We didn’t just move to get away from the city, although that does come with its own perks. We settled down in the Tennessee hill country to begin redoing our own family culture. We both come from suburban white-collar families where children grow up learning little-to-no responsibility. Freedom meant roaming the neighborhood without care or concern. Boundaries meant returning home before sundown. Our parents really didn’t worry about us much, except for the occasional scrape or broken arm.
But here, we get a “do over”. Here, on this land, we plan to grow our own food, and educate ourselves on how to partner with the land to improve soil quality and plant health. Here we hope to contribute our efforts much like a person driving an electric car or recycling all their non-perishable waste.
While the land is beautiful, and 20 minutes outdoors transports me to another world where social media and instant technology stressers don’t exist, there’s also a cost to country living.
For us, that cost is personified in the hideous form of the tick. Yep, we have a host of ticks in our area, due to the untouched surrounding forests and large deer populations.
We’re doing what we can with guinea hens and free ranging chickens to reduce the tick population, but there’s no way even two dozen birds will catch every single tick that might latch onto my precious littles.
There’s got to be a better way to repel ticks!