I'm not clear about your layout so let me explain mine. Originally I had a 6' high fence with 7' T posts driven in approx 1 foot. When I went to 9' high I replaced T posts with 4X4" posts. I used 5 T posts (one for a gate like you are planning). My garden is 32X37'. I think one could go 50' without a problem if you used regular electric fence wire. I left the 5th Tpost since the gate didn't need to be 9' high. If I had it to do over, I would be more particular about setting my 4x4 posts. I should have added more rocks to prevent the posts from sagging inward. I certainly wouldn't use cement since I may want to move them. Doesn't look so sharp but it keeps the critters out if I remember to turn it on! I'm not understanding your question about difficulty about stringing the wire. If you wanted, you could use one roll of wire attached at one end with slack by the charger, and slipped between each stand off around and around all the posts or fences at ever higher levels (or not) depending on your height needs. As I learned afterward, it would have been wiser to have run the wire around the inside of the posts to prevent them getting shorted on the wooden posts at one of the corners. The stand offs only stood off on one side. More judicous nailing of the standoffs to the exact edge of the posts might work as well. If you are going outside of part of a fence, then going inside the post probably won't be possible.

My main garden is in a rural area, with just about any kind of wildlife that gnaws... especially deer, rabbits, woodchucks, and coons. I use chicken wire low to keep out the rabbits, and several strands of electric fencing above that to keep out deer. Without that protection, a country garden is a waste of time. Electric fencing works best as a deterrent, to discourage animals from getting in the first time. If they get in & like what they find, it may be difficult to keep them from coming back for seconds... and thirds... and fourths... I purchased mine at a local Farm & Fleet. One of the employees helped me make sense of the "joules" ratings, and to handle persistent herbivores, recommended a fence rated to keep out predators. It's got quite a kick; the deer get bit once, and seldom try again. I keep the fence on from sunset to sunrise, and have had no coon damage except for one year when I was late running the wire (I take it down in Spring for tilling). My first charger lasted 10 years, and protected a 100' X 100' garden, so I think I got my money's worth.

Kirts, I feel like you are being wise to plan ahead. With the continuing modernization of some countries, like China and India, where the demand for oil and gas and other petroleum products is increasing exponentially every year, I see our energy costs continuing to rise. Since the average item in a grocery store in the USA travels about 1500 miles BEFORE it reaches the grocery store shelves, obviously the ever-increasing energy/transport costs will keep food costs rising. The changes we are seeing in the commercial agriculture industry and the food distribution network may force a lot of us to try to eat more locally. In the slow food movement, I think they refer to the effort to eat only locally-produced food as being a locavore. In addition, when you consider that a lot of the chemical fertilizers used by commercial farmers are linked to the petroleum industry, it is easy to believe that food costs will continue to go up because of rising fertilizer costs as well. I think people will turn to organic gardening as a means of lessening their dependence on foreign energy/fertilizers. There are many ways to store food and I use several of them. We have a tornado shelter and I use it to store root crops like potatoes and onions harvested in the summer as well as winter squash harvested in the fall. I have even stored winter squash on a shelf in the garage/barn and have had it last as long as 4-6 months in there. We have a large pantry located under our home's staircase. It is about 3 feet wide and maybe 12 deep. The height varies from 8' to about 2'. Back in that 2' area I store odds and ends we don't use often, like the pressure canner and my set of 4 huge stainless steel stockpots I use a lot during the harvest season. I freeze lots and lots of stuff. I always chop and slice onions and peppers and freeze them. I can usually raise a year's supply (or more) in the spring garden. I usually freeze tons of corn (I could can it if I didn't have storage space, but I do have storage space so I just freeze it.) Some years I get enough corn from the spring and fall gardens that we don't have to buy corn at all. The same is true of green beans and black-eyed peas. I even freeze tomatoes--they go straight from the freezer to the soup or saucepot in the winter. Okra is a little more iffy. We eat so much of it that I don't usually freeze much. I need to grow more, but the deer have been an issue with it for years, although I believe we've finally solved that problem. Thus, I should be able to grow more of it in the future. Carrots do best for me in the fall garden. If you have them in a well drained bed, you can leave them in the bed for months and harvest as needed. Another way to store them is in a clean trash can filled with sand. Pour a few inches of sand into the container, then put down a layer of carrots and repeat until all your carrots are stored. You also can keep them in a root cellar OR a refrigerator for months. Carrots can be frozen and even dehydrated. I dehydrate a lot of stuff. I then store all my bags of dehydrated veggies in the freezer, but you don't have to put them in the freezer. If you are careful to get out all the moisture, you can store dried veggies in the pantry. Even cantaloupes, muskmelon, watermelon and other lesser-known melons can be frozen. I usually cut them into squares, or use a melon baller to make them into melon balls and freeze them. You also can slice them into rather thin slices and dehydrate them. Their flavor and sweetness are so intensified by drying them that they are like candy. Anything that you grow in the garden can be dehydrated although some things take a pretty long time. I've never tried dehydrating corn, but I am sure it would work. Shelled beans dry naturally without dehydration and so do black-eyed peas. Many herbs can be tied in bundles and hung in a dry, warm, dark location to dry naturally. Canning is a lot of work and can be hazardous if done improperly, but as long as you follow all the recommended procedures and are careful, it is a great way to preserve food too. Cabbage will store a long time in a refrigerator or in a root cellar type situation. Back when people HAD to raise all the own food, a lot of them make sauerkraut to preserve the cabbage for winter, but I am not much of a sauerkraut person. There's always pickles too. You can pickle LOTS of veggies, not just cucumbers. You can pickle peppers, onions, carrots, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, watermelon rinds, etc. You also can make all kinds of relish and, there again, not just pickle relish but squash and others as well. Fruit can be frozen, dried or canned and you also can make preserves, jams and jellies. You can even make tomato preserves or marmalade. Storing food is not as hard as most people think, but it takes a lot of effort. If you want to expand your garden for next year, you could start building lasagna type beds this year. Although, as much as the heat bothers you and with your allergies, you might prefer to wait until fall to start laying out your garden beds. I like to clean out my garden beds in the fall and remove all debris. This is very important because many garden pests overwinter in plant debris. Usually I let the chickens roam around in the garden beds in December and they will dig and scratch and take care of lots of insects, insect eggs, weed seeds, etc. I also like to heap up tons and tons and tons of shredded leaves, gathered from our wooded areas, on top of the beds as soon as they are cleaned out after the first hard frost. The chopped-up leaves decompose into a lovely leaf mold or compost by spring. (If you don't chop them up, they break down a lot more slowly.) I also prefer to go ahead and add manure and compost to the beds in the winter months, so my beds are "ready to go" in the spring. Sometimes in a bad wildfire year, though, I stay too busy to get the garden beds cleaned up and replenished with compost, manure and leaves in winter. In those years, I really have a hard time planting on schedule because the beds aren't ready. I do all my planning and seed ordering in late fall to early winter. By the time the new seed catalogs arrive, I am usually about "done" although there is always something new that convinces me to order one more batch of seeds. Because my family understands and supports my gardening habit, my Christmas gifts are always handy useful things like gardening gloves (five pair last year, everything from goatskin to latex-dipped cotton to suede) and hand tools and such. One of my favorite garden gifts (I always ask Santa for this one) is a big cannister of electrical zip-ties. I use them to attach tomato cages to stakes, etc. There are several really, really useful vegetable gardening books and food preservation books that I find ESSENTIAL to my success as a veggie gardener. I have had most of them for years and years and years and still refer to them constantly. I'll make a list of them later. I'm off to the store to pick up some more food preservation supplies--processing all that corn wiped out my supply of freezer bags, and I need some pickling supplies before the cucumbers get out of control. I'll write later about corn and veggies. Dawn

Racoons are a big nuisance if you are trying to grow sweetcorn. I grow a big garden every year, and cannot trace any damage to the racoons except sweetcorn. My electric fence keeps out the deer but does not seem to keep out the racoons. Keeping racoons out with electric fence requires higher voltage than I am willing to use. You have to trap or poison the racoons if you want to grow sweetcorn here in my neck of the woods. If you have religious, philosophical, or other beliefs that forbid getting rid of racoons, you should not try raising sweetcorn around here. You will just be frustrated. If you are not troubled by such reservations, you can lower the population in two ways: (1) Havahart trap followed by 22 bullet in back of head and/or (2) Golden Malrin blue crystal flybait (about one tablespoon)(buy at Tractor Supply Store in the fly control section)mixed with some kind of liquid food or soda pop. By the way, my electric fence has even discouraged deer from consuming my hostas in other parts of the yard, as they seem now to be avoiding my entire yard. On using the trap vs Malrin, the Malrin is the most effective but the trap is safer because you can just release any innocent parties caught in there. I have never caught anything except groundhogs and raccoons, however. You can make the Malrin safer by (1) putting it in the garage and raising the garage door about 5-6 inches to discourage larger animals from entering and (2) only put it out at night. To be on the safe side, you might want to check local laws on pest control, and not use the Malrin if you have stray domestic animals or chickens around as it is very effective in ending stray animal problems of any kind.