July 28, 2007 

took time for myself last night and made a game board. There was this piece of board laying around which was the other half of another project and I thought "Ah Ha!". This is actually not a chess or checkers board but a Tablero game board. On the other side I am putting another game, which I will feature in the Autumn issue. This summer I am going to a medieval SCA event so I wanted some games to take with us. The gameboard is not done yet, just a start of it. The black and white 'dots' are actually glass beads, which I guess are technically NOT beads since they do not have a hole in them. They are half rounded as they are flat on the bottom. I learned to play Tablero when I worked for the zoo and my Mexican friends taught me how. People in the SCA were interested in how I played it as they had not see that style before and especially so since it had been handed down for generations from Mexico and presumably Spain at some point. Although many people use Tablero as a drinking game, I only use marker pieces such as the 'glass beads' or chess pawns. I am at a standstill on it for the moment as I want to study on it and see what I ought to do to finish it. I am considering a router to slightly indent the lines, but do not want to ruin the ability to slide the pieces across the board.

Yesterday the 13 year old "neighbor" girl (she lives like 3 miles down the road) spend the day with me. She helped me around the house and she is an excellent worker. We watered all the animals which can take awhile, moved turkeys to new pens,  she drug hoses, she helped me pull out the paper feed sacks from where I store them and open them up for weedblock in the area of my garden which is out of control (YES! I have weeds!!!). We then beat the heat and came in the house, and while I was doing some housework, I put her onto some leatherwork for her to make a medieval leather purse for herself. She had never sewn leather before. When her family came to pick her up in the evening, she said she wanted to stay the night at our house. She says she will be back today.

Today or tomorrow we are butchering chickens at Mary's house. She has alot of Cornish Cross which are being able not to walk. They grow so fast that their legs cannot support them, so they are going to the freezer. Between our 3 farms we have close to 200 chickens to butcher this year. I know I have 70-80 of them for our personal use growing here at our homestead. I am holding out until September or October to butcher ours. For those of you who are butchering this year for the first time and want step-by-step directions, you may want to check out our Winter 2006 issue. It was a request from Dawn from Colorado last year that it be in the magazine. I try to cater. So if you have a topic you would like to see, just ask.