08/22/2026
Take a look at this fence.
At first glance, it seems simple: Western red cedar pickets, Douglas fir rails, steel posts and concrete.
A fence crew can arrive in the morning, and before long, there is a finished fence standing where there wasn’t one before.
But there isn’t a single person alive who could make this fence entirely by himself.
Consider the cedar pickets.
Long before they reached this backyard, those trees grew for decades in the forests of the Pacific Northwest and Canada. Loggers harvested them using equipment built from steel that other people mined and processed. The logs were hauled to a sawmill, cut into boards, dried, graded, shaped into pickets and transported across the country to Oklahoma.
The Douglas fir rails began as different trees, likely grown in a different forest. They passed through their own network of loggers, truck drivers, mill workers, mechanics and lumber dealers.
The cedar pickets and Douglas fir rails may meet for the first time when a fence builder joins them together in someone’s backyard.
Then there are the nails, steel posts and lag screws.
Iron ore had to be mined—or recycled steel collected—then melted, refined, shaped and coated. Factories had to be built. Machines had to be designed. Electricity had to be generated. Trucks, highways, warehouses and lumberyards were all needed to bring those materials here.
The concrete surrounding each post has a story of its own. Limestone was quarried, crushed and heated. Sand and stone were mined, washed and sorted. Even the water arrived through a system built and maintained by people we will never know.
Thousands of people helped create this fence.
The logger harvesting cedar did not do it because an Oklahoma homeowner needed privacy.
The steelworker did not form that post because someone’s dog needed a safe backyard.
The quarry worker did not produce that concrete because a family wanted a secure place for its children to play.
Most of these people will never meet one another. Many live thousands of miles apart. Yet their work came together—right here, in one backyard.
By the time our crew arrives, an extraordinary amount of work has already taken place.
Our responsibility is to bring it all together correctly: to set the posts, secure the rails, fasten the pickets, and build something straight, strong and ready to serve that family for years.
So when you look at a finished fence, you aren’t just looking at wood, steel and concrete.
You are looking at forests, mines, quarries, mills, factories, highways and generations of accumulated knowledge.
You are looking at the work of thousands of people—brought together in one backyard.
It may look like an ordinary fence.
But no one person could make it alone.
