We like to garden. We like to plant things and watch them grow. Gardens are not only a fantastic creative outlet, but they are a space of relaxation, meditation and tranquility. And bees.
We also like wildlife, something fairly abundant here. Birds, otters, raccoons, wild turkeys, eagles, minks, all sorts of wildlife. And we have deer.
This is what deer do to your plants. They defoliate them. Eat them to the stalks. Jamie, who loves animals, has been talking about getting a gun to take care of our deer problem. Yeah, it’s time. We need to build a deer fence.
This ground is extremely rocky. You can’t dig 4″ without hitting a rock the size of your head. I had a rock in one hole that took me two days to excavate. At another location, I had to move my post over about 16 inches because there was a boulder down there and I didn’t have a stick of dynamite to break it with. But on the bright side, it’s been raining daily for about a month so the ground was nice and soft. About eight holes was all I had to dig.
I used pressure treated lumber for posts, which is really awful stuff. It’s toxic, it’s a skin irritant, possibly carcinogenic, but it’ll last out here without rotting. That’s kind of what I was going for, fence posts that don’t rot in the first two years.
The shop was open late into the night just getting this done.
These are the 2×2 sticks to frame in the welded wire panels that will go into the fence. I wanted to saturate them in linseed oil before installation, such that all parts of them are completely protected. If you treat them after they’re installed, there are bare spots that water will eventually pool up inside and cause them to rot.
And we’re using two kinds of fencing: traditional wood posts with welded wire (above, left) and deer fence tied to iron T-posts (above, right). We went with the deer fence over the septic field, not only to save a bit of money but also to not disturb the septic field too much.
The finished portions look great. We have temporary gates and some temporary fence up right now, just to keep the deer out.
We’re putting raised planter beds in the middle. This ground digs poorly, very rocky, so we thought raised beds would really help. Right now, we just get to kill off the grass and get the ground ready for the beds.
The back deck has the biggest improvement so far. It just looks more finished. It’s not finished, not by a long shot, but it’s closer to what it’s going to look like
Definitely looking forward to being able to plant things without the risk they’re going to be defoliated by marauding deer in the night.
Strawberry, hens and chicks, sedum, … all deer food. And it’s all protected now, inside our little compound fence