| Summer has been with us for a fortnight now: we've had the hottest week of the year so far, followed by the traditional thunderstorms and radical drop in temperature. Not knowing what to wear, this week half of us turned up in shorts, the other in longs. As it turned out, it was a nice day for working - warm enough to be "nice", but not unpleasantly hot. Plenty of sun in the morning, clouding over later, to stop us overheating. Here endeth the weather report.
Today our task was to erect post-and-rails fencing along the next stretch of field, adjacent to the Graveyard which we did last month. We'd already spent a couple of work parties clearing back the scrub - jolly hard work, I can tell you - so this week all we had to do was put up the fence. First job - unload the van into the field. Lots and lots of posts, and three times as many rails. Next job - pull out the leftovers from last time, which had been tucked under the hedge for safe keeping. Oh dear, they're soaking wet. OK, pull them out into the sun to dry: we spread them out in roughly the right places, to save having to move them again later. As you can see, we're going for the traditional 3-rail fence again. 
"OK" says Roy "I'll fix the dumper, you lot start carrying the wood across the field." This took the best part of an hour, (it's quite a big field, and the last stretch is uphill) and we'd only moved about a third of the rails by hand, before we heard the familiar cough and splutter of the digger. Whoops, forgot to take the traditional picture of dumper-starting! I'm sure you can picture it: Roy swings the starter round and round and round, while five of us stand and watch him, until there is a roar of engine, and a big, big cloud of black smoke. It then takes a mere five minutes to load up the rest of the wood on the dumper and drive it round the edge of the field (to avoid scaring the horses) and unload it. 
Exhausted by all this effort, we stop for an early tea break. 
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Right! On we go: use a rail to measure where the post goes, make an 'ole with a metal pokey-pokey stick, put post in place, bang it down to require height, nail rails on. Simple!
Here's James carefully banging in the second nail to each join, and Graham is working on the join - let's go and have a closer look: 
"What 'ya doing, Graham?" Oh, the word is "fettling" (we never use the word "bodging") to neaten the gap between the graveyard fence and the new stretch of fence. The short joining sections have to be off-set from the main rails, due to the intervening trees. 
James is getting carried away with the nailing - should we tell him that the rest of us have stopped for lunch? 
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Refreshed and renewed after a leisurely lunch, we carry on. By now we're getting into a nice rhythm of working. James and Bob do the second nailing:
While Roy and Malcy extend the rails with the first nailing. I'm playing a vital role by holding the nails, by the way. 
And what are Vic and Nady up to, with that unusual digging tool... has Vic found an edible root? No, they're rescuing a Knapweed that's in danger of being trampled to death. 
Jim gets sent back with a bowsaw to level off the tops: 
...and Graham is finally allowed out of his corner, having completely the fence join. 
Some of the fence posts are, er, slightly less than upright, mainly due to the amount of roots in the ground. They occasionally need to be encouraged into position, so here is Malcy leaning, Keith holding, and Roy getting ready to hammer. That's his own hand in the danger position, by the way! 
And here are Keith and Doug BONKING ha! ha! Just had to get that bit in somewhere. The bonker, for those of you have never participated in non-mechanised fence erecting, is a very heavy metal tube with handles: having positioned your post, you slip the bonker over the top, and two blokes lift it up and let it drop, as many times as necessary. It makes a very satisfying "bonk!" noise, and gets fence posts in very quickly. However, it's extremely hard work to use, so we have to take turns in bonking. Harry's coming along with the measuring stick, to make sure that they don't stop bonking too soon. 
Well, we've made good progress today: we've reached the electric fence, which is more than three-quarters of the way across the field. We won't finish it today, there's a gate to make at the far end - but we've done more than we thought we would, which is always nice. 
So here it is, in it's glory - another stretch of WilBerks post'n'rail fencing, all done by hand, and (in this case) without the aid of a spirit level. (Feeling sorry for us? Care to make a donation to allow us to buy more tools? All donations are welcome, really, no matter how small! Please e-mail me for information about how to help us - please! please!) 
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