Lettuce Share (with the deer)

After dropping out of our local farmers' market for 2 months due to the heat and drought, we were ready to go back this past Saturday.  Tom had collard greens, turnip greens and radishes ready to go.  And, I had arugula, some fresh herbs (spearmint, peppermint and parsley) and some "micro" greens.  Micro-greens are just very young greens that are harvested when they are  only a few days old.  They are excellent to sprinkle on salads and to stir-fry.

We had planned to take our first fall lettuce as well.  Here is what it looked like about a week ago.

But a couple of days after this picture was taken, Tom went out to find that our friendly neighborhood deer had been helping themselves to it.  Here is a close up picture of what a section of it looked like after they had nibbled on it.

However, all is not lost.  Lettuce will regrow after it has been cut off like this (either by kitchen shears or by deer) and I'm happy to report that it is regrowing nicely.

In the mean time, Tom has taken the cattle panel sections that we were growing the gourds on this summer and has made a "tee-pee" structure over the lettuce to protect it from the deer.  

Hopefully, they will not try to reach through the metal bars to sample the lettuce again.