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Post cutting

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leanin' H

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Had some neighbors ask me if I'd cut some cedar posts for them. I guess everyone just knows I'm dumb enough to enjoy cutting posts now and then. So I went onto some private land I have permission to cut on and cut thirty this afternoon. I'm not as young as I used to be or I'd a got fifty. Day started chilly but clear.
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But as April is known to do out here, a few flurries blew in. Yippee. We need the moisture



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I pity whoever gets to peel those. Do you peel them and then let the bottom third soak in Penta/diesel brew for a year? My dad always said that by putting them in green they soaked in more preservative and it drew the sap out. Is that Cedar the same as Rocky Mountain Juniper? One of the best things about moving to Eastern Oregon from SW Colorado was never peeling another Juniper fence post. We use split Tamarack here and a big dry snag usually has the bark falling off. Split Tamarack makes the best post and rails. When my dad came up from Colo. to visit he always left with his truck loaded with Tamarack posts.
 
We've never soaked a single post. Plant them in a good hole and string wire. There are cedar/juniper posts still the ground that my grand dad put there. This dry desert country they simply don't rot.
Do you put them in green or allow them to dry?
 
Got another thirty post cut and delivered today. Even had enough time left to go help my neighbors brand the last fifty head of calves. Kids helped them all day. I'm tired tonight. No pictures as I was busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking contest
 
In WY and MT we loved those cedar posts. They LAST forever.
I don't know about "forever". That is a long time. I have some that have rotted off. Of course these fences were built by Noah just before he sailed the arc. I bet you didn't know he was a fence builder before he changed professions and went to building boats.
 
A couple of years ago, an 80 year old abandoned range corral was taken down and the post looked solid even the buried part. I was told they were black locusts. One of the guys sawed it up and used it for firewood. I wished it had been sold and reconstructed on a working ranch. The chute floor was 3 X 10 rough sawn Tamarack and the rails were 2 X 8 Tamarack. The ranch hand dry shack was bulldozed down and burned. It was all board and bat Douglas Fir with a split shake Tamarack roof. They were too lazy to pull nails.
 
I don't know about "forever". That is a long time. I have some that have rotted off. Of course these fences were built by Noah just before he sailed the arc. I bet you didn't know he was a fence builder before he changed professions and went to building boats.
Our climate is much drier, so I think that's why they last 'forever'. But if yours lasted from Noah's time then I can't argue with that!!
 
Our climate is much drier, so I think that's why they last 'forever'. But if yours lasted from Noah's time then I can't argue with that!!
If your climate is dryer than Webfoots, then you must be living in the Atacama desert in Chile. :LOL: I have been unable to find where the oldest fence is located and if the original posts still stand, but I did find the longest fence to be built in the 1880s and now get this, it is dingo proof. Looks dry to me and probably most of the posts are original. This however is nothing compared to WF's fence that boasts posts made of ancient Gopher wood. It is a little known fact that the ark was discovered on big Lookout Mountain and its hydro-tested and approved wood was split into fence posts.

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My Dad got out of the navy in the early 60's and went to work for the BLM on a fence crew. They cut 9100 juniper posts and built more miles of fence than Dad could remember. (Maybe he forgot on purpose)😁
This was way back when the BLM did something and isn't the cesspool of government ineptitude that exists in it's current form.
 

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