I keep our rotisserie motor deterrents going all day and all night because it seems like the deer in this ecosystem are working double and triple shifts.

The movement of the rotissiere motor chain might be hard to see at night depending on how much moonlight there is. That's why I've been experimenting with ways to shed a bit of light on the situation.

These L.E.D. Nebula Projection night lights are my current favorite at the moment. It only uses pennies of electricity per year, has no moving parts, and gives an effective illusion of movement with the way each color changes. I found the one above at a big box store for a little over 5 dollars.

These large fence posts are turning out to be my favorite method of mount placement for the rotisserie motor deer deterrent.

The top piece is an appearance board made from treated lumber and the other piece can be whatever scrap you might have handy. Just make sure it's thick enough for your screws to bite into without going all the way through.

Locations dealing with a large deer population might need to experiment with a few different spots before you find the right one to protect your garden or flower bed. The temporary nature of these posts make it easy to unplug and pull it up out of the ground for easy relocation.

The metal fence post also allows for a slight wobble when the golf ball is in motion. I think this adds another dimension of movement that in my opinion can only increase the deterrent factor.

Last November, I killed my first deer.  It was one of the high points of the year, despite the fact that during the same twelve month period I got married and learned to take vacations.  Now that hunting season has come around again, I'm ashamed to say that the delicious taste of venison is not enough to tempt me to take up arms.  Why not?  Because, for the first autumn ever, our garden is 100% deer free.

A month ago, I saw the signs of an incursion on my daily patrol.  One of the three beets I managed to germinate during the late summer heat had been kicked out of the soil, its tops eaten off, and I followed the deer tracks to a bed of swiss chard that had been similarly defoliated.  The deer damage occurred right where I knew it would --- where one of last year's old-version deer deterrents had failed and was replaced by a deterrent with more of a bell-like chime than a metallic bang.  "Please make that one louder," I begged Mark, and he added in a metal bowl for the golf ball to strike.  I fired a few shots into the woods above where I heard a rustling, and the garden has been safe ever since.

As a result, we're eating nearly completely from the garden still, despite it being two weeks 'til Thanksgiving.  The deer-free mustard greens are huge and sweet and there are so many that I barely seem to make a dent with my daily picking.  The Black-seeded Simpson and Bibb Lettuce make for daily salads, and our broccoli is sending out enough side shoots (after we picked the 10 inch wide main heads) that we eat broccoli once a week as well.  I took a look at the high prices of broccoli in the grocery store the other day and figure that our deer deterrents have probably saved us a couple of hundred dollars in product costs for the fall garden alone.  Victory sure tastes sweet!

We've worked up a multi-prong approach to keeping deer out of our garden.  First, dot the edges with homemade deer deterrents as the main line of defense, but keep your eyes open.  If you see a deer too close, take a potshot over its head and then add another deterrent in that spot.

This fall, I've added a third leg to the anti-deer campaign --- cover crops.  Fall and early winter are the worst times for deer damage in the garden since food sources in the woods largely disappear after the last acorn is consumed.  And while a summer deer visit just means that a leaf here and there is nipped, the smaller and slower growing winter garden can be completely defoliated in one night of deer gorging.  Cover crops give you a bit more wiggle room, since they are succulent and tasty at this time of year, so they attract the deer's attention before the beasts devour your beloved strawberry plants.  I noticed that during our two small deer incursions this fall, the plants that got eaten most were oats around the garden edges, which left me smiling instead of swearing.