Beauty Farming Life

I was riding around not he zen machine and passed by the pear trees and noticed this.  I about fell off!  (not so 'zen', ha). Something has stripped and/or eaten the bark of of two fruit trees.  They just so happen to both be the pear trees.  All other trees, knock on wood, were ok, so something was appealing about these two in particular.  I thought maybe deer, though we've never seen any at the farm yet.  And any deer would have eaten off the leaves on the upper part and they look fine.  Rabbits?  Raccoons?  Something else?  It almost looks like something from ground level was standing up? I decided I needed a temporary fix to cover the bark a bit and maybe deter whatever it is.  So I remembered reading that many animals don't like strong herb smells.  I had a basil plant in a pot that had gone to seed and I was going to pull it up anyway.  So I did, got out the clippers and...

A couple of weeks back, I blogged HERE about something eating/scratching/chewing on some of our fruit trees.  Well, our recent wet weather was a bit of a blessing, because it allowed me to find THESE : Deer tracks These are, I believe from my research anyway, deer tracks.  I didn't have anything to put down for scale but they were smallish, so I'm guessing, just as several of you commented about, that young deer rubbing on the trees, were the culprits.  I have seen some rabbits around too, so it could even be some sort of combination of the two. Whatever the creature is/was, I came up with this solution.  Hopefully it's a bit better than the strong smelling basil. Fruit trees with foam pipe protectors These are the foam pipe protectors used in Winter to cover pipes to keep them from freezing.  Since they're already slit on one side, I just wrapped them around the trunks. They have been keeping them safe for the last week until I can get som...