Tips For Harvesting Wildlife
An excerpt from chapter 11...
'Useful Plants'
: page 128
Yarrow-Insect Repellent
Our daughter, Kathleen Jenson of Waterville, says she always picks a bouquet of yarrow in summer to hang down from the rafter in the garage to keep flies out.
"You can't mistake the white clusters of tiny blooms on two-foot stems," she told some of our grandchildren getting ready to fish from the boathouse. "We also hang a bouquet of yarrow under the canopy in our porch because yarrow is a natural insect repellent. A friend up in Eau Claire told me that yarrow was used as an insect repellent by early immigrants before the advent of commercial repellents."
Then Kathleen walked out into the field near our house on Sugar River and picked a bouquet of yarrow to hang in the boathouse. It really worked. No flies pestered the youngsters as they fished for bullheads. She also rubbed some crushed yarrow on my arms to test it against mosquitoes, and it worked.
Next I took our grandson
for a hike around the marsh to catch some grasshoppers for bait, and we tested the yarrow on deerflies which pestered us earlier that day. We rubbed more of the blooms and leaves on our arms and on the hair on our heads as we walked. The aggressive deerflies buzzed around and hovered over our heads, but they never attacked us.
In an emergency a sprig of yarrow tucked in the hair with a bobby pin will repel insects while hiking or fishing where insect pests are abundant.
Learn to identify yarrow in case you may need it sometime. It's plentiful all summer, and even considered a weed by many people.
It's wise to cut the stems off instead of pulling the plant with roots so it sprouts again for future use.
A lady asked if there is a yellow yarrow. She says that her neighbor has some plants with yellow blooms that look like wild yarrow and wants to know if the yellow variety also repels insects.
Native wild yarrow (achilla millefolium) has white, pink or lavender blooms. The cultivated hybrid varieties may have red, yellow or whitish blooms. All these herbs repel insects. They all have pale-green, fern-like leaves.
- George S. Bachay
1986
Excerpt taken from
George S. Bachay's
'Tips For Harvesting Wildlife : A Unique Collection'
So for those times when you just don't wanna keep layering you and your loved ones with more untested synthetic chemicals that most likely have been completely ignored by the FDA, these days of ignorance must stop. Remember friends, 'organic' is a PRODUCT. It is not a quick stand-in for NATURAL. There are too many methods to distract your common sense these days. Too many 'get whatever quick and more' schemes that blind our senses of common sense. Here's something we should all get and quick... GET SMART! Preventive medicine is the ONLY medicine.
Just one of 'too many to count' examples of how our mentor, our grandfather, George S. Bachay instructed us all to be creatively inspired at all times, to respect wildlife by not wasting ANY part of the whole. You should've seen his skull and preserved specimen collection. Boss. Thanks G-Pa. Love 'n miss you.
A vast melting pot o' creative mania is right in front of you at all times. Engage it. Grip it. Harness it.
Stay creative. Fight for it if you have to.