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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Help with deer

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  • From: "Marlin Burkholder" <glenecofarm AT planetcomm.net>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Help with deer
  • Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2003 23:03:24 -0800


----- Original Message -----
From: Baruch Bashan <baruchbashan AT yahoo.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2003 9:53 PM
Subject: [Market-farming] Help with deer


> Does anyone have a personal success story that they
> can share about how to keep deer out of the crops?
>
I don't know for sure if this can be called a personal success story or not,
but I can call it one or two of my half baked opinions. We definately live
in deer country. I see deer tracks in my 2-3 acre market garden all the
time during the winter season but I seldom see the deer themselves in the
garden areas. In the hay and pasture areas on the hill directly abouve the
crop field it is not unusual at all to see herds of them. In fact just
yesterday morning I watched at least a dozen cross the pasture not over 100
yards from my house heading up the hill towards the woods on top. Last fall
a year ago I shot at and missed one as I stood in the driveway about 20 feet
from the garage.

In the nearly 10 years that I have grown produce crops here I have never
experienced serious deer damage, a little nibbling here and there, and a few
holes punched in plastic mulched rows, but never any major devastation. We
have always had a mutt dog around which likes to follow my wife around when
she works in the garden, and three or four cats. My next door neighbor who
lives just across the fence from my garden patch, about 1000 feet up the
road from my house, has his own mutt which is constantly yapping. And about
a month ago a really nice looking short hair black Lab Retriever, which some
one apparently dropped off, has adopted us and become good friends with our
mutt. I like him well enough that I am seriously considering buying him a
dog tag and sticking up an electric wire around the herb bed by the kitchen
door to break the dogs of the habit of walking across and or sleeping in the
herb bed.

I feel that having the dogs around to make a little noise and to walk around
the garden to poop and pee here and there helps to keep the deer from
getting too intimate with us. They apparently pass through fairly regularly
but they don't linger long. I've never seen the dogs running or even
barking at the deer.

Somehow the $5-$10 we spend every couple of months for a bag of dog food to
possibly prevent the deer from wearing out their welcome, and to maintain
the dogs presence and companionship, is not a bad price to pay compared to
the $50 or more I might have to lay out for enough deer repellant (for sale
at our local garden center) to make it even worth trying in our garden. As
far as putting up more electric fence to keep the deer away is concerned,
forget it! I have to step across too much of it already.

As long as the deer problem never gets any worse than it has been up to now
I'm simply not going to sweat it (knock on wood).

Marlin Burkholder
Virginia





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