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There is a small creature waiting in the long grass at the edge of your yard right now. No bigger than the head of a pin if it is young, no bigger than a sesame seed if it has grown. It sits on the tip of a blade of grass with its little front legs out, and it waits for a warm body to walk past so it can grab on. Once it is on you, it climbs — up the sock, up the calf, to the soft skin behind the knee. There it bites, and there it stays, drinking, for days at a time, and what it leaves behind in your blood can change your life.
That is a tick. And the children we used to send running through the grass without a thought — we cannot send them anymore the way we used to. Lyme disease cases have tripled in the last fifteen years. There is a newer one called alpha-gal syndrome that the lone star tick carries — and one bite can leave a person allergic to all red meat and dairy for the rest of their life. Four hundred and fifty thousand cases are suspected in this country already. That is not fear talking. That is the plain truth of what is in the grass.
In this video I walk you through four re
https://eliasyoder.com
There is a small creature waiting in the long grass at the edge of your yard right now. No bigger than the head of a pin if it is young, no bigger than a sesame seed if it has grown. It sits on the tip of a blade of grass with its little front legs out, and it waits for a warm body to walk past so it can grab on. Once it is on you, it climbs — up the sock, up the calf, to the soft skin behind the knee. There it bites, and there it stays, drinking, for days at a time, and what it leaves behind in your blood can change your life.
That is a tick. And the children we used to send running through the grass without a thought — we cannot send them anymore the way we used to. Lyme disease cases have tripled in the last fifteen years. There is a newer one called alpha-gal syndrome that the lone star tick carries — and one bite can leave a person allergic to all red meat and dairy for the rest of their life. Four hundred and fifty thousand cases are suspected in this country already. That is not fear talking. That is the plain truth of what is in the grass.
In this video I walk you through four re
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00There is a small creature waiting in the long grass at the edge of your yard right now.
00:05It is no bigger than the head of a pin if it is a young one, no bigger than a
00:09sesame
00:10seed if it has grown.
00:12It does not move much, it just sits at the tip of a blade of grass with its little front
00:17legs out and it waits.
00:20Waits for a warm body to walk past so it can grab on.
00:24Once it is on you, it climbs, up the sock, up the calf, up to the back of the knee
00:30or
00:30the inside of the thigh or the soft place behind the ear where the skin is thin.
00:36There it bites and there it stays, drinking for days at a time and what it leaves behind
00:42in your blood can change your life.
00:45That is a tick.
00:47And the children we used to send running through the grass without a thought, we cannot send
00:52them anymore the way we used to.
00:55Lyme disease is now in every state in this country.
00:58The cases reported to the doctors have tripled in the last 15 years and the real number is
01:05many times higher because most cases never get reported.
01:09There is a new one I want you to know about called Alpha-Gal Syndrome that the Lone Star
01:15Tick carries, and one bite can leave a person allergic to all red meat and dairy for the
01:22rest of their life.
01:24Four hundred and fifty thousand cases are suspected in this country already.
01:29That is not fear talking.
01:31That is the plain truth of what is in the grass.
01:35My name is Elias Yoder.
01:37I am Amish and I farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
01:41My grandchildren run through this same farm and these same woods I ran through as a boy,
01:48and the ticks are worse now than they ever were in my lifetime.
01:52Today I am going to walk you through four things you can do this week, none of them costly,
01:59all of them safe enough that I use them on my own ground around my own family, that will
02:05drive the ticks out of your yard and keep them off your skin.
02:09Quick word before we go further.
02:12I have written a book that gathers all of these little money-saving methods my family
02:17uses, the things that have kept our household costs low for two generations into one place.
02:24It is at EliasYoder.com.
02:27I will not bring it up again in the video.
02:30If you want it, it is there.
02:32I will be honest with you the whole way, the way I always am, including telling you what
02:38the chemicals folks reach for first will do, and which ones you must never use if you have
02:45a cat in your household.
02:47Stay with me.
02:48By the end, you will have a real plan, and you will have it for less than you spend on
02:54lunch.
02:55Let me first tell you a thing that surprised even me when I learned it, because once you
03:00know it, you understand the whole game.
03:02Ticks do not live in your lawn.
03:06Not really.
03:07The neat, trimmed grass of your yard is not where they wait.
03:11They live in leaf litter, the loose, damp, decomposing leaves under bushes and along fence lines.
03:19They live in shaded edges where the woods meet the yard, in tall, weedy patches behind the
03:26woodpile, in the unmown strip along the back fence.
03:30The boundary between your yard and the wild is where they sit and wait.
03:36Mowing your lawn does almost nothing for ticks.
03:40You can mow it to a green carpet, and they are still sitting 12 feet away in the leaves
03:46under your forsythia bush, ready to ride a passing dog or a passing child right into
03:52the middle of your tidy lawn.
03:54The trick is to treat the edges, not the middle.
03:58Most folks have this backwards.
04:00So once you know where they live, you know where to fight them.
04:05And the weapon that works honestly, the one I am about to walk you through, is one of the
04:10oldest tools the old farmers had.
04:13Cedar.
04:14You know what cedar smells like.
04:17You have smelled an old cedar chest, or a cedar closet, or a cedar fence post that has
04:23been in the ground 20 years and still has not rotted.
04:27The reason cedar wood lasts where other wood does not is the same reason it kills ticks.
04:34The wood itself is full of natural compounds.
04:37They have names like thujone and placatic acid that small creatures cannot tolerate.
04:44Insects and ticks crawl across cedar oil and those compounds disrupt their breathing through the
04:50tiny holes in the sides of their bodies.
04:52They dry up.
04:54They die.
04:54They die.
04:55This is why a cedar chest has kept moths out of wool blankets for hundreds of years.
05:01The moths cannot live in cedar's air.
05:04And the same is true for ticks.
05:06Now, I want to be honest about something before I sell this any harder, because I have read
05:11the scientific papers and I will tell you the plain truth.
05:15In a laboratory, cedar oil kills and repels ticks at rates of 80 to 90 percent.
05:22Those are real, verified numbers.
05:24In a real backyard, the numbers are more modest.
05:27The field studies done by the disease researchers show cedar oil knocking down only 5 to 25 percent
05:34of ticks in tests and giving you maybe a couple of weeks of partial suppression.
05:39So I will not tell you cedar oil clears every tick out of your woods.
05:43It does not.
05:44What it does do is drive them away from the spots you treat, kill the ones that come into
05:50direct contact with it, and, most importantly for a household with children or pets, it is
05:56far, far safer than the chemical sprays.
05:59That second part is where the real value lies, and I will say more on it.
06:04Cedar oil is one tool.
06:06The four-method approach I am about to show you is what makes it work in practice, because
06:12each method covers a weakness of the others.
06:15Together, they drive ticks out of the places you actually live, work, and walk.
06:20The first method is the cedar oil spray you can buy, ready to use.
06:25There is a brand called Wonderside, and another called Cedarside, and a few others.
06:31All of them are cedar oil mixed with a carrier oil in a spray bottle.
06:35You take it out into the yard, you spray the perimeter, the fence line, the edge of the
06:40woods, the base of the deck, under the shrubs along the property edge, and you reapply every
06:46two to four weeks during tick season.
06:48A bottle runs about $25 to $30 at any hardware store or tractor supply or online.
06:55It covers a few thousand square feet.
06:58This is the convenience version.
06:59Pay the $30, point and spray.
07:02No mixing.
07:03No fuss.
07:04If you have the money and you would rather not bother mixing your own, this works honestly.
07:09Read the back of the bottle.
07:11The only ingredient that matters is cedar wood oil.
07:14Everything else is filler.
07:16But here is the thing.
07:17The cedar oil in that bottle is the active ingredient.
07:21And cedar oil itself, the pure essential oil, you can buy for a fraction of the price and
07:27mix the same spray yourself in three minutes.
07:29Which brings me to the second method.
07:31The second method is the $4 homemade spray, which uses the same active ingredient.
07:37You can buy a four ounce bottle of pure cedar wood essential oil, the good kind, the western
07:43red cedar kind, for about $10 or $12 online or at a health food store.
07:48That four ounce bottle will make you 16 batches of tick spray.
07:52Each batch costs you about $3 or $4 when you count the witch hazel.
07:57The recipe is simple, and I will tell it slow.
07:59One teaspoon of pure cedar wood essential oil.
08:03One cup of distilled water, not tap, distilled, because the minerals in tap water keep the
08:09oil from mixing right.
08:11One tablespoon of witch hazel, which you can buy at any drug store for a few dollars, or
08:16you can use plain vodka if you have it.
08:18The witch hazel or the vodka is what they call an emulsifier.
08:22It is the trick that keeps the oil and water mixed together instead of separating in the
08:27bottle.
08:28Without it, the oil floats to the top and you spray nothing but water.
08:32You shake it well before each use.
08:34You pour it into any plain spray bottle.
08:37You spray the same places the store bought version is for.
08:40The edge of the woods, the fence line, around the base of the deck, the shrubby corner where
08:46the kids play.
08:47You can spray it on your shoes and the cuffs of your pants before you walk into the high
08:51grass.
08:51You can mist it lightly around the dog's outdoor space, not directly on the dog, and
08:57I will say much more about that in a moment.
09:00A few honest words on storing it.
09:03Keep the bottle in a cool, dark cupboard.
09:06Sunlight breaks down the cedar oil and weakens it.
09:10Reapply every two weeks during the worst of tick season and after a heavy rain.
09:15Rain washes it off.
09:17Same as the store bought.
09:18That is your $3 batch.
09:21The same active ingredient as the $30 bottle.
09:2510 times the value for the same chemistry.
09:28Now I need to stop and tell you the safety word because this is where most folks make the
09:33mistake that hurts somebody they love and I will not let you make it.
09:37If you have a cat in your household, you must be careful with cedar oil and you must be even
09:43more careful with the chemical tick sprays.
09:48You must be careful with cedar oil.
09:49You must be careful with cedar oil.
09:49The cat's liver does not have the enzyme that breaks down essential oils the way our
09:55livers do, the way a dog's liver does.
09:58Cedar oil applied directly to a cat or in a space where a cat is heavily exposed can build
10:04up in their body and make them sick, vomiting, weakness, in serious cases, worse.
10:10So never spray cedar oil directly on a cat.
10:15Never apply it to a cat's bedding or where the cat sleeps.
10:19And do not spray the inside of your house with it if you have a cat.
10:23For the yard, the outdoor perimeter use we are talking about is generally fine for cats
10:29who pass through occasionally because they are not heavily exposed and the oil dissipates
10:34outdoors.
10:35But I would not soak the area where they nap.
10:39Now here is the part nobody tells you.
10:42The chemical tick sprays, the ones with a chemical called permethrin, are far more dangerous
10:48to cats than cedar oil is.
10:50This is not a small thing.
10:53Permethrin is what is in most of the popular yard sprays and many of the dog tick collars.
10:59Cats cannot break it down at all.
11:01If a cat walks across a lawn that has been freshly sprayed with permethrin and then licks
11:07its paws, which is the first thing a cat does, they can have seizures within hours.
11:13There are cats sent to the emergency animal hospital every spring from this.
11:18The dog owner does what the label says, brings the dog inside for the recommended time, and
11:24never thinks about the cat sharing the same grass.
11:28So the honest comparison is, cedar oil, used with scents, is gentler on cats than the chemical sprays
11:35by a long way.
11:37Far gentler.
11:38But essential oils are still a real chemical and they deserve respect.
11:43Treat the spray bottle like you would treat any cleaning product, out of reach of children,
11:49never sprayed on skin without dilution, never applied directly to a cat.
11:55Used with that ordinary sense, it is a far safer choice than what the lawn care companies
12:00will sell you.
12:01That is the safety word.
12:04Mind it.
12:05Before we go on to the third method, let me pause for a moment.
12:09If your house is costing more than it should, you do not have to figure it out alone.
12:14Join our Amish home savings system and community.
12:18Esther and I answer questions inside and members share what is working in their own homes.
12:24The link is in the description.
12:26Now, the third method, which is the one that does the most lasting good of all of them.
12:32The third method is the cedar chip barrier, and this is the one that pays off for years.
12:37Spray you have to reapply every two weeks.
12:41A cedar chip barrier you lay once and it works for two to three years.
12:46Here is the move.
12:47You buy real western red cedar chips, not the cheap dyed mulch from the big box store,
12:53which is colored pine and does almost nothing, but actual cedar wood chips, sold by weight at any
13:00landscape supply yard.
13:01They run forty to sixty dollars for a cubic yard.
13:05You lay them in a band three feet wide and about three inches deep along every edge where your yard
13:12meets the woods, the fence line, or the unmowed area.
13:16Every tick crawling out of those leaves and that brush to reach your yard has to cross that band first.
13:22And the cedar in the chips is doing its quiet, slow work the whole time, every hour of every day,
13:29killing the ones that try and turning the rest back.
13:33The research on this is the most encouraging of all of it.
13:38Studies done at agricultural experiment stations have shown cedar mulch barriers reducing tick numbers
13:44in the protected zone by a great deal. Some studies show better than eighty percent inside the band,
13:51others show more modest numbers, but every honest study shows real protection.
13:57And the great thing about it is that the chips do not need spraying, do not need mixing,
14:03do not need any attention. You lay them and the cedar does the work for two or three years,
14:09slowly weathering, slowly releasing its oils until you top them up with a fresh layer.
14:16And here is the cleverest move of all for the patient man.
14:20Call your local tree service. When the tree trimming crews work, they end up with truckloads of wood chips.
14:28Cedar tree chips, when they take down a cedar tree, are a problem for them to get rid of.
14:33They have to pay the landfill to take them. A great many of those crews will deliver
14:38a whole truckload to your driveway for free if you catch them on the right job day.
14:44Some folks have built their entire perimeter for the cost of a six-pack of soda handed to the crew
14:50on a hot afternoon. Ask. Be friendly. The worst they can say is they have nothing on hand today.
14:58For a quarter-acre property, you are looking at perhaps $150 in chips bought outright,
15:05or free if you ask around, for a barrier that costs nothing to maintain and works for years.
15:13That is the forever fix. That is the one I would do first if I had to choose only one.
15:21The fourth method is the cleverest of all, costs three cents, and works every single time.
15:28I learned this one from a hunter in our community, and the foresters and the field researchers all do
15:35it. You will smile when I tell you. You take an ordinary roll of duct tape, the wide gray kind,
15:43the kind in every man's tool drawer in this country. And before you walk into tall grass or the woods,
15:49you wrap a band of it around the top of each sock with the sticky side out. That is it.
15:56That is the
15:57whole trick. Here is why it works. Ticks climb. They do not fall from the trees, despite what folks say.
16:06They climb up from the ground, up the shoe, up the sock, up the leg, looking for warm skin.
16:14Almost every tick bite in this country happens between the ankle and the waist, because that is
16:20the climbing zone. So when a tick grabs onto your boot and starts up your leg, the very first thing
16:27it crosses is that sticky band of duct tape at the top of your sock. It gets stuck. It does
16:33not climb
16:34further. It does not reach skin. There is no chemistry for it to work around. It is simply glued in
16:42place.
16:43When you come back to the house, you peel the tape off, fold its sticky side onto itself, and throw
16:49it
16:49away. Ticks and all. You do not even have to look. The tape has them. Three cents an ankle. Works
16:57every
16:58time. No chemicals on your skin at all. This is the one I have my grandchildren do before they run
17:05into the
17:05back pasture. They think it is funny. It is also the cheapest, most reliable personal protection I know of.
17:13Now I want to take a moment because this is the part that matters. Look at what we have just
17:19walked
17:19through. Four methods. Together they cost you almost nothing. A few dollars for a homemade spray
17:26batch. A hundred and fifty dollars or free for a once every three years cedar barrier. Three cents an
17:33ankle for the duct tape. And together they cover every part of the tick problem. The perimeter,
17:39the personal protection, the long-term landscaping, and the convenience when you need it.
17:45Now compare that to the alternative. The professional tick and mosquito treatment company that knocks on
17:52your door in April will charge you four to seven hundred dollars for a season, sometimes more. Their
17:58main ingredient is permethrin, the chemical that puts cats in the emergency room. They will come every
18:04three weeks and spray your whole lawn. They will tell you to keep the dog inside for 24 hours and
18:11they
18:11will never once mention the cat. There is a great deal of money in selling families a monthly tick
18:17treatment contract. There is no money in telling a man to buy a ten dollar bottle of cedar oil that
18:24will last him a
18:24season, lay down a band of free cedar chips, and wrap duct tape around his socks. So nobody runs a
18:32commercial for any of it and a whole nation thinks the only answer to ticks is the white truck and
18:38the
18:38seven hundred dollar contract. It is not. It never has been.
18:44The old folks dealt with ticks the same way they dealt with every other pest, by knowing where they
18:49lived, by using what worked, and by not paying for what they did not need. So here is what I
18:56want you
18:56to do. This week, do these three small things in order. First, buy a small bottle of cedarwood essential
19:05oil online, $12. Mix one batch of the spray using the recipe I gave you, store it in a cool
19:13dark
19:13cupboard, and walk the edges of your yard with it. Spray the fence line, spray the strip where your lawn
19:20meets the wild, spray the shaded corners where the leaves pile up. If you have a cat, mind the warnings
19:27I
19:27gave you. Second, look at your property and pick the spot where the woods or the brush comes closest
19:35to where your family walks. Order, or ask a tree service for, enough cedar chips to lay down a three
19:42foot band along that edge, three inches deep, once. That barrier will be working for you two and three
19:50years from now. Third, buy a roll of duct tape if you do not already have one. Keep it by
19:58the back door.
19:59Before anyone in your family walks into tall grass or the woods this season, wrap a band around the top
20:06of each sock, sticky side out. $4 in your hand for the spray batch, $150 or free for the long
20:15-term barrier,
20:15$0.03 an ankle for the personal protection. That is your full tick plan and it is more than most
20:24homeowners
20:24with a $400 contract are getting. Tell me in the comments below, where do the ticks get bad on your
20:32property? The fence line? The woods edge? The dog yard? The kids play area? And if you live in a
20:40part of the
20:40country where ticks are at their worst, the northeast, the upper midwest, parts of the south, tell us how
20:47bad it has gotten this year, because the folks just starting to deal with ticks should hear from the
20:53folks already in the worst of it. I read every single one. Next time, since we have been speaking of
21:00how to
21:01keep the small creatures out of where the family lives, I am going to show you the old way my
21:06people
21:06keep mice and rats out of the granary and the home, the simple traps, the doorway tricks, and the small
21:13habits that mean you never have a mouse problem in the first place. It is the natural next step after
21:20today. Until then, mind the edges, lay the chips, and remember that the cheapest line of defense against
21:28the smallest enemy is almost always the oldest one.
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