I have been working on getting a critter resistant fence up around about a 1/4 of an acre (1000 square meters) of garden. I have taken down the electric fence that previously surrounded it and have only some rugs and chicken wire skirting (a fruitless attempt to keep groundhogs from going under the electric fence) to pull out from the entangling weeds and grasses to be done with that.

This is going to have the 8′ deer fencing with a rabbit wire skirting around the bottom two feet, buried wire going out perpendicular on the outside (to discourage groundhogs from digging under it) and an electric wire to prevent raccoons from climbing it.

This is overkill and probably not cost effective for larger areas but I am so tired of growing stuff and losing it to the critters. They have plenty to eat in the forest and meadows and eating veggies is just them being greedy.

Kencove is a fencing supplier about 40 miles east of Pittsburgh that has the deer fence. Most local fencing suppliers don’t stock it. I think they actually make it. They ship deer fencing and all sorts of other fencing supplies all over the country.

I have been needing to go there but waited until the trip to the doctors at UPMC because that was over half way there.  It was slow going because from Monroeville to Blairsville it was road construction about 80% of the way. It is all being converted from 2 way to 4 lane road and multiple locations were being worked on.  That will open up a corridor and would be a good place to buy property if I had any investment capital, which I don’t.

The trip back was simpler because I was able to cut down to 1-70 and avoid the Pittsburgh area.

The wire comes in 20 rod rolls (330′ (100 m)) one of which isn’t quite enough to surround what I want to but I have some chain link fence I have picked up here and there to finish it out. I actually got two rolls because Gopish is also doing a fenced in space for garden so we are purchasing stuff together.

The last piece of the puzzle is getting all the posts. I need about 26 11′ posts and have only acumulated 16 of them over the years.  Whenever I get firewood, if I see a post in a locust tree I cut it out and save it, but I haven’t been so active in the last few years and not every tree has an 11 footer in it hence I am short of cured posts.

I won’t put a green locust post in the ground. Raghu has done experiments and we know that a green lcoust post will only last about 20 years. If you can peel the bark off locust with your fingers it is well cured and will last 30-40 years.  You would be surprised how fast those decades roll around and having to replace posts within a lifetime is inconvenient.

I don’t mind using green locust for bracing but I don’t like putting it in the ground.

I do have some dead locust reconnoitered that I will get some more cured posts out of but will still be short.  Local fencing suppliers don’t stock the long posts but Gopesh special ordered a bundle of 45 treated posts from the Marshall County Co-op which is about what he will need for posts and bracing. He said  I can get a few from him to make up my shortfall and replace them with either green locust for bracing or if he goes the H brace method,  shorter posts can substitute.