Deer appetites increase in the fall, since it’s imperative that they gain weight and build up fat reserves to carry them through the lean, cold months ahead. In winters with prolonged snow cover and access cut off to even a meager diet, deer can lose up to 30 percent of their body weight—if they lose more than this, they’ll likely die from starvation. The deer population in the Hudson Valley is on the increase and has been for at least a couple of decades. Less hunting may be one of the reasons; milder winters, with less snow cover, another; subdivision of wooded and agricultural land may be a third. Thirty years ago, deer were not a major problem for us on the farm, except for occasional feeding on the edges of distant fields. Today, however, they’ve become a constant threat to many of our crops, and we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to thwart them.
One approach has been to grow more plants that they find unpalatable, like garlic, onions, shallots and certain herbs, but we already are maxed out on most of these. Our second (and main) defense is to try to exclude them. Because deer are good jumpers, this usually involves creating a barrier at least 8 feet high. For a number of years, we’ve considered putting up a permanent, heavy-duty woven wire fence, which is what many vegetable growers and orchardists resort to. This would entail setting 4- to 6-inchdiameter, 12-foot-high posts into the ground every 15 or 20 feet, then tightly attaching 8-foot-high galvanized wire mesh. There would need to be, at a minimum, three or four sturdy gates for access in and out of the fenced area and at least a 15-foot swath between the fence and the crop rows for tractors and equipment to navigate and turn.
The deer population in the Hudson Valley is on the increase and has been for at least a couple of decades.
If we had one or two large, relatively level fields, a permanent fence (meaning it might last 20 years) probably would be our best bet, but our farm is a patchwork of small, sloping fields with lots of hedgerows, woods and wet areas. Given our uneven land, rocky soil and the challenge of setting posts 3 or 4 feet into the ground, the cost to fence just several acres could approach $30,000 or more, and such a fence would reduce our tillable area, be difficult to maintain and, to my mind, would mar the natural beauty of the land. (I’ve always had a soft spot for the old Cole Porter/ Robert Fletcher song from Adios, Argentina: Give me land, lots of land under starry skies above/Don’t fence me in.) So, instead of a heavy duty, permanent fence, we’ve gone with temporary barriers that we keep in place for about eight months each year. To 1-inch-diameter, 10-foot fiberglass rods set 2 feet in the ground, we attach 8-foot,
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the valley table
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nov
2017
photos these pages keith stewart