Procrastination is a fault, I know, but it does provide me with fresh perspectives. In a week or two, for example, it will be time to put the vegetable garden to bed at our house in western Massachusetts. And I haven't yet completed the surrounding fence that was supposed to protect the harvest from animal intruders.
The garden itself was new this spring. I framed seven 4 x 8-foot beds fir planks, fastening them at the corners with aluminum brackets purchased from Gardener's Supply. That was the easy part. Because the soil is so poor and thin on our rocky hillside, I had to haul in, pickup-load by pickup-load, 6 cubic yards of sphagnum peat, builder's sand, and composted horse manure to bulk up and enrich what I found on-site (the final mix was approximately three parts improvements to one part native soil).
I then set to work enclosing the garden with a fence. In typical fashion, I made this structure needlessly elaborate, hiring my son to set the fifteen 4 x 4-inch wooden posts. I planned to connect the posts with rails made of 2 x 4's, whose ends I would mortise into the posts. After finishing the carpentry, I'd staple up welded wire fencing, burying its foot 8 inches deep in the ground. I did finish the framing, finally, a week ago, but I've yet to install the wire. The fence still looks, as it did all summer, like some sort of Christo artwork writ small. Any animal that wanted to could have simply stepped through the rails to ravage the vegetables I planted last spring.
The fact that the only intruder all summer has been my own dog suggests that my conception of country life was seriously in error. Our weekend house is surrounded by several large properties, thousands of acres in all of protected forest, stream, and pond. I had thought when we built there that we would be living cheek by jowl with hordes of wildlife. Actually, in the last three years, I have crossed paths with a bear, and a couple of porcupines. A pair of ravens occasionally flies overhead. I've heard there's a moose in the swamp over the hill. But nothing came in four months to eat my beans and lettuce, which suggests that the woods are far less populated than I had thought.
In the suburban neighborhood I inhabit during the week, there are animals everywhere. I fight an on-going guerrilla war against insatiable raccoons and possums, and I've had to encase our chicken run with poultry wire. That's to ward off the red fox from whose mouth my wife snatched a very unhappy hen; fortunately, my wife runs faster than that obese suburban predator. In August, I pluck mockingbirds out of the netting with which I try to protect my ripening grapes. I toss the would-be thieves into the air and they flutter a few feet away to sit on a branch, where they wait until I leave so they can try again. Deer loiter in the field across the street; they'd be in my garden, too, except that they also fear the kamikaze commuters who use our street as a shortcut.
To read more from Tom Christopher check out his blog on HouseandGarden.com
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