T-post driver?

Local farmers co-op rents a fence post driver. Only problem being you can't get a piece of equipment to most places you want perimeter fence posts except road frontage. You biggest problem will be corner posts, need wood and they need to be deep.

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"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self confidence"
Robert Frost

You have soil with rocks, in the Ozarks we have rocks with a little soil and relocating a post just begets more rocks. Everyones situation is different.

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www.salmonslayer-simplelife.blogspot.com

For your corner you can use 4' cylinders made of heavy wire mesh filled with rocks. That will save you a lot of digging.

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Well I'm not sure I'd be quite so rude however, I do agree with tink's basic point-- give it a try by hand.
You might be surprised how easy it actually is. Or rather, how not-difficult. lol

We put in a half mile of fence when we first bought our place.
Wooden posts, every 12 feet, dug in by hand. Four wire fence.
DH and I put it in in a single (hot!!) weekend.

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~*~Erin~*~
SAHM, ranch wife, sub and quilt shop proprietress
the Back Gate Country Quilt Shop

That's 'cause you live where there is soil. I've lived places where it took us all weekend to get 3 T-posts in the ground. And that was WITH a pneumatic pounder. Then I've lived in places where you don't bother with T-posts. The whole fence was those cylinders filled with rock. When we first moved to this part of the country we actually would go out and pound some just for the heck of it. The novelty of watching a fence post go into the ground with just a few slams of the pounder was awesome! We still can't get over the fact we can put up enough T-posts to run 900 some odd feet of fencing in just an hour or two.

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Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Hamlet


My attempt at a blog. Hopefully entertaining and useful.
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Seriously. It is not just some rocks. You cannot just move it over, there are rocks everywhere. Even with a huge auger on a decent size tractor my dh could only drill like 2 fence posts in our yard in a DAY. Out my back window is a rock quarry that has been operating for decades and no end in site. My husband is not lazy, did the vast majority of rebuilding our house himself. Works his butt off but I am all for him renting a post driver- his time and energy is worth something.

Ummm... So have I.
I've also lived in places where you could drive a wooden post, if you just sharpened the end a bit!
Where we're at now has a lot of rocks.


But that doesn't change the basic suggestion to the OP--give it a try. She might be surprised.

__________________
~*~Erin~*~
SAHM, ranch wife, sub and quilt shop proprietress
the Back Gate Country Quilt Shop

I can tell you this, in TN I bent steel T post trying to drive them with a hand driver and a strong teenage helper. In most cases you can drive them through rock but some rocks are just too big and too hard.

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the police are just MINUTES away!

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Judging by the OPs avatar - they are not spring chickens. And they live in Georgia. Pounding posts in hot, humid weather is not a lot of fun, even when you are 20 and have a head full of impossible dreams. I can attest to the fact that doing so when you are <mumble, mumble> and perfectly aware that one more post will be either the cause of a major medical bill or at least a divorce makes the rental of a mechanical post-pounder sound very appealing. We only have 3.5 acres, and we DID pound them in (every 8') with the weighted hollow tube thing, in the height of summer, but our soil isn't so bad, and we were really poor when we did it, thus we couldn't afford to even rent a mechanical pounder

Mary

wow...some people just look for a psssing contest...

So do it in the "winter"...
And as far as spring chickens go, my dad still does all of his fencing by hand and he's 63. My grandpa and great uncles all did their fencing by hand until they were into their 80s!!
In fact, my great uncle Fred still made the tightest fences in the county til the day he was "forcibly retired" by my great aunt and his boys. lol



Don't cut people off before they've had a chance to try, guys.

__________________
~*~Erin~*~
SAHM, ranch wife, sub and quilt shop proprietress
the Back Gate Country Quilt Shop

Isn't a 4-FOOT cylinder a little bit of overkill?

I guess you meant 4"?

And you guys are still speaking?? Just kidding!

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Samantha,
Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

I don't think a 4" cylinder filled with rocks sitting on the ground would hold even itself up...let alone a fence line.

You could always do what our customers do and hire professional fencers.

*chuckle*

In all honesty, DH and I ranch for a living. And we've both put in miles and miles and miles of fence over the years. (In various states and ground conditions, like others have mentioned)

A half mile, while definitely a good workout, was certainly not the longest stretch either of us had ever put in.

__________________
~*~Erin~*~
SAHM, ranch wife, sub and quilt shop proprietress
the Back Gate Country Quilt Shop

Mary, you have it the nail (or t-post) on the head. We own a hollow tube pounder thingy, that's what we used to put up the chicken pen field fence were we are now. The pen is only 16x30+/- feet. Not 2-4 or 6 acres! We are "grown"! We managed to not die, divorce or kill each other.

We will rent a pounder of some sort. We will leave the "minimal effort" to the young folks and the ones who really want to!!

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Samantha,
Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

Y'all must have a rock farm like we have! Oh to be able to drive in a t-post in only 30 seconds! That must be heavenly.

Thats kind of what I was thinking also.
Up in Nebraska I could drive a post in 5 or 6 hits and be done.
Here in the Ozarks after 5 or 6 hits I'm barely breaking the surface.
I've even snapped a few t-posts while pounding them here.
Hit a rock just right and they break.

I've even considered getting a jack hammer or at least a demolition hammer to get the holes started.

You better come down to the Ozarks and show us how it's done.
Our place is on top of 1 of the little mountains here. Maybe an inch
of topsoil at most and after that it's rock, mostly solid rock. I can pound
t-posts with the best in normal soil and dirt but it's a rough and tough job
here. Some posts I've had to use a sledge hammer on to get them thru
the rock. if I'm lucky I don't snap the posts off.