Ed, you've described my situation very well, except I'm OK with most snakes. Once I imagined the kind of muscle-tone it would take to lift my body off the ground without arms, I developed a lot of respect for them.
I like Jim's identification better, because if they're rat snakes I can leave the little guys there. Down at the other end of the row, my white fingerling potatoes got severely chomped. But near the snake nest, the purple Peruvians didn't have a single tooth mark on them.