Fences

Hardrock Ranch's 20 acres are near Olympic National Park, two creeks, and just enough neighbors to keep the hunters away. Does that sound like wildlife heaven to you? We have often driven up our driveway to see two or three or seven deer munching or lounging around the house. To date, with very few exceptions, the deer seem to munch on whatever we brought home from the nursery, starting with the highest price item and working their way down.

What to do? Most of our neighbors, to the extent they attempt gardening at all, build tall stockades around each fruit tree, or group of fruit trees, or vegetable area. We're going to try something different. We're going to attempt to keep the deer out of our entire Zone 1 area. Zone 1, in permaculture design lingo, means the area closest to the house, the most intensely gardened. In our case, Zone 1 is fairly large and includes all of the planting areas we've prepared, the garden shed, the fire pit, and the Hugelkultur area. That sounds like a lot of fencing.





For now, we are stringing wire. Some of it will hopefully be temporary, and replaced with deer-resistant hedgerow over time. In some areas, we may need to put in more traditional fencing, and we will need to build several gates to allow human and mower access. We considered electrifying some of it, but that presents maintenance problems because the fencing east and north of the house will be back in the treeline in heavy brush. Details to be determined as we go - this is a design-on-the-fly operation.





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