hi ,from not to far away from you,seabeck area. I did raised beds right off the bat because the soil is so poor around here and just plain rocky. I have extra horse poo for future compost if you would like some also can share seeds with you, look for a book called gardening west of the cascades it helped me allot. the best place to get good seed is from territorial seed in oregon they are the closest to us and do testing in the PNW. yes the seed can be expensive but you should only need what they call samplers. fencing can help some from the deer I found out by accident they won't bother electric fence much or try and jump it. if you do raised beds say a foot and a half deep the rabbits won't find the goods

I do loose some to deer but not much they don't like to camp out so to speak so close to my dogs barking at them. the other fix for deer is a motion sensor sprinkler it only comes on when triggered.