Busy Spring

I have been completely neglectful of my blog, but not my gardens, which is why I have been neglectful of my blog.
We have finally gotten the hillside garden tilled up and nearly ready for planting. It was a lot of work, mostly for my husband, who had the chore of tilling. Tilling is hard enough, but do it on a hillside and it triples the amount of work. I had started by using a shovel and loosening all of the weeds and growth and pulling and pitching them all aside. Only got about a tenth done when Chris brought the tiller down and did the rest. He ended up tilling the entire thing 4, maybe 5 times to get it where it is now. After each tilling, I took the rake to it and got all (or most) of the weeds and roots out.
Before planting, I still need to mark out all of the rows and terrace them all. The soil is in good shape and I really should still add compost, but will leave that until this fall when it can all be tilling under. I expect Chris doesn't want to touch the tiller for several months again.
I have lots to plant. I have tomatos that I started inside over the winter, Brandywine. I have corn, green onions, watermelon, pumpkin, gourds, beans, carrots, sweet basil, cucumber, and red sunflowers.
I am going to use the 3 Sisters method for planting the corn, beans and pumpkins. This will save a lot of space and allow me to also plant some strawberries.
I have also been spending time trying to figure out what I am going to do about keeping deer and raccoons and rabbits and everything else out of the garden. We aren't building a fence, but I may try to gather lots of branches and make a rustic fence (free) and hope for the best. I also have lots of bars of soap sitting unused, so this will be a good way to put them to use. I may also try the pie pan method and maybe the plastic grocery bags too.