We had our first farming loss and let me tell you I’m starting to dislike the rodents of the prairies very much. DEERS…Jerks. You know how we spent all Saturday planting trees. Well we came back a day later and several trees had been pulled out. I thought it was a sasquatch or some old enemy from my youth trying to get back at me. (Most likely from Raymond.) ha. But after closer examination we saw hoof prints walking all up our tree line and the tops of most of the trees had been gnawed off. We guessed that deer wouldn’t eat caragana or choke cherry. I mean come on, who in their right mind would eat caragana and choke cherry is supposed to be toxic other than the fruit. I found this site that confirmed deer (and moose, elk, bear, etc.) will eat choke cherry and it’s only toxic if they eat .025% of their body weight. Oh, great. Aggh. So now we are scrambling to find fencing for our garden. We planted parsnips today but didn’t dare plant any good stuff until we get an eight foot high fence. We called around and found ten foot high fence posts to cost around $16 per post. To build a stinking fence to keep out the pests is going to cost like $200 just for our small garden. I was tempted to sleep down on the land tonight with a shotgun to scare the beasts away. I did go down and shoot a few rounds off with the shotgun just for good measure. And what did I see? I swear there were at least fifty deer munching on our pasture in the riverbottom. Where is Barnabas when you need him? I mean, even Barney could finally get a deer with that many pests littering the prairie. (I’ll write a future blog about my all night deer exploits with Barnabas. It’s one of Molly’s favorite bed time stories.) It’s an eye opener to say the least. We’re lucky we started small with only 275 trees right? Any suggestions other than fencing to keep the pests away?