Even if you have not done anything for your wood fence maintenance, it is never too late to begin and this is a good habit to develop. One day you may decide that you want to move, and then this is when your efforts will pay off. This is really simple to do, and it all begins with paying attention to the fence and inspecting it. You would naturally want to know about issues and the various things that can attack your fence.
Be aware that sometimes bees will start living on your fence, and it really just depends on where you live and the climate. If this should happen, then you can take appropriate measures as you know.
You can easily forget to inspect your fence in the rush of life, so maybe give your self a reminder with your email. You know what will happen if you fail to catch this, the home they have made will become large and then they are all over the place. Then what about your dog? You see, there are many reasons for being punctual about inspecting your fence. Granted, there is not a lot of metal on a wood fence unless the swinging gate has extras on it, but you may want to ensure they are kept in good working order. Establish an effective schedule for inspection, and then you may want to increase the frequency for the gate and other metals on the fence. It should be obvious that rust and other forms of metal degradation are present or will be eventually, and so it is best to notice these signs as soon as you can do so. All you need is to periodically apply some oil to the mechanism, but you want to be careful that you do not put too much on it as this can cause other issues.
Since there are no guarantees that wood will last forever in this state, and that is accurate, you can help things out with staining. After that, you should give your fence a thorough cleaning and application of stain in about 4 years and no more than 5 years. Salty environs are the worst as they are highly corrosive to just about anything it comes in contact with, and so the way to combat this is with a solid stain. It would not hurt your fence to clean it once a year, but again it really just depends on your local conditions.
Be sure you know what needs to be done and best practices for wood fence maintenance. And you have to take everything into consideration as far as what is needed. There may be a short learning curve, but rest assured it will not be too steep.