“Wherever a farm may be located, or whatever may be its production, fence, fence, fence, is the first, the intermediate, and the last consideration,” the farmer and journalist Sereno Edwards Todd wrote in 1860.
Mike Wilson, a rancher in northern Washington State, uses it to keep his herds safe, as his father and grandfather did.
Instead they joined a pilot program for a technology designed to fence in their cattle virtually rather than physically.
It starts with two solar-powered base stations, about the size of an upright piano, topped with a 20-foot-tall radio antenna.
If a cow approaches one of the invisible fence lines, her collar emits a series of warning beeps.
Persons:
Sereno Edwards Todd, Joseph Glidden, John Steinbeck’s Tom Joad, Mike Wilson, Wilson, Joy
Organizations:
GPS
Locations:
Illinois, American, Washington State, Confederated, Colville