It is now late July, and our remaining 2 goats are intact.

Unfortunately our remaining goats are the 2 boys – one big (a La Mancha) and one little (a Nigerian Dwarf).

From a compatibility standpoint, they’re the worst pair of survivors to have . . . But they seem to have adjusted reasonably well.

The only problem is that the big boy can’t play very well with the little boy, so then he’s overly frisky with us.

Once the fencing is done, we’ll see about getting a girl to keep the boys in line.

The fencing . . . ugh.

Good fencing isn’t easy.

What the game warden recommended was high tensile electric fence.

The power of the fence doesn’t need to be any higher than what we had already, but the goal is for it to be tight and strong — so the cougar can’t just zip through.

High tensile electric fence is made with 12.5 gauge wire (annoyingly heavy-duty) cranked to 250 lbs of force.

The real problem is to support that kind of fence, you need really strong corner posts.

We have spent the last month and a half going through the steps to get H braces in place.

This setup involves bracing the corner post with a partner post a few feet away, with a pole holding them apart towards the top, and a cross wire pulling them together into a stable box.

It is, frankly, a huge pain.

The biggest issue was getting the holes done. Our soil is rocky, and even with an auger it took several hours to do the preliminary holes — and even longer to tidy them up and wrangle a few extra inches to get the full three foot depth.

Then we had to put 8 foot posts in the holes, level them, and fill in with concrete.

Thirteen of them.

It was slow going, but we finally got the top braces in a couple days ago.

The next step will be the wire cross-lashing that will stabilize the box.

Of course, at that point we still won’t have a fence. We’ll have corners.