Work party at Trautman Ranch

Trautman Work Party May 2018

Organized by Ken Carmichael, the group consisted mostly of members of the Back Country Horsemen group accompanied by Riverside State Park Ranger Danny Murphy.

Our objective was to remove barbed wire within the Trautman Ranch property.

Some of this wire was old and rusty, and had been strung from cedar fence posts and stapled to trees. The fence posts had long since fallen over, and the trees had grown over the wire. This wire was therefore yanked up out of the pine needles and fallen trees, cut

into sections, coiled and/or folded into manageable bundles, and carried to a the pickup truck for removal.

The second objective was to remove barbed wire strung by Riverside State Park to define the boundary between the park and what was then private property. Now that the Trautman Ranch is managed by Riverside State Park, there is no need to keep these fences in place. These fences were in much better condition, with good wire on heavy steel posts, with four strands separated by spacers.

The first step in removal of this wire was cutting and removing the spacers.

Next the wire clip holding the bottom strand to the fence posts was cut, freeing one long segment hundreds of feet long. The strand was then rolled onto a barbed hydraulically powered wire roller mounted on a beautiful old tractor.

Once the first strand was rolled up, the second strand up was freed from the posts, spliced onto the end of the first, and rolled onto the spool. The same process was used for the remaining two strands.

And then onto the next location.

This effort was organized by Ken Carmichael and was carried out efficiently and safely and as far as I could tell, everybody had a lot of fun.