Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Fences

In many ways fences just don't seem that important to me, especially old dilapidated ones.  And yet I keep coming across them when I'm out exploring the landscape.  Wire fences, cedar rail fences and stone fences, often quite old and no longer really functional, but they tell you something about this land in the past, and sometimes today.

Sometimes the fence is incidental to my picture - it's maple syrup season!  One of my favourite things; in two or three weeks we'll be going on a maple sugar bush tour just to see the sap collecting and boiling up close..

The pails along this line of trees (with the fence behind) mark spring for me.  We've already started buying our supply for the year.

Other fences I encounter when I'm bushwhacking.  This marks an old property boundary, and still has a very strong strand of barbed wire along the top, marking it as a cattle pasture on one side or the other.

The fence is still there, but neither side of this line has been pasture for 20 or 30 years.

Then there are the ornamental fences, constructed of old cedar rails, but made recently to mark off someone's property - this one a lot higher than it needs to be!


And other fences (or at least the fenceposts) are a work of art, created by the original Cedar tree, and 100 years of weathering.

A foggy but otherwise ornamental fence in our own backyard.

****

We've been waiting for the storm that hasn't arrived yet, in spite of the forecast.  Three days ago the forecast said 5-10 cm. of snow today, and 10-15 tomorrow.  Yesterday it said 20 cm. of snow for today, and buckets of rain for tomorrow.  Our region, Grey-Bruce was supposed to get the brunt of the heavy snow.  Today has just been a pleasant, if chilly and grey day with neither rain nor snow all day.  But the forecast still says we'll get snow this evening and overnight.  We've had a 'winter storm watch', a 'winter storm warning', and now it's a 'freezing rain warning'.  The radar does show something coming, a long pattern of precipitation extending all the way west to Wisconsin, moving our way.  I guess we'll know what weather we're actually getting when we actually get it!  And the longer term forecast shows a series of storms over the next week, leading to a 'colder than normal' early April.  Where did spring go?

Linking to:
.

14 comments:

  1. It's the same in PEI. Spring was early then left.

    Great photos!

    ReplyDelete
  2. We are having more rain (go figure) after our wettest winter ever. But I'll take mild rain any day over freezing stuff! Hoping you are able to avoid it. I'll be checking it out here. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Beautiful old rail fences (as well as the new ones with old rails) -- and your photos did them justice. I've got a soft spot in my heart for the old wooden fences, perhaps because they're almost all gone here, rotted to nothing or torn out in the name of efficiency. I've never seen an old rail fence in Pennsylvania in as good condition as any of those in your photos.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh I hope you'll post pics of the maple syrup making! My kids are I once visited a farm in Vermont and got to watch the syrup being made. Good memories.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Lovely selection.
    My favourite is the third one.

    All the best Jan

    ReplyDelete
  6. Lovely photos . We have had the maple syrup down here flowing since February and the farm down here has been selling it already and it is soo YUMMY !nothing like local fresh maple syrup . Some of those old fences would have wonderful historical stories if they could talk . We down here in Southwestern Ontario are getting lots of rain and later thunderstorms the storm of snow and freezing rain seems to all be north of us . Hope it is just rain for you and the weather people are mistaken about the freezing rain and snow up there . Thanks for sharing , Have a good day !

    ReplyDelete
  7. The old rail fences really appeal to me.

    Here we've had consistently cool temperatures for several days now, and today it's snowing again.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hello!:)Lovely old weathered fences, and the maple syrup pail line up was an interesting shot. I would love to see it being made. I hope warmer weather will not be long in coming your way.:)

    ReplyDelete
  9. This was a neat post. Loved all the old weathered fences and it was fun to see the blue buckets for the Mayple Syrup on the trees lining the fence.

    ReplyDelete
  10. A womderful variety of fences in this post. Have a HAPPY EASTER.

    ReplyDelete
  11. all beautiful fence views - but especially the one in your backyard. good luck with the storms! and happy maple season!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Great fences, I wonder too where Spring went:)

    ReplyDelete
  13. The type of maple we have here on the west coast isn't the traditional kind for making maple syrup, but there is an entrepreneur on a nearby island that is doing just that. I think the sap takes lots more processing to get an equal amount of syrup, but they have a good following at the farmer's market. - Margy

    ReplyDelete
  14. Charming selection of fences. Happy maple syruping!
    ~

    ReplyDelete