Acorns on the hillsides kept deer away from our core homestead for most of the autumn and early winter. But one doe has recently begun hanging around just beyond our borders.

Rather than waiting for her to eat up that tasty honeysuckle then move from there into the garden, I'm taking a proactive approach...let the goats eat the wild greenery instead. The deer-browse spots are harder to access, so I'd ignored them earlier in the season. But our girls obediently followed me through the briars and along the steep slope to do their duty when asked.

Now that the easy honeysuckle is filling goat bellies, I'm hopeful the deer will move along to easier pickings for the rest of the winter. Fingers crossed she'll do so before she learns about the tasty greenery still existing in the garden proper....

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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