The man who built a fence

As I’ve written before, I have a special place where I planted a special tree. This amazing adventure has changed my life!

I had a dream of building a fence to surround this special tree. I wasn’t sure if it would ever become a reality but hey, a girls gotta have some dreams – right?!

The setting for this tree is pretty much in the middle of a pasture with a cute pond right beside it. During part of the year there are cows that are living on this piece of land, not to mention the deer and other wildlife whose homes are nestled right there too.

When the tree was first planted, a small fence was put up right around the base of it to protect it from all the deer and wildlife. It has served it’s purpose. The tree is stronger and much taller than when it was first planted. It has survived MANY strong Kansas wind storms!

When the dream of building a fence started. I had thought it might look a little rustic – something like what would be on Little House on the Prairie. I called it a corral. I just wanted something simple. My dream included planting some perineal flowers with a little bench. It was going to be cute! My sweet little oasis – out in the middle of a pasture!

The first couple of years after planting the tree were growing times – for me and the tree. I used this time to heal my soul after losing my sister. I would go out to this special place to think and cry and do whatever I needed to do. I felt like I was ready for the next phase of this adventure. I was hoping this year the dream of the fence would become a reality. My husband Lon knew about my dream. He also knew I would be the one to decide when I was ready for things to get started and he realized he would probably be the one to build it! This is how he loves me! He knew how important this was to me – my dreams became his as well.

It was so fun to be able to work on this project together. It has shown me the kind and sensitive and very smart man he is! I’ve always known these things about him – I’m still amazed at how sweet and generous he really is! Lon is a very quiet man that has a huge heart! He doesn’t like a lot of attention on himself so, this post will make him a little uncomfortable. I’m just so proud of him and I think he deserves some recognition!

Just like planting a tree – I didn’t have a clue about building a fence! During this past winter Lon would occasionally ask me if I wanted to go up to the farm to look at some things that “might work for your fence”. He was thinking about it – he was taking on the fence project. This made me smile to know he was trying to figure out how to do this. Our farm is about 30 miles north of town so we had a few little road trips to see what things we might find to build the fence. Usually these little trips were on Sunday afternoons. It was so fun to just hang out looking for treasures! This was early spring – it was exciting to be out in nature exploring with my husband! It was good for my soul!

Lon would sometimes say what do you think about doing this or that for your fence. It made me love him even more to know that he understood the importance of this fence. He was actually putting more thought into it than I was!

He knew I didn’t want a brand new looking fence. That would look a little strange in the pasture. We talked about putting some wagon wheels together or parts of old tractors that my father-n-law had taken apart. He was trying to keep the rustic look and I liked the history part of it.

Well as time went on those ideas where scrapped. We decided to go with an old galvanized fence with a scallop looking top. Lon had an old roll and we thought there would be enough of it for this project.

We began with measuring, then marking the places where the posts were to be with little flags. When I saw the layout of where the fence would be I felt like I was at the beginning of building a brand new house only it was just a fence in the middle of the pasture. The dream I had was starting to take shape!

There were 10 posts to put up. That’s a lot of digging by hand with a post hole digger! Lon did it all by himself. Anyone who knows him will understand if there is a job to be done, he just does it – he doesn’t stop to ask for help. Since it’s right by a pond he would run into sand. The post hole digger didn’t work very well with sand so, he literally would lay flat on his belly to scoop out the sand till it was at the depth where we needed it to be. I was right there cheering him on!

While we were putting in the posts we would measure and make sure they were as straight as could be. The ground is definitely not level so that brought about a few obstacles. We figured out how to get around these bumps in the road together. Team work!

Now it was time to put up the gate. I had several old gates to choose from at our farm that Lon had been saving over the years. We took another trip up there for me to pick out the one I wanted. I felt fortunate to be able to choose from several!

Now came the tedious part of making a latch for the fence post to match the latch on the gate and having everything fit perfectly! Luckily Lon has some pretty good blacksmithing skills that allowed him to whip out a latch pretty quickly. All of this was so much more complicated than I ever could have imagined!

The work involved leading up to putting up a fence is pretty intense. We live in a rural community, we are surrounded by fence – I have a deeper appreciation for all the hard work that goes into building these. As we drive by all the fence, I can see different styles that some have used. Just like cooking or sewing, everyone has there own twist or flare to get what they want. Some fences look like they hired the fence to be put up while others look a little more homemade. They all accomplish the same thing. Either to keep things out or keep things in.

I kept asking Lon when we would be able to actually put up the fence. It seemed like all the foundational work was taking forever! It was fun to work together on this project and I was learning so much, but the waiting was hard! It seemed like we were ready to put up the fence then we had to do one more thing before we could.

The day finally arrived where we could put up the fence! As we began to unroll it, we could see the fence that we’d been saving for this project wasn’t in good condition. It wouldn’t be good enough to put around the tree! We had worked so hard getting to this point, especially Lon! It was so disappointing.

There wasn’t much we could do. We went home, Lon went to the shop and I went into the house. I felt so deflated! We had worked so hard! Disappointment was an understatement! I knew Lon’s work schedule was to start getting busy pretty soon. If we were going to be able to put up the fence, now was the time to get it done. We were so close, yet without a fence you can’t put up a fence. I wondered why the Lord would bring us to this stopping point so abruptly.

We thought about finding a new fence that looked old. I looked online and wasn’t able to find anything. Lon suggested that I put something on our local buy, sell, trade to see if anyone might have some laying around that we could purchase. We didn’t need very much of it.

Almost immediately I got a response from a man who lives in our town. He said he had some that might work for us. Lon & I went to look at it later that evening, I was shocked and so surprised to see what he had! It was exactly what we wanted and it was brand new! And he just gave it to us – for free!! This is the type of fence that you can’t even purchase new anymore. He had an entire roll that was still brand new!! I can’t tell you how excited I was!

Lon told me I was the luckiest girl he’d ever known. I knew differently – the Lord had his hand in this! He was teaching me that He was the one planning this, and because of this little set back (it seemed big at the time) my faith grew a bit more.

These are the things that build our faith. Little things that just seem to work out when we can’t figure out why. We just need to recognize them as a gift God has given us and give thanks for these special gifts! So because of this, I want to thank my amazing husband who shows his love for me through his hard work. Lon, you have been a gift God has given me, thank you for loving me, and thanks for building my cute fence!