5 Acres & A Dream

These seeds are a real gift because I never planned on having seeds to save from my garden this year. In fact, a year ago I didn't know I would have a garden this summer. Just hoping. I bought quite a few seeds on faith and somehow managed to get quite a few heirlooms. Happily, I have been able to save several:
Clemson Spineless Okra
National Pickling Cucumber
Casaba Melon (from a seed saving neighbor)
Waltham Butternut Squash
Small Sugar Pumpkin
Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans
Mammoth Gray Sunflowers

I also have one Table Queen Acorn Squash in the pantry which I will save the seeds from. I hope to be able to save seeds from my fall garden as well.

The dates on the envelopes (hard to read, I know) are planting dates. The first is for spring, the second for a fall planting. I'm thinking that if I file them by date rather than alphabetically, I'll have a better chance of getting everything in on time.

My plan is that 2010 will be the last year I purchase vegetable seeds, barring unforeseen circumstances or an impulse to grow something I don't already have. My herb gardens will be a work in progress for several years, so I assume I'll still be buying seeds for that.

As much as I love the prospect of being a self-sustaining gardener, I will miss pouring over seed catalogues in the early spring. Still, to grow all my own saved seeds will be worth it.

2009 Saved Seeds photos & text copyright November 2009 by Leigh at http://my5acredream.blogspot.com/

Related Posts:
Seed Saving

... and the rules say I need to mention it on my blog. So here it is. Cottage Homestead is giving away a manual hand crank coffee grinder, which I would absolutely love to have. Click here to go see for yourself. :)

While Dan has been busy under the dining room, I've been busy in it. I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I am really not too keen on an entire house with ultra-white walls. This is the color most of the interior had been painted, I suppose in order to put it on the market. Painting the dining room before we put down a new hardwood floor made sense to me.

Making the decision to paint was far easier than choosing the colors. Since the dining and living rooms open up to one another, I wanted the colors to coordinate with my furniture. (To see photo swatches of colors, click here and scroll down.)

Finally I went to Lowe's, where I could bring a cushion and compare paint chips under different types of lighting. To show you the ones I chose, I went to the Olympic Paint website (color sampler here) and grabbed a screenshot (which doesn't seem to be totally accurate. The actual paint is a touch more gold.)

Even though I chose them because they coordinate with my living room fabrics, I was really undecided about them for the longest time. I was planning to do the lightest one for the dining room walls, the middle one for the living room walls, and the darkest for all trim.

The problem was that they just aren't "my" colors. Color preferences are highly subjective. I am always immediately drawn toward cool colors such as blues, greens, and purples. Occasionally red, never orange, and rarely brown. I like the fabrics in my couch because it contains a lot of burgundy. But I didn't want burgundy walls or trim. These color chips went well with my furniture and I even bought the paint, but I still hesitated.

When Dan got started working on the support for the dining room floor, I knew I couldn't hesitate any longer. I finally decided just to take the plunge and do it. After all, I told myself, it isn't the end of the world if I don't like it and it doesn't have to be permanent forever.

I made an interesting discovery while I was doing the prep work before painting. If you read my woodstove alcove series, you may recall that we used 1/2" cement board for the alcove walls. While we were working on that, we discovered that the entire living room wall on the fireplace side was 3/4" cement board. At that time we assumed that the other walls in the living and dining rooms were plaster.

When I pulled the cove molding from the top of the dining room baseboards, I discovered that a crack wasn't simply a crack in the plaster, (photo left), it was a crack in the wall. Looking at the rest of the walls we realized that they were all cement board. In both dining and living rooms. Of course, there used to be a woodburning stove in the dining room as well, but who would have thought that two entire rooms were cement board.

I painted the walls first. Then the trim and built-in corner cabinets.

The green outlining is FrogTape. What a life saver, especially for someone like me, who's a naturally messy painter (Head for cover when I've got a paint roller in my hand). We took the doors off the bottom cabinets and I bought new hinges and knobs. The pale green inside the bottom of the cabinet was the room's original color, like the rest of the house.

Even as I'm painting I'm unsure of the colors, especially the trim. We did discuss taking all the trim down, stripping off the paint, and refinishing the wood. To be honest, I'm just not ready for all the work involved in that, there's just too much else to do around here. We do have some ideas for the dining room, something more formal, and DH was willing to go ahead with those. I, on the other hand, am not willing to put all our time, energy, and money into only one room at this point. There's still the kitchen and bathrooms which have to be done, and the sooner the better. For now, I just want the new floor in and the room presentable. I'm thinking of it as "Phase One". Some day we can commence with "Phase Two," but not until other things are accomplished first.

So, even with my uncertainties, I paint on. One of the real tests, was how well it looked with my Blue Willow. (You can click on the photos to enlarge a bit.)

After putting a few pieces on the one corner unit, I realized I could work with these colors. The contrast with the blue is pleasing and I plan to pull in the burgundy and green from the couch and rug with draperies and chair cushions.

So I paint on, anxious to get started on the floor. Having a dining room will be a big step toward making our house feel like a home.

Color For The Dining Room photos & text copyright November 2009 by Leigh at http://my5acredream.blogspot.com/

Related Posts:
Our Next Project
Beefing Up the Dining Room Floor

I've been saying for awhile now that our next house project is a new hardwood floor to replace the old linoleum in the dining room. Well, it is, but anyone who's done any renovation on an old home knows that there are often a lot of preliminary steps needing to be done before getting to the "real" project. It's been no different with our dining room floor. While to floor in that room is level (amazingly), it did have some give to it in spots. DH wanted to address this by adding additional support before we started nailing down the new flooring.

Our crawlspace is not ideal. It goes from about 3 feet at the back of the house, to barely inches in the front. The oil burning heater and air conditioner (pic here) were installed near the dining room which is about the middle of the house. To do this, they knocked a huge hole in the foundation. A concrete pad was laid and the unit placed on top of that. This meant that the largest of the ductwork was under the dining room, leaving no room to maneuver. To be able to work under there, DH pulled out the heater/AC unit, put a temporary header in the opening, and pulled out all the ductwork. Not only did this give him room to work, but also easy access to the dining room floor.

Now, I admit that I am not without misgivings about this. Not because of the heater, but because of the AC. Not that we needed it all summer, but it was sure nice to have when we had days on end in the middle 90s. Regardless of that, the ductwork was in very poor shape. Parts of it weren't insulated or the insulation was falling off, so it needs to be replaced anyway.

We aren't the first ones to work on supporting the dining room floor. You can see the beam that was previously added in the photo below. It is supported by concrete blocks.

This beam is 4x4 inches, and 8 and 1/2 feet long. The length of the dining room is 13 feet, so this only supported a portion of it and so was minimally helpful.

A problem that needed to be addressed was the bridging. Do you see the X's in the photo above? This is cross diagonal bridging. It's purpose is to prevent swaying of floor joist which cover a long span. While cross bridging is acceptable, the problem is that the bottoms of the X's are nailed into the bottom of the joist. They should be attached on the side of the joist, the same way as they are at the top of the X.

One more thing to be noted is what you can see between the floor joists. It is the underside of our dining room floor...

We have no subfloor, just tongue and groove floor boards. On the top side is linoleum (photos of that in this post.)

Dan's plan was to start by installing a 14 foot support beam. He made it by putting two 2x6's together. You can see part of it in the very first photo. To support it, he wanted to use three piers of concrete blocks, and three floor jacks, of which you can see two below.

I had never seen these before. They can be purchased in different lengths, each of which is adjustable. He made his own footings for the piers, repurposing a discarded cardboard tube which was originally used to hold industrial rolled steel.

He strengthened the form with rebar, and then poured concrete into it. The concrete blocks were set on these.

The pier on the right is one of the new ones. The footing is on the bottom with concrete blocks supporting the beam. To the left of that is one of the floor jacks. The floor jacks enabled the beam to be raised just enough to slip the concrete blocks in place.

Actually, the concrete block pier you see between the two floor jacks is supporting the floor further back in the photo. What in the world that partially buried concrete block is doing there, we don't have a clue.

You can also see in the above photo that the cross diagonal bridging is gone. Dan replaced it with solid bridging, which is made of sections of a 2x8, cut to fit between each joist. In the photo, it almost looks as though these are placed directly on top of the support beam, but they aren't. It looks that way because of the angle the photo was taken.

Of historical interest, are the type of nails he found in the old bridging.

These are cut nails. Unlike modern wire nails which are round, old-fashioned cut nails were made by cutting them from sheet of steel, giving them the squared appearance. The one I'm holding has been bent. They can still be bought today for anywhere from $8 to $12 a pound, and are used in restoration projects for an authentic historical look. An interesting history of nails can be found in this article, "All About Nails", at the Appalachian Blacksmithing Association website.

The last thing to be done was to put down black plastic on the crawlspace floor.

This will help control moisture in the crawlspace with it's accompanying problems of mold, fungi, and mildew. It will also help prevent moisture from damaging the structural elements of the house such as the joists and sills, because moisture will eventually break down wood.

As you can see, we've just begun with that step. Still to be addressed ins the hole that was knocked out of the foundation, as well as places where the mortar is loose from the foundation bricks. Much work on that part may have to wait until summer and the return of warmer, dryer weather.

Once DH is satisfied with it, then we can begin with the flooring. Yay! But first, I should show you my own preparations in the dining room. I'll do that next time.

Beefing Up The Dining Room Floor photos & text copyright November 2009 by Leigh at http://my5acredream.blogspot.com/

Related Posts:
Our Next Project
Color For The Dining Room

DH and I used to have a private joke. I love books (we both do), and when I could find a good bargain for something we were interested in, I would get it. Then I would show it to him, and he would invariably respond, "Nooooo! Now we have to move it!" This was because he used to drive for a local moving company, which meant not only driving, but also packing boxes, loading and unloading the truck. As you can imagine, moving households that owned a lot of books meant a long, back-breaking day's labor.

The other day, when I was showing him my latest purchases, he put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and said, "You can buy as many books as you want." We both laughed because this is our forever home which means we aren't planning to ever move again.

He doesn't have to worry about me going hog wild of course, because I major in frugalness. That means I am careful with what I choose to buy, and I only buy if I can get it on sale or discounted. Since we've moved here, I've added quite a few good books to our home library, and almost all of them are tools to help us fulfill our dream.

It's funny because while I was working on this post, Theresa over at Camp Runamuck asked her readers about their reading lists, so I can offer these as mine. You can click on any book cover for a closer look.

Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats by Sally Fallon. I mentioned this book in my recent ginger carrot post. Besides being a cookbook, this book offers a complete dietary model for healthy living. It begins with a discussion of the nutrients and their food sources, and then goes on to a chapter on "Mastering The Basics." These include cultured dairy products, fermented fruits and vegetables, sprouting grains, nuts & seeds, stocks, salad dressings, sauces, marinades, condiments, and about coconut products. Ther rest of the book covers every category of recipe you can imagine, including a chapter on feeding babies. Lots of interesting informational tidbits are to be found in the sidebars.

I don't agree with everything she says, but even so, this has been a mind blowing book for me.

Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods by Sandor Ellix Katz. Sandor approaches the subject from a cultural point of view: cultural context, cultural rehabilitation, cultural theory, cultural homogenization, and cultural manipulation. I don't agree with all of his conclusions, but he writes intelligently and makes some good points. Chapters include: Vegetable Ferments, Bean Ferments, Dairy Ferments (and Vegan Alternatives), Breads, Fermented Grain Porridges and Beverages, Wines (Including Mead, Cider, and Ginger Beer), Beers, and Vinegars. Lots of good recipes here.

Sandor also has a website and fermentation forum at http://www.wildfermentation.com/

This is another one I mentioned previously, Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation by The Gardeners & Farmers of Terre Vivante. This one was the precursor to the two above.

Besides the chapter on preserving with lactic fermentation, other chapters cover preserving by root cellaring, by drying, in oil, with salt, with sugar, in alcohol, and sweet & sour preserves. A chart at the back of the book indicates which methods are best for which foods.



DH was interested in this one, Smoking Food: A Beginner's Guide, by Chris Dubbs and Dave Heberle. We're nowhere near ready to build our own smoker, but like most things on discount, I've learned to buy it when I find it. The book covers types of smokers, with instructions on how to make your own, various fuels, other equipment, materials, cures, hot vs. cold smoking, and marinades. Then it discusses the how-tos of smoking fish, seafood, butcher meat (i.e. pork and beef), poultry, wild game, making and smoking sausage, and lastly smoking cheese, nuts, and eggs. Appendices discuss troubleshooting, herbs and spices, and tips on handling game (deer, rabbit, bear, squirrel, opossum, woodchuck, etc.)


This is another book that's really broadening my thinking about our little homestead, Small-Scale Grain Raising: An Organic Guide to Growing, Processing, and Using Nutritious Whole Grains for Home Gardeners and Local Farmers by Gene Logsdon. His sense of humor makes this fun to read (ever heard of a pancake patch?) For the first time I can actually see myself raising grain. Look forward to some experiments next summer!

Chapters discuss corn, wheat, the sorghums, oats, dry beans, rye, barley, buckwheat, millet, legumes, rice, and feeding grains to animals. One chapter is dedicated to more unusual grains like wild rice, triticale (a wheat/rye cross), spelt, farro, quinoa, and flax. Each chapter contains some good looking recipes as well.

Published in 2009, I don't agree with him that the jury's still out on GMO grains, but he does endorse open pollinated seed in order to save it. Informative charts are sprinkled throughout the book: cooking chart, bushel chart, and crop rotation plans. An illustrated glossary shows and explains the various tools needed form homegrowing grains.

Handy Farm Devices And How to Make Them by Rolfe Cobleigh is a reprint from 1910. It wasn't very expensive and I figured that even if it didn't contain something of use to us here on the homestead, it would be of historical interest at least. I wasn't disappointed, I got both. Devices are discussed by type, which are divided into chapters. For example: Workshop and Tools, In and Around the House, Barns and Stock, Poultry and Bees, Garden and Orchard, Field and Wood, and Gates and Doors. The devices themselves? How about: a potato sorter, a stump puller, a rack for seed corn, a wheelbarrow sheep trough, a fire warning device, an elevated clothes line, a device for extracting beeswax, and a gate to overcome snowdrifts, to name just a few.

This particular reprint is from Skyhorse Publishing, but Dover also reprints it under the title, Old-TIme Farm and Garden Devices and How to Make Them.

I mailordered Fuel Cell Projects for the Evil Genius by Gavin D. J. Harper because it is about hydrogen as an energy source. However, it wasn't what we hoped it would be. it Oh, it's a very good book, and I wish I'd had it for DS back when we were homeschooling our way through high school science. In fact, it would be perfect for that because it is geared toward small hydrogen fueled DIY projects, some of which we may still be able to apply practically around the place. Or at least gain a better understanding in order to apply the knowledge on a larger scale.

Chapter 1 is a history of the discovery of hydrogen and the development of fuel cells. Chapter 2 is entitled "the Hydrogen Economy" which explains why hydrogen as an energy source is important to explore. The remaining chapters discuss and provide projects for making and storing hydrogen, different types of fuel cells ( platinum, alkaline, PEM, methanol, microbial, high-temp. and scratch-built. Hydrogen safety, transport, and fuel cell competitions round out the book.

I bought The Amish Cookbook when we were at the Shady Maple Gift Shop on our trip to Pennsylvania. It contains over 1000 recipes from 14 states, and so probably gives a pretty good idea of a typical Amish diet. This is not a health or natural food cookbook, and some of the recipes contain ingredients I don't use such as Jello, shortening, Velveeta cheese, salt petre, to name a few. However, I don't think there is a recipe in there that one couldn't substitute preferred alternative ingredients.

The reason I got it was for the chapter on canning and preserving. When I saw it contained several recipes for canning homemade bologna, I decided to buy it. (Not to mention that I probably would have regretted not getting it once we left the shop.) I've also appreciated the chapter on pickles and relishes, and as of this writing, have realized that it contains cheesemaking recipes as well.

Weaving As An Art Form: A Personal Statement by Theo Moorman, was on sale as a surplus copy from my weaving guild's library sale. I bought it as a source of inspiration, because one of these days (after the dining room floor gets done and I can have my studio back), I will get back to my fiber arts. The title appealed to me, because I am an artist whose medium is fiber, and someday I hope to abandon functional weaving and weave strictly as an artistic statement. The author appealed to me, because Theo Moorman is well known in the weaving world. The introduction appealed to me, for it was there that I read, "..... I seem, in my work as a weaver and designer, only able to gain ground through a mass of experiments, blunders, and muddles." That's me in a nutshell. I have been in the learning and exploratory stage of the various weave structure and techniques for almost ten years, not counting long term breaks to attend to other areas of need and interest. And of course, the content of the book appealed to me, for it discusses the technique for which the author is famous, The Moorman Technique, which simply put, is a type of inlay. So this book is on my reading list, probably not in the near future, but in the future nonetheless.

Where do I get my books? Well, Amazon.com, of course. Also from the numerous Dover catalogues we get. Dover reprints a lot of old books and sells them at reasonable prices, plus they often have sales and specials. Also, I buy a lot of books from my Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller Company catalogues. If you click on their name it will take you to their website, but they do charge an additional 40 cents per book if ordered with a credit card via the website, so I prefer ordering from their catalogue. They have a standard $3.50 shipping no matter how many books are ordered, which is very reasonable.

In addition to the above, I have three more books on order!
From Hamilton:

Home Cheese Making: Recipes for 75 Homemade Cheeses by Ricki Carroll

Living Off the Grid: A Simple Guide to Creating and Maintaining a Self-Reliant Supply Of Energy, Water, Shelter, and More by Dave Black

From Amazon:

The Complete Medicinal Herbal: A Practical Guide to the Healing
Properties of Herbs, with More Than 250 Remedies for Common Ailments by Penelope Ody

Did I also mention that I love books? And until these arrive, I will love going out to look in the mailbox every day. :)

"You Can Buy As Many Books As You Want" copyright November 2009 by Leigh at http://my5acredream.blogspot.com/

Considering that we are nowhere near the coast, you wouldn't think that the southern Appalachians would be much bothered by hurricanes. But we are. Not the hurricanes per se, but the rain and winds of their remnants. And so it's been with Hurricane Ida.

Really, I have nothing to complain about. We have good drainage around the house and we didn't lose power. Nothing near like what I shared with you in my Re-establishing A Food Storage post. Still, when I looked out of my bedroom window this morning and saw water standing in the field, I figured I'd better go check things out.

Our gift from Ida was 4.3 inches of rain in 24 hours. Plus quite a bit of wind, which blew the plastic out from under the bricks weighting it down on the wood pile, sort of like how a magician pulls a cloth off a table while leaving the table settings in place. And while this isn't what I would regard as flooding, we need to know how the weather effects the land as we plan how to use it.

Next year's garden slopes, and there was some standing water at the lower end.

Most things planted here wouldn't be too happy right about now, so we will either have to attend to the drainage or build the soil up. My biggest concern however, was where we want to plant our fruit trees.

This is the lowest spot, which we realized could puddle water after our last good rain. Fruit and nut trees need good drainage, so we will have to deal with this before they arrive for planting. DH has already dumped one wheelbarrow load of dirt here, you can see a slight mound above. Better drainage would help too.

After taking a look at the fields and garden, I took a walk in the woods. There I discovered that part of my walking trail had turned into a stream. I will have to take measures to make sure this doesn't become a potential erosion spot.

The rain has pretty much passed but the area is still under a flash flood watch and high wind advisory. The flooding part won't effect us here, but the wind is pretty intense as I write. Makes me glad we had those old oak trees trimmed! In fact, our internet seems to be coming and going, so if I'm going to publish this post, I'd better do it now! If you don't hear from me for several days, you'll know what happened.

After Ida photos & text copyright November 2009 by Leigh at http://my5acredream.blogspot.com/

When I first learned about lacto-fermentation, I immediately set about collecting more information. Everywhere I looked, two books kept cropping up. One of them was Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats by Sally Fallon, cover on the left, click to enlarge. (The second was Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods by Sandor Katz. Neither one was available through my public library, so I bought both.)

Now, I've never considered myself to be politically correct, especially in this day and age. This book however, caught me by surprise. Much of it I already knew, things like: our bodies need real food not chemicals disguised as food, processing destroys nutrition, and avoid hydrogenated fats and high-fructose corn syrup like the plague. However, I never dreamed that anyone would be so bold as to challenge the conventional dietary advice which tells us that the vegetable oils and margarines ( which we're told are good for us), aren't so good for us after all. That butter is healthier. That it's okay to eat eggs and red meat. That fats are good for us. And to back it all up with real scientific research!

Well, that's all I'm going to say on that, (you need to read the book for yourself) except that this book did answer a question that has bothered me for a long time; namely, how could our ancestors eat all the foods we're told are "bad" for us, yet rarely if ever suffer from the diseases that are common today. Have you ever wondered about that?

Anyway, it was from Sally Fallon's book that I learned that whey is a good starter for lacto-fermentation. Since I already knew how to make whey, I was eager to give this a try. The recipe I chose to start with was her "Ginger Carrots" (page 95). She says these are an exceptionally tasty introduction to lacto-fermentated foods, plus we love ginger, so this was the first recipe I tried.

The lacto-fermentation experts all say that results are best if organic ingredients are used. Who am I to argue? I always go with organics when I can afford to.

First I made 4 cups of grated carrots....

Then added 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger.

I mixed these with 1 tablespoon sea salt and 4 tablespoons of whey (how to make that here.

One of the things I'm learning about lacto-fermenting foods is that their own juices need to be released for best results. This is done by pounding. Can you see the juices in the photo above? I didn't do this with my first batch of sauerkraut, but I'm learning and will try it with my second.

I put it all into a wide mouth quart jar and pressed the carrots and ginger firmly, until they were completely covered with the juices. This is important because anything exposed to air will decay rather than be preserved. No additional water or whey was added.

The jar sat for four days in my kitchen before being transfered to the pantry. The recipe says three days, but this time of year, my kitchen is pretty cool unless I'm cooking. The recipe doesn't say how long to wait before eating, but I will probably give it at least a couple of weeks.

Ginger Carrots & More on Lacto-Fermentation photos & text copyright November 2009 by Leigh at http://my5acredream.blogspot.com/

Related Posts:
Yogurt Cheese and Whey
What I've Learned About Sauerkraut