mirah zebra

Thank you both for responding, and so glad you were able to heal your Lyme! It makes sense to me that once buried there is no risk but being in brooklyn, it's quite a coordinated and multi-trip effort to get all my materials here so I can make my mounds. Any thoughts on whether, in the meantime, I might see a hatching of some clutch of tick larvae that I've unwittingly brought into my yard? It's all just sitting back there, and I'm supposed to go back to the farm to pick up more today. That is my actual fear, that I'm brining back not just stray individual ticks, but batches of eggs. I've been researching tick life-cycle but don't have a clear answer on whether rotted wood is a sought after place for them to lay eggs or not.

I recently collected a nice pile of partly decomposed wood from the hedgerows at my family farm in Pennsylvania. I loaded the wood into my car and drove it back to Brooklyn where I live and am planning to make hugelkultur-inspired raised beds in my back yard.  The evening of my return I found a tick embedded in my arm. I removed the tick successfully and have been busy worrying ever since- I have dozens of family and friends who have Lyme and other tickborne illnesses. And then it suddenly dawned on me that perhaps my beautiful pile of partially decomposed wood is home to ticks and tick nests that I just brought them from NE PA to Brooklyn. Is this a crazy thought? The literature about avoiding ticks usually includes suggestions such as 'avoid sitting on rotted logs'.  Has anyone else had tick issues (or fears) related to hugelkultur, considering that the magic hugelkultur material we are all hauling around is also a favorite environment for ticks?