You can crash your yard's mosquito population without spraying a single chemical with a Mosquito Bucket of Doom.

Fill a 5-gallon bucket about two-thirds with water. Drop in a handful of grass clippings, leaves, or hay. Let it sit for a day, then drop in a Bti dunk (also called Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis, sold at any hardware store as "mosquito dunks," about $10 for six).

Mosquitoes are powerfully attracted to fermenting water and will lay their eggs in your bucket. Bti is a naturally occurring soil bacterium that produces a toxin that kills mosquito, blackfly, and fungus gnat larvae only.

This method doesn't harm bees, butterflies, fireflies, fish, frogs, birds, pets, or people. BTI dunks are EPA-approved for organic use and safe in animal water troughs and birdbaths.

The bucket becomes a mosquito magnet and a dead end. Compare that to fogging the entire yard with pyrethroids, which kills every insect in it, including the predators that eat mosquitoes.

Doug Tallamy's Homegrown National Park has been running the "Mosquito Bucket Challenge" since 2021. The more buckets in a neighborhood, the bigger the dent. One bucket per yard is a great start.

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Here he is welding perlins on his leanto shade structure to give shade to the side of that container.

I was bushhogging and look what I saw in a hollow tree!

We made more progress recently on the new fencing. After getting the 18" corner posts set previously, my best friend drove 2 hours to help me put in the Tposts for the outside perimeter fence. Hard to believe but that was an all day event. We used the tractor to push in those we could, but the ground is still really hard and so we had to put in about a third with a Tpost driver. When we tried to push the posts in with the tractor, the ground was so hard and dry that the posts would bend. Im here to tell you that this motorized tpost driver is worth every penny!!! Its dlower than the tractor but works when tge tractor method won't. We were also able to put in several 14" gates that allow me to get the cows in and out at set entry points with a physical barrier. We've found that when cows learn that certain places are the standard entry and exit points, they tend to view them more as the only ways out. Next is to pull the wire for the perimeter and for the interior paddocks. This pasture will have 9 paddocks.