Once we had completed our field seeding, given the seeds a first drink of lake water, we knew it would only be a matter of time until the deer found the new, tender vegetables starting to grow. We had already experienced a loss last year with the deer almost completely wiping out a few rows of vegetables. With that issue at hand, we purchased a quarter mile of six foot, black mesh style deer fence. It wasn't too expensive, considering all the loss potential with growing vegetables outside.
The fence requires a top wire to hang from, apart from the posts to be fastened to. The job of installing the fence suddenly showed it's problems; where do you get posts long enough to fasten the fence to? What about gates that will match, wide enough to get the farm equipment into and out of the field? The gates were easy enough as we had leftover steel mesh panels from another building, so we added hinges and they became gates; we had a bunch of salvaged steel pipe that were nearly ten feet long which became fenceposts and for the topwire, we ran electric fence wire and as per the fencing manufacturers recommendation, we used zip ties to fasten the fencing to the posts and top wire. We had to get a few cedar posts that were nine feet long for mounting the one gate and those posts helped to define the one corner to give extra strength to the fencing as a whole.
Once the fence was unrolled along the ground, we pulled the top edge up at each post and without any traditonal stretching of the fence, fastened it and just kept it tight enough to prevent any sagging. The fencing, being black is nearly invisible. We added ribbon along it's length to give warning of it's presence, but one of the keys to the success of this fence is that it is hard for the deer to see. Since it is hard for the deer to see, they cannot judge the jump they might have to make to get over it. Time will tell if this fence is worth it.
The last few days and probably the rest of the week is the task of weeding and making green compost out of the weeds. The old garden tiller is getting a workout with having to make several passes between rows to successfully bury the weeds. With this field being carved from the wilderness, there is quite a variety of weeds, including some really robust thistles. We will leave you with some photos showing the fencing, the weeded and the unweeded sections of the field.
