Fenced apple plantations. They are increasingly common in the Lleida Pyrenees. Farmers have been fencing their farms for some years to prevent deer from eating the trees. Before they have tried other remedies, including extending human hair collected in hair salons in the area.
The smell of human hair scares animals away, but the effect is short-lived. Rural agents and farmers agree that it only works for a few days, so it is a solution that forces fruit growers to constantly replace the hair around the perimeter of the farm.
Job Roig is an agronomist from Barcelona who settled in Pallars a few years ago. In ‘Seuri’. “It is a town _he says_ that is close to Sort, it is officially written with an a but we write it with an e, a change is pending”.
Job has opted for apples for cider. He has fenced his farms and has advised other producers concerned about the problems caused by hoofed animals. The damage has been caused by the roe deer. Ungulates need to feed on woody parts of bushes, there is less and less agriculture and the damage is concentrated on productive farms.
Your apple trees have suffered very severe attacks. “I have had very beastly losses in the last two years. Now I have the fencing finished and now neither wild boars, nor roe deer, nor fallow deer are going to enter.
Job combines studies of wildlife with the conservation of local peach, vine, apple or pear crop varieties. One of those varieties of apples is the ‘senyoretes’ which he defines as “super small, flat, very tasty”. Among the pears in the area, the Cardós one stands out as highly valued, since it is widely established because it is the one used to make a recognized dish of Pallaressa cuisine. The Cardós pear variety and country quince are used to make ‘all i oli de codony’.
Carles Vázquez and Sílvia Letosa have also suffered damage to their farms. They live in Arro, in the Val d’Aran. For many years they have used hair from a hairdresser in Vielha to keep deer away on their farm in Areny de Noguera. This year they have not placed hair. For many months they have left the radio on every night to prevent the deer from eating the shoots of the young trees.
Carles has begun to protect the trees with plastic mesh and at the same time to use a system inspired by a documentary in which a Canadian farmer left the shoots that grow on the trunks and that farmers usually pull off so that they do not weaken the trees. fruity.
“The man _says Carles_ explained that he left these shoots on the apple trees, which the roe deer and deer arrive at. I’m doing the same, I’m leaving the ones that usually come out and I see that they eat them. They don’t reach the ones above, which are the ones that interest me, they do not harm the rest of the tree.
In addition, during the spring and part of the summer, until they have put up the protective mesh, Carles and Sílvia have left the radio on to scare away wild animals. “We asked my father-in-law to put it on at night, from sunset until eight in the morning. We usually put a station with little music, in which someone speaks all the time, the roe deer did not enter ”, says Carles.
