When planning out a garden, there are so many things to consider.
- What zone are you in?
- What seeds will you buy?
- How will you water your garden?
- When should you plant?
- How will you protect your growing plants?
Depending on where you are there are a variety of wild animals and critters to watch out for.
Deer, moose, bear, gophers, squirrels, rabbits and more.
Yes, some of those are cute now, until they decimate your garden!
Or worse, injure your dog! I once came home to find our dog had killed the biggest, ugliest squirrel I have ever seen. Its front teeth were nearly an inch long. I wish I'd taken a photo, but I was busy trying to stop the bleeding on Buster's muzzle and keep the kids away from it.
_Amazingly, the squirrel laid there without any visible trauma. But it definitely did not go down without a fight!
Anyway, my point, is we have to protect our garden from outside invaders. But what about your own animals?
Since I’ve mentioned our old California homestead a few times. I thought I would share the little bit of gardening we did there. We did get a few things to grow.
Some kale…
Some tomatoes…
Somethings were already planted from the previous owner.
I’m embarrassed to say that I am not 100% certain what this plant is. It looks like a squash vine of sorts, but the vegetable looks more like a cucumber, which we do not eat. (I have never ever liked cucumber. If you have some crazy recipe that you think might change my mind, please let me know as I’d like to train my taste buds to like more foods, but so far, cucumber and cantaloupe are two that make me queasy.)
We even had some pumpkins and squash sprout up around the pig enclosure. After Halloween, we had neighbors bring us their old Jack-O-Lanterns and our pigs devoured them, leaving seeds here and there. It was perfect because, we just used those plants to feed the pigs!
Between the free-ranging hens and the escaping goats, it was a miracle any plants survived. When we moved into this house we were so excited about these nine existing planters, but they were on large cement steps, so fencing them off was a challenge.
We came up with these small liftable covers made with small strips of wood and chicken wire.
Looking back at these photos, I just remembered why there is a blue bellied-lizard in so many photos. 
Even with the goats…
And with a feather hat…
And in our weed-ridden garden…
And just for fun, here’s a photo of our first hatching of Muscovy ducklings. Because who doesn't love ducklings?
I know there is some funny story as to why a shoe is in the duck pen. Alas, I cannot remember. Never a dull moment with 4 kids running about! I will definitely be writing a future post about Muscovy ducks. They were our favorite bird on the farm!
Anyway, I am not a fencing expert, so I can’t tell you what will work for your farm. This is just one idea that worked for us, that is, until the animals figured it out and it stopped working. There were days I had to go release a hen who had invaded one of my garden enclosures, but couldn’t find her way out.
Although we worked to reinforce and secure the goat fencing, there were times where a well-meaning little helper failed to latch the gate properly and one, two or three goats were found on top of the planters, after having pushed the covers to the ground. (Although, this was minor, compared to the day they got our and devoured TEN brand new bare root fruit trees we had recently planted. We nearly had goat stew that day…)
In homesteading, we must be consistent in our effort, but flexible in our plans. If something doesn’t work in the manner we intended, then sometimes we must think outside the box to find a viable solution.