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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

>  I presume the wires  
> are where the dog won't get zapped.

No, if he's careless, he'll get zapped.  Dogs train to electric fences faster 
than any animal I know, including humans who can be abysmally stupid around 
electic fences.  As is Appalachian custom, the dog has two names  Merle Lynn, 
which properly pronounced sounds like Merlin.  He'll have about 2 1/2' by 
360'  
zap free zone in which to carry on which is plenty room carry on.    The 
design includes dog house and two shelters for rain and shade.  He won't be 
on 
continuous duty, he'll be spelled off by one of the pure Aussies from time to 
time.  Too, dogs are like the electric fence per se.  You could have the dog 
in 
there two days a week and it would be just as effective as around the clock.  

By the bye, you'd mentioned birds.  We had the devil of a time with birds, 
espcially crows, until I tried the trick of stringing the cheap black 
polyester 
sewing thread about 20" above the ground or above plants and the crows, and 
most other birds, positively will not go near it.  This past year I planted 
hard 
corn in rows instead of my usual mounds.  I put three stakes at each end of a 
row, two 18" tall and the middle one 24" tall about 1' apart and put a single 
black thread beween each pair of stakes (three threads per row).  I didn't 
lose one corn plant to crows.

The only pest my Doughnut idea isn't going ot work on is turkeys, wild 
turkeys, which are beginning to rival the deer in numbers.  Mercifully they 
don't 
frequent the garden often.

I'm not holding my breath on the Doughnut of Death, but the principles you 
outlined, Gene, about what spooks deer seem to be pretty much the case.  My 
strawberry beds, units of beds, are 12' wide and about 16' long which allows 
for a 
6' wide center bed, two 2' aisles, and two 2' beds toward the outside.  Right 
when we were about to get a good harvest, the deer would come along and mow 
them.  Two years ago I put up posts and 4' field fencing so that the deer are 
faced with jumping a 4' fence to get into a 12' space.  They won't do it.  
Haven't lost one plant to them in two years.  And deer are as thick as fleas 
here 
abouts.

These strawberry gardens have gateposts made of 16' cedar saplings and by 
each of these I planted a hops vine.  I had two small barley plots and so I 
am 
documenting my etirely-off-the-farmstead-brew.  I've got pictures of every 
step 
of the process from seed and root-cutting to pouring the beer into a pilsner 
glass except I didnt' manage to get a picture of the end of the sprouting and 
the first drying of the malt.  When I do, I'm going to put up a web page 
about 
it.  So what if the world collapses so long as brewskis grow right out of the 
ground!

I'm butchering wether goats today.  Killed them five days ago and had the 
luck of perfect weather for aging the carcasses.  

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