Fences add charm, protection to homes

Do you have any fencing around your property? Fences have become more popular since they are so decorative and made in such a variety of material that add to the presence of your home’s yard, around flower beds especially. And now you can pick the color you might want, not like the olden days when they came in the natural wood color you picked out.

We live in the village and there has been a wire fence around our back yard ever since my dad purchased the place. I once asked him if he was going to keep it there and he replied “it’s for the boundary lines of the place where we live.” It doesn’t go all the way around the house, just along a creek beside our house and to the road on the back side and along the west side. From time to time, we have had to replace a fence post or two and when the wiring has rusted or broken down, we have had to replace that too. Repairing it wasn’t because we didn’t get along with the neighbors, but it’s where our “north forty” patch is and if we didn’t have an obstacle in the way, we would be run over by children and animals.

Along one side of the fence along the creek my dad built a more substantial fence to hold berry bushes, at one time and an arbor lined the bushes. I would like one day to have a chain link fence with steel posts that would be more permanent and less bothersome. It would also keep the children out that still run through breaking down what is there.

All the talk about “fencing” put me in mind of some we remember when we were children that people had all along the front of their houses. You had to open a gate to get into the yard and up to their front door. Our Canal houses are along the Canal closer than other streets. Some still do to keep children away from the Canal because they live real close to the edge of the wall.

I think of black wrought iron fencing that was in place, but most of it is gone now. The Masonic F&AM Temple had a huge front to the building and wrought iron fencing was along the front of it, but most of that is gone, too. There is fencing along some of the statues in many town and cities that are still in use to give them a distinctive appearance.

Fencing along the railroad tracks in the backyards of houses built along the railroad have many fences still there for safety sake.

Where I lived there is a quite high hill with a board walk along the road that was built by the village with a railing all along it to the pavement at the bottom. That was once a great place for kids to skate down it bumpty-bump.

Why there was never a cement sidewalk built there?

Years ago when we were kids and would spend the day with our cousins on the family farm, one of us would have to run on ahead when it was time for the cows and bring them into the barn for milking. The country lane to the pasture where the cows spent the day was lined with a wooden fence as it ran along the road that was generally busy with vehicles. At either end of the fence were gates and to us city kids, it was fascinating to unhook the fences to get the cows at either end for the day and milking time. The gate hitched and we would swing on the gate, which was really a “no-no” because it would weaken the fence posts after a time. Leave it to kids.

Years ago, if you had rocky land in the country, you could find enough stone and in time, build your own stone field fence, which to me seems to set a place into its own distinction, adding a quality that few homesteads have these day. If you travel up north of here in the Fort Drum area, you can view numerous fences as that region even has houses built from the stone of the property. They seem to set a place in quality that few homesteads have these day.

“I would like one day to have a chain link fence with steel posts that would be more permanent and less bothersome.”