A fence can set you free

One of our permaculture advisors has a farm in New Jersey called Fields Without Fences.

Idyllic, isn’t it? The image of a boundless landscape, through which one can simply run, and ruunn, and ruuunnn, all the way to where the horizon meets the setting sun, completely unfettered and free and connected to the wide open arms of the world.

And two years later, he built a fence around the farm.We, of course, had our share of giggles at his expense. But despite what sounds like a defeat, a fall from the idealistic vision of perfect belonging to nature, there is the very simple and quite obvious truth that life thrives on boundaries.

From cell membranes, skin, stomach linings, shells and tree bark to rivers, tree lines, mountain ranges and the coastline, nature is full of boundaries. And the qualities of these boundaries that naturally let some things through and keep others out (or in) create unique and stable environments for life to thrive within the particular ecosystem, whether that ecosystem is Bartalome Island in the Galapagos, the boggy swamps of the Everglades or your digestive tract.And so, just as a single cell organism emerges out of the gooey, soupy ocean of organic molecules by coalescing behind its first cell wall, the Enchanted Food Forest just got a huge evolutionary upgrade.

Drumroll... We have... a fence!

A tall, solid, deer-proof fence.

I know, not the thrilling headline from the 7 o’clock evening news. But for us, what this boundary around 12 acres of land unlocks in terms of the possibilities of life thriving is simply dizzying.Consider that the single biggest threat to forest regeneration in the Northeast is the overpopulation of deer. Deer nibbling on the newly emerged leaves of a sapling is all it takes to kill a tree.

On the farm, we have tried countless methods of dissuading deer “herbivory” of the 2,000 trees we’ve already planted. All of them require both a tremendous amount of material and ongoing manpower.With the perimeter fence, we can not only stop worrying about the safety of the toddler hazelnuts, persimmon, black walnuts and lindens, but now have the freedom to plant thousands more seedlings without straining our own capacities to protect them.A perimeter fence also opens up the possibility, finally, of having domesticated animals on the land, living in symbiotic harmony as a part of the food forest. Imagine chickens, ducks, and geese truly free-ranging, protecting young trees by feasting on the grubs, beetles, moths and caterpillars that plague them, while also scratching up the ground and fertilizing the soil with their nutritious poop.Imagine in a few years, when the tree trunks are thicker... little piglets running around in the food forest, feeding on the fruits and nuts that we are not able to fully harvest, gathering and concentrating that harvest in themselves and thus making it available to us.

This week, we took one more step towards this dream with the arrival of two magnificent Italian Maremma puppies. Hashishkebab (Shish) and Chicharron (Chicha) are 7 months old. They are bred to be livestock guardian dogs, whose mere presence keeps predators away from their territory. Under Shish and Chicha’s guardianship, our current and future chickens, ducks and geese will roam free and safe in the food forest (not cooped up!). We’ll also be able to keep honeybees, since the dogs’ presence will keep the local black bear family away. The buzzing bees dancing between the wildflowers will not only make honey, they will pollinate our persimmons, apples and elderberry – increasing the abundance of the food forest for us (and the piglets).

And we couldn’t have the dogs without the boundary fence to delineate their territory. Without that, they might roam into Coyote Island in the marsh, or get into scraps with our neighbors’ dogs. Clear boundaries create, rather than limit, opportunities.And so a new stage of life begins. As with the appearance of the first cell wall, a new chapter for the Wildsong Enchanted Food Forest has just begun.

Wildsong Gaian Sanctuary is a regenerative food forest and nature retreat center in the Catskills.