Sunset

We have had some really great sunsets this summer. Our dining room faces the setting sun.

When we have these neat cloud formations at dusk you get some amazing sunsets. Some people buy a cabin up north in Minnesota and spend hours driving to get there every weekend.

Deer Crossing

Last Sunday when Reed and I were coming back from town in the Jeep we were following a pretty serious bicycler the last couple off hundred yards before our drive way. When all of a sudden...

A Trick For Keeping The Deer Out

Deer are creatures of habit. Sometimes you can train them to ignore areas of sensitive plants.

I like to do this with an electric fence early in the season before there are garden plants they'd like to eat.

Sometimes they get a taste for your beans or carrots and then even an electric fence may not keep them out.

Unless you apply this trick...

Deer Annoy Me Two (the Sequel)

This is getting ridiculous. We had deer take a couple of nibbles of carrots, which was no big deal. But sometime between the end of the day Friday and Sunday afternoon, they came back and ate a 100 foot row. They don't usually bother until the late fall. They also ate a couple of watermelon, which were about 4 weeks from being ready. Enough is enough, Reed and I put an electric fence covering approximately three acres Sunday afternoon. We put it on the hottest setting, so hold onto your lighting rods. We have had no deer problems since.

They got into some carrots and beets a few weeks ago and we did the same thing to a very small area until we could get them harvested. They just go crazy over the carrots so I guess they must be good.

A week ago they were in the sweet corn and I got out a very aggressive fencer that runs off of a battery and can drive a fence 30 miles long. I put the more aggressive fencer around the sweet corn because in a week or so I need to put a couple more wires on the fence to keep out raccoons, who are also very annoying.

We also ran a wire around the tomatoes, which seemed to be disappearing, in exchange for lots of hoof prints in between the rows.

I think God put some of these animals in Minnesota to try our patience and test the sweetness of our vocabulary.

Deer Annoy Me and What To Do About It

Deer Annoy Me! 

Mostly deer in the garden are a nuisance.

We typically try to distract them with delectable things they can eat in great abundance and get them trained to walk away from the garden crops they would eat. I planted some really nice alfalfa and vetch in one of the main routes to the river to get water. I also have four 500 foot rows of very prickly raspberries between the woods and one of our prime growing areas, this forms a natural fence, if you will (or at least it will when it is all filled in). 

The times the deer have been frustrating are:

• Eating one bite out of the center of 100 heads of lettuce the week before they were ready for market. They could have eaten several heads and I would have not cared, but no, they had ruin them all. That was the point at which we switched to growing baby cut lettuce. Of course they pretty much leave these alone during the main part of the season and I often use electric fence towards the end of the season.
• They often eat the tips off the green beans and edamame. I can handle this as they typically don’t eat enough to prevent blooming and beans. Maybe this actually concentrates the crop a little, by eliminating the last few stragglers.
• Deer like sweet corn just like we do. I can share a few ears. But last year they ate all my popcorn. I don’t know what the big attraction was.
• The last few years the deer have been especially aggressive with eating our late fall carrots. I think at this point of the season they are craving carbohydrates and just go wild after the carrots. I couldn’t deter them with an electric fence so we just had to harvest the crop. Maybe Cody the dog could help out here. He doesn’t much like carrots, but he does like chasing deer.
• I’ve tried the stinky deer repellent sprays and I think the only thing they repel is me.
• If they aren't too aggressive, blood meal can discourage the deer from munching on your favorite plants. But has to be reapplied after each rain. I sometimes use it as a spot treatment when I seen problems develop. It is also a great high nitrogen fertilizer for your early spring pansies.