About a month after we moved to our 50-acre farm, I got home from my job as a machinist to find that two of the neighbor’s cows and a calf had wandered through the sagging fence along our woodlot. The neighbor, Lorne Wright, took it all in stride and showed up with his border collie, Laddie, to herd them back into his pasture—and with part of a roll of nine-wire fence. “There’s probably enough to reach from the road to the first brace post if you were of a mind to fix this spot,” he said. My face lit right up. I wanted to be a good neighbor, but money was tight. I took some vacation the next week and was well into the miserable job of pulling the old fence out of the tall grass when our mail carrier stopped his car and walked over. Bill Risk was a big, good-natured man who always seemed to have a story to tell. He said, “Fixing fence, are you? “A long time ago, back when my granddaddy lived hereabouts, two fellows homesteaded next to each other. Back then, you put up fence b
