hey everybody we're gonna talk to you today about some simple steps you can take to repel gnats they're annoying you love to be outside in the spring summer and follow just like us but sometimes the nets will be so bad they'll run you back in the house okay let's get the first simple method out of the way because this is so common and we only do this we only use this bug spray when we go catfishing we've got other methods we use here around the homestead we're going to show you some of those methods today but you can always go with the simple solution which is bug spray and we do do that when we we spend late nights out catfishing on the lake or river here in central Virginia we love to go to the James River and catch catfish like this all night this big and if they're biting will use the bugs the bug spray so we can stay out later we don't let the gnats run us off but here around the homestead we have several other methods we're gonna have a campfire tonight so I'm breaking off some branches from a pine tree that fell this winter in a nor'easter that I cleaned up the high resin content and the pine needles and the pine cones will help us start our fire easier so you see me wearing safety glasses it's not so much to protect my eyes from the pine needles though it is but it's to keep the gnats out of my eyes I've learned over the years that gnats are just an unpleasant part of nature but if you want to be able to get outside and do the things you love to do you've got to deal with them and I do it by wearing safety glasses I can see them flying around me but they're not going in my eyes if you're new to this you're still going to be doing this for maybe the first week or so but I've done it so frequently now that it doesn't bother me to see him hovering all around my eyes because I know they're not getting into my eyes number two I always make sure that I have a bottle of water in my back pocket because I think I just swallowed one you're gonna swallow gnats if you're working outside have water with you because if you don't you're going to panic it's your body's natural reaction to panic your heart rates going to go up and you're gonna take off running to the house on my house is more than a hundred yards away right now it's not worth it folks so we're safety glasses keep water with you for when you do swallow gnats and now we're going to show you a couple of other methods we use around the homestead to keep the gnats away okay so as you can see behind me we have a beautiful panoramic view of our homestead we actually sit over there on the side of the fire where my wife's recording this video right now but for demonstration purposes I wanted to sit here and that and so you can see the view week that we see and you'll understand why we like to set up here now my fire is not going yet and the nets are still fixed so I'm gonna put these back on for now but a campfire the smoke from a campfire as you know will repel gnats and it will repel mosquitoes you know you've probably seen in memes or somewhere else online that you can put sage in your fire and it will repel the mosquitoes I guess that's true but it's not really necessary I mean not only is that sage fodder the for the fire but I think the concept of sage and a fire is kind of fodder for yuppie conversation so people can talk about how we burn sage and I'll camp piles to keep the gnats away all right do it if you want to it's not necessary and you can ask any country boy or country girl and they'll tell you the smoke itself will keep the nets and the mosquitoes away now always remember smoke does followed Beauty so when we have our campfires I always always make sure to set right beside my wife because that's where the smoke goes because she's beautiful and it's the only way I can protect myself but campfire smoke is another great way to repel gnats so let's say you live in town you're in an apartment complex and it's not practical to have a campfire so the smoke idea is not going to work for you and you don't get to burn your sage there are other things you can do and it's the most simple method and this does work and we do this when we have meals here underneath our umbrella table outside looking at a panoramic panoramic view of our homestead which is especially beautiful and fall it's like sitting in a rainbow and having Darren a rainbow but the nets are still out well all you need to do to keep the Nets away from you is to attract them to something different and we use vinegar and soap it's that simple just just a mixture of vinegar and soap now I want to point out to you here I have various types of soaps and vinegars here this is just to show you that it doesn't matter what brand you use see a lot of videos they'll say use this brand use that brand use that type of soap I guess maybe it's well it's crap people they're getting paid by advertisers or maybe maybe not or maybe they heard that this is the only way you can do it but the fact is we use whatever soap and vinegar we have available for example we're almost out of malt vinegar my love my wife loves to eat this with with her french fries so we're almost out however we have half a bottle of balsamic Bianco white balsamic vinegar okay so this is what we're going to use because it's what we have so I'm just dumping dumping dumping now here's how this works vinegar as you know has a very strong odor it's not a foul odor I love the smell of vinegar it attracts the gnats when the Nets come around they're not gonna be attracted to you so much due to your shampoos your soaps your deodorants which these things do attract them because the odor of the vinegar is it's a more bold odor than these things these hygiene products you use you know a lot of people will say well stop using scented shampoo and soap and blah blah blah that's not really practical we'd like to share practical ideas with you okay this is the body wash I use and I can put a drop of this in here I can put Dawn dishwashing detergent in here when we do travel and we stay at hotels I mean I guess we're those types of people that we take the hotel bar soaps that's where this came from I think this stuff's from the shangri-la in Boracay in the Philippines or maybe when we stayed at the shangri-la in Cebu whatever a nice place the soap was nice so we took the soap okay but here's some dove and it's very simple with your liquid soaps you just put a few drops in there now if you're gonna use knives be very careful okay of course that's a saw here's a knife you can just take your bar soap and just cut off enough that would be equivalent to a few drops from your liquid soap and put it in there and that's all you do that smells good now the way this works I mentioned that the vinegar the odor of the vinegar will draw the gnats in will the soap as it dissolves it sits like a sticky trap they can't get out of and they get stuck in the vinegar and they perish so we'll create this we'll set it off to the side over there out of the way so we can enjoy our meals and then we just set up here and here in about five or six minutes any gnats that are flying around me will be over there I'll be able to take these off I'll go ahead and take them off now so remember all these ideas when you're trying to deal with the gnat issue so you can go outside spring summer fall go outside and enjoy the weather enjoy the things you love to do that's what we do and you don't have to spend hundreds of dollars on these big Nets you set inside you don't have to have specific types of products to do it just use vinegar and soap and I wanted to mention too in parting I have salt out here because if you do live in town let's say you're out on your back deck your patio you take a little bit of soap or I mean salt and add to your vinegar in your salt mix your vinegar in your soap mix it now has salt you mix that up you've got a non-toxic weed killer so if you have a brick or a stone walkway coming up from where you park your car up to your porch and they've got those nasty little weeds growing out of there you want to kill them but you don't want to poison the earth every time you're out making your net repellent I mean look at this folks I have no gnats in front of me right now just add a little salt to the mix and then use it to kill weeds so when you discard of it dump it where you have weeds on your walkway where you don't want those weeds to be if you learn something from this video please consider subscribing to our channel homesteading off-the-grid and make sure to join us for more next time