Field Notes: How I became a full-on ‘fence guy’

The author, John Marek, is executive director of the Anson Economic Development Partnership.

There was a point in my life, just after college, where I imagined myself as a songwriter, well, a lyricist, at least. I had a high school buddy I would send my lyrics to, and he would put them to music. A couple weren’t bad (check out this one) but most were. One of the really awful ones was called “Fences and Promises.” It was about the difficulties of country life, along the lines of John Mellencamp’s “Rain on the Scarecrow.” The old saying goes that good fences make good neighbors, but the irony was at the time I wrote that song I could have really used a good fence. 

Thinking back on the small town where I grew up, there weren’t a lot of fences. The family at the end of the lane had a couple of horses, so they fenced in an acre or two as pasture, but that was about it. Even the U.S. Gypsum Company, whose property had the annoying tendency to develop large, deep sinkholes, didn’t bother to fence off said property. I know today that sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen, but back then, if you fell in a hole while trespassing on someone else’s property, there wasn’t much sympathy for your plight.

I suppose it’s not surprising then that I was slow, very slow, to come around to the value of fencing. When my wife and I bought our first homestead, the Little House on the Highway in 1987, it never occurred to me that a fence might be useful. The neighbors on one side of us had a functional and not overly attractive chain link fence running the perimeter of their backyard. They explained that they had beagles at one time and built it in an ill-fated attempt to keep them contained. We had just acquired a beagle pup and would soon learn what they meant; the fence has yet to be created that can contain a determined beagle.

The yard at The Little House backed up to a large field, a couple of hundred acres, at least, which was alternately planted in corn or soybeans. Deer would occasionally meander in from the field and across our property, but it was never the problem you might think since we were never successful enough at growing anything to give them cause to stop for a snack. 

When we moved to North Carolina in 1995, we bought a house under construction in a new neighborhood that was still mostly woods. As the lots around us cleared and our neighbors’ houses went up, again it never occurred to me to try to fence them off. Our neighbors to the south put a four-foot black iron fence around their pool to keep pets and small children from falling in, but it was rather attractive and barely noticeable. Our neighbors on the other side – three different sets of them over 20 years – all subscribed to the natural, fenceless aesthetic. 

That changed last summer when the new owners decided they simply MUST delineate their property with a six-foot wooden privacy fence. I firmly believe in a person’s right, within reason, to do what they want with their land, but a huge wooden wall running through the previously open wooded area behind our houses made everything feel smaller and claustrophobic. Rather than get all bent about it, though, I decided to treat it as an opportunity. Our terrier, Laika, was somewhat good about staying in her yard, but she couldn’t be trusted outside for any extended period without close supervision. Because we now had fences on either side of us with our house in the middle, it occurred to me that I could complete the loop by building just a few dozen feet of fencing. So I did. 

Now, I still think that BOTH our backyards looked better “au naturale,” but it is nice on cold winter mornings to just open the back door and let the dogs have at it. Yes, dogs. Having the fenced-in backyard allowed us to adopt a larger, more active German Shorthaired Pointer who loves to run circles along the fenceline.

Just this spring, I became a full-on “fence guy,” when I built 120 feet of white picket around our church’s community garden. That fence is designed as much to keep things out as it is to keep things in, and I suppose that is the ultimate dichotomy of fences, and maybe promises, too.