Worm Fence?

Ever hear of a Worm Fence? I hadn't until recently but apparently at one time this was the most popular american fence in existance. During the early settler days there were thousands to millions of miles of this type of fencing snaking across the country. The pros of this fence are: easy to build, no postholes necessary, and reasonably strong yet see through. The cons are: a large supply of material needed. It is basically just logs of any type stacked on each other and laid in a zig zag pattern across the area.

We needed this fence becasue of two reasons.

1. On the east side of the orchard the ground is very shallow. Hardpan is often only a couple of inches under the surface. That makes for a very difficult time installing TPosts! This fence seemed a natural fit since it requires no posts!
2. With a traditional TPosts and wire fence, the turkeys housed in the orchard area would have a difficult time getting to the open pasture. I have leanred from experience that adult turkeys can fly, but prefer not to cross woven wire fences unless necessary. We want the turkeys to have free range of the pasture so we wanted an easier way to let turkeys pass but block sheep.  This seemed ideal since the top of the fence is natrually a "perch" in their eyes.

First step was acquiring material at a reasonable price. Unlike early settlers I was not prepared to go into the forest to find, cut, and split 12 trees.  Call me lazy but I much preferred the lumber store. But this much normal lumber is costly! Fortunately we discovered one lumber yard with "seconds" of 4x6 pine posts that were inteded to be treated but didnt pass inspection. We swung a deal on 100 of these that was too good to pass up. As the forklift dropped the two full pallets of these on our flatbed I began to wonder... never had I seen the tires quite so flat! The owner did some quick calcualtions and happily stated "It should'nt be over 4500 lbs." Well, the bad news was my trailer is rated for only 2080 lbs cargo weight! It was a VERY slow ride home at 20mph :)

Building the fence was actually quite easy. Here's some pics:

Unloading the trailer to set the pieces

Cutting some end pieces

The Job Inspector Arrives - How am I doing?

Almost Done!

Checking for Strength

And here is the finished product. In the foreground you can see the woven wire fence that makes up the south end of the orchard.