Motherfucking, cute as the dickens, four legged, fluffy tailed pieces of shit, lacking  sensitivity to anything but their appetite for succulant young tree branches and older trees that they can ring bark with their antlers, cause it feels soooooo goood to scrape the fuzz off. I know that's true for me on full moon nights but I only have one antler and would rather soak it in some warm viscous fluid than rub it against a tree.

So I'm making the rounds the other day after having spent a couple of work days with the amazing wwoofettes, re-securing the deer fencing on the southern border of the property. This is the direction from which the deer approach the property.

Now that the weather has turned to drought, the myriads of trails leading to the property are like some terrestrial g.p.s.,tracking all roads leading to unky jp's plant smorgyborg and fermented water emporium. Yummy.

All the areas for growing veggies, or doing banana/papaya/perennial veggie polycultures are within fenced orchard areas to keep the darling (I want you dead now) deer from doing what they did to the one orchard area that lacks a fence on the North side of the property line.

Why, you might ask would I not fence this stretch of border? The standard answer of I'm a knucklehead comes to mind, but also because that portion of the property is bordered by Kealakapu road and not an area where one normally see's anything but cars, trucks, horseback riders and those out for a stroll.

The beautiful (I want you cut up and in my freezer) deer would have to do some loopdeloops to get over there. Well they did, and in so doing found a patch of glycine growing by the roadside as a result of the irrigation system used to keep the the orchard thriving.

Now this orchard and home to the rhode island reds, which we refer to as" Oscar Peterson" is fenced in on the South, East and West sides and has never been hit since that fence was in place.

But in a meeting, held in secret in a barranca just to the south the of the property, the alpha male, a nine point buck named Rory Spotted Balls and the notorious Mergatroid Chizzletooth of the Kamaole mongoose clan sat over a bowl of fermented egg yolks and talked business.

Chizzletooth, surrounded by his elite henchgeese, teeth laser sharpened and bared ever so slightly in a snarl, confided that his clan had been raiding the Americauna enclosure from the North for several years now and that with the exception of  a certain acceptable percentage of war casualties found it to be a foolproof approach yielding a steady supply of eggs, some good sport freaking the cookies out of the chooks and leading to discoveries of ever more clever ways to beat the traps.

He told of vast mountains of greenery running up the roadside, smelling of terpenes, crawling things and bird doo. Rory sat patiently on his hind quarters, surrounded by his stable of rutting beeotches taking in this info and realizing that even though the hard black stuff on the road hurt his feet, it might just be worth it to chance-um'.

Little did he know at the time that his risk would lead to a night of ravaging Oscar Peterson.

Rory handed a faded leather satchel over to Chizzletooth who examined the contents with an ever widening and sickly sinister approximation of a grin. He pulled a  piece of jerky out of the satchel, bit off a tweensy bit and chewed it with such zealous frenzy as to turn it to liquid within seconds.

He then swished the slurry around in his mouth and spit the remains to ground. After rolling his eyes back in a swoon and breathing very deeply, Chizzletooth declared fair deal, zipped up the satchel, waggled his eyebrows at the beeotches and disappeared into the underbrush.

Rory then barked out orders for the evenings forage and the dye was caste.

The result of a few of these delightful ( the only good is a dead) deer finding ingress to Oscar Peterson resulted in the ring barking of the largest Inga Edulis and the newly transplanted white indonesian guava, the total destruction of a two and a half year old mango, the shredding of four banana keiki's, a two year old lychee tree rendered unrecognizable as anything but a small stump to trip over, a denuded cashew and mulberry and the nibbling of numerous mango leaves and small branches.

All in all not at all what I had expected to find in a routine days rounds. While I know that a lot of what farming is about is rolling with the punches, I found myself rolling into "whats the use" mode and then allowed myself some pissed off time to begin the energetic transmutation from  anger to order where the world is good again and life is simple and solution orientation points the way to overcoming even the vision of years of work laid to waste and of unheard plant screams put to rest.

I knew from past patterns that it would be imperative to get that northern border fenced the next day or risk the total destruction of this young orchard. So I camped out with a pitcher of pina coladas and my rifle and passed the night in an uncomfortable sort of peace. Early the next day I headed for town to pick up the fencing materials. A few hours later and with the help of superior human women, access to the property from Kealakapu road was denied.

Not having the dough to fence the entire property kinda sucks, but moments of intensity which yield affirmative action geared toward renewing the strength and vitality of the Rancho, rock out. Its about getting sweaty and bloody and teaming up to solve a problem. Its about the learning and the laughing and the longing. Its about knowing that the challenges never cease and that one of the most important crops we can grow is Perseverance.

"Thats deep unky jp."

"Not really, little fella, just the voice of Nature."

"The who of what?"

"That's right little fella, the who of what."

The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace, Jp