Me (standing at counter): Well, Arrie and I have been sitting in the shade, watching sheep bounce off the new electric fence."

Ellen Beebe (out of sight behind the deli case, weighing cold cuts): "See, that’s what I love about Fly Creek!"

(Maybe Ellen meant: "Don’t people here entertain themselves in interesting, unusual ways?" Or, maybe, "What a nut! You never know what you’re going to hear in this place!")

But that’s just what Arrie and I had been doing_watching sheep test the new fence. They weren’t hurt; the voltage’s not that high. But, as local punster Tim Wiles might say, if it didn’t affect their hoofs, it surely gave them pause.

And give them pause, it did. After her second or third zap by the fence, a ewe would walk up to it, stop, and turn away. Success! No more forays into the flower beds; no more munched annuals.

I’d been making fence most of the day: cutting a path for it around the field with the brush mower, driving the lightweight posts, fastening on insulators. Then came the tedious part, stringing the wire. The word’s misleading, since the material is really woven plastic ribbon, with aluminum filaments throughout. It comes, 700 feet to a roll, on a metal spool; and it’s heavy and cumbersome.

I’d laid out the first length of it around the field and was on the far side from the house, tightening the last insulators when I heard tires crunching on gravel.

Arrie Hecox’ s great boat of a Chevy slowly rounded the back of the house. From across the field I watched him climb out, stand for a minute aligning limbs and stiff joints. Then he hauled a folding chair to the edge of the lawn, just above the far side of the field. He sat enthroned up there, eighty-six years old, scowling down like the god of farming.

Men spend their lives, says Robert Bly, hunting for father figures. My actual dad’s been dead for twenty-five years. But Arrie, this grand old coot, has stood substitute for a decade and more. And for the last seven years, he’s been my mentor in all things agricultural.

I put down my pliers and waded through the tufted grass to climb the slope and join him. He pointed at the fence, about ten feet from his chair. "If you don’t lower that bottom strand," he growled, "I’ll have lambs in my lap."

I flopped heavily into another chair. "Well, damn it, after a break, maybe I will!" I growled back.

We sat for a while, admiring the tall grasses dancing in the breeze.

Suddenly his voice was high, scornful. "Don’t tell me about slopping pigs!" he rasped. This was Arrie shorthand for a story I’ve enjoyed many times. The imitated speaker is Arrie’s own dad who, by all accounts, was a tough, opinionated old bozo.

Decades ago, Arrie had installed an electric fence, an early, highly charged one, around his pigs. His bossy father had shown up and taken charge of the evening feeding.

Arrie warned him not to touch the fence with the galvanized bucket of slop. "Don’t tell me!" etc., snapped the old man. He threw one leg over the fence and carelessly let the metal bucket touch. With a whoop he flung the pail into the air, slopping himself head to foot, all the while doing a jig, one leg on either side of the fence.

Arrie, older now than his father ever was, loves to tell the story. And I love imagining the scene. All it takes is those few words in that mimicked voice. I laughed and Arrie grinned at the memory and my shared pleasure in it.

He helped me finish the second strand, hobbling ahead of me with that heavy spool, paying out the ribbon while I clamped it into the insulators. Then we let the sheep into the field and sat under the basswood, admiring the success of our work. I brought out two bowls of black raspberry ice cream _ about his favorite, I think.

Halfway through he paused, spoon in air, looking out sadly at sheep, dancing grass, the newly made fence. "I love that kind of work!" he declared.

Me, too. And him.

Jim Atwell lives in and views life from Fly Creek. While he is on vacation, we are running some of his favorite columns. Learn about his book at JimAtwell.com.