Why late winter is the time to sort your fencing

Late July, and we are into the back end of winter. The paddocks are wet, growth is slow, and the jobs that feel urgent in spring are still a few weeks off. Which makes right now the sensible time to look hard at one thing most people leave until it fails: the fence.

A fence is easy to ignore until a beast is on the road or a paddock will not hold. But spring is exactly when you need your fences working, and exactly when every contractor in the district is flat out. Sort it in late winter and you go into spring with lines you can trust.

Why fencing is a late-winter job

Two reasons. The first is timing on your side of the gate. When the pasture takes off in spring, a sound fence is what lets you make the most of it: shut a paddock up to spell it, rotate stock onto fresh feed, and keep them off the ground you want to grow out. A fence you cannot rely on takes all of that off the table.

The second is timing on ours. Spring and early summer are the busiest weeks of the year for land work, with pasture, spraying, slashing and hay all wanting the same window. Fencing scoped and booked now gets done before that rush, on ground that is still soft enough to drive posts cleanly but firming up as the wet eases.

Walk the line and read it honestly

You do not need to be a fencer to judge your own fences. Pick a dry-ish afternoon and walk each line end to end, rather than eyeballing it from the ute. You are looking for a few plain things.

• Sight down the run. Stand at one end and look along the fence. A sound line is dead straight, posts evenly spaced, all standing plumb and at the same height. Leaning posts, gaps where a post has rotted off, or a wandering line all tell you the run is tiring.
• Check the corners, ends and gateways. This is where fences do their real work and where they fail first. Every corner, strain point and gate should have a heavier strainer post braced with a diagonal stay or a box assembly. If a corner post is loose, leaning or has no brace at all, the whole run either side of it is only as good as that one post.
• Test the wire. Push on a wire between posts. It should be taut and spring back, sitting dead straight along the face of the posts. Sagging, rusted or broken strands mean the run needs re-wiring even if the posts are fine.
• Look at the posts themselves. Give a few a shove. Firm is good. Timber that moves in the ground, is soft at the base, or is grey and splitting is at the end of its life.

A fence is only ever as strong as its corners. Everything in between just holds the line.

What a fence that lasts actually has

Knowing what good looks like helps you judge any quote, ours or anyone else's. A stock fence built to last has treated timber line posts at even spacing, usually four to eight metres apart, often with a couple of steel pickets between, all driven vertical and standing at a consistent height. It carries five to seven plain high-tensile wires, or a run of hinge-joint mesh with a wire or two above, strained tight and stapled flat to the stock side of the posts so the line runs straight.

The parts that earn their keep are the strainer assemblies at every corner, end and gateway: a fatter post set deep and braced properly, so the wires can be strained hard without pulling the corner over. Along a dead-straight run there are no stays, just identical line posts. That is the pattern that stands up to stock leaning on it season after season, and it is how we approach the work.

Repair, or replace the run

Not every tired fence needs pulling out. The judgment usually comes down to the posts and the strainers. If the timber is still sound and standing but the wire is shot, a run can often be re-strained or re-wired for far less than a full rebuild. If the posts are rotting at the base, or the corners have given way, that section is better rebuilt properly than patched again next winter. Walking the line tells you which is which, paddock by paddock.

Make the list, then book it

Turn the walk into a short list. Note which lines are boundary fences, where a breakout ends up on the road, and which are internal. Which runs hold stock now, and which are just tidy-to-have. Sort the boundary and stock-critical lines to the top, mark the corners and gates that worry you, and get the work booked while there is still room in the calendar before spring.

Fencing is one of those jobs that is never urgent until it is, and always cheaper to plan than to scramble. Late winter is the quiet window to get on top of it. If you want a hand reading your lines, or a straight answer on repair versus replace, that is part of what we do around Whittlesea and the ranges.

Oak Ridge Agriculture

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