What home improvement work did you do today?

Bought the nicest spreader I have ever had... and then laid down 50lbs of bifen... Mowed, sprayed weeds, pest control and then hid in the AC.

 

Mole crickets, ticks?

 

fn ticks...

we really didnt want to treat because we have some awesome life in our yard.. dung beetles, fireflies, butterflies and more.... but... the fn ticks....so we are creating a "play zone" that we will treat while leaving the rest alone. once I get a job again, we will look at putting up a picket fence to mark this area.

 

You got a lot of scrub palms around you? A lot of rodents in your area?

I got deep in the woods a lot when I was down there, and I would never get into ticks until I got up in the scrub palms. But that said, if you have rodents in your area, I've heard nothing but positive things about tick tubes. Basically, camo tubes with permethrin-laced cotton inside. Rodents come along, being a typical host for baby ticks, snatch the permethrin cotton out of the tubes to nest with, and the permethrin kills the ticks on them every time they go to the nest. The general concept is, by controlling ticks on the smaller hosts in the area, you can destroy the population nearby.

We're going to be doing a lot of the same shit in midcoast Maine where we are. It's 1¼ acres and pretty substantially grassy, wooded on the back half.

Fireflies, butterflies won't be impacted by bifen, I don't think? Those guys usually get popped by people misting pyrethroids with a backpack sprayer. As long as you're not misting in your yard, only sticking to granules, it's only going to get at stuff that's crawling on/in the soil.

 

yeah, I am not 100% sure so we are sticking to granules and a dedicated zone for our walking path to the barn. We do have a lot of scrub palms, but we mowed them all down in our main area, so its all open... the issue is these damn deer the fam likes looking at... we dont have rodents, I have seen 7 different cats on property, a hawk and an owl... so I am convinced its from the deer... anyway, I am making my own tick tubes just in case. I will be treating the immediate area around the house in hopes to reduce the insects that make it in the home and then our play area/walk area... the rest will remain untreated for now. on 5 acres, I have 3 cleared and almost 2 in heavy sun. So it is a mystery on the rest

 

Guinea hens, get about a half dozen of those and your ticks will be gone. Chickens are second best.

 

once I get back to work, qual are on the roster... we talked about the hens, but they are loud AF.. so we will see... but yes, that is solid advice!

 

Guinea hens are loud, but they are funny. They react to many different things, all differently.
My daughter's circled a rubber tire dog chew toy like it was a snake. They make different sounds for different threats.

They also lay decent eggs. But not like chickens. The eggs will pop out anytime, any place. You have to search the yard for them. Nice dense yolks, but not much white.

 

I have done a lot of research on our fowls plans and these birds are great for a lot of reasons! with our acreage, they may make the list.. but we will see.

 

That's some really nice work there, my girls would be so jelly!
I did this around our chicken "hanger". Coyotes and bobcats (occasional bear) here.

 

Lent a couple long folding tables to our neighbor for their yard sale, they gave my wife the first dibs on everything pre-sale.
She came home with this little gem for me for the shop. I'm Livin the dream boys!


Oh, and a couple other things.

 

Would a citrus based treatment work? I feel like up north here they do organic bug and tick repellant stuff that works pretty nice but doesn't hurt anyone, just deters them. Not 100% sure how that would effect your other bugs you are trying to have around tho! Up here, anything I mow, the ticks stay out of, but walk 3 feet into the woods or my fields and you can get them pretty quickly.

 

I am not 100% sure. A lot of people use the cedar treatment stuff around here, but it is way to costly for my sqft'age. We will see how things progress with this first round.

 

Tic report: About 3-4 weeks ago they just dropped right off up here in MI

 

We've got those on the bedroom door frames on the old side of the house and on the old fireplace mantel.

 

Cedar could be what I was thinking of. Have no clue on the cost. I think we did it once 5 years ago with my business and then thought it was too expensive for what it did and never did it again. I forget the price though as it was almost a decade ago.

 

Yeah, rosettes are what they're called when in the top corners, they're pretty common pre-1950s, and if you have them in the rooms (private space), they're often more ornate in the guest areas (public space) like dining, living, foyer, etc. A lot of times, with the "bullseye" style we have and you're showing, the bullseye profile will line up with the trim, it's one way to quickly determine if the rosette is original to the trim. Example here with ours, notice how, if you stretched the rosette outwards, all the profile lines match? It's fully intentional, sometimes it's totally custom, like they make the trim, then hand cut the rosettes, and you never know if the original (often local) mill that made them is still around, at least from what I've been reading. When we're up in Maine next week, I'm going to run by a couple of nearby mills in the midcoast area and see if anyone recognizes these. I found a couple close on the trim from Princeton, but I suspect I'll be hitting salvage places to swap out the one or two non-original interior doors with era-correct matching 4-panel doors, and maybe find some of this trim or at least the rosettes.

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They call them a “Smithville” something our other around here (these people slap “Smithville” on everything ) But the other homes around here are chock full of them too.

 

They do pull some money on Etsy and fleaBay if you can get a handful. If you have the matching trim, it's bonus.