Ahhhh spring! Time to start seeds, build another raised bed, prepare the garden, and build a Wattle Fence. What is a Wattle Fence you ask? It is a fence made by weaving saplings (traditionally willow) in and out of posts set into the ground. You see, Rusty lives down the road and regularly goes to church across the street, he also likes to meander through the garden. We love Rusty but not so much in the garden. I wanted a fence to keep Rusty out, be open enough to see through, but be decorative and cheap. A Google search for cheap, DIY fencing brought me to the Wattle Fence.
Rusty and his friends.
Robert was clearing out a small portion of the woods so we cut the small trees for posts…64 of them. We then used an axe to whittle the bottom of each post into a point, 64 of them.
Fortunately for us the ground was pretty wet but it still was no picnic getting each post (did I mention there are 64 of them?) 12 inches into the ground. Robert hammered, I hammered, Alina hammered, and Rachel was at work, lucky girl.
Alina multi tasking.
Then we started gathering the saplings from the woods and let me tell you, it takes a lot of saplings and each sapling needs its little branches snipped off. Rachel didn’t get out of that! I did most of the weaving of the branches which required some finessing to get not so straight branches to fit tightly but overall it wasn’t too difficult.
Robert and I finished the last side on a sunny Sunday afternoon with me weaving and him going into the woods, dragging out more saplings, asking “how many more” about 16 times, before we were finally done. I do still have to build a gate for it but the seeds have been begging to be planted so the gate will have to wait!
Finished fence.
My little wattle fence has attracted more attention than anything else we have done here I think. Cars slow down and stare as they drive by and several people have actually stopped and walked over to talk to me about it. All in all it was a relatively easy project (due to the muscle of Robert and Alina), it was free, I absolutely love the look of it, and Rusty can come to visit all he wants and my lettuce is safe!
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