The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

How to make a fly trap

How to make a fly trap

Duncan sent me this plan for a nearly free, homemade fly trap that he made out of a plastic soda bottle.  The top of the bottle turns into a slippery funnel down which the insects slide into the trap zone.  Although a few might find their way back out the small opening, it looks like in practice most insects aren't that smart.

Learn to keep bugs at bay Duncan's goal was to keep down flies that sprang up around his chickens, but I can envision using the same setup as a homemade Japanese beetle trap and others on the internet use it to catch stinkbugs.  Since chickens are at the top of my mind, I'm tempted to make a trap like this with a solar LED light at the bottom to snag nocturnal insects to feed the chickens.  (The only thing holding me back is the lack of plastic soda bottles in our trailer at the moment!)

For more tantilizing inventions, read about Duncan's wheel lift for a chicken tractor and his heated PVC pipe chicken waterer on our chicken blog.  You can also see his beautiful, homemade musical instruments on his website.



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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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Not into bees or chickens, but I do love your blog's variety of comments. I'm in the process of creating the solar power backup with the Chicago 5 in 1 power pack. Right now I'm testing my power pack as the first time use was only a couple hours before it started squealing at me. Almost ready to take it back when I found your blog. Will now give it a little longer to prove itself.
Comment by seekertat Tue Jul 31 11:27:15 2012
Seekertat --- Glad you enjoyed the blog! We actually ended up deciding the power pack wasn't as good as we'd originally thought --- after just a year or so, it won't hold a charge. Our next trial will be with golf cart batteries.
Comment by anna Tue Jul 31 17:17:57 2012

Looking forward to learning a lot more from your site. Knew how to make the bottle trap, but really appreciate the different "recipes". Really happy I found your page!

Comment by Barb Tue Jun 30 11:25:22 2015





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