Mad is a Momma Moose!

The moose here at Wicked Raven are sometimes out of control and I am pretty sure they are trying to make me quit farming completely at times!  You have all seen in prior blogs and probably on Facebook that the moose eat just about everything - and they love the fruit trees!  I told you last year about using the mattress deconstruction to protect a few of the apple trees - as I started to deconstruct a few more mattresses that I had this summer - the neighbors came over and commented that they hardly "redneckednized" the place what with all the crap everywhere and why didnt we just put up some real fence?

This is one of the momma moose that have been trolling for trees in my yard - the two calves are just outside the picture - I couldnt get them all in!

We can't afford to fence the whole 5 acres, and it would be really hard to have that many gates - we would have to have about 8 gates to make it be useful and semi easy to navigate through the fences so.... enter the hubby with a brilliant idea!

We got two rolls of this fencing - 50 yards each - it cost about $1.00 per foot.  Total cost to do all of my trees (15 total so far) was less than $200.00.

We used the survey stakes mixed with some regular pound in fence posts (I think they are called "t" posts)

We made a circle around each tree large enough that the branched didnt stick out and locked the circle together by bending the cut edges of the fencing around itself - sort of looks like a hook and eye when complete.

We also used some of the broken hockey sticks that are composite fiberglass - those things are tough!

Above left is a shot of the winter fence covering.  We also had to put a fence lid on the rounds as the moose are tall enough to stick their necks into the rounds and eat the tree anyway if the lid isnt on!  Above right is the moose creeping up thinking she will get a bite of a cherry tree!

Notice in the above picture how her hackles are all raised up on her neck!  She is not happy to not be able to get to the cherry tree!  She dented the heck out of the fencing around the tree trying to get at it though!  I had to go out and pull it all back into a round shape!  Everything held up though!  yay!

Below you can see the "lid" on the round.  We also put the blue and orange newspaper bags (our newspaper comes in a plastic bag that is sized for it depending on what day it is - Sunday is a bigger baggie - they are plastic tubes basically) and they flap in the breeze and sometimes scare things away!  Sometimes they are necessary so a snowmachine, go kart or four wheeler doesnt run over anything!

Another winter view!  

Word of advice from the voice of experience here - don't try to do fencing by yourself in s stiff wind!  Luckily I had my glasses on or I probably would have lost an eye here!  As it is I have a nice fencing "war wound" on my nose to remember it by!   Hubby had gone hunting and I was just gonna finish the last two rounds that we didnt get done before he had to leave!  I would probably do it again though - Ill never give up!  No matter how mad those moose get!

The fencing works well and it looks nice as well.  Way better than the mattress coils - I am still using them - just not where you can see them from the road!  It was too great an upcycle to not use again! 

Blessed be and I hope your winter is going well!  Keep the farming faith alive - there is a way where there is a will - even with moose around!