I remember one couple that I met when I used to be a realtor in Northern California in the late 1990s. They were typical old-timers, I guess - just good at minding their own business but the warmest pair that you could ever meet. Their names were Michael and Kathleen Bishop. They had originally come from Ireland but had made a home and a farm in the countryside for about 35 years and they now had to sell up and move into something smaller and with less land to look after. I used to get on particularly well with Michael. He was as straight up a guy as you could find and he would love to sit and talk with me for as long as I had to spare. I never did have more than about 15 minutes with him at any given time before I had to make the long journey back to the office. We shared a lot of philosophical points in common. He was firmly of the view, for example, that the majority of cancers that were coming about these days were down to the fact that less and less mothers were breast-feeding their children and were instead getting some complicated formula made from some animal’s milk and feeding to generation after generation of people. I remember his wife saying that that was nonsense but to me he made perfect sense. She was more of the chemical way of doing things but her attitude was about to change. The big problem in selling their property, as I explained to them, was that they had a problem with flies. There was a major fly infestation that was due, in part, to the fact that there was a public dump site about two miles away. The rest of it was down to the fact that they simply had a farm and a farm tends to have manure and other rotting material about the place, which tends to attract flies. Any time you did sit down to talk to them, there would be green flies and blue green fly swarms attacking and annoying you all the while. I told them that the best solution was to go for organic pest control. Their first reaction was what the hell was that. So I explained to them the whole story of how this was first used in mosquito control, how it was perfectly safe way for flies getting rid of them, how the homemade traps were often the best mosquito repellent as well as excellent fly repellent, how to get rid of flies in the house as well as the barn and generally how effective it all was. We sold the fly-free house and farm the next month.



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