It is quite common to hear in old movies that people dream about eventually living in a cute little house with a white picket fence around it. Well, I guess I can say that I have achieved part of that dream, because our house does have a picket fence around it, actually most of our property is surrounded by a picket fence, but it isn’t white, it is a cedar picket fence.
The fence was built by the retired guy that built our house back in the early 1960’s, and it is impressive how much work he must he must have put into splitting all the cedar pickets and constructing the fence. From the length of the fence I estimate that about 1,800 pickets were used. The guy probably went out into the bush, found the cedar logs, cut them to about 4 ft. (1.2m) lengths, then using a froe, split the logs into pickets about 3 to 5 inches (7 to 12 cm) in width. He also had to split all of the cedar fence posts, dig the holes and set them into the ground before he could nail all those pickets onto the rails. It seems like it must have been a tremendous project, all the while he was building the original house.
The fence is now about 50 years old. With its aging it has taken on a very rustic patina. It is now covered with lichen and moss as you can see in the photos.
Look at my paintings: www.davidmarchant.ca
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