Let the boar wars begin!

Another lovely day today so as it would have been a shame to waste it, I made a reasonably early start and got quite a bit done. The first job was to hitch my small trailer to the Kia and trundle across with its contents to the décheterie at Rouffignac where I emptied it out and continued on my way to Brico Depot in Trélissac. There I purchased two 50 metre rolls of ‘grillage mouton’, 300 metres of galvanised wire on which to suspend it, a box of galvanised staples and a dozen wire tensioners. I already realise that I’ll be needing quite a few more of the latter, but that’s for later.

After unhitching the trailer leaving all of the above items in it until I can come to use them, I then cleared all of the dead oak leaves from my large trailer together with the remains of the temporary roofing board floor that I hurriedly repaired it with for my move from Plazac, parts of which have now warped in the weather and disintegrated. I then arranged with the sawmill that I visited two days ago to go and pick up the 2 metre fence posts that I said I would require.

When I arrived, the super lady in the office said that I could have 6 more (36) than I originally said I wanted for only a few euros more, which was a fantastic deal. I was extremely happy because now I’ll have almost enough to fence in the whole of my land as well as make extra bits like diagonal stabilisers on every few posts to keep them upright when I apply tension on the suspension wires. I’ll explain more about that when I come to do it.

I got back at the end of the afternoon and decided that in the time available I might as well start laying the posts out at 4 metre intervals at the positions where they will be banged into the ground and in fact much to my surprise, I managed to do the whole lot that I wanted to before the sun eventually sneeked down below the horizon. Here’s a shot of the posts that were left over for now in the trailer.

Here’s a plan of my land showing what’s going on and what I intend to do about it.

The ‘sanglier’ (wild boar) represented by the red arrow are coming up from the small valley and grassy area to the east below my land through a gap and up a small rise straight onto my land where they then create mayhem digging everything up in the search for whatever they’re looking for. They stay on my land, presumably because they can find everything there that they need, without deviating to the adjoining land on the left or right before presumably departing via whence they came.

Several people have told me that they are like little bulldozers and that you can’t stop them, but I’m not so sure. My thinking is that if you block their way with a fixed barrier, even a relatively flimsy one like the fence I intend to erect, they’ll just turn either to the left or right and continue their quest on whatever piece of open land is available to them.

So my plan is to block off two sides of my land with new fencing marked in blue on the plan. Then as they come through the gap from below and breast the rise they will initially meet the barrier between points 2 and 3 marked in yellow on the plan. As point 3 is actually within the small belt of trees on sloping terrain at the foot of my land, my thinking is that they will then therefore turn to the right towards point 2.

When they reach point 2, they might then think that by turning left again they’ll be able to circumvent the barrier and get onto my land with all of its succulent porcine delights as they have been doing up to now. However, they’ll not be able to because it will extend right up to point 1 which is in the belt of trees at the top of my land close to where my caravan is situated and therefore they’ll either decide to give up at that point and go home, or more likely, stay on the neighbouring land to the north of mine and dig that up instead, which won’t be my problem 🙂

Here’s a shot looking up towards point 1, which is the boundary marker with a red top next to the large tree.

This is a shot looking down the length of the intended new fence from point 1 towards point 2.

This shows the bottom portion of the new fence between points 2 and 3 and also the small valley, the grassy area below my land and the gap through which the ‘sanglier’ are coming.

This shot was taken from point 2 looking towards point 3.

The boundary marker at point 3 is the post with a red top that can be seen in the bushes in the next shot. I don’t intend to place the fence post as deep in the bushes as the boundary marker as to do so would need removing some of the bushes, which would defeat the object somewhat. If the boar are clever enough to find a way around the end of the barrier at that point I’ll just have to think of another way to defeat them – perhaps by placing some barbed wire or some other alternative in the bushes.

The next shot shows the gap through which the boar are coming and the grassy area below. I’ve placed two fence posts closer together just there so I can have a gate, not for the ‘sanglier’ but in case I need to get down there for any reason without having to hop over the fence.

The next shot shows a boar’s-eye view of my land as they come through the gap and up the small rise. You can see from the brown patches what I mean about how they’re not going either to the right or the left but just continuing straight ahead onto my land and proceeding to dig it up.

This is a shot taken from point 2 back up towards point 1.

This shows the grassy area below my land and how the boar have made a mess of that. The field beyond has also been damaged but by no means as much. The reason for that I think is because there were cows in there and the ground is pretty much plastered with cow pats which presumably the delicate snouts of the discerning ‘sanglier’ find rather offensive.

This final shot shows the rise that the ‘sanglier’ have to ascend, not a great challenge for them, in order to get from the grassy area and onto my land.

So that brought me to the end of what I thought was a satisfying day’s work. The next job will be to bang the posts into the ground and I’m waiting to hear from the guys who laid the concrete base for my new tool store who have a ‘fence post thumper’ that attaches to the back of their tractor and should make short work of what would be a gruelling manual job.

Before that’s done I’d like to get some wood preserver onto the tips of the posts. I think that they’ll probably last as long as I need them to anyway as they are but they are nice posts and if I regard the wire fencing as a temporary measure, they’ll still be an excellent future basis once my new house is finished for a fine rustic barrier with horizontal boards right around what will then be my garden. When I’ve got my dog, that is 😉