The ongoing fight against nature

Our house is surrounded by deer trails, and when we first moved here last winter we got excited every time we saw deer. The first time we saw the house after we bought it, a deer was even standing by the front porch, and we thought it was so cool.

But after seeing 40 or 50 of them in the neighborhood, the thrill wore off, and we knew we'd have to fence in our garden eventually or lose everything to hungry deer. We were busy with other things and put off building a fence until June, when we started seeing deer prints in the garden beds and losing young green bean plants. 

On the left: a healthy young bean plant. On the right: one that the deer stripped.

The only surefire way to keep out deer is an 8-foot fence, but that wasn't in the budget this year. The next-best option is electric fence, so after much confusion and research, we bought all the equipment we needed and spent one looong day installing it.

Our garden is pretty far from any power source, so we bought a solar-powered system. We put up about 10 metal poles at outward angles, which supposedly adds more depth and discourages deer from jumping over. We installed one upright wood pole (the only nice-looking pole we had laying around the barn) to mount the solar charger. Then we ran two wires around the perimeter that would carry the charge and two uncharged wires just to provide more of a barrier. We used chicken wire at the bottom of the fence to help keep out small animals, although any really determined critter could squeeze underneath it without too much trouble.

The solar charger and the angled fence. For an extra classy touch, we included strips of plastic bags at the top to make the fence look taller.

It wasn't a difficult project, but it took a lot of time and involved unpleasant tasks like mowing down a huge area of poison ivy and securing the chicken wire with hundreds of metal twist-ties. At the end of the long day, with our extensive cases of poison ivy already showing up, Mike bravely stepped up to test the fence and make sure it actually worked. He'd been shocked many times in the past by a strong charge around a horse pasture, so he was pretty wary.

Using a blade of grass to test the electric fence

I was standing by eagerly for his reaction, but it didn't turn out to be too bad. He says it's not something you'd want to feel but not seriously painful. It's strong enough to be unpleasant to a deer, which is all we need. We've had a little damage in the garden from a small animal or two since the fence was put up, but we haven't seen any evidence of deer breaching the perimeter. 

We were in too much of a hurry to figure out how to include a gate the first time around, so we have to turn off the charger and squeeze between the wires when we want to get in, which is annoying and makes it really hard to get a mower in there. This fall when we're done harvesting everything and can take down the fence for a few days, we're planning to install a gate. While we're at it, we'll also replace the rusty metal poles with nice wood poles so it doesn't look like such a prison yard.