My Darling B has a garden in the back yard with a fence around it. As fences go, it’s pretty basic: a series of 4×4 posts set in the ground about four feet apart, with galvanized hardware cloth stapled to the outsides of the posts. The bottom edge of the hardware cloth is buried about six inches underground to discourage rabbits from digging under it.

B doesn’t want the fence any longer because it doesn’t stop anything but rabbits. Squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, every other animal that walks on all fours can easily get over the fence to ravage the vegetables in her garden. And the few rabbits which have slipped in when B accidentally left the gate open didn’t bother to eat anything but weeds. Meanwhile, when she has to get in and out of the garden, she has to either climb over the fence, or go out the one gate that still works and walk around. So, the fence had become more trouble than it was worth.

She asked me yesterday if I would take out the back of the fence to start with, so she could more easily clean up her garden. I got togged out in my work clothes this morning to see how much work taking it out would be.

The first step to dismantling the fence was undoing the heavy-duty staples holding the hardware cloth to the posts. The easiest solution to that was to snip through the galvanized wire with a pair of electrician’s dikes. I just happen to have a pretty good pair.

The next step was to figure out how to pull the bottom of the hardware cloth out of the ground. That was not easy, but eventually I worked out a way to plant the pick end of a pick-mattock in the ground right at the base of the fence, then pull back on the handle, using the head of the pick-mattock as a fulcrum to lever the pick up, pulling the fence up with it.

And that was mostly all I had to do. It sounds simple, but there was probably close to thirty feet of fence to pull up, so it ended up taking almost three hours for me to remove it, and it was anything but easy. I had to cut the hardware cloth into panels about eight feet long because it was just too hard to handle as one long piece. It’s heavy, and it doesn’t like to roll up after it’s been straightened out. I was dripping sweat by the time I was done.