America's best farm fencers competing for CASH! Both Educational and Fun!

hey there folks this is josh stoneyridge farmer welcome back to the channel today is day two the final day of the farm fence forum out here in worthington indiana at farm fence solutions we're gonna have a fencing competition today it's gonna be awesome we'll tell you all of the details and how it's all judged and everything and we're gonna be building some ag fence today you guys are gonna learn a little bit have a little bit of fun and see some pretty cool stuff here on the stoney ridge farm today hope you enjoy [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] let's go build some vents [Applause] [Music] so the fence will start kind of right here at these flags it's going to drop off over this steep hill we're gonna get you some awesome drone footage it's gonna be a good time now behind the scenes there are a couple big rocks buried right here so that's gonna pose some challenges it's gonna be fun guys hang tight one second i'm gonna show you we're gonna do a bit of a giveaway this is a hat signed by all the participants and all the people that are playing in this game and the judges guys post a comment tell me what your favorite part of this video is when you get done watching it let me know what your favorite part is we'll pick a random winner in about two weeks and we'll send you this hat and this is for the fall fence forum of 2020. [Music] [Applause] awesome [Music] the guy in the back of that truck is competing solo i'm pulling for him that's awesome some folks have referred to you as adolph the judge is there have you ever heard that you seem like seem like a real nice guy been pretty hard on the guys lately huh some people like me some people hate me yup sleep says i'll give him 10 points he says no mom i'm more of a seven we're going to go over here we're going to catch our second judge this here judge is ryan sloot proudly endorsed by the winning team yeah i saw somebody handing some cash over a little bit earlier today bribes accepted and i hadn't found the winner yet no doubt guys we're gonna go over all this stuff once we get done with uh ryan and the other judge there we'll have some fun these two competitors are affectionately known as mutt and jeff what's the weight comparison here what do you weigh uh about 135 soaking wet that's sticks fencing time ty ty is custom defensive area are you over three yeah yeah [Music] so what we're seeing here is a reverse foot yeah and this is a little something we haven't seen before so what they're trying to navigate is how they cross this hill yeah rest of this hill so they're anticipating that this pipe is going to be pulled into the ground by the wire so they've welded on a reverse foot okay so it should spread the load out and keep that post from traveling down something we've never seen here before yeah it's a bolt move cot i'll tell you guys if you see anything that you think is unsafe post it down there in the comments we want to hear from you yeah so we've got rotating beacons on these things uh chainsaw chaps are important safety glasses are important pieces of posts could plow sparks whatever so lots of safety stuff we want to make sure that we're all as safe as possible and that's part of the judging criteria here creativity safety fit and finish all sorts of stuff and meeting the spec yep cool the guy working by himself has put more posts in the ground than anybody else here it's pretty amazing and they're also judged on time and there is a time limit today yesterday we had to eliminate the time limit due to all the rocks in the rocky soil back here behind us but they're kicking some butt it's looking awesome and there's so many unique ways they're building fences so we're right here on the transition from flat to hillside and what gavin langley here langley fence is doing is welding in a foot right here so they're digging a hole so they can drive a post in at an angle and weld a foot to it and that's going to help to brace that post and keep it from trying to shoot out of the ground once they pull the wire tight so when you're in a dip like this and you have tight wire and you're pulling constantly up on the post there's a chance that post can be pulled out of the ground the opposite situation up top there's a chance it can pull the post into the ground if the ground gets really wet or something like that so that's what they're doing the challenge is keeping that post from pulling down and keeping this post from pulling up this here is sebring jessup if you look under the bottom of the hat we're giving away he's got the biggest signature he's the john hancock of the bunch sure you can see it there you go all right guys so we're taking a little bit of a break from all the hustle and bustle out there and i'm with mark olson swi uh out in wyoming mountain wyoming now you're out of cody wyoming right i'm out of cody we've got three offices cody casper and cheyenne so we pretty much have north to south covered awesome so what we're doing here is not only uh learning together but it's also contractors networking together too and a layperson can come here is that right any person can come to the farm fence for them absolutely i'd recommend it yeah so if you're going to build a fence for your farm make it a point to come here guys get onto farmfentsolutions.com and check out next year's program it may be a four or five day program so it's just been totally awesome i've learned so much here so tell me about what you guys you guys kind of specialize in in farm fencing and in residential fencing and gates that's something that you're gonna revisit the farm you were out with us building fence this summer uh when we were building pipe fence in a 900 degree heat with chiggers biting us all over our legs yeah we were out there about triggers yeah there's no chiggers in wyoming so he definitely learned about him he saw my gate so our farm gate on the stoney ridge farm is just a tartar farming ranch regular old farm gate i've got a little sign no trespassing on it that says stoney ridge and we've got i'm not even going to mention the brand but we have a consumer grade gate opener as soon as mark saw the gate opener mark said uh-uh that thing is unsafe man you could get a child trapped in it you could get animals trapped in it you know damage vehicles stuff like that and you guys might know if you follow the youtube channel that i boo booed and uh and crushed the first gate we had with the grain drill so tell me about what your thoughts are and we're actually gonna have mark back out to the farm we're working on a gate right now and we're going to get mark we're going to hire him to come out and and build the gate we're actually going to drive to ohio and show the gate being made and have mark back out so tell me about what what you do with gates and the safety factor so what we do in wyoming is we're we do some ag but we do a ton of automated gates jackson holes big big in the gate so yeah a few years back having a brother as an electrician really helped us out and kind of springboarded us and then we got into learning more about the safety aspect and the safety aspect of is ul 325 that's what you need to know is your gate if you're getting ready to have a gate installed on your place you need to make sure that your ul 325 and you should be asking whether or not your installer is certified right and the certifying board for that right now is idea um they're the same people that handle overhead doors and automated doors but we see so many fatalities young kids and stuff like that getting trapped in gates yeah i think one of the first things i asked you is how was that gatework yeah how was that game working it was it was in a stationary position yeah it's doing okay i mean our gate's doing okay but as we further open the farm we start offering classes and stuff like that here on the farm uh well not here on the farm but on our farm like hog processing classes and chicken processing classes and all that stuff and also opening the farm up to the public for a couple days a year we're going to need something that's safe that insurance companies will cover and if we're opening and closing gates we want the batteries to last so a solar setup is what we're going to be working with and we just want something that's safe so we don't harm anybody and that's that's the main thing safety first on any farm on any piece of property safety and reliability those are the two things i mean that's that's the first things everybody's because nobody wants to have to go back out and fix the gates you need to put something in that like i said can handle the cycles yeah and we're going to be looking at that how many cycles are we going to go through a day and how do you want to interact with that gate do you want to be able to open it from your cell phone do you have wi-fi there we're going to have power there does it need to be solar a lot of things we look at when we're getting ready and planning a gate and that's what we're in right now is the the planning phase so yeah we don't need it super fancy we're a farm but we do want it super duper safe and we want to be able to open and close that gate 50 times a day so right now we have the system that we have in place i'll just say it it's a mighty meal system and it served me very well i'm on my second mighty meal system and i do have a lot of trouble in cold weather so winter wintertime we might as well just leave the gate open if it's below 24 degrees you're out in wyoming you guys constantly have those cold temperatures yeah and you you just wouldn't be able to be uh have a reliable system with a consumer grade gate opener but there's nothing wrong with it it's just a consumer grade gate opener and it's not quite uh the safety spec that we're going to have when we have a teaching opportunity on the farm we want to be safe yeah we consider all those things snow ice rain yep all those things go into planning a good system so cool well thanks mark we're gonna head back out and watching bill fence some more sounds good [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] langley fence seems to be kicking some butt but all the rest of the guys have their wire laid out ready to stretch some of them are already stretching their wire but langley fence is really really shiny and their job looks fantastic that's my pick you guys let me know you might notice a little something different some of the posts are straight up and down as you go down the hill and some of them are with grade that's just two styles of building fence so it's just interesting to see how everybody's accomplishing the same task but using a different method this is a typical strut type brace that you would see with pipe fence basically uh it's welded to a four inch pipe right here you have a strut that goes down to a post that pounded in the ground all the way down it's called a stubby it's six feet down there in the ground and that's all welded up tight that's a typical setup we're gonna go look at a couple other setups for bracing so this brace setup's a little bit different it's a wooden post and they've cut out a slot for the strut to go into and it goes down into another wooden post that's driven six feet into the ground these are big big posts you can see the tops of these posts are rounded off with a router and that helps them to drive a little bit better and it keeps them from blowing out quote unquote on the side sometimes because sometimes the post might not be perfectly flat on the top so this is a different style brace here too so you can see the brace wires on the middle sticks fencing and ties custom fencing are the ones that have done this and you can see that there's a wedge cut and there's a little slot in that post and then that post right there and that's the style brace that they decide to go with a lot of creativity here guys this is something that you might typically see at a really fancy horse ranch here in kentucky just a little bit east of us to get a different type of bracey you can see that the post that they're pulling from right here this is all tied up there'll be a strut and another strut down so you can see a brace post and a strut i guess the strut goes down again to a stubby that's in the ground right here but this stubby isn't driven below ground level so it's just a little bit of a different design is it stronger i don't know we'll let the judges decide it's the final countdown what is it two minutes two minutes two minutes two minutes that's time i'll tell you something funny these guys down here sticks they were trying to tie a piece of barbed wire they're like that we got to get it tied we'll see you guys when we announce the winner i don't think it comes to as any surprise to anybody that's fenced with him because you show him something he's never seen before and walk away and you come back in three seconds and he's done it and he's done it better than you did and then he takes it and he makes it even better gavin langley and luscious and of course you got the the henry's yeah we were here last year uh had a good time learned a lot uh me and ryan sloop actually won last year uh and this year you said he had to judge one of the two and i said i don't like to talk so you can judge but uh this is my cousin colby we uh he's been fencing with me since february i think so he's come a long way and he's always fussing saying i'm ocd you know tying on his head's hug cut it off but it's made him better when you can't pick his knots apart from mine no so we we're just happy to be here mr colby got nothing so let's walk through this real quick and we'll talk about uh what made his fence stand out over and above the rest yep gavin's not work is supreme everything he does is exactly to spec it's as if you just carbon copied every one of these knots and they're all perfect construction you can also see gavin down here made a weld that looked like a machine weld it's it's perfect there's not a single flaw in his welds anywhere everything was coped correctly everything was mated correctly his selection of materials today was far above with using a three inch 12 foot strut which was the only player in the field that used a three inch 12 foot strut which hypothetically would double his holding power of his king post the other thing that gavin excelled in is being able to keep a consistent tension on all of his line and net throughout the entire project so he navigated heels up and down kept all of his line wires tensioned to the post with even consistent tension he was able to do that he kind of cheated a little bit because he had some good wire to use and he he made that navigation perfectly over the heels we'll go down here i'll show you some tips and tricks he uses so in the spec it called for one union of all line wires so he had to join his wire in the middle cut make a splice and you can see here in his knots his knots show a little bit more artisan in them than what other competitors used his knots actually look in his barbed wire look like a barb so having that extra little bit of attention to detail is what really made his fence really drive home this week you can also see here his box stays spacing from where he tied all these figure eight knots perfectly consistent top to bottom all of his box stays line up exactly perfect so this is a six inch stay spacing he lined him up perfect within a sixteenth of an inch which is almost impossible so where he made his transitions whereas network was putting extra pressure on his post he double tied every line wire which would prevent any kind of slippage or either up or down all of his twist ties are all matching perfectly everything here was done exactly like it was written out of a book as you can see it is very tight very very tight you can see at the bottom of the heel here where he had to make this transition he had to do something to combat the lift that this post is going to have on it so to do that he installed a foot in the bottom at a 45 degree angle back into the bank welded it solid at the bottom and this would be covered back where it would never be seen so down here you can see his strut is constructed exactly the same as it was at the top same cuts same measurements same welds it's a carbon copy of the weld that he did at the top this strut construction is very uniform and very very very good of the highest quality thanks a lot i enjoyed it i've learned a lot this weekend everybody here has learned a lot this weekend it's been a lot of fun it is it's it's still fun and we're going to have fun tonight yep and then cleaning up tomorrow is going to be fun leaving real early lead to guys it's starting to rain a lot we're having some fun uh thank you a whole lot for coming today i hope you enjoyed the video this has just been a blast we've learned so much here are all the other fences just so you know everything you got to see it under construction right here but langley fence just kind of kicked butt man so if you need a good person to build a fence go to farm fencesolutions.com give those guys a call they know a contractor in your area so that's what this is all about is bringing the best in the country here so you guys can see them if you want your ag fence built or even your uh what is it the commercial fence that we built yesterday and we built some residential did some residential stuff yeah expanding good time come join us next year that's it come on man where is it [Music] that's the way it's supposed to be stoney red yesterday or the other day um safety like i said the first day is is of the utmost importance and um i'll start that over josh no you're already sucking go ahead out here at the farm fence forum at tornado yeah the farm fence competition out here in worthington in barcelona final of the competition right little shot here you're from indiana you know you know about little owl come along the grand prize is a bunch of cash here at uh farm fence uh uh oh heck yeah here we are at the ball pit form shootout we're gonna judge this real quick like we're gonna go home tired we are tired yep feet legs and our bellies are empty mine still had five burgers five burgers three burgers and two hot dogs anybody living in there yeah