Chestnut fencing the vegetable garden

Sorry, did you say you have lived here eight years? And you only now have put up the fence?

Yes, shameful admission time. Today I finally completed the full fencing of the vegetable garden. And that was only because the deer ate my Swiss chard last month and I was forced to act.

Procrastination, where is thy end?  At the munched ends of a leafy green vegetable in this case.

I had put up two sides of the fencing a few years back. The vegetable garden as you can see from the map has two impediments to animal invasion: on the north side (the seven foot stone wall that leads to the courtyard and on the south side a steep drop down to the track.

Obviously I wasn’t thinking like a hungry deer looking for a more varied diet when I thought the steep bank on the south side with brambles, vines and slowly rotting compost would be an impediment.

After the last invasion I flung all manner of temporary metal fencing at the problem. But now the effect is complete thanks to twenty metres of chestnut palisade fencing.

Two rolls of ten metres. So heavy I cannot lift them on my own.

I bought the first roll just as some friends were coming to stay in the guest house. I hauled it out of the car and just left it in a heap near where I wanted it installed.

And one lovely guest (Elodie’s Dad) had the first roll up and in place one early morning. Without Even Asking. How about that for kind and generous?

The second roll went into place today.

But the hardest part was the prep. I had to remove an embarrassing collection of rotting chestnut supports which I had pulled out of the garden and just stacked out of the way.

That out of the way was definitely in the way when it came to getting the new fence in place.  I sensibly wore long trousers, shoes, gloves and wielded secateurs to remove the stack. And cut back the weeds that had grown through them.

I then had to do a quick strim to actually find the edge of the soft fruit orchard.

A quick hammer of ten upright poles (hah! I’m either on solid granite here, or finding random rocks) and then help to get the roll over the black currant bushes and into position.

A lovely morning’s work if you will.

Now all I need to do is work out where I’m going to put all the wooden structures that I have just piled up down in front of the lavender bank. What a shame the wild animals around our farm are not partial to rotting chestnut stakes.

I’m not going to attempt to clear it all away now that the heat has returned. I’ll attend later in the afternoon. Or when I get a Round Tuit.