Reduce, reuse, and recy - play yard pong!

A few months ago a friend and I decided that we wanted to have a Cinco de May-O (spelled that way because we were going for a redneck theme) party. Because who doesn't want to celebrate a Mexican holiday with beer in a water trough? That party was on last Saturday, and I am pleased to say that it went very well.

One good and bad thing about hosting a get together is that it motivates you to get all of your little projects done. Like installing new laminate flooring and learning how to miter quarter round so that you can put a bed in your newly remodeled back bedroom two days before you are going to have guests staying in it and you also have to get all of the herbs planted that you bought at the botanical garden and mulch them in so that your yard doesn’t look like you held up a garden supply center at gun point.

Which is kind of what mine looked like at the start of last week. I hadn’t mown, there was a large pile of brush that I had earmarked for a bonfire along with a bunch of extra newspaper and empty cereal/cat litter boxes that I had saved for fire starters, I had probably close to thirty or forty plants laying around, ten bags of mulch in my back seat (Mercury Milans are surprisingly spacious. I can fit about four straw bales in there at once too.) and I had laminate scraps and the carpet I had ripped out laying around the yard. Actually, given the theme of the party I probably should have left it. Though redneck and white trash aren’t exactly identical…

Long story short, I was a little stressed but it all came together with the help of my friends from out of town. They took to helping me set up, cut trees, and cook with the kind of enthusiasm that makes me want to cry tears of joy. They even helped me put a stallion out on pasture the morning of the party. I have the **BEST** friends.

Having a party like that means that I have been slacking on the blogging front, and I am sorry. But it was a great time, and a fantastic way to develop new games. Like Yard Pong. Which combines the classic drinking game beer pong, with finally finding a use for all of the empty mineral tubs we have laying around. Sustainability and alcohol. It was a great combination.

Yard Pong

2 beach balls

12 empty mineral tubs

Drinks of your choice

Four players

Set the tubs up in a triangle (one, two, three tubs per row) with the tops of the triangle about 10-20 feet apart depending on your athletic ability. Take turns trying to hit the beach balls into the tubs. Use one ball per person on two, two person teams. The scoring is as follows.

If you hit the ball into the tub the opposing team drinks one drink for whichever score it is, first tub = one drink & sixth tub = six drinks.

If you don’t hit any tubs you take one drink.

If you bounce the ball off of a tub the opposing team drinks once for every time the tub is hit, beach balls ricochet well.

Two re-racks are allowed.

Needless to say we had a ball, and I am going to start selling used mineral tubs to college students. That’s one way to recycle and recoup the costs, right? Maybe? There is a whole market here just waiting to be tapped!

Craptastic!

My craptastic weekend...was great!

So why do I call it craptastic? If you read my second to last post you saw my gigantic to do list. On that list was an entry called “dig out Moon’s pen.” What does that mean exactly? Well, overwintering animals in smaller pens closer to the house for monitoring and pasture management reasons has some drawbacks. Like an overabundance of manure. When the animals don’t have as much room to roam it builds up pretty quickly. So digging out the pens means removing the animal and attacking the ground with a tractor. Ideally this happens two or three times a year, realistically (I mean did you see the rest of the to do list?) it happens once or twice.

And I shall call it Mt. Horse Apple.

Well, we got Moon’s pen all cleaned out (about five hours of work all told. I started it out, but my dad stepped in and finished it after it hit a tree with the bucket (front end) of the tractor as I was backing up. I don’t think he trusted me near the edges after that for some reason. I don’t know why! I have skillz damnit. You can tell they’re legit because the have a “z.”

Well, I started on cleaning out the milk house of doom while he was finishing up on that. I had no clue what I was getting into there. There are things in that tiny building that have no place being there. Like porcelain bears, old boots, knitted something or anothers. As I was hauling fruit basket after fruit basket of junk out, because for some reason we had dilapidated fruit baskets in there. ‘Cause, hey why the hell not. They go with the glass bears. I got to thinking that there are probably even snakes in there. *shudder* The things I do to try and get a potting shed. So, it still isn’t done, but I took a few loads out.

Then dad and I moved hay, and dad decided to dig out the cow’s winter enclosure. We live pretty close to the Cahokia Mounds, and dad has decided to create the “Cowpoopia” Mounds. He seems to think it’ll make a great attraction. I’m not convinced. (Actually, I told him it was a shitty idea. Then cackled like a fifth grader. Geez. I am too witty sometimes!)

One day archaeolgists are going to have a field day with this one.

While he was working on the cow pasture I walked around and located six trees down over the fence. Yet another good reason to keep the livestock close to the house for the winter months. Ice and wind are hell on trees, and trees are hell on fences. So, dad and I loaded up the chainsaw and he cut and I dragged until the perimeter fence was at least up again. I am not going to count it as cleared yet, but at least it should hold the horses and cows. It will be another weekend or two before we have another chance to work on it, but at least it is serviceable right?

Yeah. I’m going to tell myself that. Just wait for the post about the livestock in the neighbors field. I sense it coming.

Sunday found me trying out my carpentry skills, which are, uh, nonexistent. The good news is I now have a dog house, the bad news? Well, I’m not sure I should be allowed near a saws-all again anytime soon, but that deserves its own little how to. Check out my post on DIY Dog House out of Pallets for more of that story! I also started in on making pots for starting seedlings, but I will wait and fill you in on that one in its own post as well.

Hope ya’ll are surviving the daylight savings shift!

SPRING!

Some people would say that this is oregano poking through straw. I prefer to call it SPRING! And it is about damned time!

Although, now instead of a to do list made up of cooking, eating, and catching up on my reading I have made a monster. My to do list looks like this:

Why am I excited it is spring again?

Oh yeah, BONFIRE!!!!!!