It’s time to thrive! Next year, for Season 7, we’re enclosing the gardens in a deer fence.
A choice has to be made for next year. Either give up the farm, or build a deer fence.
We love this farm, and the way of life it provides, so the answer is clear. Let’s build the fence.
The price tag for the project is about $13,000. We’ll enclose 4 acres of gardens, fruit trees, and berries with a 7 1/2-foot fence. The cost is what’s stopped us before, but now we’re determined to make it happen.
THE TOLL DEER TAKE
If you’ve had a garden or farm - large or small - you know the damage animals can do, from the tiniest mouse or chipmunk stealing seeds or eating seedlings, to deer or even bear devouring and trampling produce.
According to the Pennsylvania Game Commission, a buck weighing 125 to 250 pounds needs from 4,000 to 6,000 calories a day. That means a single deer will eat 4 to 10 pounds of vegetation in a day.
In Season 2, we relocated the farm to its current Dingman Road location. For whatever reason, deer didn’t bother the gardens. Seasons 3 and 4 didn’t experience much critter interference, either. Then, in Season 5, the deer discovered our little farm, nestled far back in the woods. Our house is on one side of Dingman, and the farm is a short distance up the road, set back in the woods. On three sides, it’s surrounded by forest, with a cornfield framing in the fourth side.
That year, we planted nearly 1,000 feet of peppers, eggplant, and tomatoes, to provide for our CSA, farmers markets, and retail sales. The deer ate it all, chomping down plants before they even had a chance to produce, or eating ripe fruit. There were some things they didn’t touch, and those carried us through the season, but took a huge bite out of our farmers market and retail sale profits. The same happened with broccoli, cabbages, beans, and peas. The most devastating loss was lettuce. In an attempt to discourage the deer, we fenced in a small section of the gardens with an electric fence. It seemed to help.
This season, we expanded the electric fence. A farmer friend of ours warned that it wouldn’t be enough. Eventually, the deer would risk the sting of the fence, or avoid it all together by jumping over it, or darting through it. And that’s what happened.
Once inside the fence, the deer even venture in our high tunnels. Earlier this summer, we caught one actually inside our Big Tunnel. The door was shut, so it leaped in through a roll-down side. It crashed against the plastic a few times, tearing holes in the wall, before jumping out again.
Deer can destroy months of work in minutes. Jason starts everything from seed. So thousands of seeds begin life in our basement, under grow lights, which can be costly to run, until they’re ready to move to the propagation greenhouse. Here, they get a little bigger and are watered throughout the day. Then, it’s time to transplant them into farm soil, and tend them there. Here’s just one example of the deer toll this season. Jason transplanted 600 feet of squash. Within a few days, deer trampled or ate almost every single plant.
IS THERE ANOTHER OPTION WHEN IT COMES TO DEER CONTROL?
Short answer: yes. Farmers who are experiencing crop damage are permitted to shoot deer. However, it’s not as simple as it sounds. Here’s a link to a summary of the rules compiled by the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau: https://www.pfb.com/images/brochures/FarmerRightsObligations20.pdf
Attempting to control your deer problem with hunting is also time consuming. Jason, the person who would do the hunting on our farm, works a full-time job off farm, and works in the gardens on his evenings and weekends. There isn’t spare time for hunting and dealing with a deceased deer during the growing season. Not to mention, currently, we have several fawns raiding the gardens.
AND WE LIKE DEER
That’s the other thing. We respect the beauty and athleticism of deer. We have no desire to spend the rest of our farming years at war with them. We remember watching out a window with our son as six deer darted around our backyard, playing what looked like a game of tag. It was a once-in-a-lifetime sight.
While we choose to eat a plant-based diet, we respect the rights of hunters who want to provide meat for their household by hunting it lawfully. We’re encouraged when we see hunters parked along our road in the fall. It’s a sign that the deer population will be controlled in a way that will provide for a family. We see too many deer carcasses strewn on roadsides.
Just the other day, as I was leaving the farm, there was a fawn watching me. After everything we’ve been through with deer, the sight still brought a smile to my face. Looking into the eyes of a peaceful, wild creature is a rare and moving experience.
We actually enjoy and respect deer. They’re graceful, powerful creatures. We just don’t like seeing them in our gardens. PENNSYLVANIA GAME COMMISSION PHOTO
WILL THE FENCE BE TALL ENOUGH?
Deer are amazing jumpers. They’re “capable of clearing obstacles up to 9 feet high or 25 feet wide,” according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission. Deer can also run at 40 mph for brief spurts, and can go 25 mph for longer distances.
However, based on our research, deer seem to steer clear of 7 1/2 foot tall fences designed to mess with their depth perception.
We spoke at length with a company that specializes in deer fences, and they recommended 7 1/2 feet. The most reliable source of information was the vegetable grower who warned us about the futility of a low electric fence. His gardens are situated on the edge of state gamelands. Deer laid waste to his produce, putting him in the same position we’re in now: take a drastic measure, or quit. He put up a 7 1/2-foot fence, and never had a deer breach. We’re planning to use the same company that did this farmer’s fence, and we’ll be using the same design.
TIME TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
As stated before, money is the big obstacle when it comes to a fence. For those interested in small farm finances, we’ll go into detail about this matter.
For seasons 1 through 5, every last penny earned by the farm went toward farm expenses (payroll, insurance, compost, seeds, etc.) We also pay about $3,000 per year on a government loan that we used to purchase high tunnels and a walking tractor. This loan is low-interest, and was crucial to our ability to farm. Before the walking tractor, we did everything by hand. Given the scale of our farm, this was not sustainable.
So, for five years, all farm-generated cash was reinvested in the farm, or used to pay debt.
This season, we fully expected our first-ever owner’s draw. (Yes, we have not yet pocketed a single dollar of farm money for our family.) Then, the pandemic hit the United States in March. Not knowing what the coming months would hold, we scaled back. We decided not to hire anyone this season, and to assume there would be no farmers markets. Our business model is such that we grow specific amounts of produce. We enter each season with a detailed plan. We cannot just decide to go to a farmers market in June or July. That decision must be made when we’re still seeding in the basement. We also lowered our CSA membership from 70 members to 50, because we were worried that if one of us got sick or injured, the farm’s size would be unmanageable for one person.
All that said, the CSA memberships sold out, as they have every year, and we kept costs to a bare minimum. We continued to funnel money toward the debt that we classify as “bad,” and we’re happy to say that we are hopeful it will be paid off in just a few months.
So that means: CSA money will no longer be required for debt payments. We also have no other major infrastructure needs this fall or next spring. These two factors combined, mean it’s time to go ahead with the fence project.
HOW CAN YOU HELP?
First of all, thank you for taking the time to read this. It’s a bit cathartic to put it all into words, and it means a lot to us that you care.
Normally, we open up CSA memberships in late fall, but we’re accepting members for the 2021 season now to raise the $13,000 needed for the fence. You can pay for your share in full, or put down a $75 deposit to save your spot in 2021.
To learn more about the CSA, click here.
To join online, click here.
For information to pay by check, click here.
If you support zero-spray, family farms, and want to donate to the farm, click here.
Thank you again for taking the time to read this. It’s because of people like you that this little family farm exists. Jason had a conversation with another farmer the other day. This man pointed out that making a living from farming is hard, but it sure does make one amazing life.
— Stella & Jason
Plot Twist Farm