The Honest Courtesan

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it before, but the people whose estate I bought Sunset from were quite elderly; the son who signed the sale was 80, so the old folks had to have been over 100.  That means they came of age in the worst part of the Great Depression, and I’ve noticed people who did are generally major pack rats.  It was certainly true of these folks; when we arrived two of the buildings were so crammed with stuff that we couldn’t even use them until we had cleaned them out.  A lot of it was just plain junk, and many other things had been ruined by time, but I kept a lot of the remainder because, truth be told, I’m a bit of a pack rat myself.  We’ve used some of it in our projects; most of the cottage skirting is made from panels salvaged from an old roll-up door, and I found old metal roof panels stored with them that I figured would come in handy someday.  Well, they finally have; as you can see, they made dandy pig shields for the bottom of a stretch of fence (I employed stakes and tensioners to keep them from wobbling).  The stretch in the background, which cuts through the trees all the way to the northeast corner of the barn, is protected by a layer of logs and branches at the bottom, and the entire south side has panels of welded wire fencing at the bottom. The project in now done except for a short stretch just south of the barn, but that’s presently so choked with brambles none of the animals can get through it; after that, the only remaining thing is reinforcing some sections on the south side that are still too floppy to resist a determined pig.  And about time; it’s going to take weeks for the collection of scratches I’ve obtained lately (we have some serious thorn vines here) to heal.