Hit my 200th fence post last weekend and it felt weird

I've been putting up split rail fences for a neighbor's property outside Albany for about 6 months now. Last Saturday I set my 200th post and I stopped for a second. Didn't realize I had done that many. I started out using a manual post hole digger and it took me like 20 minutes per hole. Now I use a one-man auger and I can do a post in under 5 minutes if the ground is soft. Still takes me way too long to get them all perfectly lined up though. Anyone else lose track of how many times you've done a certain task on a project?

3 comments

3 Comments

holly_reed553d ago

Honestly the part about the manual post hole digger taking 20 minutes made me like physically recoil. That sounds absolutely miserable, I cannot imagine doing 200 of those by hand before getting an auger. Ngl I would have probably quit after like 5 holes if I had to dig that deep manually every single time. The fact that you stuck with it for the first however many posts is wild to me, you must have arms of steel now or something. Tbh I've never done fence work but I've done enough yard projects to know that any repetitive task like that just wears on your soul after a while.

phoenix2463d ago

Man, I feel that. Twenty minutes a hole is brutal, especially when you hit clay or roots. The thing most folks don't realize is your form matters more than your strength. If you're just muscling it, you're gonna burn out fast. You gotta let the tool do the work - twist it right and lift with your legs, not your back. That first time you rent a one-man auger and blast through a hole in two minutes, it feels like cheating. But honestly, doing those first few by hand teaches you how to read the soil, which saves you headaches later.

markh853d ago

Whoa, hard disagree with you there holly_reed55. Twenty minutes a hole is nothing if you're learning the ground. @phoenix246 is right - you need to feel the soil change from sandy loam to that hardpan clay before you can really know how to work it. An auger just masks bad placement and jams up on roots you didn't expect. Besides, the manual labor builds muscle memory and patience. Rushing through fence work with power tools usually means you're fixing it again next year.