The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Techniques and skills => Topic started by: rob39 on June 11, 2015, 10:00:30 pm
-
Hi all
Just in the process of buying a cottage with around 6 acres of woodland. One side of the woodland is bordered by farm fields with sheep/cattle and has a stock fence, and the other side borders a very quiet country road, already a broken rotten fence here with hawthorn hedge. My plan over time is to re fence the road side but what kind of fence will suffice? A simple post and wire fence?? (4 levels of wire topped with barb. no stock fence) My overall aim is to lay the hawthorn hedge behind this.
-Any programs to help gauge how many post/wire you would need
-Maximum distance between posts
Also who should repair the fence bordering my land and the farmer??
Rob
-
The farmer will probably want to keep his/her stock on their land & will have an interest in maintaining the fence.
I say probably - this is what we do to keep our cattle on our land.
We have a number of what are called 'march fences' - the fence between us and another landowner. A march fence is a shared responsibilty - however, some neighbours are better than others at accepting their commitments... Note, I don't think we consider our roadside fences to be march fences, we are keen to stop our cattle wandering on the road and are happy to maintain those fences.
Most of our fences are post and wire along the march. Also along the roadside. By choice we have added stock fencing in certian fields - mostly to keep sheep in or out as we've found post and wire fairly useless at doing that.
Get to know your neighbour farmer.
Sue
-
Rob, assuming you are in England or Wales, the common law position is there is no obligation to fence land what so ever.
It is the responsibility of animal owners to fence against their stock.
So in your case, if you have no animals in your land, where your land borders the farmers he needs to contain his stock.
If you too have stock it's a good idea to get together and share costs of a fence, but there is no obligation to do so.
On the road side you need do nothing, but you would possibly want to do something to make trespass not too easy. There are no particular rules I am aware of other than planning...which i think means max height one metre. And I guess common sence stuff like not to put razor wire next to a kids playground !
In Scotland the law is different.
-
The Forestry Commission published a guide to fencing, it contains lots of useful info.
See:http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/fctg002.pdf/$FILE/fctg002.pdf (http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/fctg002.pdf/$FILE/fctg002.pdf)
HTH
Sue
-
-Any programs to help gauge how many post/wire you would need
-Maximum distance between posts
Rob
I use Google Earth a lot for measuring field boundaries, there are some other programmes.
some of our posts are 2mts apart, some 3mtrs, but thats for sheep netting. maybe post & wire could be further apart. Unless you are expecting people/animals trying to get in, why not about 3 strands barbed wire?