Andrew is ten years old. On his wish list for the Christmas just gone,  he had a crow bar listed at number two. It was below a new book and above a Nerf Gun. When asked why, he quickly answered, ‘To help Dad bark trees ….. What else would you do with a crowbar!”

 Santa did not deliver a crowbar however Dad was more than willing to share one from the shed.

Cutting and ripping fence posts is hard, physical work. A tall, straight ironbark tree is felled, the bark then removed before it is cut into billets. From the billets, fenceposts are ripped out. The saw has to be sharp, the tree straight and fuel mix right. 

The boys are keen to help out but first they must watch and learn, and consider all the dangers involved.

There is some valuable lessons happening on all levels when they work with Dad ….

teamwork is one of them.

Just watch and learn …..

While Hamish is still a little young to wield the crowbar …. he is proficient at counting how many posts in a billet and spotting the next suitable tree.

Another reason why I love school holidays …. the boys learning life lessons with Dad.

As always, I’m swamped when smoko comes out on the fenceline.

Much to the boys’ dismay, we will be back in the classroom when it comes time to pull the wire.

There are 3 comments on this article:

• On 27/01/2014 Ali said:

  What a beautiful blogpost Ainsley! Lovely.

  Best wishes from the Alps,
  Ali

• On 28/01/2014 sharon said:

  That is one thing my kids will probably never learn, is its all steel strainers and steel pickets in our part of white ant eaten world (although are familiar with fence-posting, as Angus calls it – ie cementing in the strainers! although their usefulness in this task is debatable!).

  When I was growing up gidgee was the choice of post, however no splitting required, just a nice straight tree (some strainers, some just fence posts between steel pickets) . And no debarking either. Sometimes dad drilled holes with the old hand drill, or most usually, just added a little slot/notch with the chainsaw. Everyone would keep an eagle out of for the rare and prized long tall posts for gallast (spelling?) gate posts, and then the lighter posts for lever gate rails (lighter so people not of weight lifting build could actually reach through the wires and lift the rail to its (again specially sought after) forked resting post. Ah, memories of trotting to the lead to open the gate in front of a restless mob of cattle, then having to scramble through the barbed wire (and getting caught) as I couldn’t lift the rail from the wrong side… Sometimes after a big session you longed to be the one to open that gate and get off your horse for a moment, and other times, knowing how tricky the gate could be, you so didn’t want to be the one closest to the lead 😉

• On 5/02/2014 Maria said:

  The Husky shape – no missing it. The bar, the wedge and the hammer…. Falling and cutting posts used to be DH business. Now it is only out of necessity (thankfully). But both our boys have said at one stage that they want to be post cutters – oh to be young again.