{"id":352,"date":"2013-06-22T01:08:09","date_gmt":"2013-06-22T06:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/?p=352"},"modified":"2013-06-22T01:08:09","modified_gmt":"2013-06-22T06:08:09","slug":"vacuuming-grasshoppers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/2013\/06\/22\/vacuuming-grasshoppers\/","title":{"rendered":"Vacuuming Grasshoppers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anybody that has known us for a while, is generally\u00a0aware that\u00a0there is a grasshopper horde that plagues us every\u00a0summer.\u00a0 The grasshoppers are so thick that they jump up as we walk outside, and when they\u00a0land, it sounds like rain.\u00a0 While we do have some of the non-breeding Java chickens roaming in the garden for grasshopper control, we still have plenty of grasshoppers to spare.\u00a0 And then some.\u00a0 When walking outside and getting literally covered in grasshoppers, it is almost impossible not to think of various Bible stories involving locust plagues.<\/p>\n

I was really getting frustrated with the windows on the back of the house being covered in so many grasshoppers that you could hardly see out.\u00a0 GROSS!\u00a0 While discussing the grasshopper plague, my friend Laurie up in Maine gave me an idea – get a shop vac and VACUUM THE GRASSHOPPERS and feed them to the chickens!<\/p>\n

Upon mentioning this to the hubby, he dug around in the garage and found the small portable shop vac we have.\u00a0 He\u00a0promptly proceeded to the back of the house where the hoppers were congregating.\u00a0 It took a bit to be able to get the rhythm down to sneak up on the hoppers and suck them up before they jumped away.\u00a0 But he figured it out and\u00a0was soon divesting our poor house of its obnoxious, annoying, disgusting, abhorrent\u00a0hopper horde.<\/p>\n

In the end,\u00a0an estimated hundreds\u00a0of grasshoppers were sucked up and then deposited into a chicken run.\u00a0 At first, the chickens were really freaking out and didn’t know what to do with a huge pile of sluggish (dying) grasshoppers.\u00a0 But after their initial alarm wore off – those chickens had a feast and went to bed that night with very full crops.<\/p>\n

Moral of the story:\u00a0If you find yourself with disgusting things like hordes of grasshoppers or maybe crickets, don’t underestimate the power of the lowly vacuum in your pest control plan!<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anybody that has known us for a while, is generally\u00a0aware that\u00a0there is a grasshopper horde that plagues us every\u00a0summer.\u00a0 The grasshoppers are so thick that they jump up as we walk outside, and when they\u00a0land, it sounds like rain.\u00a0 While we do have some of the non-breeding Java chickens roaming<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,32,108],"tags":[179,177,123,5,124,26,56],"class_list":["post-352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-farmlife","category-gardening","category-nature","tag-chickens","tag-farmlife","tag-grasshoppers","tag-homestead","tag-insects","tag-pests","tag-summer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/B-vac-hopperC.jpg?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2wWew-5G","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":361,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions\/361"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}