Fixing Pasture Fence

I finally admitted that I need some help. Cary's boy, 15 year old Alex, has come over for a couple of hours for the last two Saturdays to take care of some of the jobs that I dislike the most. He gets down enough hay for the horses and alpacas to last me a week. I do not like climbing up those hay bales. He has also chopped and dug up thistles in the pastures. You know, the kind that produce the round prickly burrs. I have been picking them out of my Ivan's forelock and tail for the last month. Fortunately, none have gotten into the alpacas' fleece. What a mess that would be.

This morning after I finished my barn chores, I walked out to admire Ivan's pasture, sans thistles. Damn! a wire was down. Sometimes deer will be running and explode from the corn field and go right through the electric fence. That's probably what happened, although it was only the bottom wire.
I loaded up my wheel barrow with a roll of new wire and wire cutters and headed out to the pasture. ...and my helper, Ivan followed right along. This picture was taken just before he pushed the wheel barrow over with his nose. Did I ever mention that Ivan's purpose in life is to play pranks and make people laugh? Well, I definitely didn't laugh at him but taught him some new two legged words.

♫ ♪ Ta - da! ♪ ♫ Here's my shiny new bottom strand all spliced in. I finished walking the fence and chopped down a bunch of weeds and vines that were growing quite close and could interfere with the electricity. This always makes me feel kinda cowboy-like, you know, riding the range and looking for fencing down.
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I've been thinking about writing down all the changes in my life since Smitty died because it seems so huge. I'm going to tack on some of my thoughts each time I post here........
1. The obvious - much more work. My morning chores used to take me from 7:30 to 8:30, and now I'm lucky if I'm done by 9:30.
2. I now know that my kids are grown up and not where I try to visualize them which is somewhere between high school graduation and college graduation. (That was a really big time span for son, Doctor Rob ☺) All three are beautiful, mature, intelligent, kind, dependable, caring, animal loving adults living full productive lives. The death of their father seems to have brought us closer together.
3. I can't leave the farm for any length of time because of the animals. (this isn't even important to me right now but might be in the future)