Month: May 2020

Okra & “Fire Lilies”

May 28, 2020

Okra & “Fire Lilies”

Today we planted okra. Three long rows of okra plants just far enough apart to walk through the rows with the mower for easy weeding, pruning, and harvesting.

Yesterday and Tuesday were the 6 by 4 corn patch. The 5 by 4 corn patch already has rows of little green stalks pushing up and it was planted Saturday! We also did a patch of mustard greens and our trio experiment over the weekend. The “trio experiment” is onion seed, three inches, beet seed, three inches, carrot seed in a patch 3 by 3.

Oh, all numbers are in feet… so far.

And my favorite of my blooms at this house (since my gardenia has been reluctant to bloom) is this –

– it’s a bulb with a single straight stalk that ends in this fiery flower! We call them fire-lilies but I know that can’t be their official name. It’s a takeaway from Grandma Jeanette… a little piece of history carried along and the blooms make me think of her every time I see a new one exploding with color.

(oh, and if you know what it is, please comment! We’d love to know what it really is!)

Lucas and Thea ate all six ripe tomatoes themselves before they got inside. I managed to sneak one away for the egg scramble I made for brunch. (I eat shakeology breakfast at 5:45 so at 11am I was practically starving and had to grab something filling and nutritious!)

We have little pets who poop breakfast… and Becky made more of these:

Yummy deviled eggs; Becky is a pro at this now!

YES!

Worked at gym yesterday… REC CLASSES OPEN MONDAY!! Camp fills up quickly & starts June 1st (I can’t wait to see my gymnasts!) and we get to have gym party (Parent’s Night Out) this month!! (Third Saturday of each month: our coaches entertain and feed a boocoodle of kiddos so their parents can have a night kidfree… here)

I’m excited about coaching again! I’m thrilled about our garden! I even got to play Age of Empires with Jillian and Lucas today while big sisters went shopping!

We had a lovely day!

Type at you later,

~Nancy Tart

Life is Risk

May 26, 2020

Life is Risk

Life is risky. How many people get out alive? (I’ve heard that from two sources this week, and it got me thinking…)

Our goal since the beginning of time has been to build this net of safety around our family to allow our offspring to grow in relative peace – to be fruitful and multiply.  How we each define peace greatly fluctuates based on our culture, time, and prosperity.

Think through culture and time.  Isn’t relative safety for her offspring the goal of every mother who ever lived?

Imagine Eve carrying her children outside of the garden.  Even though animals were still peaceful then, there were dangers that had arisen.  I wonder if she lamented over what was lost or considered her time peaceful.

Imagine being one of Noah’s daughters in law.  You grew up in a time when every step you took was surrounded by evil and except for the tiny oasis of your husband’s family unit you felt scared to go anywhere.  You couldn’t go home.  Now you are post-flood and raising your children in a world where peace is your constant – except for the new storms.  How thankful you are to be in such peace!

Imagine you are a Jewish mother raising her children under Roman occupation.  The slightest whim of a passing legion, an unruly governor, insane emperor, or a bandit troupe can take your harsh living conditions and twist them into certain death.  How do you dare to plan for the future when you know only scattered moments of peace?  When the odds are that maybe 20% of the village’s children will live to maturity?  One in five of your children will die before adulthood – how can we in this culture fathom this?

Imagine you are an orphan whose parents both perished in a famine and you were lucky to have been taken in by another family instead of doomed to die or languish into the horrid world of child slavery.  You are second class in your home with little hope of being more than a worker paid in room and board, but at least you are not starving. You fear famine and disease, ugly monsters who still stare in the windows of your village hungrily; where can you find peace?

Think of stories. Fiction, non-fiction, legends, lore. Don’t most of these follow someone who chooses to do something risky to help others, find an answer, discover a cure, or save someone or something they love? Risk-takers. Once I read, and many times have heard quoted, “in order to live, you have to take risks.” Honestly, what activity doesn’t come with risk?

Across times, across cultures, across this world, what we in the “first world” countries of the twenty-first century know as peace is something most people who have come before us would have thought at heaven.  Consider that in most places and times in the world, the thought that you will see all of your children become adults is rare.  We are in shock at this?  There are people even today who live in cultures where lack of medicines, inadequate nutrition, and the possibility of becoming collateral damage in a conflict are normal.

A hundred years ago, the simple concept of sanitation was so unknown to the majority that we can’t understand.  People dying of fevers and botulism without medical assistance? Do we even hear of food poisoning in our comfortable first-world culture?  Rarely.  Once upon a time importing unknown food products into new markets such as potatoes into England resulted in thousands of deaths because people ate the wrong parts of the plant!  We don’t hear of that often, do we?

When we consider breathing air too risky to take a walk for exercise, I consider my life not worth living.  I want to live.  I want to take risks.  I drive in a car to get to and from work – great risk is involved in that.  I want my children to enjoy the green growing outside.  I want them to run freely, love deeply, play with neighbors, and live.  I live by the same code I always have: I trust that God will decide my time and I will live my life to show my passion through everything I do.  I will not avoid stopping to help someone with their flat tire because she isn’t wearing a mask.  I will offer help.  I will not dampen my offers of help, comfort, food, or a listening ear because of some sickness – I would still talk about Jesus if it was illegal.  Why would I not show His love?  I choose not to be fearful.  I am so blessed to live in a place where the gunshot wound that killed Lincoln could now be healed, cojoined twins sharing a brain can be safely separated, babies born at 20 weeks can be nurtured to full strength; medical miracles have come from our increased knowledge in nutrition, anatomy, biology, and sanitation… and so much more. 

I will not be afraid.  I have always washed my hands, changed clothes when coming in from work, washed and changed after visiting someone who was sick, cleaned my food, and kept my home and family clean.  I understand that we have tools to keep us healthy.  The rest is up to God.  If I am to hide from this fear, why not from the fear of every other disease that circulates?  Why not hide in my home away from items I am allergic to?  Why not hide from the fear of getting in a fatal car accident? 

I refuse to allow fear to control my life!  For you have not been given the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. ~ 2 Timothy 1:7

I understand being cautious.  If you have a preexisting co-morbidity, you probably already keep yourself distant from possible infections that would aggravate your condition.  You do not go out in public without taking precautions.  The responsibility of your own health is on you, not everyone else around you.  No one understands your personal strengths and weaknesses better than you. You are weighing your risks.

But I am willing.  I am willing to take the risk of driving to work, the risk of walking into the farmer’s market, the risk of hugging my neighbor, the risk of helping a woman with a flat tire, the risk of adopting a new pet, the risk of living. 

This choice is one each person in each culture, stage, time, and place must make for themselves.  If you choose to live without fear, you must understand and accept the risks.  Just as you understand that a person may deny your offer of help, they may not wish to go out of their home, the may wish to keep everyone around them ten feet away.  That is each person’s choice. 

Learn. Read. Question.  We have more access to more knowledge than ever before. Research. Then make up your own mind and take the risks you are willing to take. 

Only a relative handful of people choose to research a mountain, outfit themselves, and climb to the summit; the risks are great – they could even die!  But when they reach the summit, the rush they get from their massive accomplishment usually makes them enthusiastic to begin planning a new mountain climb before they have even returned to base.

You must accept the risks of life to truly live.  I choose not to live in fear.

Thank you for Reading!

Type at you next time,

~Nancy Tart

Peppers

May 20, 2020

Peppers

Have you ever seen a pepper seed? If you’ve had crushed red peppers shaken on your Italian food, you’ve seen the small whitish yellow seeds; the crunchy non-red parts of the seasoning.

They are very small – not carrot seed small, but almost four times smaller than a squash seed.

We do have little tunnel diggers in our yard so we plant each seed separately in its very own little cup. These sprout into two tiny leaves holding the seed coat above them like a rocket punching through the atmosphere. Then we have sprouts! (the picture below show a mix of tomato and pepper sprouts)

We planted our second wave of pepper sprouts into a close bed of 4′ by 4′ with just enough spacing between each one for the plants to grow. They have a few small branches at this point as the picture below was taken about three weeks after transplant and about five weeks from sprouting.

Here they are seen with several little peppers hanging off of their branches. Can you spot them?

We’ve had one supper of stuffed peppers over rice, I harvest one to chop up and toss in my eggs or leftover rice for second breakfast, we even used some to make a salsa along with our fresh tomatoes!

I’m loving the peppers from our garden! (And both Lucas and Thea eat them right off the plant – at least Lucas will wait until they are big!)

Thank you for Reading!

Type at you later,

~Nancy Tart

Watermelons

May 18, 2020

Watermelons

In our garden there are these long snaky vines that we keep training to stay out of the peppers, stop invading the carrot patches, and keep your green tendrils off of the zucchini!

They start as wavy delicate yet determined sprouts. Nothing, not even the largest block of rock mud from the bottom of the old dried up pond gets in their way!

BOOM! rock is dust!

RIP! old squash leaf is split!

CRACK! goes the tiny seed starter cup!

Whatever stands in the way, the watermelon seedling bursts through it. Then these once delicate vines turn into a vast network of tangled grass-choking stems. What are they protecting?

The whole life and growth of the watermelon vine is directed to the tiny fragile yellow blossoms. Some female blossoms bear a tiny oval of green at their base. This tiny dimple is what they are destroying all other plant life for? But that tiny dimple grows. It is sheltered under the protective covering of the lacy leaves. This blip becomes a blimp! Swiftly it swells into a gourd that darkens with tiger stripes – if tigers were green.

Watermelons.

Even when conditions are difficult the watermelon plant puts all of it’s effort on building the fruit to maturity.

This plant can’t grow without sunlight, water, and the right nutrients in the soil

It reminds me of life: (here she goes again, more plants and animals that mirror into life *sigh*) HEHEHE… (you should already know this!!)

Anyway, it reminds me of life: we start slowly and cautiously in wherever we are planted, uprooting is a risk, we slowly grow in whatever direction leads us to light and space, we try to smooth the path for those after us, as parents, everything in our lives is focused on leading the next generation to maturity and we can’t do any of that without God.

And that is where my mind wanders as I am counting watermelons on the hills in our little garden…

Thank you for reading (gotcha trapped if you got this far!)

Type at you next time,

~Nancy Tart

Shattered

May 16, 2020

Shattered

Again. Shattered Again. This is what strikes my heart again. Of course, in the big scheme of things I realize, this is tiny. This isn’t losing a family member or going bankrupt. Logically, my brain tells me that this isn’t really a bad thing and there is likely a reason behind it, but still…

I can’t ignore the emotions that were tearing me apart when Louis said he got the email.

We never, NEVER, would have showed our children the new house (they’ve been calling it that) unless we were told it would happen.

We were told, based on incomes and expenses that it would happen. Our debt-to-income ratio (we know all that, studied before going to attempt for the loan. We had the credit scores above the requirement on the website, we’d done all our own figuring, we make three times what we would need for the maximum monthly payment!) We were told everything was good – we even asked over and over, is this really going to happen?

Well… of course, we lost income, BUT IT IS TEMPORARY!! Gym can open back MONDAY – two days from now! Are they only looking at one of my two incomes? Are they not looking at Louis’ income at all? I’m still working at the office! Louis is still working at uber.

WHERE IN THE EARTH did some loan person decide that she would NEVER once talk to me but CANCEL our documents because “they have zero income” when she didn’t even check? That’s a lie! That’s a stinking, irritating, hurtful, dream-shattering lie! We have lost income over the stupid COVID19 government shutdown garbage, who hasn’t? But to say that is permanent? It’s a bump in the road! A mortgage is 30 years!! Do you expect our income to never change in 30 years??????

We’ve not deferred ANYTHING… we’ve chosen to keep the down payment (yes, in the bank, safe and untouched!) and pay minimums on credit cards that we had to use for groceries, yes. Gym was forced to shutdown temporarily – between Monday and June 1st, I go back to work as soon as they open.

NOTHING has been late; not FPL, not our rent, not our van or car payment (we pay off the giant van payment in 4 months!)

Why is this hurting us? I thought this was responsibility? To keep the down payment, to choose to pay bills on time instead of ask for deferment, to pick up odd jobs to keep our income up while this stupid government decides to ruin our jobs and now – yes, shatter our dreams AGAIN!

Christina and Kimberly lost summer encampment, Christina, Becky, and Kimberly lost Passion Camp (this was the only summer they could all go together), the VBS they were looking forward to is canceled, they miss out on their gymnastics show, the girls are despising this whole zoom meeting garbage where they can’t talk and meet in person…

Becky said, “they can’t take our house, can they?”

It seems, one mortgage person can LIE and say we have no income while NEVER ONCE contacting or trying to contact me, Louis, or either of my bosses regarding our actual status of employment – and yes, deny us our house.

So while I understand that if someone takes the last 4 weeks of my paystubs and averages them over the course of a year, they will think we can’t make our payments; right now we are only missing about $200 a month (with the expected higher mortgage rate and this doesn’t count Louis’ income) – and we loose a $650 a month liability (paid off vehicle) in 4 months (so then just my income alone will cover our bills with more than $400 surplus!).

What really hurts is the LIES. I had to get this information from one lady we called because Louis got an email saying we no longer qualify and so have to pay a cancellation fee… ?????? Why can’t we at least get a courtesy call? No one ever asked? Not even a text. That’s seriously taking social distancing too extreme.

I hate that I took my children to see this place. I hate that I’m so gullible. I hate that I shared my dreams with others and now feel embarrassed that we even tried.

I am determined to at least speak to this person before I agree to pay for a lie.

I pray that God sets this up the way He wants it. I pray my emotions level (which, yes, after writing they always do) so I can speak calmly and rationally. I pray to see the good through this curtain of hurt. I so wanted to have those friends as neighbors, I really wanted to have Treaty Park as my backyard, but whatever; I should have known we will never make it to a real house.

Emotions are sometimes things we hide. I do. I try very hard not to let anyone see anything that isn’t positive. I try to be the mood lifter, not one who complains or cries or feels darkness. But I do. I feel darkness right now – like all my life I’ve dreamed of having a house where I could raise my children and grow trees that would shade my grandchildren – I know, silly. I saw a plan online that almost mirrored the house I’ve been building in my sketchbook all my life and even though we had to give up the place that was my first dream, I thought that if this all went through, it was a second shot at my dream. Next year would be too late: Christina wouldn’t be in that house. This faint hope rose to believe we’d have one season before Christina went to college. A place my teenagers wanted to be in.

These are raw emotions. We all have them. We all scream at the irrationality, lies, deception, cheating, or hurtful things that shove us or our loved ones into positions they don’t want to be in, shatter their dreams, or whatever.

We have to do what works to calm ourselves down and realize that God is in control; yes, even when someones lies and it shatters our dreams, it is just an opportunity for God to show us something better…

Anyway, I write to sort through my emotions; what do you do?

Thank you for reading.

Type at you later,

~Nancy Tart

Hidden Treasures: Garden Style

May 14, 2020

Hidden Treasures

When we grow our garden, we come across some interesting plant discoveries (probably because seeds are lost by little helpers in odd places) and have found some amazing co-growing companions.

This tomato was just found in the lily patch and we potted it as it was before the last frost and we wanted the free tomatoes! – no one knew what variety it was until the fruit came about. Turns out it is a sweet cherry tomato like the ones we like to get from Curries’ Market as Lucas’ favorite snack picks.

That is one little plant that has produced nearly a hundred tomatoes (most of which Thea has eaten green) – that is a side effect of allowing a toddler to help in the garden. She sees us eating things we pull off of bushes and out of the ground so why can’t she? Instead of puckering her face and wanting to know why the tomato is sour, Thea licks her lips and says “yum!” to little green tomatoes.

Another hidden plant is this one. He is protected by this huge wild plant in the tobacco family.

It isn’t a proper tobacco plant like those cultivated for cigars and such, but is a weed from the same family. It has stood guard in the same spot for three years . We trim it back to a 1′ stalk as the foliage dies in the late winter, but it grows back up to 6′ in a thick bush of shade. (Right now, the very tops are easily 8′ up!) This pairs excellently with tomatoes around because of two things: #1 tomato worms that can decimate a tomato plant almost overnight prefer this wild tobacco! So all the bugs get on these fine fat leaves for easy seek, squish, and destroy missions (Lucas is the bug catcher squisher most of the time). Our chickens won’t eat said worms so in order to keep them from eating away our tomatoes, we squish them. #2 It also grows tall at the same time as the tomatoes begin to fruit, providing filtered shade from the Florida sun. Awesome.

Then there are the little treasures like tiny citrus trees sprouting from the compost we lined around the garden bed!

A few carrot tops placed around make for beautiful parakeet snacks and pest repellent for tomatoes. Doubled with the onions (the root sides of green onions replanted), these pop up in “expected” locations.

Another fun thing are the wild foods that get cultivated along with our planted foods. Wild beets, those come from the undigested seeds from the Guinea Pig and Rabbit food, sprout around many of our plants. They attract the greens-eating bugs who love their leaves more than buttercrunch lettuce! The chickens eat not only the bugs but also the wild beet greens. Minuit and the Guinea Pigs love the wild beets.

Pusley, Spanish Needle, and Dollar Weed are excellent rabbit and Guinea Pig treats. They are all edible for humans too (along with our pansies and bougainvillea) and make a yummy greens mix for stews (Shhhh!). Pop in Rattlesnake Weed tubers and try that (chickens love them). We discovered bougainvillea is edible for the mammals in our house and safe for our avian pets. Although it is like a potato, as only part is edible. For a potato, it is only the root which is edible. For a bougainvillea, the leaves and flowers are edible. The thorns and stems contain a mildly toxic sap that causes upset stomachs and can cause dermatitis in birds.

  • Florida pusley
  • Pennywort (dollar weed)
  • bougainvillea
  • Kimberly said I can’t forget the Sweet Potato – that was one vine in the pot now it’s on the ground too & we’ve been harvesting greens from it (they are super sweet like a spinach-beet)

I love learning about and passing on this fun knowledge to my children. Once Jillian remarked, “cool, there’s so much food I’m stepping on all day!” I am a little concerned that Thea will be like her Uncle Buddy and try to shock people with “what a beautiful flower!” as she chomps on a pansy, rose, or bougainvillea flower. But that hasn’t happened… yet.

Enjoy your garden!

Thank you for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

Blighted Tomatoes

May 12, 2020

Blighted Tomatoes

Today Louis, Thea, and I spent hours clearing the blight from our tomato bushes in the faint hope that we can eradicate the fungus or at least keep it away from the healthy tomatoes until they are harvested.

Blight starts harmlessly enough – it looks like this:

  • Blight on the edge of a Tomato Leaf looks like squiggly bug lines
  • Blight on a wild beet (rabbit food) looks like dust from chalk

Then it causes the leaves to curl up and die and produces brownish spots on the skin of the tomato fruit. If you open the tomato fruit at the early stage, they appear to not be damaged inside. However, shortly the tomato blight spreads to cover the fruit in a thick brown layer and will start to look shriveled; in reality, they are rotting from the outside in. Gross. Yes. Totally.

You can prevent it with fungicides. (we are well past that) You can destroy the plants and NOT use that area for planting tomatoes for the next two seasons – sometimes more!

We chose the in-between. We hope this works because there are so many big beautiful fruits not yet affected and looking gorgeous! We cut back all of the blighted parts of the plants (sourced the blight infection from a load of mulch) and burned them (okay, dumped them in the fire pit waaaay away from the plants).

Now we will keep a lookout for anything slightly infected and remove it from the plant. Hopefully, as blight is a fungus, this will keep the spores from spreading to the healthy plants and parts of plants. (An entire section of tomato bushes were blight-free.)

After pruning, we were left with these:

We’d like to see these guys grow big and red and juicy!

If you wonder what’s “Eating” your tomatoes and it looks like squiggly bug trails but no bug bodies, dying leaves, and browning yucky-looking fruit – it’s likely tomato blight.

Hope this helps!

Type at you next time!

~Nancy Tart

Culture: The Importance of Family

May 10, 2020

Culture: The Importance of Family

Imagine you are raised a young woman, married a few years with two children. Your family is part of a group sojourning in a land with people hostile to you. In your family’s culture, women are to obey their fathers and later husbands. You and your husband love God. You honor His law. Then you hear at the well that the midwives are commanded by the king to destroy all male babies of your people as the baby is being born. But you hear how two of your midwife friends fear God over the king and so being, do not obey him. Yet you are scared for your people.

You find yourself encouraging and helping; but the fear is everywhere. Women are praying their children are girls so they are not required to kill them.

You find yourself pregnant. Part of your heart wrestles the fear – should you pray this child is a girl? Your husband smiles and whispers, “we fear God, the child is a gift.” But you hope that stays true even after the child is born. Your daughter and son see the fear in the people and look to you for comfort. They look for assurance that you live by the faith you speak of; do you fear for your baby or trust in God? You smile and tell them, “God has given us this child, God will keep the child safe.”

But you wonder. Death and affliction are around you. The rulers hate your people. Many of your friends have faced death and the shroud of death for defying the king expands to all in their household – or so the stories say. At least twice you have known it was truth. Would you risk the lives of your husband, son, and daughter for the baby if it is a boy? Which is safer? But the rumblings of the little person growing inside you remind you as you wrap your arms around your swelling belly that this child is worth the risk. God’s gifts are always worth the risk.

When the day comes and you labour with your own instead of calling the midwives, you birth the beautiful child whose lovely eyes catch away your breath as you stare and study him. Him. Yes, your daughter says “I have a baby brother!” and your husband hugs you and the newborn tight. Your son glances up at you to look in your eyes. You are not afraid. You will risk everything for this love. “We will keep him hidden.” Your husband smiles. Your son and daughter relax in their trust of you as they see you trust in God.

But you know there will come a time when your tiny illegal child will be too loud. Someone will know, someone will tell, and there must be a way.

You are learned as your family teaches even your daughters to read and think; you know that your afflictors bow before idols. One is the god of the river, Hapi, and you know that women wishing to be fertile yet cursed with barren wombs go and bathe at one place. Also, the wealthy do not nurse their own offspring, instead they hire a nurse for the child. You begin to watch. Daily you go with your daughter in tow under the guise of fetching water and food yet along the way you see the women who come to the water. They all wish for children; the longing in their hearts and souls are deep. Their sorrow causes tears to rise in your eyes. It also waters the plan you have devised.

Your husband does not agree quickly, for him it is a horrid idea to turn his child, his beautiful gift from God, over to some heathen woman regardless of whether it may save the child’s life. How can you think of killing our son’s soul in this way? But it is your daughter who says, “but Father, what if they chose Mother as his nurse?” and this you both continue to discuss and pray about.

The time comes when he is too big to hide anymore. His tender hunger cries have turned into the periodic wails of teething, striking without warning and so loud you fear his voice will call soldiers from every corner of the globe. Now, you set him adrift in the basket of woven reeds and pitch you have carefully crafted, and carefully place it among the reeds to drift into the part of the river where the barren women come to bathe. Your daughter stays as a guard. You leave to pray.

This is the sorrow, trust, and faith of Jocebed, wife of Amram and mother to Aaron, Miriam, and Moses. She placed her trust in God and brought an illegal child into the world, hiding him from those who would kill him. She watched, waited, and used the heathen culture of her people’s enemies against them.

We know the rest; the pharaoh’s daughter comes to bathe and finds Moses. He cries and she takes pity on him, knowing he was a Hebrew! A girl appears and says, “may I fetch you a nurse to suck your baby?” and this educated woman of Egypt says, “yes.” Do you think she didn’t know this nurse would be the child’s mother? Wow. Just to imagine these three women and the things they chose to do… Jocebed in faith and love, Miriam in obedience, faith, and love, and Pharaoh’s daughter in love and pity of a child who she took into her home in defiance of her father’s order.

Just some thoughts.

I know that most of us spend today thinking about our mothers. Not to say I don’t! But I love to step into the shoes of those before. I love to try to see their struggles – how powerful Jocabed’s faith! Not only to give birth and refuse to destroy her boy, but to give that little gift in faith to another believing that God will allow her rather devious plan to work trusting her family can pass their faith on to this child in the short amount of time they will have him (while she nurses him).

Wow.

Think about the various challenges we mothers face at different points in history, through various cultures, and in various strata of existence. All of our stories are different, but the theme of faith, love, and hope permeate them all. We all want the best for our gifts and pray to effectively train them up in the little time we have them.

Give thanks for the mothers and grandmothers and motherly influences in your life.

Thank you, God, for mothers!

Thank you for Reading,

~Nancy Tart

Monopoly Crazy

May 6, 2020

Monopoly Crazy

Yes, my family is crazy. Maybe.

We love board games – especially if it involves everyone. This is difficult as most games like battleships, mancala, and chess are two player or maybe four player like labyrinth, the mall game, trouble, spelldown, scrabble, and Lord of the Rings Risk. Even the regular Risk is just six players, along with all the trivial pursuits and Settlers of Catan with the 5-6 player expansion set. Yes, we alter it by adding extra pieces to trivial pursuit (we have four different card sets and ten player pieces with the total amount of wedges) and by using two yahtzee sheets instead of one, but a game where we don’t have to alter?

Yippee!

Monopoly here we come!

Granted, our monopoly set has been victim to a few mishaps; added to from two quarter yard-sale finds with a few pieces here or there, but we maintain the exact number of applicable hotels, houses, and chance and community chest cards. Unfortunately Lucas demolished the Cinderella castle board from a Disney set – but we have the tokens and a few ones and hundreds have Disney characters on them. (Actually, most of our ones are Disney, and due to Barbie Bake Shop and Restaurant Store drafts over 13 years, there is a shortage of one dollar bills insomuch as we have to “borrow” 10 white ones from the poker chip collection to play.)

Today, Aunt Becca took Becky off to babysitting land and Jillian had cleaned the table and set up piles of Monopoly money around the board – “Who wants to play Monopoly?”

“Wait?” Daddy says, taking a second glance at the table with five eager (okay, four eager and one required teenager) faces grinning at him, “everyone is at the table?”

“All except Becky,” pipes Jillian.

“She’s not here,” I added, “so everyone who is here.”

“Not Thea!” someone quips, “but she can’t play yet.”

To answer this, Thea squeals with joy – as Louis says, “roll the dice to see who goes first then I’ll sit down.”

Yippee! They all get excited about playing with Daddy and Mommy… Daddy is the cannon, Mommy is Walt & Mickey (statue from the Disney version), shoe, candlestick (from Clue), Miss Scarlett (from Clue)… someone was Mr. Thimble Moneybags (the thimble with the moneybags inside and the hat on top) – Yes, we collect old tokens from games bought at yard sales for extra pieces! Thea demands Mommy pick her up. Mommy smiles and sits by Lucas. Lucas, Jaquline, and Kimberly all rolled 6s so they roll again. Mom goes to change Thea. Lucas rolls highest! He goes first!

“I’m taking Mommy’s spot by Lucas!” Daddy announces. “I go second!”

Mommy does a mental facepalm… luck my foot.

We sit back at the table in the remaining chair between Jillian (#3) and Kimberly (#5) as Louis pops two doubles and lands three properties – 2 of a 3 group already.

At one point, we have Kim roll onto Louis’ hotel, die. #6, Christina, roll onto same hotel, DIE, and #7, Jaquline, roll onto Jillian’s hotel – DIE! Three out of seven down in one turn… with Mommy out the next and Lucas following. We ask Jillian (no hotels by this time) if she’s ready to concede that Daddy wins…

NO WAY! “I don’t quit a game – if I lose, I lose, but I don’t quit!” (Where does that come from? Remember Risk games during Daddy and Mommy’s dating days, brothers and sisters? One lone dude in Australia against the entire red world… “I’ll never surrender!”) Mommy has to laugh.

One thing for sure, out of the government shutdown garbage, Lucas knows how to break a twenty and what change to get back from a $10 or $20 on the $6, $8, and $14 properties (…almost typed the names… I’m too nerdy!)

What board game does your family love to play?

Thank you for Reading!

Type at you Next Time!

~Nancy Tart

Tiny Specialized Chicken Coop

May 4, 2020

Tiny Specialized Chicken Coop

In preparation for our move and new gardening regime (Louis is moving to raised garden beds), we made our specialized chicken coop tractor. I know, that sounds funny, but our goals were lightweight, easy to move, sturdy, storm proof, and hopefully predator proof.

The intended purpose is for this little run to sit on top of the raised garden bed in between plantings. The chickens will dig up the dirt, take dust baths in it, eat every green anything and all insect life (well, most), and fertilize the soil. They’ve done an amazing job of turning compost into fertile soil for 15 years for us (our chicken experience has been pretty much ongoing) and we’ve played with the tractor idea. Normally, we built a larger version with an attached house that is moved by lifting (4′ x 8′ x 4′) or a static house (12′ x 12′ x 6′) raised off the ground that we clean monthly and dump into each segment of the chicken yard for them to scratch around and finish. In that time, we had three chicken door and rotated the chicken’s access to three separate 100′ x 40′ fenced fields. In this spot, we don’t have full fences and for a while we’ve been fighting off the puzzle of very smart raccoons or feral cats who have ripped into anything that wasn’t made of solid 1×6″ walls! (Yes, they’ve even pried plyboard and wire walls off of the frame to get to our chickens!) So our adult chickens have stayed in a 20′ by 10′ fenced and over fenced (we have a very large community of hawks around here) run area with a tight, 4′ x 4′ x 2′ box we closed them up in at night.

This new box is of 2″x4″, 2″x2″, and 1″x2″ construction. It is made in two pieces that connect together with either a hasp or a simple hook. (Picture shows a hook)

The first section is the run.

The run is 2′ tall by 2′ wide by 6′ long. It is constructed completely with 1″x2″s. It is open on the bottom for scratching up compost. Each wall and the top are covered with 1″ chicken wire woven at each connection for a perfect seam. The ladder matched the henhouse portal. The supporting braces for the ladder help to reinforce the structure of the run. Optional would be a hinged opening at the far side of the run that would allow for larger scraps to be dropped in. The pictured run did not need that.

The henhouse is 3′ tall at the peak, 30″ tall at the short side, 2′ wide and 2′ deep. It has a variety of construction materials. (The pictured house has 2’2″ short peak because it was the first one constructed, but optimally it will have a 6″ slope instead of a 10″ slope.) It has two “floors” along with openings for each. Only the bottom 12″ and an access portal facing the run is not enclosed.

The first floor of the henhouse is the sustenance station. This is 12″ tall and open to the ground (once we have this attached to a raised bed, the henhouse will sit on a platform so the first floor will have a wooden floor). It is tall enough to hold a standard one-gallon plastic or metal waterer and a small feeder. This is accessed through either side of the ladder by 8″ gaps which are large enough for a Jersey Giant hen to waddle through. The rear has a lifting door for access. (This door is also lifted for easy holding when moving.)

The second floor is the nesting box and roost area. This is a solid wooden platform floor and enclosed with sliding doors to access either side of the nesting area easily. (This was their first hour & they already laid their eggs inside!) The box is covered with a plastic waterproof roof that extends over the peak to as to help keep the water out.

It took about a half-day of work to complete.

The chickens are happy!

This size works for three large hens (ours are between 5lbs and 7lbs) or up to six bantam chickens. This design could be customized easily to accommodate larger flocks, wider garden bed areas, or to be a home for one or two bunnies. See our Guinea Pig outside home too!

Thanks for Reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

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