Chapter 8: Future Plans

While the ground was frozen I used the tractor to drag the trees I'd cut to the areas I'd set aside as mangers for the deer. It was several weeks of hard work in the cold before I was satisfied. The tractor would easily traverse the old roadbeds despite the stumps if I kept the speed down. Nobody but a madman with a death-wish races around any fields in a tractor—they have turned over and crushed many an unsuspecting farmer doing simple things such as plowing or baling. Farm injuries and deaths are one of those nasty little secrets that people don't mention. Are they industrial accidents? Are they home accidents? Well, yes to both, but your home probably doesn't have a machine designed to cut off, suck in and finely chop tough stalks half the size of your forearm either! (Look up a silage knife or silage chopper.)

With nothing to really do I started thinking about second- and third-order effects of what I proposed to accomplish here. For example: if I planted a large garden then I'd have to fertilize and prepare the soil, pre-plant some seeds for seedlings in the conservatory, plant the seeds and seedlings then care for the garden, feeding, watering and protecting it from the depredations of hungry animals. Sure, fencing helps but deer jump better than any Olympic pole-vaulter on their best day. A deer jumping sixteen feet is no big deal. That's pretty hard to defend against. Shooting the critters is the only reliable option that I could think of, as scent baits sometimes work and sometimes don't.

All right, now I've got a few deer carcasses. What do I do with them? Butcher them, obviously. A commercial butcher would report the carcasses as taken without tags—a big no-no and Mister Sheriff would not be my friend. Alternatively, I'd have to build a slaughter house and a smoke house, learn some butchery skill, cure and smoke the meat. That's not a bad outcome if you like venison, and I happen to like it!

All right, your garden is going great guns. You have to water and weed it regularly. Once the crops begin to ripen you've got to harvest them. Some, such as tomatoes you harvest regularly until frost kills the plant. (For God sakes, don't plant zucchini without filing an ecological impact wavier!) Root vegetables such as potatoes and carrots are one-shot harvest investments. The potatoes can stay in the ground until the vines are dead, along with the turnips. Onions, garlic, lettuce, cucumbers, peppers, radishes and other 'soft' crops have to come in when they're ripe, and can come in all at once! The catch-22 is that they taste the best when harvested the closest to peak ripeness that you can achieve, which leaves a truly minimal window to get everything picked, washed and processed.