My DIY Failure was Still a Success - Yours would be too.

I failed. It's hard to say and even harder to share with the world, but it's necessary for my growth and hopefully someone elses.

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You see I planned on building a deer proof fence for our garden.
It would have been my first fence, but I'm not new to building. I've built sheds and decks, etc. But, I learned two valuable lessons with this one. Two lessons I'll probably have to learn again since doing them correctly is against my very nature.
I started to tackle this fence build the same way I tackle every thing, and that usually works for me. I just dig in and get started and figure it out as I go. This task however required two additional steps I did not follow. If you're a married man, you'll understand the first one.

I did not get proper input from the misses on the design aspect of the fence.

I'm a very aesthetic person and I like to have things around me to be pleasing to my eyes. But, this is all relative. When I see a fence, I see beauty in it's functionality, my wife however sees beauty in beauty. We have a greenhouse nearby, I say we, but it's really her she shed. It's a nice timberframe greenhouse build from logs milled on our property. Our garden where the fence is needed, is right beside it. Now, If I'd had been thinking, I'd have known she'd wanted a very nice and attractive fence at this particular location. However, in my mind, I wanted to build this fence in the most simple design possible. Which meant buying that black plastic mesh fence screen sold on Amazon as deer fencing and just running it around the posts and ensuring the bottom was buried to prevent digging animals.

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So I set off to borrow a fence post driver for my tractor, which meant driving the tractor 10 miles up the road, figuring out how to get it attached to my tractor, driving it home and then learning how to use it. I did all that and was quite proud of myself after I finished driving the final and 45th post.

This is the point the wife (@qberryfarms) decided to get interested in my fence project and start asking lots of questions. I can tell you right now, she didn't like any of my answers. The plastic screen will look bad and not hang properly on the posts she said. It won't be tall enough she said. I have to say, I was not at all pleased. But it didn't take long to realize she was right.

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I relented and we ended up.... God, I can barely bring myself to admit it.... We ended up hiring people to build this fence. If that wasn't enough of an ego buster for a do it yourself guy, then the next thing I found out was. All 45 of the posts I pounded in had to be removed and replaced with 12ft tall posts driven 3 ft in the ground. Therefore my second lesson learned was that some projects require a lot of pre-planning. I hate pre-planning.

I don't even have access to equipment that can do that, so I could fallback on that excuse. But I'm not. Truth is, I sucked it up, hired some wonderful people and hoped none of the neighbors would realize I didn't build it myself :)

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So what's the point here other than men should always get the wife's input before starting a project, and pre-planning is good? Well, I tried something new and I actually succeeded in hooking up a very large heavy piece of equipment to the tractor alone, learning to use it alone and pounding 45 fence posts in the ground alone. Just because I failed at the planning piece doesn't mean it's a total failure. I have new experience now. I can build a great fence now. (Especially with my extra 45 posts) So, the point is when you are determined and try something new that is out of your comfort zone, you succeed. Even if your project doesn't. That's my learn from this one, and it helps me treat the sting of doing, undoing, and hiring someone else to do a fence! Never be afraid to try, you'll get something good, even if it isn't exactly what you wanted.

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Here's some of my favorite failure related quotes for your inspiration:

"Everything you want is on the other side of fear." - Jack Canfield

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“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” - Robert F. Kennedy

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“If you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail… it takes back bone to lead the life you want” - Richard Yates

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“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” - Denis Waitley

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Hope you enjoyed and took some inspiration
-@qberry