O’Neill: Removing fencing from a bygone era

Casey O’Neill is a farmer and owner of Happy Day Farms in Laytonville, Calif. The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of The Mendocino Voice. If you’d like to write your own column for The Mendocino Voice, send your idea to info@mendovoice.com.

The warm, sunny breaks in winter might be my favorite time of year. While the cold nestles into the valleys, we sit on the ridgeline with nights above 40 degrees and days in the 60s. It makes for excellent winter crop growth, a needed balance to the trials of deep snow that arrives later in the season.

With the clear weather drying things out, we’ve been able to do garden work, prepping and planting and preparing for the season to come. Cleaning, organizing, making compost piles of waste and distributing finished compost to perennials and winter beds that are ready for sowing to fresh crops. Trays of seeds are up and growing in the propagation house and the farm is taking shape once again.

We’ve also been working on a project down at the bottom of the property, hiking tools in and materials out. We got grant funding from the Department of Fish and Wildlife to remove the legacy fencing remaining from old ranching operations that our land was part of in the decades before my folks came here. It has been a powerful process of reflection and thought, much to digest about the nature of this land and the impacts that it has undergone. I think about the animals that the fence contained, the predators it was designed to keep out, the people who built and maintained it through the course of their lifetimes.

I think about the impact of fencing on wildlife populations, the statement that fencing must have made to Native peoples who encountered this new barrier, the taking of the commons for private gain. It’s a strange feeling, this removal of legacy fencing, a juxtaposition of my own efforts to raise livestock, the fences I maintain and build.

The old fencing is down near the bottom of our property, bisecting open range in a place rarely traveled by humans because it is inaccessible except by foot. Livestock is no longer run here, and the fencing is a holdover from a bygone era. When we were kids we crossed the fence line every time we went out wandering, often snagging our clothing on the barbed wire, holding the lines apart for each other to duck under. I never once thought about the impact fencing has on wildlife, the ways it makes animals change their patterns of movement, the species it helps to foster and those that it impedes or damages.

In one sense, fencing keeps livestock in, meaning that grazing and impacts happen in one area and not in another. This can mean that the areas outside the fence are more able to maintain natural habitat, but it can also mean that invasive species are more able to take root in the disturbed areas. Looking at the species composition of the rangeland today, it is easy to see that the shallow-rooted, invasive annuals have dominated and that few of the deep-rooted perennial grasses remain. Animals prefer the better nutrition from the perennials to the poor forage of the annuals like medusa head and wild oats.

In our contained ranching operations, we use both hard fencing and moveable electric fencing to graze rotationally, working to build soil and decrease damage by regular movement of a concentrated animal population. This management is very different from turning animals out onto a broad space, where they will hunt and peck for the most nutritious forage over the landscape, shifting the species composition over time as species with less nutrition benefit from the reduced competition. Sometimes our efforts work, sometimes we have failures or lack of understanding; there is a lot to learn about successful rotational grazing systems, and they take a lot of infrastructure and time to manage well.

As we work to deconstruct the old fencing, rolling up the barbed wire strands on the top layers and the coyote fence from the lower level, we notice the generations of fence posts. The original oak posts have mostly rotted, just a few remaining. The next set of redwood posts are intact, bisected by successive generations of metal T-Posts. As we pull the posts and haul them out, I think of all the effort that went into building and maintaining this fence, the generations of ranchers who rode the lines to check for breaks and manage their livestock. I think of the time before fencing, when Native peoples managed the landscape, caring for the oaks and controlling the conifers with fire.

Taking down a fence feels strange, yet I love the idea that wildlife will move unimpeded in ways that haven’t happened in more than 100 years. I’m grateful for the funding to do this work, for without it I don’t think we’d find the time and energy. I’m glad for Chantal Simonpietri and Mainspring Consulting, who helped us with the grant and suggested the fencing removal as part of the project. There is a great article about fencing here if you’d like to read more about the subject. As always, much love and great success to you on your journey!