Factory Fencing: Etseri, Svaneti
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The time had come. After several years’ waiting, planting little annual veggie gardens but leaving them unprotected should bovines or porcines break through the barriers around our land, I was about to make an interior fence. This time, using bought but as yet unused rolls of diagonally assembled wire.
I called a neighbor whose Russian lodger was available as a helping hand when needed; Sergo and I worked well together. First, we replaced some normal, wire-and-picket fencing a few meters long where it had fallen into chaos near the barn and replaced another small section of the same kind elsewhere, the wires of which had been mysteriously… cut. Who means us this kind of malice? I had to wonder. A 4-legged break-in could quickly lead to devastation wrought upon our plantings. And they are oh so cunning, these animals.
Then, the main event. We used my new electric chainsaw (meaning that with electricity free here I was running it for nothing) to cut new posts from nice hard lengths of supposed firewood which would serve better in this repurposed role. Trimmed one end of each to a point with the axe, to hammer it easier into the ground, still damp and soft enough from the snow’s recent melt, before the summer sun would come and harden it much too much. Then we used a straight steel crowbar to punch conical holes in the earth. Hung a tight string between the start and end points of the new fence to achieve a straight line, consulting with my wife for position, door location, and other points on which she must agree.
Pounded in the new fence posts first, using a sledgehammer, finishing by beating the ground around each to harden it as well. Then we started unravelling the first roll of actual fencing, and finally at this moment the interesting job of its making at a factory in Zugdidi became clear.
There are two things about such fencing, one of which is simply the nature of the beast you have to be patient with, live with and not lose your temper over. This is the way that both ends of it tend to grab onto anything they can as you unroll it, especially your clothing and more of its own self. You just have to go slowly until the whole thing is stretched out between two of you, unhooking it from yourself and itself as you go, then carefully maneuver it into position at the start post and end position, however far away that is, stretched nice and taut to prevent further snarls.
The other thing is that you might have fencing which obviously came from a maker who Just Doesn’t Care. This becomes evident when you see that, instead of a nice perfect rectangle when unrolled, you have something whose top and bottom edges jump up and down by as much as 5 or 8 diamond lengths. This is entirely invisible in the rolled-up form, and glaringly visible once you open it out fully. You can either spend maybe an hour or three curling each improper vertical length around and around in spirals until all line up properly, or you can just leave it, live with it. As the fence is only a few hours old now, I haven’t yet decided if I have the patience and need the perfection of the sorting out, or if I CAN live with it. The days ahead will tell.
Then, secure one end to the starting post with a few nails hammered in and bent over along its height. Keep doing this at each successive post, your work partner holding the far end tight to head off any more self-catching, until you’re done. Repeat with the next and successive rolls until your whole perimeter is enclosed. Bend over the offending top edge’s wires tomorrow so they can’t snag onto anything else and congratulate yourself on a job well done. Easy with two people, close to impossible alone, and very satisfying when completed, despite that jagged edge which might nag too much or, conversely and better, might fail to affect your desire for geometric regularity. In any case, the cows and pigs are Thwarted… for now.
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with nearly 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri:
www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
By Tony Hanmer