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"I'm so glad you got the electric fence working," my wife said.
"Yay!!! Finally!!!!" texted grandson Lamppost Head when he read the texted news. He had suffered with me through half a day of trial and error, mostly error, getting the new fence to work that he and I and the other pumpkin patch co-conspirators, The Favorite and The 747, had erected around a previously unprotected field to keep deer from eating the tasty pumpkins growing therein.
You will recall the motto of Worshrag's Pumpkin Patch: "I do all the work, the grandsons get all the money." In reality they do plenty of work for what they earn selling pumpkins in the fall, provided that insects haven't killed the vines and deer haven't eaten the pumpkins.
Deer repellents such as coyote urine don't work or wear off, not to mention how hard it is to persuade coyotes to donate sufficient quantities. Deer avoid or develop a taste for "deer-resistant"plants. Sturdy barrier fences are impractical unless over eight feet high. As for the expensive high-tech gizmos hyped on the internet that emit light, sound or water sprays, deer learn to ignore them.
Aside from a faithful guard dog or hot lead, a properly installed and maintained electric fence is one of the better methods for keeping deer out of your garden.
Unfortunately, I am advised, it is not legal to install a fence that actually electrocutes the deer. Otherwise I would try it, though I'd probably electrocute myself in the process. God knows I have zapped myself enough times just putting in the legal kind of electric fence, which gives a painful jolt to a deer without (darn!) actually injuring it.
According to this helpful chart (not pictured), 1,000 to 2,000 volts is sufficient to deter a marauding rabbit or raccoon, and docile cattle will avoid a fence charged at 2,000 to 4,000 volts, but 6,000 to 7,000 volts is required get the attention of bears, bison, and, yes, deer.
The boys and I have for several years put up an electric fence around the pumpkin fields and my vegetable garden near our barn, but basically out of laziness I've procrastinated doing the same for the fields next to son Seed's house, relying on a strategy of growing more pumpkins than the deer could eat. This worked moderately well until last year, during the drought, when the hungry deer in our resident herd demonstrated that they could, in fact, eat everything that we grew.
So the boys and I set fence posts, rigged them with insulators and strung wire for a fence. Our power source for the fence charger, or energizer, as it is properly called, was the chicken coop behind Seed's house, which he had thoughtfully electrified when he built it. We set tall posts to carry the current overhead to the fence around the fields, and ground rods were driven in as per instructions. (Please note no chickens were harmed in the making of this fence.)
I was surprised to find that one grandson, who shall go nameless here, though highly intelligent, was not conversant with the theories that metals conduct electricity while plastic and wood do not, and that electricity always seeks a ground, so that, say, allowing a wire to remain in contact with a steel post driven into the ground was not consistent with our goal of holding 7,000 volts of zapping power in reserve on the hopeful chance that a deer would touch it and repent any intentions of having pumpkin for dinner. Lesson learned for that grandson, and all is well.
All except that Lamppost Head and I wasted time with worthless fence energizers that I over the years had obtained at yard sales. I bit the bullet and spent a hundred bucks for a good energizer for which 7,000 volts was a walk in the park. I know it works because I splurged and bought a voltage tester, which is preferable to my habitual way of testing, which has been to grab the wire. I heartily recommend the tester.
I hooked up the new energizer and texted out the good news that the new fence was working.
The next morning I checked and found it wasn't. The GFI circuit breaker on the chicken house outlet was tripped, an occurrence that The Favorite, also known as Chicken George, now informed me happens frequently overnight.
But that is not a problem, he told me, because "all you have to do is reset it."
"But," I said, a bit testy, "while it is off at night the deer can come in."
As a test, we unplugged the strings of Christmas lights in the coop which are normally left on as a nightlight for the chickens, and this morning the electric fence was still working. Nevertheless, I will ask Seed if we can replace the GFI with a regular outlet or otherwise find a reliable energy source.
If the chickens stop laying in protest of losing their nightlight, I'm not sure what steps will have to be taken, but we must protect our pumpkins.