Bobert: regarding the anti-bird netting: I'm trying the UK approach this year: instead of fencing birds/critters OUT, you use the netting to create a "fruit cage" to keep your plants IN. It's essentially a little fence/net room, big enough to stand up in, with stakes or some kind of frame on which the netting can be draped and then secured to form a roof and walls. Pollinators and harvest-folk can get in, but not wild hungry berry-munchers.

I plant to do this for my raspberry & blueberry patches. It's probably cost-prohibitive for a big spread, but our farmstead is quite small and our berry patches are only two years old, so it'll be easy to enclose them.

--Cuilionn, who has more trouble with berry-stealing chickens than any wild feathered theives!