A Rural Home in La Porte, Iowa

Reader Contribution by The Mother Earth News Editors
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This story is from Deborah Michel, submitted as part of our Wisdom From Our Elders collection of self-sufficient tales from yesteryear.

My grandparents kept an extensive garden at their rural home in La Porte, Iowa. I visited them summers from the early 1960s through the 1980s. They tried a few alternatives to pesticides, although it was still a new idea.

They put a large Martin birdhouse on a high post, and its many avian residents consumed many pests. They also kept numerous bird feeders all around the property, which probably reduced the mosquitoes a bit.

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