Indy and Hayden have been a part of our life for just about a year and a half now. They have been staying with us this entire time with just the mere suggestion of a fence. Really. Alpaca are fairly easy to contain, they don't often challenge fencing. But you could barely say that we had any fencing whatsoever until this weekend. Metal posts and wire fencing would be shuffled around as needed and in late fall and early spring, when the grass isn't so green, I would spend a bit of time each day escorting the boys back into their suggested area. A gate was non existent. I would just peel back a section of the wire fencing to get in and out of the field. It was a far from ideal situation to say the least but sometimes you do what you have to do until you can do better. And, that time came this weekend.
Greg, along with our neighbor and friend, Brad, spent all day Saturday drilling holes and driving in fence posts. And then Sunday the fencing and gate went up. It seems like such a simple and straightforward thing to do. But for me, it meant so much. I have been lucky enough to live in our beautiful home with land enough to keep Alpacas, chickens and really whatever else we chose in the future but those open spaces needed definition before they could become entirely useful.
Dreams are often put off because we need more time, more freedom. In this case my dreams are coming true by the act of limiting. It seems contradictory that the enclosure of an area or space can make you feel so much more free but in this case it does and my heart is just filled with gratitude for the two men who helped this happen this weekend. This may seem like an overly dramatic statement for something as simple as a fence but I know that there are many of you out there reading this with farms or farm dreams and you understand the feeling entirely.
But, I really have so much more to be thankful for as well. This fence was a community effort. Not only did Brad lend us his efforts and tractor skills but the fencing and gate were donated by my neighbors, Rachel and Felix, who finally decided after many years to stop keeping goats. They dismantled their fencing and brought it down to us. Another neighbor allowed us to borrow his post hole digger for the occasion.
I grew up on Long Island, house on top of house, where fencing was a necessity. Good fences made good neighbors. I feel entirely blessed now to inhabit an area where there is literal and figurative 'room to breath' and where good neighbors make great fences.
