For many years on my way into town, I would drive by a farm that raised sheep. The pasture was very neat looking and was often cropped to the ground. Like a neatly mowed lawn with isolated thistle plants popping out of what looked like a green ping pong table, this was their home. My farm is home to another herbivore called the white tailed deer. It eats my pasture grasses but also the foliage of many species of shrubs and trees. It has a varied diet including my tree crops of persimmon and acorns. The pasture at my farm is dense and rich filled with many species of grasses and forb of which the diversity increases every year. It is never cropped. The deer are selective eaters. This makes the deer a shaper of vegetation of which it is of great benefit to my farm. I realize when I say, the deer love that, I know the deer will partially or totally destroy it. I had a large collection of sunchokes and each time I planted them in the outer reaches of the farm away from my weekly spraying of “Deer-Off” or outside the electric fencing, the deer loved them to death. Like a herbivore freight train, even the most vigorous selection of Jerusalem artichoke was gone by the second year.

I had the thought many years ago after seeing browse on a neatly chomped buckthorn bush that it might be possible to stimulate browse on other plants that I needed to reduce or eliminate to make it easier to harvest under the trees. I have to do this from time to time. I use a weed whip and lopers. I do not own a tractor or mower. Inspired by sheep, the weed whip would allow me to crop an area like a ping pong table. I would use lopers to flatten shrubs around these mature trees. I started by testing large shrubs and pruning them back to the ground. I used multiflora rose and tartarian honeysuckle. The groundcover at the time was pasture grasses, timothy and quackgrass. When they began to thin due to shade and star thistle, the other shrubs took hold. I was using sawdust mulch at the time and this aided in seedling establishment as well. I would prune back the shrubs to ground level using lopers. New sprouts from the rose and honeysuckle are very succulent. Deer will consume these in great abundance coming back to them over and over just like my sunchokes. The forage of honeysuckle is rich in protein. The multiflora rose sprouts are heavily browsed in the winter too. I have noticed that the young sprouts of grape vines are relished and are quickly consumed. That seems to be a favorite after I cut back the vines from climbing my pear trees. Even new seedlings of pokeweed are tipped by the deer. You would think this would make them sick. One of my cameras in the winter showed a line of deer eating the pasture grass near my Korean nut pines and hybrid chestnuts. This particular low area was capturing the warmth of the sun which made the grass grow late in the season which in turn created a small herd of deer all eating in a row cafeteria style.

I do not allow hunting.To begin with, my farm is too close to residential homes to be safe and would not be legal. I love the deer and their presence at my farm. I do not feel they are destructive. The benefits clearly outweigh the small amount of food they take from my tree crops. I do not want them killed or managed or whatever you want to call it. The coyotes do a better job of that plus they feed on other animals in the process. It is interesting that my small 13 acres rarely has more than 3-4 deer at a time on site. I found out a few winters ago after a light snowfall that many deer from outside my farm come in to feed at night before retreating to the heavily forested areas and a nearby wetland.

It is through the white tailed deer that land can rebound by increasing plant diversity, improving habitat for other animals. Their waste feeds other plants with its nutrients while cultivating the ground with its hooves allowing for greater water and nutrient penetration. To me the white tailed deer is a perfect animal doing everything it can to shape my vegetation into a greater whole while asking for so little.

People have told me stories of specific deer they have gotten to know a little. For many years there was one female deer that did not run away when I was working in the fields. I was a steady fixture with my shovel harvesting field trees for the nursery. I would turn away or walk at an angle to her. Once I saw her giving birth. She looked at me from a distance but did not move and then looked straight ahead. I turned away. There was a certain trust built up over the years. One day she was consuming grass in a recently demolished greenhouse area about 40 feet away from where I was standing. I could not figure out at first why she was eating Johnson grass of all things.Then I saw the buck sitting on the ground about ten feet away from her. He was not moving and with my presence probably was on the verge of bolting. I quietly slipped into the barn and lightly closed the door. I will let that play out on its own in this ecological theatre I call my farm.