The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Walnut tree fence post

field report on how long the walnut tree as a fence post lasted before it fell over


This walnut tree functioned as a fence post for about 6 years.

It was in line with other fence posts, so we just trimmed off the lower limbs and attached the fence.

I might think twice about taking a short cut like this in the future and use a treated 4x4 or maybe even a 2x4 which would most likely last decades.



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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Mark, I have found that treated landscape timbers (approximately 3x4 ) work well for line posts. If you seal the ends they will last for a very long time. They are stronger than 2x4 and less expensive than 4x4. I bought some last year for under $3.
Comment by Wade Breazeale Tue Feb 12 07:31:45 2013
Glasd half full: that's six years your new fence post didn't have to be in the ground! We like to use Eastern Red Cedar (juniper v.) for line posts here, you can catch them at the perfect size and they xome "pre-treated" lol
Comment by Phil Tue Feb 12 14:17:11 2013





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