Farm News
It is said that here in the United States we waste somewhere around 50% of the food we grow. What a shame. All that good food going to waste. We here at Fresh Earth Farms do not subscribe to the wasting of food. In fact, I believe we waste no food at all. The 50% that typically gets wasted at other farms goes to the deer at our farm, or so it seems this year. They are taking about a 50% bite out of each of our future heads of lettuce. They ate about 50% of the beets we planned to give out in the next couple of weeks. They haven’t eaten quite 50% of the chard — yet. Battling the deer has been a full time job this past week. And I believe we have done as much as legally possible to protect our crops from these pests. Let’s take a look back at this past week to explain the predicament.
It is said that doing the same thing and expecting different results is the sign of insanity. I covered why this proves farmers are insane in this newsletter from a few years ago. But we don’t want to be insane so sometimes we do the same thing and expect the same results. Unfortunately this doesn’t occur in farming. I was reminded of this when it was brought to my attention that it looked like there was a party in the beets.
Deer eating beets isn’t new. Deer eat beets. It’s why they have that lovely red shade. What we did last year that was successful in saving the beets was to setup a “deer fence” made from 30-lb test monofilament fishing line. Who would have thought fishing line could keep deer out? Certainly not me, but we heard that it is effective, not by preventing them from getting to the beets but by confusing them. The theory is that the deer can’t see the line so when they walk into it the deer can’t figure out what it is. “What is touching me?” “This is so weird.” “Ghosts!” Then they go elsewhere to seek nourishment. We tried this last year and it seemed to be successful, with one failure I’ll get to in a minute.
So with our observation of the remains of the beet party we decided we better put up the deer fence. We surrounded the beets and a few other susceptible crops with our fishing line deer fence. We build it like last year and expected the results to be the same as last year. We are not insane! Unfortunately the next day there were the remains of the second night of beet bash.
So our first thought is maybe what failed in the past failed this year. It seemed last year that if the weeds grew high enough next to the fishing line the deer would think it was weeds that were touching them and not ghosts so they would just keep walking and walk through the fishing line. We noticed there was an area near the fence that had weeds that were a bit high so we cut them back and hoped for the best.
Unfortunately this was not the problem. There were more beets missing the next day. So we implemented DEFCON 2, the next level of protection. We put hoops over the beets and then put plastic mesh over the hoops and clipped the mesh onto the hoops with plastic clips to keep the mesh from blowing off. We do this reluctantly since it adds effort to do anything with the crops underneath, whether it is hoeing or harvesting. But when the pests force us to do it we do it.
This worked! Yippee! No more eaten beets! The deer obviously got the hint and looked elsewhere for the evening’s meal. They switched to the uncovered lettuce three beds down! Arg! We planted the lettuce on white plastic to try to keep it cooler and it seemed to be working really well. It also showed the lettuce eating culprit. The deer left telltale footprints punched through the plastic. Hoof print followed by hoof print all the way down the 250 ft bed. Shoot! Which is what I wish we could do to these destructive pests.
So today we did something we’ve never done before. We put up an eight foot “fence” around the beets, lettuce, chard, fennel and celery. I put fence in quotes because it really isn’t strong enough to keep the deer out if they are really insistent on getting in. We’re hoping the deer see this fence, think it is impenetrable, and go look elsewhere for food — and by elsewhere I mean someone else’s property. I’m hopeful it will work but I’m also skeptical that the fence will survive a strong gust of wind. We could build a stronger fence and may have to do so in the future but putting fencing around an area the is 250 feet by 50 feet is not cheap. Plus putting up any barrier like this eliminates our ability to use tractors and tractor implements to manage the other problem plants encounter, e.g. weeds, bugs, etc.
Hopefully this latest attempt to save the lettuce and beets will be successful. If not we may have to become a beet and lettuce free farm. There is only so much we can do to keep these oversized rodents out of our crops.
Oh, and we got hail yesterday. The lettuce and chard leaves are now holey. The snap peas also have holes punched in them. Many of the rest of the crops have holey leaves but should survive without significant detriment.
What will we have this week?
It should have been beets and chard galore, but instead we will have bok choi, lettuce, salad mix, green garlic, green onions, some peas, some zucchini, some chard and garlic scapes.
We will have eggs, fruit, and mushrooms this week. No flowers, coffee or jam.
That is all for now. As always, feel free to send in questions, comments, suggestions, 8′ tall fencing or anything else you’d think is helpful.