Biological insect control
Do you get ravishing mosquitoes and black
flies where you are? --- Heather W
Aren't you afraid of mosquitoes during the summer? --- Rena
Aren't you afraid of mosquitoes during the summer? --- Rena
We live next door to a swamp,
but we don't get bitten much. Bats and dragonflies patrol the skies all
summer, keeping the outdoors habitable nearly all the time.
We do have a few insect
problems. In 2011, we started being plagued by deer flies whenever we
go in the woods during the dog days.
Gnats flying into our
eyes are another summer problem. They're not bad enough to keep us
indoors, though.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Mark --- Vanilla extract is a great idea! The only anti-gnat technique I know is to hold our hand over your head (and all the gnats will go up there and leave your face alone). But your hand gets tired after a while, and it's hard to work with one hand in the air....
Mike --- Fascinating! I keep meaning to learn dragonfly ID, but I never do.
Heath --- A lot of the other swallows are much more common than purple martins here, although the latter do exist. I've actually never seen purple martins move into houses in our neck of the woods, though --- they must like their wild housing better.
Maggie --- Glad you liked it! Mark's birthday's actually not until tomorrow, but I'm sure he appreciates the early birthday wishes.