Build pens and fences

Set posts and weave or rail between them so your animals stay in and hungry visitors stay out.

takes patience⏳ a weektradition — not yet hand-tested

A fence is a wall made of posts and gaps. It does two jobs at once: it keeps your animals where the food and safety are, and it keeps foxes, dogs, and neighbours' goats out of your garden. Every kind of animal-keeping starts here. A goat with no fence is not your goat — it is the forest's goat.

The good news: a fence does not need nails or metal. Posts set deep in the ground, with rails lashed on or thin branches woven between them, will hold for years.

You need

• Posts — straight lengths of wood, about as thick as your arm (8–12 cm) and 1.8–2 m long. Hardwood lasts longest; chestnut, oak, and cedar resist rot. One post every 2 to 2.5 m of fence.
• Rails or weaving rods — for a rail fence, poles 3–4 m long. For a woven (wattle) fence, bendy fresh-cut rods thumb-thick or thinner: willow, hazel, or any young shoots that bend without snapping.
• A digging tool — a sharpened stake, a shovel, or a heavy pointed pole to make post holes.
• Cordage — rope or strong plant-fibre string for lashing rails to posts (this is why you learned knots).
• A heavy stone or wooden mallet — for pounding posts firm.
• A helper, if you can get one — one person holds the post straight while the other pounds.

Steps

1. Walk the line first. Mark where the fence will go with sticks or a scratched line. Avoid soggy ground — posts rot fast in standing water.
2. Decide the height for your animal. Chickens: 1.2 m and they mostly stay (clip one wing's long feathers if they fly over). Goats: at least 1.2 m, better 1.4 m — goats climb and jump. Sheep: 1 m is usually enough.
3. Dig or pound the post holes. The rule: one third of the post goes underground. For a 1.8 m post, that is about 60 cm deep. A shallow post is a fence that falls over in the first storm.
4. Set each post.
   • Sharpen the bottom end to a point so it drives in easier and sheds water.
   • If you have fire, char the buried end in flames until black — charred wood rots much slower.
   • Drop it in, hold it straight up (check by eye from two sides), and pack the hole with soil and small stones, pounding every handful firm.
5. Test each post by shoving it hard. If it wobbles, pack more stones around it now, not later.
6. Fill the gaps between posts. Pick one way:
   • Rails: lash 3–4 horizontal poles across the posts with tight lashings. Lowest rail no more than 15 cm off the ground, or small animals slip under.
   • Wattle (weaving): weave bendy rods in and out of the posts like a basket, alternating which side each row passes. Push each row down snug. This makes a solid wall goats cannot poke their heads through.
7. Make a gate. The simplest gate is a light panel of lashed poles that lifts out, or a section hinged with loops of rope on one post and tied shut on the other. Tie it with a knot animals cannot nose open.
8. Walk the whole line as if you were the animal. Crouch to goat height. Push, lean, look for gaps wider than your fist. Fix them before any animal moves in.

Watch out

• Wobbly posts — the most common failure. Cause: shallow holes or loose packing. Fix: dig deeper, pack with stones, pound hard. There is no shortcut.
• Rot at the ground line. Posts break where air meets soil. Char the buried end, use rot-resistant wood, and expect to replace a few posts every couple of years anyway.
• Goats. They lean, climb, rub, and test every fence daily. If a goat can get its head through a gap, its body follows or it gets stuck and panics. Keep gaps narrower than a goat's head.
• Diggers. Foxes and dogs dig under fences. Where predators are a worry, bury the bottom of the fence 20–30 cm deep, or lay flat stones along the outside base.
• Building too big too fast. A small, strong pen beats a long, weak fence. Start with a pen you can finish well in a week; extend later.

How it works

A fence's strength is almost all in the posts, and a post's strength is almost all underground. The soil grips the buried third and turns every push into a lever fight the animal loses. Weaving and lashing then spread any shove across many posts at once, so no single point takes the whole blow.