I've seen a lot of posts on Facebook about this being a bad year for ticks. Ticks are no fun. In addition to being disease-carrying creatures, they tend to gross people out. Honestly, I'm immune to their ick factor, having pulled hundreds out of my family. But, I do give ticks a great deal of thought, and I thought I'd share with you our strategy for preventing tick bites on our homestead. When we purchased our land it had been in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) for years. CRP land is taken out of agricultural production, and while certain management practices are allowed, like planting hardwoods, or mowing, it is essentially fallow. In our case, the non-forested areas grew up as … [Read more...]