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[Robert Walton <waltonrp AT gmail.com>]

> I know that deer will stand on their hind legs and eat off a tree, I 
> suppose your goats would, also.............

My goats will stand on their head if they want to eat something :>)
It's just corralling that enthusiasm that I try for.

>  If you care to explain a little more about your trees and fencing , I'm 
> always interested in reading about that subject.

Well, I intend to get back into bees this year and I have a problem in
the main field here where it just wants to make a dry creek and erode.
I have lots of sourwood (good honey) in the woods. I also want to get
some black locust growing here. I'm going to mix the two in the
planting.

So.. I have this bright idea to divide the big field up into smaller
more manageable sections. This includes a swath of trees planted right
up that area that wants to erode. I got out there with my niece and a
100' tape a couple of weeks ago and measured out some divisions.
Includes a bottom field, a nice long field and a odd shaped 1/2 acre
that is still plow-able.

This leaves a lot of area to deal with later and divides up 3 fields
into natural sections (one bottom, one sloped, one upper land at the
top of the slope).

My fencing goal until now has been to keep "them" away from me. Fence
them out. I had one long stretch of woven wire fence next to the
garden that I'd stretched by hand and help up with steel T posts. It
was pretty precarious last year and I had to string an electric wire
over it to keep the goats honest.

Last weekend, I set posts, stretched the wire and made it all
permanent. That's good for the garden.

I don't have woven wire to fence the goats out of all the divisions I
mentioned. I think that what I'll do is set cedar posts at the corners
and string electric wire around the whole mess. I should have enough
wire for that so no $$. Then as I can manage it, I'll make division
fences around each of those areas.

Fencing is a big cost, both in $$ and labor. I'm lucky that I have a
decent supply of cedar in the woods for posts. Cedar posts are pretty
reasonable if you need to buy a few also.

The one thing that I've learned on fencing is to start with movable
fences or be certain when you lay them. Moving a permanent fence is a
big job.

Back to the bees... I'm planting locust, sourwood and cedar trees (not
for the bees) in between posts along the permanent fence. In 20 years
when the cedar posts are failing, I'm going to just nail what's left
of the fence to the trees and leave it for those who follow me.

Rob - Va