So this is what greeted me when I had to go out into the back of the pasture to round up the last of the horses that would not remove themselves from the hay feeder. There are 23 in the picture, but there were 28 total that I counted. And of course, that is just what I could see... There was also something scrounging in the woods, but I never could see what was rustling the leaves. Its a crying shame that we can't hunt them here, we'd have a freezer FULL and be eating an awful lot of deer meat. It would be like the list of shrimp in Forest Gump....
So that's what I've got to deal with. They eat the hostas off the front of the house in the summer, and in the winter they have even taken to eating the azaleas! They aren't even supposed to like azaleas! That started the winter after we had the snowpocalypse and snowmageddon one right after another and everything was buried under 40+" of snow (which has NEVER happened before).
I have read Bee's information on creating a single strand electric fence to keep out the deer, and now I need to go about doing it. We live in an 80' single wide trailer that has a front door that is probably about at about 1/3 the length of the house. Across the front is a bed that is probably about 8' deep that runs the length of the house and wraps around each end, It has azaleas and alberta spruce (which look pathetic), and then the hostas in it in summer. I am thinking that the front porch (just a wooden porch, the house sits up four steps) will be a good staging place for the electric hookups for the hot wire, and then run it in opposite directions towards either end of the house. Beyond that, I have NO clue what I am doing. I hope to get that set up here in the next month or so to protect the azaleas from any more winter damage so that they might recover and look like respectable bushes here in the next few years, some of them have sustained pretty rough damage between the deer and deeper snows. Eventually I would love to replace the alberta spruce with something that looks a bit better. The azaleas are taller than the spruce and that isn't saying much!! Right now it doesn't appear that there is much in front of the house from a distance as the house sits a little lower than the driveway as it comes past the house. I should take pictures of all this when I can...
Also in my plans for next year are a compost bin made of a band of chicken wire so that it is about 4' in diameter (or the width of a pallet, whichever is smaller). My grandfather used this method, and it worked well, made it easy to keep neat rather than a sprawling pile. I'll sit the wire cages on a pallet so that the crazy trees won't grow up through it, and probably line underneath the pallet with plastic as another layer of protection.
Then comes the plans for the garden. I would like to can beans, which means I'll be growing pole beans (Kentucky wanderers is the variety that my grandmother and grandfather always grew, and they can well), and maybe a squash plant and a zucchini plant, and maybe a tomato. Since I haven't really grown anything on my own, I want to make sure that I start really small (well, with enough beans to get A can at least, LOL). It is going to be a challenge for us to manage with our time being as short as it is. I also have plans for the garden to have a wire fence around it as well (also to keep the dogs out!), so that will need to be hooked up. I hope by the time I get to the garden I'll have the hot wire thing figured out. So the thing I haven't decided is whether to go with pots for the garden or try to make some kind of beds. It won't be much space, but I also don't want those dang trees growing up through my plants, either... So many decisions!!
). The real monkey wrench is that I am now moving pretty slowly. I came in and put Essential Oils on it right away, and did a few things to get dinner in the oven and then took it easy. Which sucks because I have SOOO much that really should get done. We are going out of town for a friend's wedding and someone will be staying here to watch the dogs and keep an eye on the place, and this place is disgusting! Not to mention that I haven't started packing AT ALL, and we feed the horses tomorrow evening as well, plus we have to drop the truck off to have it worked on while we are gone.
