Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Lately I’ve been going through what I’m calling my “Farming Reality Check”. It’s not so much a mid-life crisis or even a “mid-farm crisis” as much as it is the fact that I am quickly (after slowly) coming to the realization that there needs to be more shifts and movement on the farm. A few weeks ago it became painfully clear that the balance in our life had gone from extremely shaky to absolutely falling off the ball out of balance. This shake-up (which I admit had been coming for sometime) has finally got me to the point where I need to honestly evaluate what is going on at the farm and what maybe needs to have big changes. There is good news though! The good news is that I’m taking the bull by the horns and attacking the balance issue as best as I can … with the help of my family and all the great listeners of The Beginning Farmer Show I’m building a business plan and taking a close look at everything we do on the farm and why we do it.
Not everything about this episode is a downer though. Thanks to a growing group on the new Beginning Farmer Show Facebook Page I wanted to take some time to answer questions about two of my favorite topics … chainsaws and pigs! Below you will find links to the resources I mentioned:
- The “String Method” for weighing pigs.
- Stihl FS130
- Stihl MS 241 C-M
- Stihl MS 261 C-M
- Here is the fence charger I use … the Stafix X6i
One more thing … I mentioned in this weeks episode that I’m getting about 1,500 volts on the ground wires in my fence. Is this normal or do you have any thoughts on what I’m missing that would be causing this? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
As always, I want to thank you so much for listening and supporting the show with your encouragement and reviews on iTunes! I am continually working to produce a better show, and I’m thankful for all of the listeners sticking with me as I learn.
If you do enjoy the show, don’t forget that you can subscribe on iTunes and leave a five star rating and review (by clicking the link). If you are an Android phone user you can also subscribe on the free Stitcher App. It is so very encouraging to know that people are listening and enjoying the show!
I would love to hear your questions, show ideas, or comments about the show. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail! As always you can follow along with “The Beginning Farmer” and Crooked Gap Farm by checking out these links …
I have a Stafix X6 energizer (same as yours without the remote) and I thought that if you had a fence with alternating hot and ground wires that the ground wires are supposed to be connected to the grounding rods.
According to the manual (http://images.kencove.com/documentation/EXD12R_EXD6R_manual.pdf), there’s also a way to wire the fence with the half voltage (yellow) terminal to end up with a “bi-polar” installation where the wires have some sort of alternating positive and negative voltage. Is it possible that you have your fence was installed as a “bi-polar” installation? A fence installed like that would have a lower voltage on the wires.
Rich … Unfortunately I just noticed this comment. But, yes my problem was that I didn’t have my ground wires grounded. The problem stems from a moment of frustration last year where I just went crazy disconnecting things searching for a solution and then didn’t hook them back up. Ugh … problem solved now though! On a side note, do you know about how much distance you are charging with your fencer?
I think I have somewhere around 3 miles or so worth of high tensile running from that one energizer.
It’s a single wire (offset from a barb wire fence) running around part of the perimeter, then it branches off to go down various interior barb-wire fences. The wires all go out from the energizer and “dead-end” (if that makes sense), but I’ve been thinking about eventually adding some more wire to build a “loop” into the system.
I’m not entirely sure if a “loop” system would work much better than a “dead-end” system, but my intuition tells me it might.
Ethan there are two problems.
All the negative wires on the fence are supposed to be hooked together and not touching any of the positive wires so you need a connector wire from top to bottom every other wire everyone those negative wires must be connected together. The next thing is that the negative wires now tied together need to be run to a series of three ground wires 4 feet in the ground and at least 10 feet apart. anyplace along that fence .
The second point is that when you are testing your ground you have anything over 400 volts on the ground at the charger it is not acceptable . What it means is that the ground attached to the charger is not sufficient. Again you must have at least three ground rods 4 feet in the ground minimum and 10 feet apart. If you’ve already done that then I would take a hose and soak the area around those ground rods trying to get a better ground obviously there’s something wrong with the ground at the charger.
It’s no wonder that you had trouble with your fence all this time.