Well it finally happened, the deer have discovered our vegetable garden. You can’t really blame them – the garden is looking lush and tasty and Sean did recently clear a big patch of blackberry the deer liked to munch on that was close to the garden fence. Luckily, only a single deer raided the garden. The strawberries and raspberries were the only victims, and they are already growing back replacement leaves. With all the deer we’ve seen on the property, we knew that it was fairly likely that the deer would eventually get into the vegetable garden. We had already built an electric fence around the garden, but we hadn’t turned on the electricity since we wanted to wait and see if we did in fact need to electrify the fence. Now we have our answer, and we turned on the electricity a couple of weeks ago. So far it seems to be working, and we haven’t seen any deer in the vegetable garden recently. As for the flower beds around the back deck, that’s another story. Every week the deer take a few more bites out of the flowers I’ve planted, although I don’t really mind all that much since it’s fun to see deer so close to the house. The chickens don’t much care for the deer and will announce their presence with quite a ruckus of alarm calls. It’s all quite enjoyable and one of the things I love about having a place in the country.