Jonah Raskin has resorted to physical measures to enforce social distancing — from the turkey and deer chewing up his garden.
Some of the hardest battles I’ve fought over the past few months have been with wild turkeys and deer, who have raided my garden, chomped on the lettuce and the peppers, and most of all on my beloved tomato plants. The only thing they didn’t touch were my two marijuana plants, though I cared more about the veggies than the pot.
There was a simple solution to the problem, but I was too lazy to embrace it. Finally, my landlord took pity on me, dug holes in the ground, buried posts and stretched plastic netting around the whole area. Then I waded into the secure zone, staked the tomato plants so the fruit wouldn’t rot on the ground.
Truth to tell, it wasn’t just laziness that prevented me from making a fence. I was also philosophically opposed to the very idea of a fence, though I loved Robert Frost’s immortal line, “Good fences make good neighbors.” My friend, Anne Teller, never fenced Oak Hill Farm and her son, Will, who grows grapes and makes wines doesn’t fence his vineyard.
“Deer gotta eat,” he tells me.