Living Small in Austin TX

I need a new fence...

A few weeks ago, a drunk driver hit my neighbor's car, plowed through our fence, clipped a pecan tree in our front yard, and landed on our front porch.  Thankfully, the porch is concrete, and a brick column (apparently not load bearing) took the brunt of the impact.

The chain link fence was a little warped, but I just grabbed a couple of t-posts from the backyard and got the fence back up so it was functional, if not pretty (oh, look, it's like a theme...)  Our insurance company sent someone over to move all the bricks out of the way so we could open the front door - yeah, don't get all excited and ask me who they are...I just got the bill from the company they contracted that little polite action out to.

I finally received my check from them today, and have been thinking about how to go about repairs.  We had been planning on eventually replacing the chain link fence with something that afforded us more privacy, so may just go ahead and get that started.  I was never all that fond of the brickwork out front anyway, so we will likely replace it with wooden beams instead.  I'm thinking rough hewn cedar posts would be gorgeous, and easy to source locally.

As for the fence, I want something a little creative.  I'm hoping to alternate sections of wood fence with hog fencing so I have a built in trellis for climbing vegetables.  I also really want to be able to use reclaimed wood...but my google fu's been so off lately.  I can't seem to find anything!  I'm worried my vision is going to be prohibitively expensive, not to mention difficult for my contractor to implement.  

What I really want is rough boards like this:

I'd like to use them horizontally, with slightly bigger gaps in between.  The fence in the photo is down at the Natural Gardener, possibly the best garden shop ever, and my go to shop for seeds, plants, tools, expert advice and a bit of good natured flirting with the staff - I think it's written into the employee handbook or something - I wonder how many other customers go for the ego boost alone?  

I suppose I could just call them and ask about the fence.  Or I could just stop in at any one of the numerous lumberyards in my neighborhood with the photo - there are two on my street alone.  Let's hear it for light industrial zoning!  They are small shops, with pretty creative fences themselves...

A few months into this, and I totally get why most working farms are not pretty.  Okay, I should clarify.  I think most farms are gorgeous, soul restorative places, but inevitably there are piles of broken down machinery, plastic feed buckets splattered with mud or pigshit or, most likely, both, and ramshackle outbuildings - and I'm not talking about picturesque weathered barns, but dubious looking repurposed "manufactured homes" with an old tarp thrown over the rusted out metal siding.  Functional?  yes.  Pretty?  No.

To the left here?  This sort of thing is not pretty.  And I have a lot of this sort of thing going on.  

On the other hand, form is certainly following function here, and that's something I can get behind.  This is the "gate" to our chicken run.  it gets moved around a lot, to allow them to forage on fresh wild greens and then allow grazed areas to recover.  What's not beautiful about happy chickens?  And not needing to weed?  And not throwing this old bungee cord into the landfill because there's a second life waiting for it here on the micro farm?

With time, I think my little backyard farm will be both functional and beautiful, but for now...mostly it's about quick fixes, like yesterday afternoon when I took advantage of a break in the rain to go out and check on my dear little hens, only to find the covered run of their coop completely flooded.  They couldn't get to their feed without standing in a deep puddle of cold, dirty water...so I shoveled in a makeshift island of mulch for them to stand on, dragged over a panel of the moldy and rapidly crumbling wood panelling I've been stripping off the back shed to create more of a shelter...not pretty at all, but the chickens sure appreciated it.