Duncan sent me this plan for a nearly free, homemade fly trap that he made out of a plastic soda bottle.  The top of the bottle turns into a slippery funnel down which the insects slide into the trap zone.  Although a few might find their way back out the small opening, it looks like in practice most insects aren't that smart.

Duncan's goal was to keep down flies that sprang up around his chickens, but I can envision using the same setup as a homemade Japanese beetle trap and others on the internet use it to catch stinkbugs.  Since chickens are at the top of my mind, I'm tempted to make a trap like this with a solar LED light at the bottom to snag nocturnal insects to feed the chickens.  (The only thing holding me back is the lack of plastic soda bottles in our trailer at the moment!)

For more tantilizing inventions, read about Duncan's wheel lift for a chicken tractor and his heated PVC pipe chicken waterer on our chicken blog.  You can also see his beautiful, homemade musical instruments on his website.

Want more in-depth information? Browse through our books.

Or explore more posts by date or by subject.

About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.

Powered by Branchable Wiki Hosting.