Watching Growth

From plants to chicks to rising bread: we all grow at a different rate!

June 18, 2018

Watching Growth

Have you ever watched bread dough rise?  It takes FOREVER!

Have you ever planted a seed or set out a new plant in your garden?  You sometimes don’t see the slow growth – sometimes you don’t notice until, “Oh, wow, there’s a red tomato on that bush!”  The plant was watered, de-bugged, and looked after for about 100 days but never really watched.

I planted my elephant ears in spring… now they are taller than me!

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Our baby chicks were cute little fluffs of fur, totally dependent on us to keep them safe, feed, and water them.  Now, they are nine weeks old.  Fully feathered, they look like miniature adults.  They don’t need us to pamper them and hide them from the rain or help regulate their body temperature; just some food, water, and a cat-proof shelter is fine.

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My oldest daughter is almost considered by the state to be old enough to command a 1-ton vehicle!  I still see her as the tiny bundled angel in the picture on my wall.  Of course, I literally see that she’s grown.  Sometimes she doesn’t see it.

Sometimes I don’t see my own growth.

God is always working on us.  Since none of us are dead, we are still improving.  Sometimes we get frustrated at ourselves because we don’t see any growth.  Maybe instead of imagining ourselves as rising bread, we should think of ourselves as growing plants.  Maybe not elephant ears – okay, sometimes we do grow quickly.  But with some things we are like the White Cedar (growing about 6 inches per year) or the Saguaro cactus (gets only one to two inches tall in the first 10 years!)

Sometimes slow growth is hard to see.

A wise man plants trees under whose shade he will never sit.

Wow, that thought says to me that those who choose to invest in long-term growth are wise.  So rather than expect instant results when I’m allowing God to work on my life, I understand that sometimes tiny steps in the right direction eventually lead to the finished product.  I will choose not to be frustrated with myself for not being a fast enough learner; I will choose to rest in His care and allow time for growth.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

 

The Bossy Hen

Chickens can be very entertaining!

July 16, 2018

The “Bossy” Hen

Chickens all have their own personalities, but like humans, they tend to fall in categories.  Today, we’ll discuss the bossy chicken.

This is the hen who thinks her feathers are better than everyone else’s.  (That’s because she doesn’t see the white spots on the top of her head or the drooping rump feathers!)

She has the loudest cackle in the yard announcing when she laid an egg.  (Her screaming can be heard over ten miles away and the other hens wish they had fingers to plug their ears!) She is absolutely sure that the most beautiful chicks in the nursery pen are hers, and will argue this point by pecking the other hens mercilessly.

She is the first at the water trough (unless Rex, the king rooster, is there) and shoos the other hens away from the fresh scraps tossed in the yard.  (Of course, Rex doesn’t like a hen bossing his other hens around, so he will crow loudly, puff his feathers, and announce his dominance.)

Sometimes bossy hens will actually steal eggs from other hens and roll them into her nest!

They are fun to watch – and discuss.

One such hen is our Pearl.  She is an old White Rock who seems jealous because she doesn’t lay eggs anymore so she swipes everyone else’s eggs and sits on them, cackling as if she just laid them!  We keep her because she’s laid lots of eggs in her 4 years and she’s a pretty addition to our flock.

Another bossy hen is one of our Plymouth Barred Rocks, White-Head (so named because she has whiter feathers on her head than most females of her breed).  She thinks all scraps are hers!  She will chase every younger pullet away from the feeder too.  If one of the roosters, especially Red, her favorite, goes after a younger pullet, she will act all fluffy (chickens fluff out their feathers to “fight”) and try to chase the younger pullet away!  The roosters do not like this!  White-Head lays 6 eggs every week and is an “Irma chick;” only about 8 months old.  She just graduated from “pullet” to “hen!”

There’s plenty of entertainment “hen-watching” in my backyard!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

Houdini Hot Wings

June 26, 2018

Houdini Hot Wings

“Mom, he’s out again!”

The most idiotic of all chickens is this Buff Orpington cockerel who hates the safety of his pen.   I mean, what is it with this bird?

He has food, water, playmates, and protection from things that would pick their teeth with his toenails!  Like the hawk flying overhead, licking his chops (no, hawks can’t lick their chops, but still).  Okay, so the big Plymouth Barred Rock rooster can manage – he’s five times bigger than the hawks.  But little Houdini (no, his real name is “buffalo” like the hot wings) thinks his half-a-pound scrawniness is a match for the 1-pound hawk.  He struts around the yard squawking, “I’m free, come get me!”

Seriously!

The girls race outside, skipping with glee.  They love chasing the escapee teenage chickens.  Future-hot-wings squawks in horror.  Yes, bird, you should have stayed in your protected yard with all your friends!

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“Come on, we don’t want the hawks to eat you!” Yells Jillian.

“No, you’re our dinner in a few weeks!” Kimberly reminds him.

(If this is supposed to reassure him, it’s not helping.)

Jaquline finally grabs him, “his feathers are pretty, maybe someone will buy him to raise before we eat him.”

“Why?” Kimberly asks.

“Because then we don’t have to chase him all day anymore.” Jaquline replies, dumping said bird back in the pen with the others, “if we wait for him to get fat, he will start getting on my nerves.”

10 more weeks of chasing this escapee?  I certainly hope not.  Maybe the hawk gets him tomorrow – or someone chooses him as a 4H rooster.  Whatever happens to Houdini Hot Wings, he’ll forever be a character in the Long Tail books!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

Relax and Rest

June 13, 2018

Relax and Rest

Sometimes I just feel overwhelmed with thoughts.  I feel like my mind is going to blow a fuse (or already has blown through a few and I’m on the last one, staring at an empty box and praying this one holds).

I’ve taught myself that when I start to feel concerned for the future, I stop, hand it to God, and refocus on the present.  Usually that involves song.  Sometimes, it just involves quiet.

In nature is my quiet place.  At a beach, at a park, walking through a forest, or just sitting in my backyard watching the dragonflies dance around in their pursuit of mosquitoes while birdsongs, crickets, chicken noises, and guinea pig squeals form a nature symphony.  (Okay, maybe more like a rock concert or a three-year-old on the kazoo, but still, it’s relaxing to me.)

I think that’s why God tells us to rest in Him and cast your cares (aka worries) on Him.

He knows we have to recharge (relax) our minds in order to have good mental health.  (Interesting, isn’t it, how God mentions lots of things in the Bible about health that science later proves is true?)

When I observe nature, I can’t help but notice how perfectly God made everything to work together cohesively in its environment.  We are made with a unique purpose in our environment.  We can’t be our best in our purpose if we are super stressed and worried.

Relaxing can be different for each person and each time.  I can relax laughing with Becky while playing a video game, writing a blog in the backyard, reading my Bible on the front porch, singing along to music, baby-surfing with Lucas, or walking through a Florida trail trying to spy different wildlife.  Just reminding myself that the problems of the future are in God’s hands and if I can’t fix it now, I just need to rest from worry and trust Him: that is relaxing.

God understands my mind, my heart, and my desires.  He knows what relaxes me, what stresses me, and why my triggers get set off.  He is the quiet voice reminding me that I need to lay a train track with Lucas, help Becky name the new hens, watch lizards with Jillian, or just sit on the ground and look up.  I constantly remind myself that I need to live in the present – pay attention to today because I won’t get another one.  Once the day is gone, it is yesterday; while it is here, it is a present God has given us to enjoy.

Enjoy your present and rest in God’s love.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Crafting Cages

June 5, 2018

Crafting Cages

Last month we built two big mobile cages for our livestock

One is for the “teenager” chickens (those between just feathered and adult, about 6 weeks to 24 weeks).  Rebeccah bought the clearance Buff Orpington straight run (mixed males and females) from Tractor Supply at the end of their chick days and they are now a little over 12 weeks old – time for selling the males before we eat them at 24 weeks!

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The other was for Rebeccah, Kimberly, and Christina’s newest project: Guinea Pigs.  They had one named Jack, who, just like his namesake, was adept at getting out of cages (starting with a two-day excursion on the day she brought him home!).  On one of his excursions, he decided to disappear into the wild for good (I think he’d heard some Wild Kratts: free and in the wild!).

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But TobyMac stayed with his two girls, Taylor and Avery.

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The bright orange is TobyMac and the pretty one below is Avery.  Taylor is camera shy.

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Shop day had us designing and building the cages.  They are night-time predator proof and easy to move.  We discovered that Guinea Pigs are a perfect lawn mower: one day and they graze the grass to ½ inch height.  (Formula = 3 adult pigs to 32 square feet of grass.)

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Kimberly and Jaquline using the portable drill to make pilot holes and drive screws.

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Rebeccah tacking on the chicken wire.

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Notice the painted guinea pig on the door when it’s open.

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Even Lucas was helping!  He painted, held screws, fetched tools, and helped measure boards to cut.

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The best drill ever!  Plus wire cutters for the chicken wire.

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Three different lengths of screws and our poultry staples

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We precut all of the lumber for the second cage!

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The girls learned and practiced using power tools, critical thinking (this looked good on paper, but in reality it will cause this problem, how can we fix it?), planning, budgeting (looking prices up online and estimating our actual cost before we went), and applying this knowledge in a practical way to create a final product.  We painted the walls to help keep them from rotting, but Rebeccah, who is never satisfied with leaving something plain and functional, turned them into a work of bi-colored art.  (I only had white, so she had to mix dyes to get another color!)

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Although this was a “day off” from school, the girls learned and used various practical skills and developed two products for our family livestock.  They had a blast!  They learned a lot.  They had a very successful and memorable day creating and a huge surge of pride when they look out there now – something they made is being used everyday by cute little animals!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

 

Understanding and Choosing Forgiveness

April 23, 2018

Understanding and Choosing Forgiveness

Sometimes things make us irritated.  Loss, waste, and destruction of life are hot spots for me.

We have livestock.

Honestly, I can shrug off an owl or hawk picking off a young chicken.  I can understand the predators are getting food and my unguarded (or less than perfectly guarded) animals become easy prey.  We learn how to build a better pen or protect our animals better for the environment we have.  But I hate waste.

I had never faced a human killing animals indiscriminately.   Until yesterday, neither had the girls.  They love to show off their animals and share their experiences: from soft, fluffy biddies to newly laying vibrantly colored pullets to nuzzling Guinea Pigs.  The girls love animals and wouldn’t think of hurting them just because.  Even the “mean” cockerels (young chickens we will eat or sell, sometimes a rooster just has a mean disposition and they stay locked in the pen for protection!) are treated with respect.  They will be grilled chicken dinner or traded for feed money, anyway, so they serve a purpose.

Once, we had a child swipe a biddie because it was  “so cute  and I wanted  it,”  but her brother returned it the next day because it “looked sick.” (Unfeathered baby chicks have to stay under a heat lamp at about 100o and yes, without that heat, they get sick.)  We could understand that but the girls kept explaining to this little child that if she wanted to hold them and play with them, she could come to our yard and ask, but the biddie needed to stay with her “sisters.” (The other chicks.)

Recently, a child came to the house, systematically killed several hens, stole most of the young chickens to bait a dog, and took eggs.  We didn’t want to believe it was true.  His family returned the two live ones that managed to make it and graciously paid money to replace the lost animals.   One of the accomplices was one of the girls’ friends.  The girls went through many emotions: devastation, betrayal, anger, sadness, joy (when discovering the one rescued young chicken was the last female Buff!), compassion (when they decided they needed to pray for him), and forgiveness.

It took a while to process.  We discussed trust, honesty, betrayal, sin in the world, fallen man, how we shouldn’t be bitter, how Jesus calls us to love regardless of how people hurt us, and eventually the anger and sadness turned to compassion and forgiveness.

For me, I went through the same emotions.  It was hard to swallow and move on because of how hurt the girls were.  I wanted to protect my children from these emotions.  I didn’t want them to feel betrayal – they had allowed “friends” over and shared their animals with them and at least one of these children were part of the attack and theft.

Instead, I chose to help coach them through the emotions.  It was right to feel betrayal, anger, and sadness.  Those emotions are normal.  They had to understand how sometimes good people choose to follow evil and are sad about what they did.  (Case with their friends.)  The girls had to forgive.

And by the end of the next day, they were laughing and playing in the yard with their reconciled friends.  True forgiveness means forgetting and moving on.  That, despite the loss and hurt of the morning, made my heart happy.  Of course, I hope they never feel betrayal, but – reality check! – in this fallen world, it is likely that someone else later in life will hurt their hearts – and they will have to forgive to keep their heart from bitterness.

Yes, I found that if I allow God to move on my children’s hearts, He can turn their hurts into joy.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

Spring Seeds

March 3, 2018

Spring Seeds

Florida likes to tease our tropical plants a bit with a fake spring.  It’s really the start of spring weather but we will have at least one more cold snap to remind us that we do participate briefly in the season the rest of the country calls winter.

My favorite plant (outside of anything edible and my personal favorite trio of roses, gardenia, and Camilla) type is bulb.  In Florida, many bulbs thrive with minimum care.  Our yard had a few worn beds of overgrown bulbs when we arrived.  Year one was break them up and replant.

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Year two is sprouting.  (See how I love bulbs!  Fast growing, hardy and results in a year!)

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Elephant ears are one of my favorites, but this yard has two types of elephant ears, bananas, gorgeous lilies, fire-flowers, a yellow-red lily with a huge 6” bloom (just a green few in the picture here as tall, cup-like leaves with “spokes”), and the normal replanted ones like celery, onion, and garlic.  Celery bottoms replant and grow until they are tired of being stepped on.  We have one two-year pineapple and two newbies.  Two garlic cloves are growing. Dozens of onions dot the design.

And we have what we call “bonus plants” these come from our fertilizer.20180302_173445.jpg

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We fertilize with an organic mix of hay, biodegraded plant material, and chicken droppings.  Since our philosophy is to waste nothing, our chickens end up eating a lot of kitchen scraps that include seeds.  This often leads us to wonderful “bonus plants.”

These gems are usually milo, wheat, millet, collard, eggplant, citrus, pepper, or tomato!  We’ve noted cucumber, sunflower, and pumpkin as well.  When we find a tomato, we baby it.  Usually, though, the next day the lizard hunter has trampled it even though the gardens are strictly off limits.  Any lizard who makes it to the house or the garden is safe!

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But this spring we were babying one tiny tomato in the front porch garden when today, voila! ~ ~ We discovered this literal bed of tomatoes hiding under an elephant ear!  We’re so excited we haven’t figured out if we want to attempt to dig them up and separate them while they are small or just leave them in this area they appear to like.  (I’m beginning to believe a single chicken must have eaten an entire bag of tomatoes last season!)

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All of our young pullets are finally hens, laying and regularly producing so we have an average excess of 10 dozen eggs a week!  Now our chickens pay for themselves and the dogs!  (The money we get from the market for our eggs pays for chicken feed and dog feed.I love the seeds of spring!

20180302_173503.jpg(So does Lucas, who had to have his picture taken without his dirty shirt.)

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

 

 

Interview with Alfredo

An interview with a real chicken

October 16, 2017

Meet Alfredo

*** We are attempting to interview Alfredo, a rooster in the series, “The Adventures of Long Tail” but he doesn’t seem to think his microphone is working…***

Alfredo: So, are you going to interview me?  Oh!  Hello there!  Didn’t expect a beautiful white rooster like me to be talking, did you?

Alfredo whispering: (Guys, are you getting this on video or audio only?)

Us: Audio only.

Alfredo: (Oh, just sound… bummer.)

I’m Alfredo, the most beautiful white rooster to ever walk the planet!  And I live on this lovely farm with a sturdy henhouse and yard filled with beautiful hens and pullets… all my lovelies.  (So, just ignore that mean-sounding jealous crow in the background, that’s only a tiny, little, dull, worn-out, old rooster who’s jealous of my harem and my beautiful white feathers.  Can you guys filter him out in the final cut maybe?)

NOT Alfredo: “ALFREDO!”

Alfredo: Okay, maybe that yellow rooster in the picture is the king rooster of this henyard and I’m the second in command… (but a guy can dream, can’t he?  Guys, you can remove the first half of the sentence later.)

Anyway, so there are humans in the human house (scary thought, isn’t it?  Guys, have you ever seen a human?) and there are giant creatures all around outside of our sturdy fence and solid wooden henhouse but I have defeated many enemies!

NOT Alfredo: “ALFREDO!”

Alfredo whispering: (Can’t a guy do his own interview without interruptions?)

Us: This is live, Alfredo.

Alfredo: (This is live?  Bummer… maybe I should flatter him then so he’ll be quiet.)  So, I’m not the big hero all of the time.  Mr. Big Yellow Long Tail the Magnificent is always the hero.  It says so in the books… every one of them says “Long Tail, the great yellow chief” and he always is the big hero.

I’m done now!  Signing off, is that okay Mr. Long Tail?  (Is he gone?  Okay, so maybe I should ask my human writer to start the next book with “Alfredo the Beautiful whom the hens and pullets adore…”)

Us: ALFREDO!  That isn’t the book format!

Alfredo: That wasn’t a rooster crow!  Who said that?  Yikes!  A voice I can’t see!  Maybe there are more of them!  Alfredo is hiding in the hay until they leave – better yet, you go fight them for me, will you?  Bye!

*** We were unable to get Alfredo to return to the microphone and face the unseen voices.  So, this ends the interview with Alfredo the Rooster.  Read more about his hiding (ahem, his “bravery”) in “The Adventures of Long Tail.” ***

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

A Storm and Chicken Story

A sneak peek at Long Tail and the Big Storm

August 26, 2017

A Storm and Chicken Story

One day we were playing outside and a storm came up.  Not a cute little Pooh bear thundercloud with a few raindrops, but a giant, hurricane-wind, flash-lightning-fireworks-in-the-sky, shake-the-whole-house-thunder, all-people-hide-inside kind of thunderstorm.  (Okay, it was a simple, everyday, Florida thunderstorm.)  The winds were swirling chicken feathers and fluffing them out like towel-dried cats.  Smaller chickens were hop-flying to stabilize themselves as they fought for the safety of the henhouse.

After drying off from the first wave of rain, the girls peeked outside and giggled at the chickens until the raindrops were so large we couldn’t see the henhouse anymore.  The late summer winds blew the tree limbs around like strong autumn breezes scatter just-raked leaf piles.

“Mom, can you tell us a story with a storm?” Asked Rebeccah.

“A Long Tail story!” yipped Kimberly.  She was five, and she loved Long Tail.

So we snuggled on the couch with lightning flashes illuminating the room through the big windows and started what would become “Long Tail and the Big Storm.”

The chickens of the yard were ruled by Long Tail, the great yellow chief, and guarded by Long Tail and Alfredo, the white rooster imported some time ago.  Under this rooster team, the hens and pullets scratched and gossiped and laid eggs all day with no worries.

On one autumn day the bright sky darkened with angry clouds.  The sun hid.  The birds in the woods started crying warnings and flying away.  Two small humans who were playing in the henhouse with the baby biddies, heard a booming crack of thunder and jumped!  They put the baby biddies back in the safe brooder and left the henhouse.

“Look at those little humans!” cawed Alfredo, laughing, “running like rabbits!”

A giant bolt of lightning lit up the sky just behind the woods and a cannon-loud BOOM of thunder shattered the air.  Alfredo scrambled into the henhouse and hid under the brooder.

All the hens laughed at the silly rooster.

Even Red Feathers and Golden Eye, two of the youngest pullets, laughed at him.

Long Tail strutted by, “when the water falls from the sky, we come in.” Long Tail was not afraid.

A big wind shrieked through the henhouse.  It blew the people door open!

Can Long Tail save his flock?  Be sure to check out Long Tail and the Big Storm to see just how this courageous rooster accomplishes this brave feat!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Conquering Ticks

Our natural solution to ticks.

August 10, 2017

Conquering Ticks

We live on what we call a tiny farm.  It’s just over an acre.  It was abandoned before our landlord bought it, spruced it up, and cut down all the brush.  When we arrived in April, we discovered that a twenty-foot walk from our carport to the front step attracted lots of ticks!  Not the big, easy-to-see dog ticks, but tiny ticks the size of a period!  (Yes, some are so small they can fit on the head of a sewing pin, the girls have tried it – they also are fascinating to look at under a microscope because the light goes through them!)  Some were slightly bigger.  (No, we’ve never taken pictures of them!  We are usually inside when we find them and we smash, burn, or flush them, instantly!)

Research taught us these were a variety of deer tick.  The small ones are called “seed ticks.”  In part of the tick’s life cycle, they are newly emerged in their tick form (small adult form) and need just a little blood to finish growing.  So they bite and release.  The duration of this bite is between ten minutes and an hour, so sometimes we caught them and got them off.  We got very adept at distinguishing tick bites from the bites of other minuscule horrors of Florida, like sand gnats, mosquitoes, fire ants, and yellow flies.  We all know that ticks attach themselves once they are full adults.  (For this variety, full adult size is about 1/8th of an inch in diameter – the size of a small print “o”.)

I hate ticks.  (Who doesn’t?)  I don’t like pesticides.  (We want to eat food from this yard!)

Luckily, I have chickens!

Chickens are opportunistic omnivores (aka, scavengers).  This means while most people envision them eating dry seeds and corn, they actually have a palate that inclines them toward consumption of living organic material such as insects, microscopic organisms, fresh new plant shoots, and anything moving that is small enough to fit in their beak.  My chicken flock has always been known to hunt actively for mosquitoes and flies.  (Yes, they run along under the flying insect and jump to attack once they perceive catch is possible.  Several times they have smashed into a fence or wall while hunting in this manner.  Side-effect: human entertainment.)

Roosters (grown-up males) seem to find ant larvae a delicacy and get all excited digging up ant beds and telling the others, “here, some awesome food!”  (A few hens join in this feast, but others look at the ant-larvae-loving chickens with “eww, gross” expressions.)

Our laying hens (females) and breeding roosters stay in the covered henyard.  Our “biddie-babies” (the girls have made-up terms for every stage; this is newly hatched to 6 weeks) and “baby-toddlers” (6 to 10 weeks) share the brooding pens so they can be protected from rain, draft, and heat in the pre-feathered chick stage (biddie-babies) and to protect them from our area’s population of kites (beautiful, small hawk-like birds who hunt young chickens).  The “big toddlers” (10 to 15 weeks) and “teenagers” (15 to 24 weeks) roam near the henyard because they are too big for the kites to carry away.

They will forage all day for insects and leave the free-choice feed completely alone.  They stay within about 25 feet of their water source at all times (during or just after a light rain, they may wander a bit farther, but not normally).  They LOVE seed ticks!

Within two weeks of our natural pest control plan, we could walk to the carport with zero ticks!  Within a month, the strip of back yard where we hang clothes and the kids play was nearly tick-free!  It’s been five months and they have cleared an expanded circle that includes parts of the front yard.

(My bulb beds helped grow the circle as they love to eat insects that eat the bulbs and the plants hold dew.)

Slowly, our chickens are conquering the tick population in the rest of the yard!

In closing, if you have a tick problem and don’t mind chickens scratching through your plant beds, maybe consider a pest control plan that rewards you with organic fertilizer… and eggs too!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

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