The Fence

I never knew how much I loved (or hated!) fences until I built one in Somaliland.

Why fence the land?

Back in 2015 when we first began exploring how to use animals to restore the land we hired an assessment done to tell us how best to approach it. From that assessment we learned that without fencing, it would be nearly impossible to successfully implement something like this in Somaliland – the communal nature of land ownership meant that even if land-use-agreements could be made between neighboring communities, they couldn’t be enforced on passing herds and visiting nomads. If we were going to do this, we were going to have to use fence.

I love fences

So, after we got our land, we began looking for someone to build our fence. And that’s when I realized how much I apparently love fences – or at least how much I love quality fences! Haha. Maybe it’s because I’m a farm-boy from Iowa, but after looking at the fences that had been built here there was no way I was going to pay anyone to build one of them for us! And I really don’t think my standards were that high… haha. But regardless, it became clear that we were going to have to build our own fence.

Building the fence

Since I had never built a fence like this before I asked my new buddy Joseph if he would come and help us get started. Amazingly, he jumped on a plane and flew right out! He brought with him fence stretchers, fencing pliers and other equipment we can’t get here. We installed some of the H-braces together and Joseph showed us how to stretch and install the barbed wire fence.

We also had a local workshop construct a fence post pounder for us to use for installing the fence posts. With the fence post pounder it was incredible how quickly they popped into place. “At this rate,” I thought, “we’ll be done halfway through June!”

I hate fences

3 months laters, in September 2021, we were still placing fence posts! Haha. But now instead of pounding fence posts into place we were pounding solid rock to make way for the fence posts. While the soil had been nice and soft on the lower parts of the land, as we moved up the perimeter towards the higher parts of the land the soil became very hard and rocky. Definitely nothing like the soil you would find installing fence in Iowa! This meant that we had to dig a hole in rock for each and every post. We ended up spending the better part of two months with the small digging-rod-wielding army we had hired pounding rock under the Somaliland sun. And that, my friends, is just about as much fun as it sounds! Interestingly that is around the same time I realized how much I hate fences… Haha.

The Finished Product

Though we clearly had no idea what we were getting ourselves into when we started the fencing project, in the end all the blood, sweat and tears were worth it – well most of them anyways! Not only did I learn about my range of emotions surrounding fences, but we had also learned a whole lot about building a fence in Somaliland and we now had 4,400 meters of strong 2-meter-high fence installed and protecting the perimeter of our farm. Feels great to have the fence done!

Next step: building the water cistern. How hard could that be?!?