Fences and more for Free: The Wattle-Fence-Club

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Do you know that you can build your own fences, raised beds, shade-panels, trellises and much more for little to no money? If you have shrubs and/or trees on your property you already have the required building material in your possession to build wattle-fences, for example.
What is a wattle-fence? - Pretty simple: You turn the garbage from the last pruning into fences by weaving the most straight twigs between posts, made out of thicker branches. The result looks something like in the picture from Wikipedia below:

I have started to build my first wattle-fence around one of the veggie beds to keep the ducks out and i will update this thread with more pictures and text later. Just wanted to get this thread started!
Please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences!

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Ok, got some minutes between conference calls, here we go:
A while ago i had to clean the second driveway that i have neglected for two years and i collected some material for the first fence. Last Sunday i found the time to try it, so here is what i did…

There were already two 2x2's in the ground that i had used last year with some chicken wire. I poked four additional branches as posts into the ground so that i have a post every 64cm (~2') and started weaving. On the pictures below you can see the posts and my collection of twigs that i had at hand.

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While weaving i discovered that many of the twigs were too short to fit between three posts. - Three posts is the minimum you need to keep a twig in the fence. - So i added some thinner branches in between the posts and after i have used up my material, the fence looked like this:

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Not bad for a rookie, hmm?!

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Update on the fence progress: Bad luck, i couldn't weave as much as i had liked today, the wife wanted to go grocery shopping and needed a coolie.…
But i made a lot of progress! A very time-consuming part of this is to de-twig the branches that you want to use for weaving. I've collected all the little side-branches and twigs in a mortar bin, so that i can throw them into the compost later. Her you see Katharina Duck checking out the bin, she wouldn't believe me when i told her that there's nothing to eat in there:

Here is the pile of branches for weaving after the de-twigging:

This is how its done: You start with the thick end of the branch and weave it between the posts, pushing it down from one end to the other:

After about 30cm of woven fences, i noticed that the end-posts were slightly leaning outwards. The pressure from all those twigs was forcing them out. As a counter measure i spanned some bale-wire between both end-posts to stabilize them. I know, professional fence weavers chew on the branches to soften them, so that they can be wrapped around the posts, but ,hey, i am an amateur, so i am allowed to use shortcuts:

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Won't that wire rust away? - For sure, it will! But hey, i'm building a fence here, not the Egyptian Pyramids…

This is today's result:

What i like the most about this fence is its ability to handle uneven ground! You can see that the fence is a little bit taller on the right than on the left due to my veggie bed sitting on a slope.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

I finished this part of the fence on Friday afternoon by weaving the last branches in, here is a picture with an orange bucket in front, so that you can see how tall it is:

After that, i dug up the veggie bed, so that the frost can get into the ground, kill most of the bugs and soften the soil. The ducks used this opportunity to help themselves to some additional protein:

Today (Saturday) i was busy with other stuff, but i managed to remove all the flagstones and rammed three poles into the ground for the next section of the fence. Tomorrow i will have to harvest more fencing material…

 

[AnnaWolf]

In my country we use lots of these. I'm from the Netherlands and we call it a takkenril.

The idea is you can keep filling it and evrything fits.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Looks great! I don't have anywhere to cut the twigs but maybe the town dump will allow me to take some. I have a small section between 2 sheds I would like to do this to.

BTW you better find those sheers before you run them over with the mower or someone/duck steps on them

The Duckies found them yesterday! - I was out on the hill cutting more branches for the fence, when they all gathered around at one spot, squawking and squeaking about something. I walked over to them and there were the sheers on the ground. Thank you very much Duckies!

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

And i had a close call with a widow-maker! - A sudden wind-gust, i heart a loud crack, followed by a loud thud, turned around and just 10 meters away from me:

This is where i came from, just a branch of that rotten tree to the left:

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Finally today i had the time to finish the wattle fence around the vegetables bed:

I am re-using one of my old fence-gates to block the opening between the wattle-fence and the house:

Now i must think about what to do next…

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

In expectation of the heavy showers that were forecasted for today i just kept close to the house and gathered some more material. That is today's harvest in branches:

And i found a good method to bring the harvest home, just wrap it tight with a strap and pull it home:

But cutting shrubs and branches is a bloody business:

 

[shawluvsbirds]

I'm just wondering how that will hold up to the wind? I'd hate to do all of that for it to just blow down. Ask the little pig that built his house out of sticks!