Selfsufficientish.com

Hi,

Nearly feinted when my lovely landlady offered me the field behind our house yesterday for veg growing.

But she did say I would have to put up some fencing to stop her horse from munching on the veggies (as has been known before).

The only problem is all of the online fence suppliers are VERY expensive and kind of doesn't make it worthwhile - I am looking at an area of approx 20m x 5m (lovely, lovely landlady!) with one side already there. The cheapest wire fence I can find (without posts) is already £200.

I know nothing about horses - but I am guessing that the fence would have to be fairly robust and I am not keen to use an electric fence as I am not sure she would be happy about me zapping her horses for the sake of a few veg!

Does anyone have any ideas?

Sorry to ask a lot of questions here but the new house (which I just love) is throwing up a few challenges.

Thanks

Bonnie

What kind of fencing does she already use for her horse (which I'm assuming is currently in this field or next to it)? Most horse owners use electric fencing these days.

Hi
We use electric fencing for our horses, which is the most common for horses, other than expensive post and rail. Horses have a habit, or mine do anyway, of pushing and rubbing on fence, so electric probably best bet. Most horse owners go along with it, so check with your land lady. Stock fence not good, as they get their hooves through it, then get stuck and panic and take whole fence down with them! You can get fairly cheap electric fence systems, battery or mains operated from most country stores.

www.cyrilssoapshed.co.uk

just scavenge up a load of ld pallets, most builders merchats ect will normally let you nick a few out of their scrap pile!

if you can get hold of the eight foot plaster boad pallets they are ideal! then all you need is some posts!

cheers
hyperion

another place for large pallets is a glazier or window factory there pallets are about 10b6 and bloody heavy.
as for horse fencing most owners dont want stock fencing cause of the risk of injury from hooves getting caught and barbed wire is normally a no no incase they rip them selves up on it.but any thing else is normally ok as long as there are no sharp edges patruding .
electric is the norm now if a little ugly post and rail is fav but v expensive if your landlady all ready has electric running round you should be albe to spur of this to energise your bit.
also have you tried asking her what type of fencing she wants and if you erict it would she buy it
(it dont hurt to ask and a lot of farms have piles of posts)
good luck with your veg growing

just had a quick search for electric fencing have a look at these prices i aint say their good bad or indifferant bbut just to give you an idea http://www.countrystoredirect.com/index.html
for your info you would need just over a 100ms or tape or wire to put up 2 strands of fencing and posts aprox every 10'

Thanks folks for the advice.

In answer to questions - at the moment it is nice wooden 2 bar fencing and I don't think she would pay for it - don't want to push my luck!

I hadn't thought of pallets - brilliant idea. Also didn't realise that you could tap into existing electric fence (I think she has some of this behind the wooden fencing) so will look into that idea - thanks too for links, on the websites above the tape and posts were really cheap and it is just the engergisers that were expensive.

Am having her round for dinner in a couple of weeks - will just have to keep the pino grigio flowing and see what I can get away with (polytunnel?!?).