Moving to Woodlands in 2017. Personal story. Part 5

Me & my husband were longing for countryside life, so, here we are now – after 10 years in city moved to woodlands in 2017, and not leaving it. We are staying here. This is our honest „moving to countryside” story & my thoughts from the house, garden and woodlands.

Living with nature in natural environment means a bit more than just enjoying the enormous beauty around. It also means that nature will come in your life in different forms not always in a pleasant way. I’ve told you previously about dealing with mice, you can find that story here: Part 4: Unregistered Household Inhabitants. (opens in new window)

Other parts of the story:

Part 1 here: Planning, Motivation & Obstacles around(opens in new window)

Part 2 here: Worries for the 2 Months Alone (opens in new window)

Part 3 here: The main principles of our countryside life. Or life in general, no matter where. (opens in new window)

Living with blood-suckers

Those small creatures and critters are a big deal. Honestly, a big deal.

• Mosquitoes are annoying and impossible to control – they take care of ruining late nights around the fireplace.
• Fleas travel with animals, hide in the grass and are hard to eliminate if they’ve moved into house. Terrible blood-sucking creatures.
• Ticks are carriers of lyme disease and  encephalitis, that can even kill.

Bee stings and ant bites? No, they don’t disturb me that much. I’m disturbed by ants coming indoors and trying to eat my sweets, but even more I’m disturbed by the previously mentioned ones – all of them craving to feed on human blood.

And then there are also our efforts to keep our household methods as nature-friendly as possible. No, it’s not easy. Poisoning one creature might lead to poisoning other beneficial creatures that take care of our wellness without us even knowing it, and bringing toxics in the house just doesn’t excite me. Spraying the house and beds with poison that kills those insects harming health of everyone in the house isn’t what I’m looking for. So, we are on the figt for some time with the main goal of keeping specific insects out of specific zones indoors and outdoors.

Fleas

Those blood-suckers lived here before us and they seem to enjoy our blood, and we haven’t stumbled upon a miracle to ban them from our living space. We have tried cleaning rooms with turpentine like in the old days. Not much of success with that. We have tried putting different herbs in beds (fresh and dried) that are supposed to repel fleas, but not very successful eaither. First habnd helpers are flea repellent straps for cat and dog. Definitely increases their own wellbeing and doesn’t allow fleas to hitchike on them into the house. We can’t really fight them outdoors, they live in grass, so, at least around the house we are keeping the grass short. The method that helps indoors is cleaning beds and sofas with baking sod (scatter on beds, leave for at least a few hours, if possible, overnight, and then vacuum clean, I usally steam clean after that as well). This gives peace for a while. So, we are repeating this procedure regularly and it helps.

 Mosquitoes

That's my "mosquito cape"!

Mosquitoes are inevitable here. We live between the river and woods, and these flying creatures are annoying. Truly annoying. Since childhood kids here know that in order to stay protected they have to spend a lot of time on swings on Easter – that’s a folk wisdom, that unfortunately isn’t very effective against mosquitoes and mosquito bites. There are different sprays that we sometimes use, depending on the amounts of mosquitoes trying to suck our blood. I have a summer cape that I sometimes sprinkle with essential oils like eucalyptus, lemongrass, peppermint, lavender, cloves. The cape (from a thick yet light fabric) itself actually is pretty useful protection against mosquitoes.

I tried cloves pinched into lemon slices and palced them around fireplace for a night with frieds. We had been eaten a lot by the mosquitoes before that night,  but that one night on Midsummer we really weren’t disturbed! The problem is that I’m not sure my cloves into lemons were the thing that helped. Because starting from the next day mosquito wave was gone and there were noticeably less of them everywhere.

For the next year I’m planning to plant a lot more lemon balm in resting spots as they are supposed to repel mosquitoes. The issue here is that they also attract other insects. It’s nice to party and rest with butterflies, but not very nice with vasps... i’m still thinking.

Another thing – I need a little pond for frogs as they eat mosquitoes. We are also trying to befriend birds by placing close to home and garden birdfeeders with food, and in spring we are planning to put at least a few birdhouses around to invite birds staying with us. They also feed on mosquitoes and other insects.

If you have a proven homemade mosquito repellent recipe, please she in the comments! I’m really eager to find what works!

Ticks

There is vaccine available for tick encephalitis, but ticks unfortunately can be also carriers of lyme disease that doesn’t have a treatment so far and there is no vaccine against that as well. We can’t keep ticks out of woodlands and we can’t keep ourselves out of woodlands as we have chosen to live here. So, we have to make ourselves invisible, unattractive and unavailable to ticks. I’m on a mission to finding a natural  solution for repelling ticks and I don’t have a miracle potion yet.

Our natural solution here is proper clothing for going into forest. We have no cute pictures of ourselves half-naked in forest – that would be a clear invitation for forest insects, including ticks to feed on us.

Talking about ticks, here is an article FYI: Lyme disease is set to explode and we still don’t have a vaccine 

I mean, I can surf the internet looking for solutions, but most of the solutions for these trivial issues posted online don’t help much. They are obviously posted online for the sake of posting and getting views for the page, not for the sake of helping. I can experiement until I find what works, but sometimes I just need a break with something that REALLY WORKS. Of course, life itself isn’t harmless and we all will die sooner or later,  but I kind of wish to stay strong and protect my loved ones. For that reason: always remove all your clothes and check yourself carefully after returning from woods to make sure none of them is trying to find a spot for sucking your blood. We still are looking for a strong, natural tick repellent, if there is any.

That’s the reality, and blood suckers aren’t the only critters to intervene with our daily lives.  There are ants stealing our sweets and vasps drowning in our sweet drinks. There are flies, that don’t allow leaving any food on table uncovered. Spiders are friends in helping to deal with flies. There is no spider that has ever done anything bad to me (and we don’t have poisonous ones here), and they eat flies. We let them feast. And then there is another creature that now gives me chills: earwig. The next blog post (a short one!) will be my earwig story. And thanks to the changes of season, now in winter we can  have a rest from almost all of them. In some fields of well-being winter colds come with a relief! 

I could shine the light on everything what is great and amazing in coutryside (and I am and will be doing that!) and pretend that the unpleasant part doesn’t exist. It exists and it is faced here not just now and then, but every day. And it’s fun as well, as it makes you to become a researcher of things you never cared about and a kitchen alchemist mixing things you’ve never mixed together before. It doesn’t allow you to sit, but always pushes for seeking solutions.  

Find the previous posts of "Moving to Woodlands" here: 

Part 1: Planning, Motivation & Obstacles around(opens in new window)

Part 2: Worries for the 2 Months Alone (opens in new window)

Part 3: The main principles of our countryside life. Or life in general, no matter where. (opens in new window)

Part 4: Unregistered Household Inhabitants. (opens in new window)

You are welcome to leave your questions, ideas & worries in the comments, as I'm curious about what you have experienced and what solutions you have found! 

Moving to Woodland in 2017. Personal Story. Part 4

Unregistered Household Inhabitants.

The Dog that tried his best
helping to deal with mice.

For those who are tired from the endless run in the city, moving to countryside might sound like the most romantic idea in the world – peace and silence, no crowds, just nature – and that’s how it is. It’s beautiful. But living with nature in natural environment means a bit more than just enjoying the beauty of nature and planting the garden. It also means that nature will come in your life in different forms not always in a pleasant way. 

Part 1 here: Planning, Motivation & Obstacles around (opens in new window)
Part 2 here: Worries for the 2 Months Alone (opens in new window)

Part 3 here: The main principles of our countryside life. Or life in general, no matter where. (opens in new window)

Life happens outdoors and indoors with or without you willing it to happen. And endless love for nature won’t save you.  Not the most pleasant part of countryside life, especially if you are in an old house that requires looots of renovations that will last for years. That’s our case and we are dealing with it. So, this time about sharing living space with unpleasant household inhabitants. Identifying the first two „enemies” who love living with people was easy:  mice & fleas. So, first things first:

How to get rid of mice living in countryside?

Oh  boy, this was an adventure, and the short answer is you can’t get rid of them entirely. They will always be somewhere around, and that’s definitely not the worst thing that might happen. In natural environment they are food for big birds like eagles and owls, for bigger reptiles, and mammals like cats, foxes and others. Outdoors they will eat from your garden, roots and vegetables make great snacks for them, but that’s not the biggest issue. The biggest issue for us was getting them out of our home indoors. First months of living here I heard them dancing everywhere, especially at night and I have no doubt they were running over me while I  was asleep. I don’t want even imagine that. 

Our old dog was annoyed by the mice as much as we were. He was trying to catch mice, but his size and lack of agility didn't allow him to be a good helper with this. So, we had to go to the war. Against mice.

Block their ways

Firstly, you have to block their entrances into the house. In an old  building there might be more of mice  ways and tunnels than you could expect. Every crack in a wall or floor is their opportunity to get into warmth and to your food kept indoors. If the house is renovated before you move in, great! If not, seek for strong materials to fill those cracks and holes with until you can get to proper renovations. But, if you keep doors and/or windows open in summer (as we do) they will get in unnoticed.

Don’t leave food available for snacking

The second thing, do your best to store your food in containers that mice can’t get through. Leaving cookies overnight on a kitchen (or any other) table is a huge NO – they will feast on them. We also lived through a period where we were washing dishes not just after meals but also before – because the mice shit all around showed that they might love playing on our dishes as well.

The mythical powers of aluminum foil

I was digging internet for natural methods of getting rid of them – those little, cute looking fellas were really disturbing. One of those short-term methods I found online as great helpers where covering surfaces with aluminum foil. Of course, I  had to try, especially because internet told me it works. And it did help. For 2 days. Then the mice learnt that aluminum foil doesn’t do anything bad to them and returned to their old trails without caring for shine and noise aluminum foil makes. They didn’t eat their ways to food covered  with foil in our home, but I’ve heard it’s not a big deal for mice in other households – they just eat their way through aluminum foil. So, it’s a solution for a day.

Peppermint & Cloves

This comes from the depths of internet as well:  peppermint and clove aroma is way too strong for mice and they don’t go where these aromas rule. So, I brewed a strong infusion of peppermint herb and cloves to wash floors with. I generously added peppermint & clove essential oils to the water. The aroma was so strong it was too strong even for myself. It had to work.

That  was the night the mice moved from the floor to walls. And ate a few plants I had started indoors to plant outside later.

I heard them running on walls and from times to times falling down and that was worse than hearing them moving around on the floor.

I also scattered cloves around the places I’ve observed as their highways. Did that help? I don’t know. I was mixing different methods  on early spring because the presence of mice inside the house was pretty disturbing.

Heroes of this War

We won the war with mice through friendship with cats. We befriended an outdoor cat that already lived outside around our house. We really wanted to get him to live indoors with us, but he is such a wild creature that he panics every time he is indoor and the door is closed. Whole summer we were trying to the get that cat indoors. He entered only when he was sure the door won’t close, and those rare days when he came indoors, he was extremely fast bringing out of the house freshly caught mice. That helped. A little bit. This cat didn’t necessarily need our indoor mice as he had a wide world for hunting outdoors.

In  October we spotted another cat visiting our household and she moved indoors to live with us. Our new cat turned out to be the greates huntress ever. For the first few days she was catching mice and bringing them to us to show what she has caught for us. And, to be honest, we were tired enough from the war with mice, that we celebrated every victory our cat brought us. Since we live with one cat outdoors and one indoors, we haven’t heard from mice anymore.  We won the war with mice through friendship with cats. I don’t know any better method. The cat turned out to be the greatest weapon.

And as the cat doesn't care for cookies and mice are scared to from the cat we actually can leave a dish of cookies on a table and it will stay untouched :D 

Our heroic huntress

The mice lived around here in countryside and they will always live here, but I want to keep them outdoors. So, I sometimes leave veggies in the fields not too close to the house where they can easily find and feast on them.

Encounters with some especially unpleasant hitchhikers from insect realm are on the way in the next post of this „Moving to Woodland in 2017” series.

Part 1 here: Planning, Motivation & Obstacles around (opens in new window)
Part 2 here: Worries for the 2 Months Alone (opens in new window)

Part 3 here: The main principles of our countryside life. Or life in general, no matter where. (opens in new window)

You are welcome to leave your questions, ideas & worries in the comments, and I will try to answer them in the next posts.