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 achieved part of that dream, because our house did have a picket fence around it, actually most of our property was surrounded by a picket fence, but it wasn’t white, it was an unpainted 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.
What is now left of the fence is now about 60 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. I do love the natural look of those old lichen-covered pickets, posts, and rails.
I have had to tear down huge sections of the fence as it deteriorated, because the fence was no longer needed since we no longer have any goats (I used to have a herd of Angora goats). Another reason I have taken parts of the fence down was because of the danger it presented with in increased number of forest fires these days. If a fire did start on a section of cedar pickets and rails, it could easily spread, burning its way down the fence to our out buildings and house.
You can view my paintings at: davidmarchant2.ca
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