INNOVATOR PROFILE

Kyle Farmer is “soil tender” at Magruder Ranch in Potter Valley, California. The six generation family ranch focuses on adaptive grazing and wildlife stewardship and provides beef, lamb, and pigs to the Mendocino, Sonoma and Bay Area communities.

INNOVATION

The No-dig Removable Endpost works great for farms with limited access to their own lumber, inaccessible areas with varying topography and soil types, and for the purposes of rotational grazing where a fence may need to be moved in the future or taken out after a burn.

Key Features:

• End posts are installed in under three minutes with two people
• Eliminates digging and packing holes, and having to pour cement
• With proper U-channel gauge, it can be used in any soil including rock hard shale subsoil
• The cross piece (“45”) can be sawn in the barn lot, instead of custom cut in the field

PROBLEM SOLVED

This innovation cuts down on the time and cost spent by ranchers on fencing and digging post holes, not particularly joyful memories for most. Without a tractor auger, an H-brace end post can take a well conditioned team 45 minutes and $80 to install. Packing holes and pouring cement is laborious and the resulting post is very difficult to remove and relocate.

The No-Dig Endpost is installed in under three minutes, at half the supply costs, and can be removed with a tractor or high lift jack. This post system can also outperform a 8” post H-brace under load and has withstood five fully tensioned wires regularly being hit by 600 lb elk night crossings.

One of the most convenient parts of the design is that the cross piece (“45”) can be sawn in the barn lot, instead of custom cut in the field. The U-channel selected gauge works with rock hard shale subsoil. The design also helps save workers wrists and bodies from not having to drive posts.

A skid steer auger still holds its place for easy to access ground and swinging gates, but the No-Dig Removable Endpost allows for more hillside cross fencing to improve grazing outcomes.

HOW TO BUILD IT & WHAT ARE THE COSTS?

This ranch has good access to U-Channel because of neighboring vineyards. Total material costs are $40 with $30 for the U-Channel (two pieces), $10 for the 4” post, and two good nails. This is half the price of total material costs compared to a standard end post.

This design requires a gas powered post pounder with an attachment for U-channel. This can be store bought or modified by cutting grooves into a 2.5” pounder attachment (the 2.5 attachment for pipe applications is not ruined).
A petro-assisted post pounder runs around $1,000 but the modified attachment can also work for T-posts so pounding labor can be saved there as well. They loan out their post pounder to other ranchers so look into local borrowing options.

They cut and build the cross pieces before heading out to the fields using a chop and reciprocal saw. The notch can work on any topography and the wood post determines the distance to the second U-Channel “deadman” so it always fits.

Watch Kyle and Bryce build their No-dig Removeable Fence Post: