Since the visit of the wild boars on August 24th we realized the electric fence is not enough to prevent wild boars from entering. In the Winter the fence needs a lot of maintenance: the area below the fence needs to be cleaned from anything growing there every few days. In the Summer the growth is less, but the ground is then very dry, meaning the electric power is diminished. To keep the fence working good enough we need to regularly water the poles and check for small shortcuts (small green debris that slightly touch the wires). In the Winter the fence is powerful enough to work well even with small shortcuts.

So we needed a fixed fence instead. Otherwise we would never feel comfortable to leave for more than a few days.

Setting up a fence should be easy, I (Gijs) thought. I already placed several large poles by myself. So we got us 20 something poles for the upper part. 

We started early on Saturday Oct 1st. Unfortunately driving a pole into the soil was much harder than expected. At a depth of about 40 cm, a thick layer of clay prevented us from going any deeper. Digging 20 holes there could take enormous amounts of time and energy. We needed a special drill of some kind. That was a serious setback to our enthusiasm. 

To keep the good energy we instead decided to try and rebuild a fence that is actually on the neighbors ground. Nobody is living in that house and nobody ever met the owners. The rumor is that the house was never licensed for living because not everything was executed according to plan. A very common thing in Portugal.

After a few hours of digging ditches, pushing and pulling we managed to attach an old mesh fence of ourselves to the existing metal poles. It really seems very sturdy. It made us feel very proud :-) A good start after all!

Discussing the situation later with a friend, he offered to do the job of setting up the rest of the fence. He never had done it himself, but a friend from Ireland was visiting soon and that was a very capable guy.

On Oct 26th they started. Below our friend Marcos (right) and his friend Zsolt (left). In the middle our drill bit that we purchased for making the holes. Originally the plan was to hire a drilling machine. However, this drill bit is a different standard connection then the standard connection of the available drilling machine. Seems every supplier has it’s own standard…

But Marcos and Zsolt are smart guys and soon we came with a workable solution to use the drill bit manually. 

After two days of hard work, most of the first part was done.

Two weeks later they returned for the second part. This time we were better prepared because meanwhile Ellie had the local blacksmith make a handle for the drill bit. This made making the holes into a simple one man job.

The original planning for the second part was to work for three days. But in the end the guys only had two days available. With a lot of help from both of us, Maarten (our great workaway) and working until late, we managed to reach our goals anyway.

The fixed fence is now almost finished. It has three gates: two smaller ones and one larger, big enough for a tractor (only 1-2 times per year we assume). Maarten constructed a large ‘gate’ to fill most of the opening, next to a smaller gate that we can use for passing with a wheel barrel. 

The fixed fence has almost 50 wooden poles and about 200 m in length. Separating mostly the core where we are planting mainly. The remaining parts will remain unprotected (from the boars) and develop more wildly.