Wines I'm making: Shoring up the Electric Fence

In 2005, I made only six bottles of wine from the grapes in the back yard. I was determined not to be defeated by critters--but I was. Normally, the harvest is big enough to make about 100 bottles each year, but raccoons (or was it skunks, or wild turkeys, or possums, or foxes?) made off with most of the fruit--in total, nearly 250 pounds of it.

Each night another vine was stripped bare. I tried everything--inflatable snakes, plastic owls with rotating heads and motion sensors (the birds hoot at anything that moves), bright lights, and nets, all to little effect. And whatever was eating the grapes (I do think it was raccoons) had the gall to leave droppings here and there full of grape seeds. Finally, I built a four-foot-high electric horse fence around the two rows of vines and began to put the nets on the outside of the fence, so that animals can't push up against the plants and steal berries through the nets--but that was in 2006. The wine from 2005 was mostly made from under-ripe grapes, some of them damaged berries gleaned from the ground where the raccoons left them. The wine is sour and virtually undrinkable, but I will let it sit. Who knows? Five years from now, it may be palatable. Since building the electric fence, the fruit has been relatively unmolested, and, happily, the wine has been better with each harvest since 2005.

Because the wires are under tension and in part because of the heavy rains this year, the poles that support the electric fence have been gradually leaning inward, which allows the wires to sag and touch each other, causing short circuits. Yesterday, I got out there and drilled holes through the six-inch wood posts that support the trellises and, using nuts and large washers, created stays that push the end-posts of the electric fence out from the wooden posts, restoring tension. There's a particular satisfaction to be derived from solving a problem simply and well. Sadly, not all problems are so easily solved.