Well, so much for getting that chore done today.

First task planned for this afternoon: finish detaching the wire from the Former Livestock Enclosure, and pull up the remaining wooden posts.

Wire: OK.  Turns out there was just one remaining staple (a difficult one), plus the bottom of the wire being all tangled up in dead tall grass.

Posts: gotta remove a couple of braces first.  No big deal.  Then, the posts themselves!  Grab the farm jack and a length of chain.  Attach chain to jack, wrap around the fist post, and commence jacking.

Well.  One might expect the soft wet ground to make it easy, but instead of the post coming up, the post is sinking into the ground.

Go grab a couple of low-value 2x4 scraps.  Put them under the base of the jack, and try again.

Oops.

The 2x4s are sinking into the ground, and one of them is splintering in the process.  That post is taking an awful lot of force, and not budging.  And...

Oh.  With the ground where the 2x4 sank being thus lowered, I can see that this post, unlike all the other posts I've uprooted here, is set in concrete.  Which suggests that it may be (Google Earth's older imagery is not real high-res) from the really-before-time, back when this was part of an actual farm, and the barn was an elderly structure with a tin roof.

I think this calls for less of a jack, and more of a jack-hammer.  (No, I'm not going to use dynamite, tempting as it may be.)  I think that's something to leave for later, along with having that area graded for construction of a machine shed.  Meanwhile, none of these posts actually get in the way of establishing a compost heap.

Comments

[Rob]

Nope, shovel time for the post set in concrete. You could dig it loose and use your tractor and some chain to lift it out of the hole.

[Eric Wilner]

Yeah, I suppose I could use a shovel (there's various other shovel work I need to get to, more urgently), but I think the remaining 8 posts are probably all set in concrete, so that's not something I feel like taking on myself just now.

[Rob]

Pick a day and dig one loose then put your shovel away, you have more days and more posts... eventually you'll get it done and you can cross it off the list.
I always smile when I get a job like that crossed off the list!