Weoka Creek Chronicles: Lessons Learned from Electric Fences

Growing up on a farm in Alabama, I learned some important lessons from shocking encounters with electric fences.


Short cuts are only short if you can take them.


For a couple of years, when I was young and not yet in school, we lived on a hillside just outside of a small town. Our place was rented and fairly small. It would have been a sharecropper’s cabin in years gone by. There was room for the necessities and not much more.


There wasn’t a lot of agriculture going on around there, but some of the neighbors did a little gardening and some even had a few head of cows. Every once in a while I would visit one of those neighbors with cows. Visits usually included cookies or some other treat with a few stories and a visit to the pasture to see the cows up close.


On one of those visits I realized that I had stayed away from home too long and decided to take a short cut across the pasture and through a small stand of trees. I raced across the open pasture and came to the barbed wire fence on the other side. I reached to pull the strands apart so I could squeeze between.


Now, I had heard about electric fences and I knew they were strung in places across the hillside, but I had not really realized what that meant. As I touched those wires


I felt this stunning BZZZZPPP and the next thing I knew I was lying flat on my back looking up at the sky.


That was one short cut I never tried to take again.


If someone tells you they are going to do something, pay attention to how it might affect you.


Several years later, after we had lived on my grandparents’ farm for a while, we were farming about fifteen acres of corn potatoes, watermelon, and other crops. We never had a tractor. All of the plowing was with a mule or a horse, and I had to do a fair share of it.


We also had cows, chickens and pigs. For a few years we tried to go big with the pigs and built up a heard of over a hundred pigs. To keep them out of the crops, we used electric fencing run six to eight inches off the ground. It must have been frustrating to the pigs. They could get so close to all those succulent crops, but couldn’t get to them because of that terrible fence.


One day I was running the harrow along between corn rows to cut out all of the weeds. The corn was about head high and it was a hot, sweaty day. We came to the end of the row and, just I cleared the last plants, I saw something that made me have a flashback. Daddy had told me a few days earlier that he was going to move the fence around in this area. I had not paid much attention, until now, and it was too late. That old mule had just touched it with its hoof and had already begun to bolt.


I guess I could have just dropped the plow and the reins, but I didn’t want him to run away, so I held on. I don’t know how far he dragged me and the plow. It was at least a couple hundred feet, but it felt like a couple of miles. Might have been a couple of miles if the plow had not, just by chance, found a large stump to plow into. From pell-mell ahead to dead stop in nothing flat, we all tumbled into one huge pile.


From then on, I paid attention when Daddy said he was going to do something.


Don’t send a chicken to do a man’s job.


As I mentioned, we used electric fences to keep our pigs in the pig lot. Actually, it was a pasture of about four or five acres. Those pigs had plenty of room.


With electric fences, you had to maintain them on a fairly regular basis. Grass and weeds would sometimes manage to grow into it and short it out. Tree branches would fall on it, causing shorts or even breaks. It would usually take two or three hours to work all the way around the pig fence. Even then, you would sometimes get all the way around and find that it was still shorting out someplace. Time for another round!


Once, after an especially frustrating attempt to clear a short, it was time to check to see if it was working. Usually this could be done by pushing a tall blade of grass over to the wire. If it sparked, it was okay. If not, you had more work to do. But the grass had recently been cut all around that area and no test was readily available. Just then, one of our chickens wandered near and, pow, I had an idea. That fence didn’t just shock pigs, it would shock chickens too. So I scooped up that chicken and shoved it toward the fence. Only thing was, I released my grip on her a little too late and BBZZZZPP, I reached the shocking conclusion that the fence was working.


These days, if I ask someone to do something for me, I try to ensure that they will not get hurt. If they get hurt, I get hurt.


Pigs are smarter than you think.


We had a lot of pigs for a while and we learned that they each could have their own individual personality. Most were more or less just pigs. Some could be downright mean, especially sows with piglets. And some acted almost like pets.


The ones with the stand out personalities got to be well known to us. We had to keep our distance from the mean ones, but we all enjoyed scratching one of those big friendly ones between the shoulders or on the forehead. They would get so much into it, they would seem to go to sleep.


I noticed one of these big friendly sows would often stand a few feet inside the fence looking out. She would rhythmically rock forward and backward. I couldn’t figure out what was happening. Then one day, quick as she could, she bolted forward through the fence and off into the nearby corn field. I was astonished.


We rounded her up and fixed the fence, but I was still puzzled about what I had seen. Then, a few days later, she did it again. This time, I happened to be standing in position to get a clue. I could hear the rhythmical hum of the charging station as it pulsed on and off. She could too, and she was rocking in time with it. Her bolt came just at the end of the cycle, when the charge had dropped off.


Since then, I try not to let someone’s looks influence how smart I think they are.


Don’t urinate in the wind in unfamiliar territory.


On the farm, we had a lot of love and always managed to always have plenty of food. But we didn’t have a lot of niceties. Like inside bathrooms. Our bathroom was a pretty simple structure out behind the house between a couple of trees.


And, for us guys, it was most often just the great outdoors. When we were out in the fields or in the woods, we would just make sure no one else was around. When we woke up at night with a full bladder, we would usually just walk out to the edge of the yard and relieve ourselves.


One night, I had plenty of iced tea to drink and woke up in the middle of the night with an urgent need. When I got outside, the wind was blowing and it was pretty cool. I raced across the yard over to where it bordered on the pasture. Quickly I got started releasing the pressure. Did I mention the wind was blowing? Have I been talking about electric fences? I’ll just say one word: BBZZZZPP!


Now I try to pay attention to anything that might affect tasks that are important to me.






Electric fences have taught me a few good life lessons. Hopefully with some of the images from my stories fresh in your mind, you will not have to feel the BBZZZZPP of a shocking surprise.