The $3 Jar an Amish Grandmother Keeps on the Windowsill — It Ends Kitchen Flies for the Whole Summer

For three dollars once and a spoonful of sugar every few days, my kitchen stays quiet the whole summer through, and I have never bought a strip of fly paper or a can of spray to get rid of flies in the kitchen. My name is Sarah. The children call me Mammi, and so may you. I keep house on a farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where the flies come thick off the barn and the horses. My own mother kept a jar like this on every windowsill, May through the killing frost. You know the misery of it. The fly on the butter, the fly on the bread left out to cool, the swatter that kills the one and does nothing about the hundred. The ribbon folks sell you a fresh roll every summer, and the spray folks sell you a can you breathe over your family's bread. I will show you what goes in the jar, the one pantry thing nobody guesses, the paper cone that lets a fly walk in and never walk back out, where on the sill to set it, and the honest truth most people are never told: you are not fighting the flies in the room. You are fighting the flies being born in the pail. ⚠️ Keep the jar up on the sill and out of reach of the little ones and the dog. It is sweet water dressed up to tempt, and no child and no pup should drink it. Empty it outside, never over your kitchen sink. Treat it with the same respect your grandmother did. Tell me in the comments what your flies are like this year, the big lazy ones off the barn, or the little ones over the fruit bowl. I read every one. 🔔 Subscribe for more of the old ways — next time, the little tin my mother kept on the pantry shelf, and the thin line along the wood that an ant will come up to, and turn, and walk away from.