The AG Fence Best Practices Guide Is Finally Here

Hey,

Hey.

All right. All right. All right. We're on. What's up, Nicholas? Not much. How you doing? Good. Good. Man, here's an episode we've been waiting a long time for, haven't we? It's been a long time in the process for sure. Yeah. So, hey, um I know we started this uh a you know the the egg fence best practices guy. God must been going on a year and a half or more now, right? Yeah. It's got to be close to two years, something like that. Yeah. And uh we got a little bit further along, but I think uh we're ready to start adding some pages to it. I know uh some people got to see it. Uh and so let's tell everybody a little bit about you, though. Uh, by the way, uh, Nicholas, you're one of the main people that helped me work on this, uh, uh, best practices for ad fence for for a while here, but I don't think a lot of people that are watching may not even know, uh, your background. So, uh, you're, uh, the owner of, uh, Mountain M Fencing.

Oh, can you hear us? I lost you for a second. Yeah, I lost you at the last bit for your question. Oh. So, uh, we want to tell everybody a little bit about yourself. Uh, Mount M Fencing, right? Yeah. Yeah. I run an a fencing company out here in Primeville, Oregon. Primeville. Nice. I've had my company for about eight years. Yeah. So, um, what got you into the egg? I mean, I, you know, I know a lot of people don't realize that a fencing is really not the same. I think, you know, even uh even at my end, I used to think it was just residential fencing, but when you say residential fencing to an ad guy, they're like, "No, I don't do residential fence." It's uh and it's not. It's not at all the same um as our residential fences. No, it's very different. Very different. Yeah. Lot more. I got into it just because I I don't know why. I like animals and livestock and so Oh, man. I think we got a bad Yeah, we got a bad connection on you, man. Can you move a little bit closer? I know you're outside because you're always outside. Yeah. Can you move a little bit closer to the Wi-Fi signal back towards the house? Yeah, I'll give it a shot because I don't know if it's just at my end, but uh it's probably uh it's probably doing the same for everybody. You know, you're you're allowed to go inside after you're done building the fence. You don't have to stay outside unless your wife makes you stay out there. No, my kids would just non-stop talk. Oh, is that what it is? Oh, yeah. They don't understand. Quiet.

Yeah, man. I've had a lot of zooms with uh and uh normally we got a pretty good signal. So, um, and I don't see any rain considering he's up in Oregon. I'm in the desert. Yeah. Yeah. Up in the high desert, it sounds like, right? We only get 13 inches. Yeah, we only get 13 inches a year. Oh, man. 13 inches. I'm from Nevada. 13 inches is flood weather. So, hey, man. Well, again, what what got you into the a industry? What made you want to start doing a fencing opposed to just uh regular fencing? Just like I was into livestock and stuff. Uh I was managing a ranch and quit and needed to do something and all the like in the area that I was at the time all the old guys had just quit so there weren't any a fencers around. Yeah. So did you just kind of have to learn it on your own or uh and just kind of watch some videos? Yeah, I learned it a lot on my own. And uh well, like Luke Gibson from Farm Fence Solutions, he was that was back before the Facebook groups and I was talking to him a lot on uh what is it? Tornado forum. Tornado I haven't heard of that. What is that? Is that a Is that a Facebook group or just No, it's just a a website. It was a forum. Yeah, it was a forum for to tornado wire. Oh. Uh it's like a woven wire that he used to sell before co and he started Merryweather whatever it is but yeah I think he's making his own wire right yeah yeah he's got his now but I haven't tried it what's your uh you got a favorite style that you like to build or is there a style you build a lot of uh I do a lot of like horse fencing and I've been starting to do a lot of pipe fencing I really I like the bite fencing. It's fun. Yeah. What um you know when we first met up and it was there was a bunch of us kind of on there in the beginning. What what made the industry on the a side think that they needed a best practices kind of a guide? I mean, you know, not necessarily laws and regulations on it, but standards, but I mean a best practices guide. What made you guys think you needed that? Uh well, you look at the fence out here, it's it's bad. Like cutting corners is the way they do it. Is it? I mean, I could actually, you know, a little ways down the down my driveway, one of the neighbors hired a fence guy to come do a fence, and it's it's a treat. Is it It's just like It's upside down and hard stapled and loose. It's the ugliest thing. I think I should be able to sue just because I have to look at it every day just for the stress. Yeah. I'm just like, "Oh." Mental anguish. Yeah. I built one for the first neighbor, then the next neighbor hired someone else. And it's like night and day difference. It's like, oh, I think we all live in that world, man. There's always that fence down the street from us that uh we almost want to send one of our trucks over just to uh rebuild uh just so we don't have to look at it no more. We had a truck at our neighbor's house across the street a couple I a couple years ago. The dog was barking too much. So, we went over there, knocked on the door, and my wife's like, "You got to get over there. You got to get over there and tell them. Call the cops." I go, "No, man. We're just going to have to go over there and build a fence to keep the dogs back a little bit further or something." And I ended up just going over and having them put a free gate in for the guy. So, I think we all live in that world in the fence industry, you know. What do you think you were just mentioning that uh fence down the street? What do you think some of the biggest mistakes uh in the a industry are? Like just a a some of the biggest common mistakes that people make? I would say the bracing and then the hard stapling. So like because a industry it's more about physics and less about like carpentry skills whereas like a lot of residential is a carpentry skill type thing. Um, so they get the proportions wrong and then they don't have a strong fence or they hard staple it and it twists and loses its tension. And yeah,

And I mean most of the a is 50 years behind like they haven't changed, but we have better wire now and better tools and everything else. We should we should probably be using them. Yeah, I remember I was going to ask I was going to be like, man, what are some innovations? Uh, I mean, what are some innovations in your your side of the industry with the a industry that that stand out, you know, that you can think of that since you started, you know, what's innovated? Well, we got the pounders. That's huge. Uh, and then like hightensil fence. It's just like a better fence that that lasts longer, does a better job. Um, yeah. I don't know. How were they how were they tightening it before? I mean, without all this equipment, how were they getting it that tight back then? Well, I don't think they were. [snorts] It was just like for barb wire, you had like the golden rod, which I know a lot of people still use that, but it's misery. [snorts] It's just easier to use the better tools. Uh, and then like I mean that like that low carbon wire that is typical, you just got to retighten it all the time, especially for barb kind of like standard like our barb wire that we use. It actually loosens up over time and we're always out there with pliers um every couple years or sometimes even less and just kind of like kinking it to try to tighten it up. That's probably I guess they were doing a lot of that. So you you see people always out there in the movies cowboys out there putting the fence back up. You think it's a lot of because of that? Oh yeah. I have friends that do it every year. And out here, I mean, obviously it depends on where you are, but like I have a friend that manages a ranch is 150,000 acres. So, it's it's a few few miles of barb because I watched like all six seasons of Yellowstone. It seems like they were always out there fixing the fences, you know? So, uh I'm guessing, you know, Yeah. How strong can these act fences be if every movie they're out there fixing them, you know? Well, especially range fence, a lot of them's old, you know, I have fences on my property that are probably hundred years old that, you know, are slowly falling apart. Yeah. Well, I've been watching a lot of the stuff now, you know, following a lot closer over the last couple years, and there's a lot of New Zealand stuff. It looks like a lot of I mean, it's just looks like they kind of pioneered a lot of this stuff. Is that right? Yeah. England and New Zealand. It's almost all my tools are from there like they they've taken that industry serious. Where you know a lot of especially in the west I can't talk about you know other areas of the country but almost every ranch kid hits 18 and takes his dad's skid steer and tries to start a fence business. Every every fence every fence company started with some guy with a wheelbarrow and a pair of post hole diggers out of the back of his truck or his car, right? I mean, I I started out of the back of my little Nissan, but Well, how would a guy I mean, I see you guys all have a lot of big equipment. I mean, and this this is not cheap equipment. I mean, you can you do these you do standard residential fencing and even some of the commercial. You don't really need as much equipment. So, h how how are these guys starting out? I mean, how is is that why there's not as much competition because you need a lot of equipment. You got to have some funds behind you to start an a fencing business. Well, I mean, yes and no. I started with like a cheap Home Depot augur and my little Nissan. Um, I think it was four years before I got equipment. So, you can do it. It kind of depends on your area and how big a jobs you're doing and you don't make as much without the equipment. But there's I mean I there's a [ __ ] ton of a fencers out here, but unlike residential fence, a lot of these fences can take a while, you know, two, three weeks. I've been on fences for months. You know, depending on how big they are. I think I was seeing and maybe it was Justin Ner or somebody else was saying that the difference is you guys might have, you know, one or two customers a month, sometimes two or three, and we're getting sometimes three or four

Customers a day. So it's, you know, you're dealing you're dealing with the same customer for a long time. So how you handle those relationships has got to be a little bit different. Yeah, I assume so. I mean, I don't do a lot of residential. So Well, I mean I mean on the a side, you guys got the customers for a lot longer than we do on the residential fence side. Yeah, but we're not usually like right in their backyard, you know. I have clients that I've only met sign the contract and pick up the last check. Other than that, I haven't seen them. Oh, that's nice. Hey, uh let's bring it up. I know people are excited to see it. And uh I dropped um I dropped the links actually if you go to uh Facebook's my fence uh my fence life page, I actually dropped another link of where they can click on and actually uh view the best practices guide. But uh this is what we were working on for a while and I got in a single page form rather than the actual kind of magazine that opens up. That way we can kind of go over it a little bit more. But this is the uh 2025 AG fence best practices that we all came up with. And uh you can go to fenceworkers.org and find it as well. But um nonetheless, we developed this uh because of what you guys needed and uh we did focus pretty heavy on this beginning of it with the uh braces, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's the main That's the main part of the fence. Yeah. And let's go through some of it, man. I mean, I And I think what was unique about this was uh you don't see 10 foot 10 foot braces everywhere, do you? No. No. A lot of people like try to stick to the eight to save money or I've seen a lot of people do 4 foot. Just cut an eight footer in half and call it good. Yeah. So, what what made everybody, you know, after all the I we had a lot of a lot of back and forth and a lot of meetings going over this. What made everybody kind of settle on, you know, the team? And in the end of this, I'll kind of go over the team that we, you know, that all came up with on 10 foot? The angle of the brace wire. So, if that angle of the brace wire is too steep, it pull it puts uplift on your kingpost. Um, therefore, you start to lose your fence if it's tight. And our king post, by the way, if everybody can't see it, that would be your uh your posted either at the end of the end of the fence line, right? Or a corner. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And this is your bracing. So, use a And you guys all came up with um 6 inch minimum diameter. And what was uh what what were we coming up with these uh these diameters for? Is it easy to find material-wise or is it just something everybody decided worked best over time? It's easy to find material for and it holds up. Like uh I mean I've even put in 5 inch posts. I did one for my sister-in-law just trying to be quick about it. Then I had to replace it because that wire actually bent the post. Oh yeah. So you can actually get a bow in the post. I mean just Yeah. Are you sure it didn't come boat already? You guys just uh blame the wire. No, I'm sure. I'm sure.

But then the queen post, uh, if you got a king post, you got a queen somewhere, right? And the queen post is going to be the next post over. And I I know I'm talking now from, uh, you know, not in the a industry side of it. So, it's really interesting for us to see, uh, how much science you guys put in, how much engineering you guys put into this thing, right down to the angle of the braces and the, uh, you know, the wire and everything. So, um, we've got that, uh, that five five inch post, which is the queen post. And of course, tell me about how they trim. What does trim trim and square and, uh, uh, brace pin and all that stuff mean? Let me look at this thing. I haven't looked at it for a little bit. I mean, the race pin is you drill a hole and that's what holds that H that crossost in. Um I don't know what you're talking about with trim. Well, I mean, we're going to uh trim to square. So, we cut it into square in the end and then we we and then we shove it into the king and the queen post and then you uh put a pin in it. Yeah. Yeah. To hold it. Yeah. To keep it and then we put the uh the the hightensil that brace wire on there. Kind of pulls the whole thing together. Well, yeah. And that's what's holding it back. That brace wire is against that post is holding your king post back. The queen post is really just holding your vertical up. And and we kind of um after the whole after all the meetings, we decided that that that brace on this is for a typical 60 60 inch fence should be 26 to 40 inches, right? Yeah. So up to 60 in. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then we got So, we got a 6 in king post, queen post, 5 in, and then 4 inch on your uh line post. You don't need any kind of bracing on those line post. You just pound them all down. Those only go only got to go down 24 in. Yeah. As a minimum. I mean, like a lot of this with braces is as a minimum because your soil could change. I mean, I know Jacob Mater has some posts that are like eight feet in the ground because they were soft as out. where and like I have places that are too sandy. Two two feet wouldn't really keep them in, but then I have places that are rock and two feet will will last. Yeah. What um what do you do if you go down a foot and you hit a rock? You drill it. So you just pull pull the post back out and you just uh get a rock drill and drill it out and pound it and keep pounding it until it breaks through. Yep. Yep. So you don't stop. There's no Yeah. It's a lot of drilling. So [snorts] you're getting it down no matter what. Is that what it is? Yeah. Yeah. So we've got the H brace and you would you say that's your most common? Uh the H post. I don't do a lot of H posts. You don't. I do a lot of I do mostly rants rants braces. So, here's our rants brace. And I thought this was interesting when we were all coming up with it. Um, this is uh there was a lot more uh critical on the on the actual braces and stuff on this than it was on the H. Right. Yeah. I I mean there's I guess a little bit more to it when you start and there's no It looks like you're burying the brace in the ground right at the uh at the one end where the queen post is. Yep. And that doesn't cause anything. I mean you guys aren't worried about that thing rotten away. Uh I mean it's going to rot just as quick as any other part of the fence. so we got I mean the goal too is for that, you know, under that underground. It's not at the surface. It's below the surface a little bit so that you're not because that rot happens in that first like inch or two. You know, anybody that's pulled a post, you can see it like it's good and then all of a sudden that last two inches it comes in where it's been eaten away by the soil life. And you pound the everything's pounded. I know you said when you guys start off, you start off sometimes with a an augur. So, would this be dug and set in concrete if you didn't have the equipment to pound it? Uh, typically with a it's dug and set back in its own soil.

Okay. Oh, so you pack it. So, you dig it out and then pack it. Yeah. In like, you know, at max 4 inch lifts. Okay. You pack it in there tight. So, not a lot of concrete. You guys don't use concrete really? No. No. I mean, concrete just rots those posts quicker going. Okay, let me see. I know people will disagree, but concrete's an unnecessary expense where people are just being lazy. Lazy. Yeah, lazy. You say concrete's lazy. Well, I mean, most a fencers if they throw concrete in, you know, they just throw the bag in and walk off. Oh. Oh, they don't mix it. They just dump it in and let let the ground kind of soak it up. Yeah. You know, because are you really gonna carry water out to the middle of nowhere? Well, I mean, I do, but yeah, but I'm a GL, you know, I like to I like to do everything the hard way and suffer, you know. So, then we got the same kind of scenario though. The bracing sizes don't change. The 6 in when you get in this style brace, you don't you don't change it. You stick with a 6 in um king post. uh the 4 inch on the actual brace itself and then a 5 inch queen post and then it doesn't change anything on the on the line post obviously. Right. Yeah. And I mean again it's all it's kind of dependent on your area. I don't use any 4 in line post in my area. Um I they'd break before I ever pounded them in. And the the people that provide posts there's not enough of a price difference to even matter. There's very few 4 inch posts around here, but other places are pretty popular. So, what And again, these are all minimums that we were coming up with, right? So, someone's in certain area, you can adjust for whatever the market has in your area. What What would happen? So, you were saying it would push up. So, you're saying on the Kingpost that if you go up above that 26 to 40 inches because I mean, it seems like uh common sense would say the higher the better, right? So, uh you know, depends a lot. Yeah. like if you have too much of an angle, I don't know you can see my hands, you know, it it creates that pendulum which gives it something to flip up over. Uh so really like you're just trying to come up with a good because like the lower it is the stronger it is, you know, with that uplift, but if you go too low on the post, then you have so much post above the brace that you're going to bend your post over. Yeah. Um, so you're trying to find that like kind of happy medium where you have a good angle still, but you have enough, you know, your space here so you don't have too much uh overhang or that's not the word, but because if you go too low, then it kind of defeats the purpose of putting it in the beginning in the first place. You go too high, it's going to want to pop it up. So you got to find a sweet spot. Yeah. Yeah. So that sweet sauce angle and that comes out of that comes out of the angle and out of probably experience and time, right? I'm sure you I'm sure when you first started off, you put a few of those in the wrong spot, right? Oh, I I I have some fences that I'm not super proud of. You went over and spray painted over your own sign. Make sure no one knew it was you. I didn't do that one. When you got company in town, you drive them around that around that street so you don't go down that street and show it. Yeah. Luckily, you can't see most about those fences from the road anyways. So, we had the H brace. Um, and I think you see those a lot in corners and and ends. Then we had the rants brace. You think that's that's one you do a lot? Yeah. Yeah. I think it was Luke that did a bunch of pole test against different types of braces and the Rance brace won out as the most secure. Uh it's what they use a lot in England and New Zealand as well. Um and it doesn't have as much foot trapment because it doesn't have that twitch wire there. So So I've pretty much converted over to that unless I have to match an existing fence. So essentially they both would do the same thing. You could build a fence with either one of these and you're

Going to get a fence regardless, but there's not the advantage to this one. You everybody kind of determined would be a little bit stronger, a little bit more reliable. It's a little bit stronger. Yeah. You don't have to like wrap the twitch wire and all that. And we don't have this wire here and the brace. So, um, you think it's you think you think uh labor-wise this one would be a little bit easier to put in? on wood, I don't know if it's easier because there is like a little bit of fitting you got to do to it. You know, it's I don't know if we probably should have put a picture of it, but on wood, you know, it's like tapered and it's in a hole that you chisel out is how it secure tendon mortise. it's in or whatever. Um, so it takes like a little bit of skill to learn to make it look good, but not anything that nobody like anybody can learn to do it. It's not like a crazy. Nope. Now, what about a floating brace? I thought this was really cool. So, you still have the twitch wire, right? And you've got the brace, but there's no queen post at all. So, this is this is like a single dude right here. This is he's just the king's out there by himself. Yeah. And they're pretty rare that you'd want to use one of those. That's like really rocky ground that you don't want to you don't want to have to dig that second post for. And that could be like on and you can actually put that right on top of a rock or something. You find some hard soil if it was hard out there. But can you put that right on some just some loose dirt or No, no, no. It's got to be Yeah. a concrete block or or a big rock. I mean, I've never installed one because Yeah. They're not the best choice, but they're the right answer in the right situation. And we went back and forth a little bit on these. So, definitely there's some science behind these as well. And I think that's what's great about you guys is you guys are really and I think the whole industry as a whole if you can if you see it now everybody's trying to make fences last longer and longer and longer. Well, hopefully we don't make them last so long that we all go out of business because there's no fences to build. But u we got to maybe we all got to find a happy medium too, right? We're gonna we're going to pass our our companies off to all of our kids and there be no fences left to build. Well, there'll always be people that want a different style. Yeah. I don't think we're gonna run. I I always people always ask me like, "How's the business?" I go, "Well, you know, uh our business is is based off of criminals, dogs, and children, and uh I don't expect any shortage of them anytime soon. So, as long as there's criminals, dogs, and children, we got companies." Yeah. Ours. I mean, I have a client that I think I fix her fence three or four times a year because cars go through it. Let me see. And uh we've got And then we've got some other stuff that we kind of went back into. So, if anybody wants to check this out, again, uh go to our Facebook page. Uh hopefully we can get Susan or something in the background to drop a link to our Facebook page in the in the comments for everybody to see. But, uh um go to go to my fence life Facebook page and you can actually click a link and actually get a blow this up and zoom in and zoom out what you want. You can take a look at some of these pictures. So, um on the floating brace and each one of these has a little description and some um images and stuff as well that was provided by the um a industry. Uh tiebacks. Tell me about a tieback. Looks like that's underground. Yeah. Yeah, it's Yeah, typically underground so you don't see it. And it's like a tight area that you couldn't put a brace but you have like a turnpost or something or I'll use it sometimes for gates. I think that picture I think that's one of my fences. And yeah, I'm just tying it back to help support the gate so the gate doesn't sag over time because the gate, you know, came off at an angle instead of with the fence. And and would you bury that for uh safety for the the livestock or something? Yeah, safety and aesthetics just so you don't see it. And then a footed post. What do we got? What is that? That's for if you have a lot of uplift on a post. So, if you're going down into like a a ditch or, you know, a huge

Change of direction, you know, like come down, it goes down, and you go down, you'll put that post on the bottom because otherwise that fence is constantly pulling up on the post. And then, um, we got some other stuff for everybody to check out. Um, breast block and all that stuff that, um, and if anybody's got any questions on that, you can drop in and we'll try to get those things answered. But, uh, this is just the beginning of this, uh, a fence best practices guide. I know we're going to get some some more pages added to this thing. Um, and probably get this things printed out for the fence show as well and get some over to, uh, I think Ken Cove wanted some to put inside of their stores. And ifbody, anybody has a a store, a feed store that's watching and wants to get some copies of this, let us know. Um, this is the first edition. Hopefully, it gets better. And I think when everybody sees that we've all been working on it, maybe uh, some more people are going to want to get involved and help. and because we didn't even get into um some of the materials yet about you know where to get materials and stuff like that. So hopefully we get some of the suppliers involved to give us some um better suggestions on the materials and stuff as well. Yeah. And a big part of it like we try to keep it simple to bring people in. Uh and part of it is also trying to educate the customer because you know there's a lot of us that do really good fences and it's hard to always be the one being like no my fence is better because of this. So, you know, now you have an organization backing you up that you can point them to and be like, "Well, look at this." And choose your your contractor based on somebody that's actually, you know, following something of value. Yeah, that's a great point. Going back to these, we're g you're going to be able to download PDF copies of this. So, when you're making a quote or a bid, you're going to be able to say, "This is how we do it. We do it per um you know, the AF fence best practices guide." And uh that way when you're making a bid, maybe you're got a little bit of edge over somebody that's like I don't even know what that is. Right. Yeah. Because like I mean at least in my experience, you know, a lot of my consumers don't know anything about And they don't want to really know a ton, but like this is a simple easy thing to do. And it helps you justify why you're a little bit more expensive, too. Like yeah, I do cost a little bit more because I spend this extra time and money and materials and labor and then Yep. So, yeah, it does cost a little bit more, but it's a better fence. It's going to last longer. Here's somebody else backing up what I'm doing. Yeah. And sometimes, uh, you're out there bidding, doing it right, and somebody's out there just bidding, getting it done. And, uh, you've got nothing to justify it really other than just telling them you're doing it right. So hopefully you can um reference something, even bring the book out with you and show them, hey, by the way, we we build it uh the way it's supposed to be built or the way you should build it with minimum standards. So that's kind of cool. Um I I completely that's one of the main reasons, too. But going back to when I was asking why do we need this? That's another reason we need it when we're talking to the customers. So then knots, man, there was I was just blown away on these knots. I know I was lucky enough to um I think that I went out to uh Cox's thing, the East Coast Fence Rivalry and then the uh East Coast Fence Forum or Paul Fence Forum. I went to both of those and I was lucky enough to have uh um Sloop teach me some of those knots, you know, the handle thing. Crank it, crank it back. And uh man, I was just baffled on how many different knots and different things you guys do with just that wire. Oh yeah. you know, and they and they all mean something different. I know some are better looking, some aren't. Some are to tie it, some are for in the middle of the line, some are at the ends, at the posts. So, um, termination knot is probably one of your most popular ones, though, right? Yeah. That's how we terminate everything. You tie that knot, round metal post, wood post, whatever. Yeah. and then speed knots and and um I'm gonna we're going to do some videos of these things and get those out there

On um my fence life as well and then also through uh FWA to actually show people how to tie these things and uh get some of those videos which would be kind of cool. Um so all the rest of the knots I mean do they all really have a different purpose or just some look different? Um hold on sorry I got to plug my phone in apparently. Uh yeah, they all have different things. Um some of them do the same thing. They just might look a little different. Or they might, you know. Sorry, my phone should not be dying, but it is. Apparently, this takes a lot of battery power. It does the video. Yeah. And that's why, man, we we normally get back and try to get someone somewhere stable. Otherwise, I'd be in the same boat. Yeah. There's nowhere stable out here. I know. Sometimes when we're talking, we got like a great connection. Sometimes we don't. Yeah. I'm usually driving everywhere. That's why it's always hard to get an ad guy um on the shows because uh they're always in the middle of nowhere. Well, yeah. And I live off- grid. Like I'm I'm in the middle of nowhere. Hey, do you know by anyway Erin was asking what's the history of these brace names? You may not know. I don't know. I But I mean, it was a question somebody just Yeah, I don't know the history of it at all. I don't know, Erin, but I I will uh find out. I'm going to answer that because I'm curious about that, too. I'll find out and answer that, Aaron, in the uh in the comments, you know, just to see. So, we've got um our standard knot, speed knot, reef knot. So, you think the speed knot, reef knot, text brown knot, and figure eight knot, they all kind of do the same thing? They do a similar thing. the the speed knot and the text brown and the Yeah, those two knots are are done with wire that's already under tension. So, those are done on your on your stretchers while it's already tensioned, whereas the figure eight and the reef knot are done before you tension the wire. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. So, so you tie those up and then you tighten it. That's just to squeezes it up. Yeah. Like if you're splicing wire or something. Yep. Yeah. Okay. And the other ones you would just uh do it while it's under tension. And then crimps. Um I don't know if we got get a chance to actually see the crimps being used. Uh and that would be if you didn't do a knot, you could use these instead of a knot. Yeah. Yeah. And like most of the time, like if we're joining wire together, most of us will will crimp it. Man, why wouldn't you just do that, man? That seems like that'd be a lot easier than all those fancy knots. Well, you I mean it would be really hard to crimp like for a termination. But then once you learn those knots, they're pretty quick on anything except for if you're joining wire. It's hard to join wire. Um I have a pin next to me where I did it, but I wouldn't I mean it takes a lot of extra time. Do they hold? I mean, can you put put as much pull on them as much as you can? Say a figure eight. Um, the crimp actually has a better holding power because the figure eight does decrease the strength of the wire a bit. I think it's like an 80% knot or But you're still well below what the fence should take. Um, But that crimp is stronger than the wire is itself. So, we've got um again, we've got tons of different types of knots to show you guys. A little explanation about what it is. Uh, pick your favorite one. Tell us. I'd like drop it in the comments too if you got a favorite one that you uh uh you use more. Um but other than that, man, here's some some of the uh you know, contributors. You can take a look at that. These are everybody. There was a lot of people involved in this thing. Um I know it changed a little bit over time, but uh there was definitely a lot of help from the a industry and we can't be any more grateful for that. Um if anybody's got any suggestions what we need to add to this, I know we're planning on adding um some of the materials and getting into a little bit more um in-depth on some of the uh installation processes. So, um, we're going to try to get, uh, we're going to

Try to get a little bit more information in this thing. We definitely would love to help. Drop in the comments if, uh, you're in the a industry and you want help or, um, do you know of any, um, I know Ken Cove does some and I think I've seen a few other people doing training for a industry. Any any suggestions for somebody that wants to get into the a industry on the side? Just come to like the probably the Facebook groups and start to connect with people. I know like Cox does some at his and and Luke does some at his fall forum thing. Um but other than that I don't know about a whole lot of trainings out there. Yeah. So [snorts] we got to get it sounds like we got to get some uh a fence training going. So u we'd love some help on that too. Um I you know I'm not an expert in the a fence by any means but there's a lot of guys like you that are out there that are willing to help and and one thing I know about the a fence guys and gals that are in it is you guys are willing to share your information. So if you want to get into the a fence uh side of it and you're not doing it, it's probably on you because you didn't reach out to one of the guys and ask for help. Yeah, there's so many people you can call and ask. It's it's unlimited. There's there's constantly somebody willing to help you. Yeah. So, we'll um we'll drop some uh information down there. I'm going to do a little bit of research and see who's uh doing education on it. Um if not, we do we do know there's a place up in Oregon where there's not a lot of competition that you can go. So, uh well, plenty of competition, but there's other. No, Nicholas, thank you again for um for all your help. We're uh super excited to be working on this. Um, hopefully we can get a few more pages. Not hopefully, we're going to get a few more pages added to this thing. Uh, again, drop in the comments what you guys would like to see. Um, or if anybody wants to help. We're always looking for people to, uh, jump on board and jump on some of these meetings. And, uh, we'll put on this thing, um, as well the link. I think we need to get back to our regular meetings. I know some of the holiday stuff's over. I say that because, man, it seemed like the holidays went by quick and then now it's uh, time to get busy again. It's summer, right? It's 72 today. I'm like dying. I was in uh I was in Indiana for the last couple days, man. And it was only like 80 80 something. I don't know, 80, but it was humid and I couldn't take it, man. I I man, I I thought I was going to throw up alongside the road or something, but uh I don't know how to do it. But then we were still getting pretty hard freezes last week. Yeah. Were you? Yeah. like the water trough was still freezing over every night. Now I think Yeah, it was like 72 today, but it's 80. Yeah, it's been in the 80s. I'm not I haven't adjusted yet. Like, you know, it was 20° most of the winter and now all of a sudden Yeah, you're searching for water. It's just search like a horse searching for water, right? just chewing on your salt tablets. Well, hey, Nicholas, thanks again. Um, I appreciate it. Um, and we'll be in touch. Everybody, stay tuned for uh the next revision of uh the AG Fence best practices guide. We'll talk to you guys later. Thanks.