2 7/8"

Back in 2021, I was singing my pipe blues to my friends George and Jeanie Etchemendy. I had been looking for a stack of pipe to buy for our corral project, with no luck. To my surprise, George said, "Well, we have some pipe you can have." Sold. 

I'm a pipe guy. If there is a project around the ranch or church that needs some construction, 2 7/8" oil field tubing is my building material of choice.

Taking advantage of the Etchemendy's generosity, we picked up around 60 joints of rusty 2 7/8" pipe from them in the Douglas area. That was right at four years ago. 

Just getting our corral project underway back home, we stock piled it for future use.

Back in the heyday, Grandpa had this barnyard in tiptop shape.  

But over the years, she had fallen into disrepair. 

So we torn down the old network. 

And started fresh. Cutting and pounding in 2 7/8" posts was the first step.

Followed up with three years of welding.

This week, we fitted our last section. It's nice not to have to wrestle any more joints around. And it's also a good chance to reflect on the gift this pipe has been. 

Of all those 60-some joints. This is all that is left.

Most of it went into posts, where we were able to weld on continuous fence. This north-forty made for a nice riding arena. 

Some areas that would see more pressure from cattle, we put a 2 7/8" top rail.

This worked especially well in our working pen.

We even used that pipe to build us some gates. 

The final leg was our horse pen around the barn. 

Giddy up.

Between Grandpa and I, we have exerted a considerable amount of energy down here. He used a shovel and paintbrush, we used a post pounder and welder. Hopefully this time around it is here to stay. That string of pipe that Etchemendy's gave us has been a termendous blessing. I had a rough idea of how many feet of pipe we needed and how much we had. Never once did I let a worry of not having enough slow us down of doing the kind of job that needed to be done. That being said, we hardly have enough left over to make a brace post!

God is good. Planning our work and working our plan these past four years has been a great joy. Even better is the end product. I know Grandpa would be proud and I believe the Father is too. One real way of giving glory to God is by letting our light shine. When we use the skills He gave us to better creation, God is glad. I'm super thankful to Mom and Dad for letting me play in the barnyard. I'm also thankful to George and Jeannie Etchemendy for giving us the pipe to be able to do so. Now, let's really ranch!