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I’m fortunate enough to have recently purchased a 38 acre property in the Midwest, a little hollow with small hills and a spring-fed creek. About 30 acres are w
by jonstewart 7y ago
I’m fortunate enough to have recently purchased a 38 acre property in the Midwest, a little hollow with small hills and a spring-fed creek. About 30 acres are woods and the remainder is open, most of it unmowed with lots of native wildflowers and grasses, part of it low and swampy and part high and dry. It was amazing spending the summer there and learning about other butterflies than Monarchs (though we had plenty of them) and birds.
With a bit more TLC over the next few years, I think we’ll be in good shape as a little oasis nestled amongst the cornfields and pastures. We fortunately don’t have wild parsnip and the garlic mustard is almost gone. Japanese barberry runs rampant in the woods, though. That will take some effort to get rid of.
I thought the mosquitoes would be terrible, but, while present, they seem to have been kept in check by the wind and the birds.
- Alex3917 7y ago> Japanese barberry runs rampant in the woods, though. That will take some effort to get rid of. Careful, it has more ticks than anything else, and the first time you get bitten you’re not going outside for 21 days.
- jonstewart 7y agoYeah, we're Lyme Disease Central. We're militant about DEET, footwear, and taking showers when we come inside. I really hope some kind of vaccine comes out soon, though.
- eric_h 7y ago> I really hope some kind of vaccine comes out soon It would be nice for the vaccine to come back - I was able to get the vaccine (and a booster a couple years later) when the vaccine was available (quite some time ago). I've also actually gotten Lyme disease (which I was able to catch early thanks to the bullseye rash and treat successfully with antibiotics, so did not progress to the bad symptoms).
- Jamwinner 7y agoDEET is no pancea, and has its own issues. Protective clothing is your first defense.
- digitalsushi 7y agoMatthias Wandel on youtube has a video of a DIY woodworking project for building a wild parsnip harvester that doesn't require touching the plant, for the purposes of manually eradicating it.
- brixon 7y agoI have not seen that video, but he puts a lot of engineering work into his projects and might be hard to replicate if you are a DIY'er. Great videos to watch.
- jonstewart 7y agoNeat! I never knew about poison parsnip until a few years ago when I developed a burn on my arm a few days after flyfishing on a small stream on the 4th of July. It was pretty small all things considered, but very painful and took weeks to heal.