We had a power outage a few weeks ago which lasted for 22 hours.....and yes....a damn deer snuck in during that time and ate a good deal of our sweet potato leaves.

The attacks continued even after we got the power back up!

First thing we did was to identify where the deer was entering our perimeter, and then relocate one of the deterrents to block that path.

Second thing was to build another deterrent and to step up the noise a notch. I did this with the above tea kettle, which gives a louder thud than the pet bowl, and helps to mix up the sounds to increase the confusion felt by a nearby deer.

It seems like the attacking has stopped...and my wife is checking the garden every morning. I'm thinking this time of year is when the pressure is the highest, and maybe I need to think about making each primary clanger more modular so that one could un-hook it from one deterrent and move to another when the going gets as tough as its been here lately.

We're still having trouble with what I think is a trio of two small deer and their mother attacking our garden at night.

The above contraption is what you get when you combine a submersible pump with a sprinkler and a timer and a large trash can filled with water and scented soap. The finished product is what I'm calling the StinkMaster smelly sprinkler experiment, and its purpose is to provide a means as to which an area just outside of the garden can be subjected to repeated sprayings of an unnatural scent.

It's too early to know how effective it might be, but the area it sprayed last night is rather stinky with the smell of Irish Spring.

My first observation is that soapy water clogs sprinkler heads.

Maybe a liquid fabric softener or concentrated perfume would be a better choice that would stink enough without clogging the sprinkler mechanism? I even tried swapping out the clogged sprinkler with the above hand held shower sprayer. It managed to spray out most of the can last night, but I think the clogged holes put a strain on the pump.

A long term approach to keeping deer out of the garden is to use more permaculture techniques near the border.

We've had good luck with our chicken pastures operating as a buffer zone to keep the deer out of our back garden and mule garden as can be seen in the map above.

Maybe the chickens give off a smell that signals the deer how all the good stuff must have been taken already?

These 3 outlet adapters are a good match for an outdoor mechanical deer deterrent when you need to branch off the power.

It's made from a heavy duty rubber like material and seems to have no problem handling our outdoor conditions.

The normal price is somewhere around 4 dollars, but I've seen them on sale for as low as 99 cents.

We're still having trouble with a deer sneaking in and eating most of our swiss chard.

The game warden gave us a special kill permit, which prompted us to deploy a trail camera to see if we could get some data on when and where the deer are entering our garden. The plan being to ambush said deer the next time she makes a snack stop this way.

So far the pictures have mainly been me walking Lucy and my wife getting the SD card, but early this morning we got the above GIF in which you can barley make out deer eyes in the distance. I think we had the camera mounted too high, but it's a start.