And that's good , because I'll be waaaayyy too busy building the second
phase of our house in the woods . We broke ground for the cellar under our
new kitchen over the weekend . There is now a hole 14 feet wide , about 30
feet long , and varying from just over 5 to just under 3 feet deep on the
downhill side of the living room I built a year and a half ago .
--
Snag

On 9/14/2015 9:05 PM, Terry Coombs wrote:
And that's good , because I'll be waaaayyy too busy building the second
phase of our house in the woods . We broke ground for the cellar under our
new kitchen over the weekend . There is now a hole 14 feet wide , about 30
feet long , and varying from just over 5 to just under 3 feet deep on the
downhill side of the living room I built a year and a half ago .

Sounds more like a crawl space Snag, even as short as I've become in old
age I would have a problem walking in there.

Are you going to cement it, use cinder blocks, or what, for the walls?
If I dug a hole that deep here I would have an indoor swimming pool. G

What I need is a bigger pantry, these modern houses have "closets" in
the kitchen so, for more room, I turned the closet in my home office
into another small pantry but with better lighting. I miss my old pantry
in Louisiana, eight feet wide by ten feet long, all wire shelving up to
the ceiling and nearly touching the floor, now that was a PANTRY.

Good luck on your building work. It's time to mow again, every time we
get a rain sprinkle the !@#$% San Augustine grass grows six inches.

We will also putting in a couple of broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage
plants. A volunteer cuke blessed us with a nice fruit yesterday, will go
good with today's lunch.

George

George Shirley wrote:
On 9/14/2015 9:05 PM, Terry Coombs wrote:
And that's good , because I'll be waaaayyy too busy building the
second phase of our house in the woods . We broke ground for the
cellar under our new kitchen over the weekend . There is now a hole
14 feet wide , about 30 feet long , and varying from just over 5 to
just under 3 feet deep on the downhill side of the living room I
built a year and a half ago .
Sounds more like a crawl space Snag, even as short as I've become in
old age I would have a problem walking in there.

Are you going to cement it, use cinder blocks, or what, for the walls?
If I dug a hole that deep here I would have an indoor swimming pool.
G
What I need is a bigger pantry, these modern houses have "closets" in
the kitchen so, for more room, I turned the closet in my home office
into another small pantry but with better lighting. I miss my old
pantry in Louisiana, eight feet wide by ten feet long, all wire
shelving up to the ceiling and nearly touching the floor, now that
was a PANTRY.
Good luck on your building work. It's time to mow again, every time we
get a rain sprinkle the !@#$% San Augustine grass grows six inches.

We will also putting in a couple of broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage
plants. A volunteer cuke blessed us with a nice fruit yesterday, will
go good with today's lunch.

George

Due to the slope of the land we'll have a ceiling height of about 7'8" .
The living room floor on the downhill side is about 3' from the ground .
This cellar will serve as a main food storage area plus being a storm cellar
.. I also plan to reserve a corner for my reloading stuff and ammo storage .
We'll have 2 means of accessing the cellar , a set of sloped doors to the
outside and a ladder or very steep stairway to the kitchen area above -
probably into the upstairs pantry thru a hatch in the floor .

--
Snag

On 9/15/2015 8:08 AM, Terry Coombs wrote:
George Shirley wrote:
On 9/14/2015 9:05 PM, Terry Coombs wrote:
And that's good , because I'll be waaaayyy too busy building the
second phase of our house in the woods . We broke ground for the
cellar under our new kitchen over the weekend . There is now a hole
14 feet wide , about 30 feet long , and varying from just over 5 to
just under 3 feet deep on the downhill side of the living room I
built a year and a half ago .
Sounds more like a crawl space Snag, even as short as I've become in
old age I would have a problem walking in there.

Are you going to cement it, use cinder blocks, or what, for the walls?
If I dug a hole that deep here I would have an indoor swimming pool.
G
What I need is a bigger pantry, these modern houses have "closets" in
the kitchen so, for more room, I turned the closet in my home office
into another small pantry but with better lighting. I miss my old
pantry in Louisiana, eight feet wide by ten feet long, all wire
shelving up to the ceiling and nearly touching the floor, now that
was a PANTRY.
Good luck on your building work. It's time to mow again, every time we
get a rain sprinkle the !@#$% San Augustine grass grows six inches.

We will also putting in a couple of broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage
plants. A volunteer cuke blessed us with a nice fruit yesterday, will
go good with today's lunch.

George

Due to the slope of the land we'll have a ceiling height of about 7'8" .
The living room floor on the downhill side is about 3' from the ground .
This cellar will serve as a main food storage area plus being a storm cellar
. I also plan to reserve a corner for my reloading stuff and ammo storage .
We'll have 2 means of accessing the cellar , a set of sloped doors to the
outside and a ladder or very steep stairway to the kitchen area above -
probably into the upstairs pantry thru a hatch in the floor .

Sounds like good deal. I grew up in SE Texas, where the water level is
about ten feet down and we get lots of rain. The high school I attended
had a "basement" that was above ground, bathrooms, boiler for heat in
the winter, and the janitors "office". Even that flooded during a
hurricane back in the mid-fifties. Some buildings in Houston proper have
basements but they also have some hellacious big pumps built into them
too. I'm pretty sure the eighteen inch in one day rain this past spring
flooded a lot of them as the rain flooded the freeway access roads, etc.
Several people drowned or disappeared because of that rain. Luckily
we're on somewhat higher ground so no flooding here.

Just got done doing the weed eating of the yard, wife is finishing the
mowing at this time. My bad legs don't let me do mowing, the mower goes
faster than I can walk. G About 74F out there right now but the sun
just came out from behind the clouds so will warm up quickly. Damned
grass grows so fast we're mowing almost weekly now, to bad we can't
graze it ourselves as it grows better than the gardens do.

On 9/15/2015 10:33 AM, Derald wrote:
...a condition for which I do not envy you. Neither, the weather
that's due eventually in your neck of the woods. Although cowpeas,
okra, yellow squash and peanuts continue to forge ahead here, the fall
planting season is the beginning of the gardening year in these parts.

Yellow squash is doing well at the moment, first frost they're gone.
After the spring squash died we put two starts in one of the beds and
they're producing almost as much as the spring squash, family and
friends have been gifted with excess squash.

Preparing the bathtub to receive onion seeds later today or tomorrow.
Preparing beds for English peas, turnip and mustard greens to be planted
RSN. The mustards likely will be underplanted to (trellised) peas. If
the peas make it through February, they're usually good until March or
April, as are fall-planted greens, although fall planted mustard greens
frequently bolt in February. I'll begin replanting both in February or
early March. Anticipating (but not necessarily looking forward to)
cool-enough temps which favor carrots, broccoli, and the like. Tried
broccoli raab a season or two past and now must reserve a little
undisturbed bed space for a spot of it; not so, the bok choy—never again
for it.

Neither of us cares for mustard, got to much of it when very young. We
will probably seed carrots today, just looked out the kitchen door and
see wife is taking down tomato, eggplant, etc. plants to go to compost.
Sweet chiles will continue to make until frost, they're coming back
strong with the cooler weather.

DW&I enjoy the flower buds of commonly grown mustard greens and
find the broccoli raab blossoms complementary (and pretty good eating).

Never tried those, might give it a whirl next year.

Still enough warm weather left that I think I'll try one more late
planting of green beans, although, I may regret changing the normal
order of planting. Planting order directly effects bed availability for
succession crops while the weather's still cool.

Had not considered fall green beans, we generally don't get a freeze
until late October or early November, some years no freeze at all, we're
in USDA heat zone 8b.

Debating whether to
plant tomatoes for the fall. Floradale, better boy, early girl are
candidates, early girl being the obvious choice for a short-season crop
but not as flavorful as others. Not a big tomato enthusiast so they're
sort of on a "available space" footing as garden candidates. Fall
tomatoes, at least for me, are daughters (cuttings or layering) of
spring tomatoes and produce until December or January when chilly
temperatures eventually take them out. Starting fall tomatoes from
scratch is new to me.
We put up so many tomatoes this year we won't plant more, the small
tomatoes are blooming again and we will just let them continue.

The closest thing to a construction project here is the replacement
of "black" stovepipe with stainless steel. The pipe's on-hand but we're
too early in the year to fool with it yet. I don't usually make first
fire until November.

I want to replace our back fence, replace the cheap builder crap and put
in a cedar fence with steel posts. Of course I have to run it by the HOA
directors who will probably say no to galvanized steel posts, which last
much longer than treated wood here. Plus the fence can only be six feet
tall. I despise HOA's, generally the directors are not elected because
no one shows up for a vote, then you get the people who are afraid their
property values will go down. We've been here since 12/12 and the value
of our home has gone up about 40K already. To get out in the country
away from the builders we would have to move at least fifty miles which
would put us farther away from the grands and great grands, which
Grannie won't have.

We have a fireplace which we never use, gas heat and electric AC year
around at about $150 a month, beats chopping wood for this old man. G
Used to do that in my twenties and thirties but now I'm bumping 80 so
don't do dat.

On 9/16/2015 10:12 AM, Derald wrote:
George Shirley wrote:

On 9/15/2015 10:33 AM, Derald wrote:
...a condition for which I do not envy you. Neither, the weather
that's due eventually in your neck of the woods. Although cowpeas,
okra, yellow squash and peanuts continue to forge ahead here, the fall
planting season is the beginning of the gardening year in these parts.

Yellow squash is doing well at the moment, first frost they're gone.
Same here. The spring planting usually holds out 'til June,
sometimes July before yielding to bugs, mildew or miscellaneous scabosis
This time of year, the beds usually have okra and some kind of heat
tolerant legume but this year I planted a few squashes under some okra
after the early cowpeas finished up. Most years, I don't fool with late
squash.

snip

DW&I enjoy the flower buds of commonly grown mustard greens and
find the broccoli raab blossoms complementary (and pretty good eating).

Never tried those, might give it a whirl next year.
Sautee with garlic and, maybe very tender greens, in olive oil
until "done" to suit your taste. Monitor temperature closely to avoid
scorching and bitterness. Yum....

snip

Had not considered fall green beans, we generally don't get a freeze
until late October or early November, some years no freeze at all, we're
in USDA heat zone 8b.
Well if you plant what old-timers used to call "early", meaning
short-season, beans in late summer while soil temperature and nighttime
lows still favor germination you might get a pretty good crop.

snip

We put up so many tomatoes this year we won't plant more, the small
tomatoes are blooming again and we will just let them continue.
When I grow tomatoes, they are few and primarily for fresh table
use. One or two sandwiches per year is about my limit on sliced
tomatoes, although, my wife likes fresh tomatoes pretty well and eats
them when we have them.
My wife is, I believe, a food hoarder, she will try to save veggies that
have been pecked by birds, chomped by slugs and bugs, whatever. She is
the middle child of five live births and I think that's why she's a
hoarder. You should see her shoe collection. G

snip

I want to replace our back fence, replace the cheap builder crap and put
in a cedar fence with steel posts. Of course I have to run it by the HOA
directors who will probably say no to galvanized steel posts, which last
much longer than treated wood here. Plus the fence can only be six feet
tall.
Oh, I've done the HOA and the zoning code enforcement board
dances. I live where I live partly in order to avoid dealing with that
type of Chinese-style enforced order or with the minions who willingly
enforce such silliness. You might be able to extend the fence with a
lattice or trellis supporting a vining hedge without violating HOA rules
or L&A ordinances.
Nope, specifically lists no trellis at all, just a six-foot fence,
garden sheds cannot be more than 7 feet tall, mine is 8 feet but no one
seems to notice, even short people can barely get into a 7 foot high
shed, particularly if the roof is peaked. We lived most of our 55 years
of marriage without HOA's and could do what we wanted with our property
within reason.

I despise HOA's, generally the directors are not elected because
no one shows up for a vote, then you get the people who are afraid their
property values will go down.
IMO, you're being generous but we digress.

We've been here since 12/12 and the value
of our home has gone up about 40K already. To get out in the country
away from the builders we would have to move at least fifty miles which
would put us farther away from the grands and great grands, which
Grannie won't have.
Ours are dispersed and have been since the 1980's, which has worked
pretty well, so far.
Our problem, as we aged, was the three hour one way drive to visit the
kids, etc. Of course they're all busy with jobs and kids so couldn't
visit very often unless they "needed" something from us. One very large
grandson lives two blocks from us on the same street and is always
willing to help out with the heavy lifting and ladder climbing, he's a
blessing. The rest come around when they need a baby sitter or a loan.

We have a fireplace which we never use, gas heat and electric AC year
around at about $150 a month, beats chopping wood for this old man. G
Never had any interest in AC and don't much care for it. I heat
with a home-brew system of circulating fresh air that is warmed by a
wood heater, using outside air for combustion. My heating needs are
light and, at this stage of the game, I still enjoy the process and am
capable, so.... Collecting and splitting firewood comprise a pretty
much year-'round evolution for me because that's how the wood becomes
available. At my pace, the process becomes a series of smaller tasks,
none of them too daunting for an emergent geezer. As I'm sure you know,
green wood must be split as soon after harvest as is reasonable and
that's pretty easy to do with most of the hardwoods in these parts,
excepting the various live oaks and the white oak (Quercus alba) which
are tough and get tougher. I use a pretty heavy mid-'70's Craftsman axe
for splitting and keep a sledgehammer on hand to unstick the occasional
uncooperative billet.

I come from a long line of small farmers and loggers, was working in the
woods when I was barely big enough to handle a cross cut saw and axe.
Had fireplaces at two of our other homes and cut a lot of wood for
those. Wife and I both decided this new fireplace is going to stay new.
If we lived in the boonies again we would be cutting wood for various
purposes. Just came back from Lowe's and were wondering where all the
sawmill's and paper mills went. When I was younger there were both of
those about every ten miles. I guess recycling is taking up the slack
plus many of the wood lots are now subdivision's and malls.

I do miss some of the old things that are gone now but am happy with
modern medicine, without it I would have died in 1986 when my chest was
cracked for the first time. So far I've lived longer than my Dad,
Grandad, and Great Grandad, might be a few more years of gardening,
hunting, and fishing. Picked up my annual deer tags yesterday, have had
a Texas Lifetime hunting and fishing license since 1988. Good thing I
bought it then as the price has tripled.

Looks like rain I hope.

Terry Coombs wrote:

And that's good , because I'll be waaaayyy too busy building the second
phase of our house in the woods . We broke ground for the cellar under our
new kitchen over the weekend . There is now a hole 14 feet wide , about 30
feet long , and varying from just over 5 to just under 3 feet deep on the
downhill side of the living room I built a year and a half ago .

i hope it goes well Terry!


songbird