Finnegan, our dog is wearing out our backyard. And we can’t let him out after a rain as he’s worn down the grass to the bare clayey soil. So, I’m partitioning off, with chain link fencing, part of the back yard and the west side yard for a dog run.

Yesterday it took me an afternoon and evening to put in 3 six inch by 27 to 30 inch holes. The middle hole was the “easiest” as there were no large rocks or roots. Just a thunk, scoop, thunk, scoop with the post hole digger. The first hole had several tree roots along the way and several larger stones to extract. Once I cut the forked tree root at the top of the third hole the thunking part wouldn’t work. I needed to use my 3 foot crowbar to “loosen” up an inch or so of clay and then use the post hole digger to extract this. This was all very laborious and time consuming. However, I doubt a power auger would have worked in our heavy clay.

Today I set the three poles in the three holes with quick setting post-hole concrete. I didn’t even need to stake the last pole vertical as the concrete had all ready set enough. For the other two poles I found my heavy pipe clamps laid on the ground were sufficient to hole the fence posts in place.