James Thorpe

This week, our ducks kept us on our toes. They have begun to lay their eggs in new places every few days. First, they laid eggs in random places in our yard, out in the open. Then it was the hollow on the north side of the basement wall, then the nook between the shelter and the fence, then the other end of the nook, then the hollow again, and then the former residence of the large duck shelter, which of course they have never actually used for shelter. But yesterday, they began laying eggs under the steps to the deck. God had me looking that direction or I would never have found them. It’s kind of a game, now, for me and my wife; where will the ducks lay them today? I hear them quacking maniacally (“They’ll never look here! Ah, hahahahaha!!”).

The Thermal Windows people come this week to replace our old windows with new efficient ones, and we can hardly wait. Our electric company will be getting less of our money, Lord willing. Nothing against the electric company, of course. As far as we know.

Amy baked a lot this week. She baked cupcakes for JB’s birthday. She baked a cake for dinner at my folks. She baked cornbread for dinner, made egg salad with duck eggs (YUM!), and stir fry on another day. Her cooking gives me reason to thank God for our food each meal.

Our peach tree has some beautiful flowers already, and our apple tree shows inches of growth from last year. We look forward to fruit, though it may take a few years of pruning for the trees to get strong enough. We hope to see some berries, too. Some other trees are putting out green leaves, and the chickweed needs mowing. (Groan) It doesn’t wait for you to be ready, although my wife really loves our riding mower. You should see her in fifth gear; just don’t get in her way. Maybe I can swing a deal…

I finally changed the oil in my Honda Civic, which is gray. The car, not the oil. My wife insists my car is purple because I always respond with mostly feigned indignation that it most certainly is not. I don’t want a purple car. But it isn’t primer-gray, so maybe she has a point. Don’t tell her I said so.

We went to an estate sale on Thursday, and bought a 17-ft extension ladder so I can make our insurance agent richer when I fall off. Just kidding; I’ll be careful. It will allow me to get some branches down from trees I have been itching to remove for almost a year now. We had about 3 severe ice storms over a period of less than 5 years, and they destroyed the tops and outer limbs of a great many trees in our area. Ours have not been tended to in some time. I plan to fix those trees, but good. You can tell ‘em I’m coming…and my chainsaw’s comin’ with me!

I’ve got a syndrome; I think it happens every spring. I feel overcome by a desire to clean and organize, especially if there is a lot of other stuff to do. This weekend, I reorganized and cleaned half of the basement, the half that has my tools and the kids’ toys for outside. It needed doing, but I spent the whole day doing it, and now I want to do more. The school cabinet is next, and we already did the video cabinet. And I want to spread the desire for neat cleanness to everyone in the house, to every room and surface! Hahahahaha!

Sorry, I get a little carried away sometimes. If my wife complains that she can’t find anything, or one our kids goes missing for days, or we have more stuff in the give away pile than in our closets…just know the neatnik gnomes have been at work. No clutter is safe.

James

The saga continues…

I’ve always wanted to say that.

Well, this week was somewhat less eventful, but no less of a blessing. It began with a day off of school for me (James), in which we celebrated Valentine’s Day with our homeschool support group. Imagine children of all ages loaded with sugar, running pell-mell around one of the meeting rooms in a community center while the Moms enjoyed each other’s company and retired men played billiards in the room next door. At least, that’s what I saw. We came home with enough chocolate to meet our acne needs for the next month at least.

The new HVAC unit (paid for by our home warranty) arrived in the morning, and took the whole day for a 3-man crew to install. Apparently, it didn’t fit the original setup as expected, so they had to make some adjustments. But they finished by the afternoon and now we have HEAT! Hallelujah! We are so thankful for a system that doesn’t have to run on overdrive all day. Our electric bills were way high, and we didn’t always stay warm before, but we sure do now.

Right after the HVAC guys left, we got some heavy rain and a fair amount of pea-sized hail. It looked like an army spilled their drinks from Sonic. Our ducks didn’t seem to mind, and they continue to lay their 4-eggs-a-day quota. I guess they’re happy; they haven’t sent a labor representative to negotiate for more feed and shorter hours…

My daughter and I worked on a design for her pinewood derby car for her American Heritage Girls troup project. We decided on AHG and not Girl Scouts because of AHG’s decidedly Christian perspective on leadership, not because of the cookies. My daughter then went to Grampa on Saturday to have him do the crafting and cutting. He added his own special touch: ball bearings in the body, sitting in holes made with the drill press, and held in place with automobile epoxy. Leave it to the engineer. Earlier that morning, I took the boys to Lowe’s home improvement store (aka Daddy’s Toy Store) to build the parent-child project they had: a NASCAR car made of…pinewood. Perfect; now everybody has one, and nobody has to fight over it. Can I get an “Amen!” from the parents of more than 1 child?

That same Saturday, a student of mine came by to help with some of our outdoor projects. I invite students once a month to a “workday” so they can get service hours for their school requirement, and we have a great time. Trent helped me haul logs and hay bails while telling me about his trip to New York City, and we built the first of our raised garden beds from 2×12 boards. We put my wife’s new elliptical machine (thank you, craigslist) in the basement, and began pasting pieces of sheetrock back together to fill in the hole in our kitchen wall left by the plumber who helped me (James) refix a leak from our upstairs toilet that was dripping into our kitchen cabinets…whew! That sentence took longer than the repairs. The details are in the previous post (Feb 19: 5 Blessings).

However, the leak is back, but it’s slower, so I guess we’ll call him back, or something. Stay tuned…(dramatic voice)”Is this the end of the dynamic duo? Tune in next week, same bath time, same bath channel!”

Also this week, I (James) installed a new light fixture on our ceiling fan in the dining room. We dined in the dim, and even went so far as to mount Christmas lights in the window and light multiple candles, but to no avail. That room was just dark.

“Pass the, um, whatever food that is.”

“That’s the vase of flowers, Dad.”

“Well maybe they just need salt.”

But now, we can see everything, and there’s so much more energy in the room. My resourceful wife found the light fixture at the ReStore, the Habitat for Humanity store that sells overstocks, and I checked online to make sure I knew what I was doing, and then installed it one afternoon. Of course, it had its unforeseen obstacles (JB weld on the plastic light-click housing, metal snips to remove an unwanted light bulb socket), but now it works great, looks great, and remind us that God is great.

After church today, I asked my son E.J. what his picture was; he told me “This is Jesus; He has a giraffe neck and he can tie Satan in knots with it. This is porcupine quills, and He can poke Satan with them. And He has a saw, so he can saw Satan.” Wow. That would be something to see. I don’t remember this picture from the book of Revelation, but I never saw Satan myself. After supper tonight, we decided to play games. After two simultaneous games of UNO, we told a story using the pictures on the faces of 9 dice (picture cubes). We took turns rolling the dice and telling a story that connected all the pictures shown on the dice. It was hilarious. By the end, we all were laughing and had all been very silly. It was a great way to end the week.

My wife has started seedlings, my father-in-law has a new motor for his tiller, and our crocuses have begun to bloom a beautiful gold-yellow. Spring is coming, and there is much to do: insulate the basement, fill the raised beds, cut wood (lots of wood), have a bonfire or two, change the oil in the cars, fix the leak (take #3!), and continue excavating our hill and woods. We’ll keep you posted on what we discover. See you next week.

J.T.

Wow! What an amazing week! God provides, and our friends are just amazing, and it’s affordable, and…okay, I better slow down and give some details. Lemme ‘splain about our most recent 5 blessings.

First blessing from God: When we first bought our A-frame, our very wise realtor, Chris Martin from Coldwell Banker, had the sellers purchase a 1-yr home warranty, that said if anything that came with the house, had passed inspection, and was working when we moved in, broke in the first year, they would replace it at minimal costs to us. Our HVAC unit (heat and air) was old, and we weren’t entirely sure it worked properly as we began to leave the hot summer and find cooler air. My wife’s instinct told her something was wrong. I couldn’t tell what, and the first repairman from the home warranty company couldn’t find much, either. But we prayed that if it was going to break or wear out, that God would smite it before the warranty was up.

It got worse after the first “repair”, and finally began making such loud intermittent noise that we couldn’t sleep on that side of the house. But since that side had all the bedrooms, we began running out of couches. After calling the home warranty company again, the repairmen took the whole thing apart and discovered a ton of problems. They told us the whole thing would have to be replaced, and all we had to pay was $300 for some parts not covered by the warranty. Huzzah! A new HVAC unit for less a tenth of what it would cost us to replace it ourselves, plus labor. God is so good. We had 1 month left on the warranty.

Next blessing from God: Our upstairs toilet began leaking into our kitchen cabinets several weeks ago (“Save the COFFEE!”), so we called our plumber friends for advice, and they said to replace the gasket and wax seal on the toilet, so I (James) gave it a go. I had done this once before on the downstairs toilet, so figured I knew what to do.  Well, I almost did.

In retrospect, using a jigsaw to cut PVC pipe already glued in place wasn’t the best plan. I left jagged edges, several of which were so low, water continued to leak after I made the repairs. Also, I will always remember to arrange the gasket so the toilet, after bolting, is flush with the wall, and not cockeyed like I did on this one. My gracious wife made the best of it all, still cooking delicious food without part of her kitchen. And our kids took turns using the one working bathroom without killing each other.

So after I finished, the leaks waited a few days, and then came back, worse than before, so we invited our plumber friend Aaron Davis and his family to our house and fed them lunch so he would help us with the leak. We redid the whole repair job, but with a nifty professional plumber tool that cut the pipe neatly, and now we have no leaks. We even had extra pipe ready-to-hand from rerouting the dryer hose weeks ago. I broke the blade on the jigsaw with that one, and then found out my reciprocating saw was a better tool. Oh, well; you learn from mistakes. God is good, my wife never said “See? You shouldn’t even try,” and all it cost was a few dollars for parts and a half-dozen duck eggs we gave them for their trouble. Plus we got to spend a day with good friends we hadn’t see in a while.

Third blessing from God: Thermal Windows of Tulsa is going to replace our old, single pane aluminum windows in all the bedrooms. And we can afford it! We weren’t sure after hearing the first few estimates, but after checking out several companies, we decided we could afford what Thermal Windows offered, and it would significantly reduce our electric bill and noise from outside. The new windows should be in before Spring is over.

Fourth Blessing: Our six ducks, a gift from our friends, Larry and Vicki Shead of Kansas, have continued to lay 3-4 eggs a day since January, providing us with a cheap source of protein and lots of learning. We have learned a little about animals mating, every parent’s FAVORITE thing to explain to their five-year old, feeding and watering every day means every day, and animals leaving their poop everywhere. We also learned that ducks are relatively low maintenance compared to chickens, who seem to need help remembering not to drown in a rainstorm. Seriously…they drown.

Fifth blessing: Okay, this one we had to hire out because my wife refuses to let me haul a chainsaw up a 50-ft pecan tree. I am not objecting. We have many large pecan trees, and some of them had large branches reaching way out over our nearly-new roof. With the memories of recent ice-storm disasters in our minds, we agreed with our wise realtor, and decided to get them professional trimmmed. Preaus Landscape of Tulsa did the hard work in single day, gave us a discount, and still finished in less time for less money than their original estimate. We like the Preaus family and got to know them from James teaching 3 of their 4 children at school.

All this to say that we love our home, our improvements came just when we needed them and God provided for all of them, and we have made some great friends in the process. This next week, James plans to redo a repair job he did taping insulation to ductwork – but this time, he has tape that will stick (we hope). We also plan to use high-school students to help build raised garden beds. We’ll let you know how that turns out in our next post, and remember that God is good…all the time.

James and Amy Thorpe

We have a weird house. It’s in an unusual place. We do odd things to it. Good thing we are a little strange, too. Lemme ‘splain.

Our house is an A-frame, which means the slanted roof is so long it makes up two of the walls of the house. This makes arranging furniture against the wall something of a challenge in some rooms. Hanging pictures also requires more advance planning than a regular house. It means we have potential storage space in the walls, but only below waist-height. It means we have to lean as we go up the stairs because you can hit your head on the wall/ceiling when you turn at the landing between the 1st/2nd floor and the 2nd/3rd floor.

Ordinarily, an A-frame roof reaches all the way to the ground, but our house sits between two creeks in a flood plain, so our basement sits up above the ground so it won’t flood as much. Can we even call it a basement? The two living floors of the house sit on top of it, so we have actually three stories, but one is a basement and we only live in two of them.

So we have a A-frame, but not a normal one; we have a basement, but it’s above ground…totally. Our front door is on the second floor, and our cars won’t fit through the door of our basement/garage. Are you mixed up yet? We were for a while, too.

Thankfully, we know what to do with our house and our land. God granted us a house full of dreams and potential, and we keep getting ideas about every week of something else we can do to make the house and land even better for God’s purposes. This blog will chronicle events, projects, ideas, and directions that God gives and we do to our lovely, strange, bizarre, perfect-for-us A-frame in a flood plain.

“The goal of homesteading is to live deep and not wide”, to quote George Nash. It means depending upon industrial processing less, and doing as much as you can for yourself. It means recycling/reducing/reusing to the max. It means you go to church more often than you go to the store. Okay, that last one is our own version of homesteading, but you get the point. We try to make what we need instead of buying it ready-made, reuse and repurpose what would ordinarily be thrown away, and learn how to do things ourselves with help from others, rather than hire it out. The goal is to be a semi-independent homestead, able to be nearly self-sufficient within a community. Of course, you have to have the right schedule, the right equipment, the right skills, and the right help to pull this off. We are trying to get there in stages, and this blog will tell our story. We hope it’s good reading.

Now, we don’t do this for the reasons many have advocated: going back-to-land, shrinking our carbon-footprint, barricading ourselves against the end of the world, and so on. We don’t have an axe to grind. We used to live in a middle-class suburban neighborhood, and no one would have thought we were planning to leave it all.

But God put a dream in our hearts to live away from the city, away from pop culture and worldliness, and close the natural world, in a home that would offer peace and refreshment to others. Plus, we just really like homegrown food, and we get a lot of satisfaction living this way. We hope you will be able to glean ways to find the same satisfaction in God and not in the world.

James and Amy Thorpe, February 2012