I'm on a piece of
land that has been badly degraded by a clear cut logging operation. As much as it bothered me, I had to accept that it was a major source of income for the property owner, and I've actually come to appreciate how much I've been able to learn by observing the the natural succession of a piece of land that's been knocked back to square one.
What I haven't appreciated is the sudden population explosion of herbivores now that forest has given way to tender, weedy annuals for them to munch on. Rodents had been my primary adversary until I planted my first fall garden post-logging. That's when I had my first battle with the
deer. 12 cabbages transplanted one day, and 12 cabbages gone the very next.
There were expletives. There were threats to put them all in the freezer (and buy more freezers if I ran out of room in the first).
It would have taken a lot of freezers.
My best count to date puts the herd at about 20 deer.
It got better in Spring. Not only was vegetation starting to recover on the property so that they had things to eat other than my garden, but we also completed our first milestone in setting up permanent housing, so I was able to move my livestock guardian dog up near the new garden.
That was great at first, but I could not let my dog free range at night because she hadn't yet accepted this new space as home and would wander off. Eventually the deer figured it out and would walk within 20 feet of my dog, while she barked her head off, just to sample things from my garden. But at least now they had plenty of other things to eat and merely topped my plants instead of eating them to the ground.
Only a few weeks ago, after making all of these little observations, did I finally figure out the purpose of deer in the garden. It's not for the manure, though that's important too. It's not for the meat, though I at one point felt that was their only value. It's not to keep weedy plants in check or to maintain trails either, for though they can help with these tasks, to do either effectively would require overgrazing and a larger deer population than the land can support. No, their purpose is much more ingenious and depends on the peculiar response that most dicots have to predation.
I didn't want to miss anything, so I recorded my musings in the following
video:
Knowing what I know now completely changes my relationship with deer. I'm sure they'll still find plenty of ways to annoy me, but now I'm designing to make maximum use of their desire to much on my tender, succulent plants. And now that I'm saving seeds and building up my stockpile, I'll be planting lots of annuals haphazardly in zones 3 and 4 so that I can continue to watch the deer's preferences and involve them in my own breeding
project. Plus, a healthy number of sacrificial plants in my outer zones, coupled with a dog in my inner zones,
should help encourage them to keep their distance from the things I actually intend to harvest. And if not? Well, at least I'll have planted plenty of extras in my outer zones so I can spread the harvest around.
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