Resets 100-Year-Old Stone Posts : Fence Builder Measures Work in Miles

Dan Hoisington loves the job he hates.

As a builder of custom fences, he is his own boss, working outdoors at his own pace for some of the friendliest people around.

The problem is he hates building fences.

“It’s the most hated job on the farm,” he said. “We don’t like it any better, but we get paid to do it.”

Hoisington flashed a wide grin and laughed at the irony.

This love-hate relationship is 10 years old and showing no sign of ending.

He works within a 70-mile radius of his home in this town near the Russell-Osborne county line, building new fencing for ranchers and repairing fences stretched 100 years ago.

It’s steady work. Winter storms seldom keep him out of the field. If his customers had their way he would be working at night.

He says that most people are surprised that he stays busy. “Jobs are around if people are willing to look under their noses and see what isn’t being done,” he said.

Quit Steady Job

That’s what Hoisington did after he decided working for someone else wasn’t what he wanted out of life. He quit his job at a grain elevator and ventured out.

He once worked for a farmer who taught him fence-building. “I hated every minute of it, but I knew I could do it,” he said.

“The first day I was scared to death. I’d quit my job and I had one fencing job lined up and a wife and two kids at home to feed.”

His hunch that most farmers and ranchers despise fence-building proved true, however. One job led to another and for most of the last decade, he and his two assistants have had no shortage of orders.

“We pick up a lot of jobs because people see what we build and like them,” said Bill Peterson, who has worked with Hoisington eight years.

Peterson said he doesn’t like the work any better than Hoisington, and he should know better. He farms full time south of Alton in Osborne County. Rounding out the crew Gale Pruter of Natoma, who joined Hoisington last fall.

Posts Set by Pioneers

At least a third of their jobs involve rebuilding post rock fences, a chore they dislike even more than modern fence-building. It’s unavoidable, however, in the heart of post rock country.

One recent job, for example, was to rebuild 1 1/2 miles of post rock fence southeast of Russell.

Most of the limestone fence posts are buried at least a foot deeper than they originally were set--a legacy of the Dust Bowl era--and many lean sharply due to the force of gravity.

Hoisington uses a front-end loader to scrape away soil, then wraps a chain around the posts and raises the loader to pull them from the ground.

He uses the loader to move and lift the posts into new holes punched through layers of the same Greenhorn limestone from which the early settlers carved the posts.

Hoisington marvels at the skill and backbreaking labor it took to build these fences.

It took the Hoisington crew 2 1/2 days to rebuild a half-mile section of post rock fence, and that, he said, was the easy part. The remaining half a mile, which covered rugged terrain and crossed a small creek, took 4 1/2 days.

Difficult Stone Work

“Normally I figure three days,” Hoisington said, “but we had to jackhammer every hole.” He estimated that another half-mile stretch across the road would take as long.

Modern equipment makes the job considerably easier than it was in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when most of the post rock fences were constructed. A tractor-powered posthole driller and hydraulic jackhammer, tamping device and steel post driver have eliminated much of the hand labor.

“But there’s still a lot of labor involved,” Hoisington said.

Hoisington figures that his crew builds about 25 miles of new fence each year.

“That doesn’t sound like much,” he admits, “but it’s mainly in hilly terrain and rocky soil.”