Seasonal Shift

 At last, the temperature pattern has changed. It was an overnight change, not a gradual one. We were still pushing almost 90°F (32°C) everyday up through the first weekend of October. Then a front pushed through and the temps have been lovely since then. And the pattern is holding. 

So it feels like autumn, even though it doesn't look like autumn, except for the mistflowers and golden rod, and a few swirls of windblown leaves beginning to fall.

Mistflower

The harvest is wrapping up. It was a good year for muscadines.

I have about two gallons of these in the freezer. I'll probably use them for both wine and jelly.

It's breeding season for the goats. The bucks are constantly on the lookout for the does. Behind their little barn is their best spot for catching a glimpse of the girls.

Ralph and Jonah

The girls, on the other hand, are only interested when they're in heat, which occurs about every three weeks. Otherwise, they are busy hunting acorns.

Lily, Nora, Saluda, Willow, and River, way off in the background.

The boys are out of luck until November. The timing of breeding is based on making sure the kids are born in mild weather.

I'm still getting a few things from the garden. Like okra.

Jing okra. It turns green when cooked.

Groundhogs (which are still a problem) destroyed much this year, including demolishing our peas and lettuce. Of the sweet potatoes, they continually munched off all the leaves, so that the plants had little time to actually make sweet potatoes. Here's my total harvest.

Some of them are pretty sorry looking, although the goats won't mind those. I should probably just plant the best ones in pots to overwinter. 

One thing the groundhogs didn't touch was the winter squash.

sweet potato squash flower with pollinator

Gracie showing us the green squash she found

It's been an excellent year for winter squash

I love this variety. I still have three or four almost mature ones left to pick. We eat the small green ones chopped fresh in salad or steamed or sauteed like summer squash. 

The groundhogs haven't touched the green beans either, although perhaps because they are pole beans.

I planted them in late spring, but they have been very slow to produce.

Our first picking was just the other day.

My slicing tomatoes are done, but our volunteer cherry tomatoes are still producing. You may recall I mentioned my fermented cole slaw, in which the fresh cherry tomatoes are wonderful. 

I've also taken to adding my hard cured goat cheese, grated. Such complimentary flavors! This is currently our favorite salad. At least until the greenhouse lettuce is big enough to eat. 

As I write this, the remnants of Hurricane Isaias have been raining all day, with more to come all night. The rain is welcome and needed. So it's been an indoor day.

Gracie and Violet

How about you? Do you still have a garden? Or are you done for the season and getting ready for winter?

Seasonal Shift © 2026 by Leigh at 

https://www.5acresandadream.com

Back Porch Project: Floor Part 2

 Continued from Part 1

So here's where we left off last time.

The porch floor was completed almost to the top of the old concrete porch. Before Dan could continue, he had to address two things:

• How to fasten the wood flooring to the concrete
• The levelness gap between the old porch and the new. The old porch slopes away from the house, while the new floor does not. 

Picture from last post.

Then there were questions about the porch roof posts and the downspout. 

Photo from January 2020, before
Dan replaced the knee braces.

The little roof is narrow and only there to keep the rain off your head when opening the back door. The posts sit on each edge of the concrete porch. Since we're extending the porch to the house, we wondered about the farthest post. It might be in the way; something to have to walk around when the new porch is finished. Both porch corners have a knee braces on the ends, so Dan wasn't sure we needed both posts. 

The remaining center post would have to be shortened because the floor will be raised by the thickness of the boards. Another detail to tend to.

The other item in question was the downspout. 

Photo from when we were just getting started.

To leave it he would have to cut the floor to accommodate it and he wasn't sure he wanted to do that. And then there was the idea of crawling around under the porch if the downspout needed maintenance. Instead, Dan decided he would move it to the other side of the porch roof where it can drain into the driveway. 

Decisions made, it was time to get to work. Here's what Dan did to install the wood boards over the old concrete porch. He made tapered shims. 

Violet

To fill in the space where the first concrete step made a hole, he fitted the board in the space as a joist with a long tapered end.

I have no idea if that description makes sense, but I think the pictures explain it better than me!

Gracie and Violet are playing ambush-and-pounce. That's Gracie on
the concrete, while Violet is below, hiding under the board floor.

The shims took several fittings and trimmings for snug placement. Once he was satisfied, Dan glued them in place with adhesive, weighted them with bricks, and let sit until the next day.

To install the boards, he predrilled holes with a concrete drill bit. 

Concrete screws were used to secure the boards in place. 

Adhesive flashing along the edge of the exterior wall.

So here it as at the moment, with a new porch post.

The new porch floor is very solid underfoot.

Cat trivia: One feature you might have noticed is our kitty door. I have to mention an interesting historical tidbit I picked up while listening to Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery on audiobook. He spent his early childhood as a slave on a plantation in Virginia. He noted that every house, from mansion to shack, every house had a cat door. Kitty doors are nothing new.

Porch railing is next.

Back Porch Project: Floor Part 2 © 2026

by Leigh at https://www.5acresandadream.com

Back Porch Project: Floor Part 1

After the stairway was built, the floor was next. The first part, screwing the floor boards to the framing, was pretty straightforward.

Even though all the boards are pressure treated, Dan took an extra weatherproofing precaution of painting the joists with plastic roof cement. 

It's both a sealant and adherent, and so an extra measure toward the sturdiness and longevity of our porch. After each board was positioned, he screwed it in place.

It feels so good to have a sturdy floor under our feet!

That's as far as he got for the first part. The second part was covering the old concrete porch floor. This step was a bit trickier because it meant screwing the boards into concrete, but also because the concrete porch floor sloped downward quite a bit.

In the above photo, if you follow the edge of the old porch from left to right, you can see the difference in levelness with the new porch framing. This required extra thought and planning. I'll show you what he did here, in Part 2. 

Back Porch Project: Floor Part 1 © 2026

by Leigh at https://www.5acresandadream.com