Historic Wire Pile

You wouldn't think that there would be anything "historic" about a wire pile, but that was the case at ESF. If you had ever been to the farm and drove along the road going down the middle ridge you would have certainly noticed this impressive creation. There along side the drive sat one of the largest piles of used wire that I have ever seen. I have been told that this wire pile was already started when UK created the farm in 1955 and it has only grown since. Here are some pictures of the wire pile.

Although not hurting anything, this wire pile sat on precious level ground in the exact spot that we would like to place a winter feeding area. Dr. Steve Higgins with UK has been working with us to get some winter feeding areas established at the farm so that we can demonstrate to producers the different designs and construction techniques that can be successfully implemented with minimal input cost. And this wire pile was directly in the way for one of the designs. Dr. Higgins arranged for the pile to be hauled off and recycled for scrap. They used an excavator with a hydraulic thumb to simple pick up the wire and put it into roll off dumpsters to be hauled away. As you can tell by Greg's gesture, it was rather cold the day the excavator showed up.

The wire pile had been there long enough that there were a few trees that had grown up in the middle of it. They did a really good job of separating everything so that there wasn't any wood in the dumpsters so that the wire could be recycled.

There was everything in this pile from woven wire, barbed wire, old gates, steel posts, and an old charcoal grill. I was expecting to find the remains of an old pickup truck, but there ended up not being anything like that in there. In all UK hauled off 36 tons of wire! The project ended up paying for itself from the money earned at the recycling facility.
I would like to thank Dr. Higgins and the UK team who helped us remove this wire pile. Now we have a clean, flat area to install a winter feeding pad that should benefit us much more than that historic wire pile did.