We have noticed a disturbing pattern in our farming activities. We acquire some animals (40 chickens, for example). Then we discover that these animals have a deleterious effect on something (our tomatoes, for example). So we end up spending a Saturday or two or three and somewhere between $50 and $250 to animal proof whatever needs protecting.
Exhibit number one. Some of the chickens figured out that they could fly over the fence to eat bugs (good) and produce (bad) and bathe in the soil (bad) in the garden; cute little song birds have also eaten many of our finest tomatoes. So we have sealed off the garden to anything that can't fit through a 1" hole by draping the whole thing in bird netting. (The filmy green mist you see in the picture below is not the steel tubing sending forth the first shoots of spring; it is the bird netting that is turning the garden into a fortress.)
Exhibit number two. The cats that live on the back porch were using the flower garden as a litter box. But no more! The flower boxes are now protected by chicken wire, with holes for the flowers carefully cut out with a Dremel tool. So now they have started using the gravel between the flower beds.
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