A downed tree on the deer fence

The deer fence was designed for withstanding limbs falling on it, but not for trees, and we should be keeping all the trees cut from along the fence. This was our first downed tree on the fence, so we sawed the tree, and once the tree was off the wire, the wire popped back up (mostly). We were pleasantly surprised to see that the fence wire is in pretty good shape with no brakes. All we need to do is re-stretch the wire and connect the wire to the posts so that we can continue keeping the deer out of our production area. (We wished we would have fenced the entire farm, like our neighbor Frank did, because outside the fence we have barley any cover crop growth due to overgrazing by the deer.)

The tree came down on the fence line running along a branch that comes down from the holler and we purposely left the trees along the branch because it is good for the creatures that reside in the creek. These trees cool the water temperature a bit, debris falling from the trees provides food for the creatures in the branch, and I am certain there are many more benefits that I am not aware of. We are now considering taking a few of the large trees along the branch down so they don’t end up on our fence.