My Blog Web Address

This post is to let you all know that my blog web address (AKA URL or domain name) has been changed. I recently purchased a custom domain, and my blog web addy is now

http://www.5acresandadream.com/

The old blog address was http://my5acredream.blogspot.com/

The new one obviously makes more sense and is easier to remember. I would have chosen it as my blogspot address when I first set up this blog but at that time, it wasn't available. 'My5acredream' was the closest thing I could come up with. Add the .blogspot and it wasn't easy to remember, considering that's not the title of my blog.

Because my blog is still hosted by Blogger, everything will be redirected by Blogger to the new web address. You should still be able to get here by your usual means, unless you visit via a search engine. These will take awhile to catch up, because my entire blog must be reindexed with the new web address by search engine robots. Until then, it may not show up in searches. According to this helpful article over at The REAL Blogger Status, the best thing to do is publish frequently. I'm going to try to follow this advice, so you'll see a few more posts from me for awhile; I hope that's not a problem; I notice we homestead bloggers blog the way we like to live, slowly. :)

As long as my blog remains at Blogger, any links you made to me should redirect with no problem. There is a transition period of several days for this, so if you run into problems, please be patient. Things like Google Friend Connect may be nonoperational, but this is temporary. If you continue to have problems or would like to update any links, just let me know.

So, to get the search engine ball rolling (and for anyone else who is interested , here are links to my recent posts in various categories:

Remodeling - Fixing The Bathroom Floor
Food Self-Sufficiency - Fall Foraging
Goats - How To Make A Buck Rag
Chickens - Around The Homestead
Recipes - Goatherd's Pie
Food Preservation - Fall Freezer Canning
Gardening - Last of the Summer Harvest
Riley - Yikes! There's a Chipmunk in the House! Or, Smart Cat?
Cheese Making - Cheese #11, The Recipe
Land Stewardship - Pasture Improvement Phase 2: Remineralizing Our Soil

My Blog Web Address © November 2012 

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

Fixing The Bathroom Floor

I laid out our plan of attack for the bathroom in "Starting On The Hall Bathroom." In "Hall Bathroom Remodel: Preliminaries", I told how we strengthened our bouncy floor and took quite a bit of the sag our of it. The next step, was the bathroom floor itself.

The problem was water damage to the floor where the toilet had been.

Water damage left the floor rotted and weak

One option would have been to pull up and replace the entire floor. That option wasn't even entertained. The second option was to do as we did in the kitchen, replace that section of the floor.

Damaged section of the floor removed

The joist was strengthened and a box made for toilet plumbing

So far so good. A sister joist was added and a box framed out for the toilet drainage. He allowed for a 12 inch rough in, the old rough in was 14 inches.

Then the real fun began. The original floor in the bathroom is 7/8 inch oak tongue and groove. The problem is, 7/8 inch thick flooring, subflooring, plywood, etc., isn't manufactured anymore.

These size differences in building materials have been a problem with all the repairs we've done on our house. For example, when this house was built in the 1920s, 2x4s were true 2x4s, i.e. a true two inches by four inches. The last 2x4s we bought, were actually 1.5 inches by 3 & 5/8. Now we needed 7/8ths worth of subfloor. Of the choices available, nothing added up to 7/8 no matter how we stacked them. We were always an eighth of an inch short.

In the end we used Dan made up that 1/8 inch difference with roofing shingles. I missed the photo op for that, but can report that the subfloor is now sturdy and solid underfoot.

Repair complete. Floor is nice and solid now.

Some of you might be wondering, why bother to go to all that trouble? Why not just replace the entire floor? Wouldn't it be easier? The answer to that is twofold.

First is cost. Our budget enables us to make improvements on the house, but only paycheck by paycheck. The difference between $100 worth of materials and $1000 worth of materials, is weeks of waiting in between projects, while we save up the money to make the purchase.

The second is quality. Dan has said several times that the quality of the materials in this home is far superior than anything we can buy today. If the same house had been made with today's materials, it likely would have fallen down long ago.

In addition it was well put together. Between all the heavy duty nails and the age of the wood, the deconstruction we have done, has unfortunately busted up the materials. Dan deplores the waste, so we leave what we can as is, and work around it.

Now we can get on to projects with showier results. Hopefully I'll have an oooo or an ahhhh to show you next time.

Fixing The Bathroom Floor © November 2012 

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

Fall Foraging

Beautiful autumn weather seems to be meant for foraging.

Good pecans this year

I've gathered quite a few pecans, and so far they're all good ones.

Shelling pecans for Thanksgiving's sweet potato casserole

We have a number of pecan and hickory trees, and interestingly, they all produce different size nuts. The squirrels love pecans too, so there is competition for these.

Only a few persimmons left on the upper branches

There is competition for persimmons too, because deer and possums love these, probably other critters too. Our persimmon tree is tall, so the fruits look like dots on the branches. I can only collect the ones that fall to the ground. I can see the top of the tree from where I sit at the milking stand. It is visible out the door and above the treetops. I managed to get some last year, but this year, there isn't much left.

We are having a bumper crop of acorns!

Acorns

These are from white oaks. In some places, the ground is completely covered with them. I collect them to feed to my goats when the winter forage pickings get slim. They aren't especially rich in protein, but they do add roughage, carbohydrates, and fats to their winter diet, and they love them. We could eat them as well, though I haven't tried that yet. (For more information on processing acorns, read Jackie Clay's article, "Harvesting The Wild: Acorns").

I've also managed to collect a few wild rose hips.

Wild rose hips

I showed you my rugosa rose hips in my "Last of the Summer Harvest" post. These are teeny in comparison; all seed and no fruit. I tried making jelly of these, but it turned out pretty badly. That's one of the reasons I planted the rugosas. Plus those hips are easier to collect.

The goats love the wild ones though, both leaves and hips. We used to have tons of wild rose bushes before we got goats. Most of our bushes were cut back when we added fencing. What remains the goats eat. Only a few are out of their reach and these are from those bushes. I gather what hips I can, to dry and feed to them during winter for vitamin C.

Some things, like the acorns especially, may seem a tedious thing to gather. But a pocketful here, and a pocketful there, make for a pleasant way to take a break from other chores, or to spend a few minutes outside when I'm doing indoor projects. It reminds me to be thankful too, for all the little things. Acorns included.

Fall Foraging © November 2012 

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