Boots

Darryl and Anne are away for a couple of days and the grandkids are staying with us. The boot tray is overflowing with all of the boots.

The kids have insulated snow boots. I don’t believe I ever had any boots of that nature as I was growing up. All I can remember having were 4-buckle overshoes. I haven’t seen any for years but doing an internet search I find that they are still being manufactured and sold. The boots fit over whatever shoes you have on. My dad had a pair of 2-buckle overshoes, a low-top version. They kept your shoes dry but wouldn’t allow you to wade water of any depth.

He always had a pair of rubber boots, much like the ones of mine in the picture above. We always called them “gum boots,” which I found by doing an internet search, is a term used in several countries. In South Africa the mine workers which wore these types of boots to keep their feet dry in the wet mines even originated a “gum boot dance.” Many examples can be seen in various You Tube videos.

I found a rather humorous article pertaining to wearing gum boots that you might enjoy. Just click here.

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I’ve Kept It All These Years

Reminisce Magazine, which calls itself “the magazine that brings back the good times” is written by its readership.  The articles and photos are about earlier times, the depression, WWII, the 50’s, etc.  One feature they run each issue is one entitled “I’ve Kept It All These Years.”  The short notes are accompanied by a photo of some object the writers have kept over the years.  Many may be of toys or items from their childhood.

I have an item that I have had since my early childhood, my first plate.  It is more like a dish and is made of enameled metal.  It is now hanging on the wall in our dining room.  I’m not sure where my parents obtained it but I suspect it was inexpensive since it has a flaw in it.  There is a rounded area missing from one side.  I know that it didn’t keep me from eating a lot of meals from it.

This photo shows the plate hanging on the wall.

Here, sitting on the table, you can see that it is fairly deep, much like a dish.  With the rim it was easy for a small child (that was me!) to hang onto.

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Toby Likes Popcorn

Toby began getting excited while Connie was popping the popcorn.  He really likes popcorn and has become quite good at catching it out of the air when it is tossed to him.  I tried to get a picture of him catching some but the best I could do was to get him up in the air as the popcorn was coming down.

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Cutting Firewood

Since all of us here on the farm heat with wood we must spend some time cutting firewood.  We have cut almost no wood from the wooded acres here on Cedar Ridge Farm since we have been able to obtain wood on neighboring farms, primarily the tops of trees that have been cut down for the saw logs.  This Fall and Winter we have been getting our wood from a neighboring farm that had approximately 40 acres logged so there are lots of good hardwood tree tops laying there for the cutting.  These have been down for a year or two so the wood is already seasoned.  Darryl and I cut and hauled in a truck load of wood this morning.

This picture is of the area we worked this morning.

Here is a photo of Darryl working with his chainsaw cutting limbs into stove wood lengths.

The larger pieces were split using our splitting mauls.

  The truck has been backed into position and the wood is being thrown into the truck.

The truck is loaded and we are ready to head home.

Using the dump bed the load is unloaded.  And, all of this was accomplished in 2 and 1/2 hours.  That was from the time we left the house until we were back and the wood was dumped.  It should keep some of us warm for a few more days.

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Tired, or is it Retired?

I’ve often said that I was tired yesterday and I’m tired again today so that must make me re-tired.  It has been said that you know you are getting older when it takes half as long to become tired and twice as long to get rested.  I mentioned in my profile that I’m not retired, just redeployed. 

But, the tired or retired I’m talking about now is what I did yesterday.  I took our van into town and got it “tired” or maybe that was “retired.”  I bought a new set of tires.  We bought the van over 4 and 1/2 years ago as a used vehicle.  The tires that were on it were nearly new but since that time we have put several thousand miles on them and they were needing replacement.

So, what was it? Did I get the van tired or did I get it retired?  It’s making me tired trying to figure it out.

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Drinking Water—Part One

We may hear from time to time about people in third world nations drinking dirty, polluted water and think how fortunate we are to be able to go to the faucet and get a glass of good, pure water.  But, do we ask just how pure and good that water is?  Do a little research and you will find that it isn’t as pure and good as we might imagine.  In some areas the water is “purified” water taken from rivers or streams that raw sewage or partially treated sewage is dumped into.  Various chemicals are added, supposedly to make it safe to drink and for our benefit.

One chemical that is used in most municipal water supplies is fluoride.  We have been told that it is to help prevent tooth decay.  But, is it?  Perhaps you aren’t aware that there are two types of fluorides.  One is calcium fluoride that naturally occurs in water but this is not the type that is added to our drinking water.  The fluoride that are used are of two types.  Silcofluoride is a by product from the phosphate fertilizer industry and sodium fluoride  is a waste by product of the aluminum industry.  This last product is also used as an insecticide, fungicide, bactericide and in rat poison!

Charles Elliot Perkins, a research scientist sent by the U. S. government after WWII to take charge of the I. G. Farben chemical plants in Germany discovered that “The real purpose behind water fluoridation is to reduce the resistance of the masses to domination, control and loss of liberty.”  In his report to the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research in October of 1954, he said,  “Repeated doses of infinitesimal amounts of fluoride will in time reduce an individual’s power to resist domination, by slowly poisoning and narcotizing a certain area of the brain, thus making him submissive to the will of those who wish to govern him.”

There is much more that you can research on your own but suffice it to say that I do not wish to ingest fluoride from my drinking water, my toothpaste or from any other source.  And, it can be successfully removed through distillation, reverse osmosis and a few other filtering units.

We used a water distiller for a number of years.  Since it was an electric unit the energy cost was significant.  A few years before moving to Kentucky we installed a reverse osmosis system, which we were quite happy with.  We left the unit with the house we sold but we purchased another unit and installed it in our home here.  The following photos show a little of the system.

The main unit is under the kitchen sink.  Our unit is a 6 stage system, which means that in addition to the main membrane there are other filters.  1st stage is a 5 micron sediment filter.  2nd stage is a granular activated carbon filter for chemicals.  The 3rd stage is a 5 micron coconut carbon block for chemicals.  Stage 4 is the main membrane.  The 5th stage is a demineralization by ionization cartridge for super clean water.  The final and 6th stage is a granular activated carbon filter for taste.

Also under the sink is a three gallon pressurized storage tank.  This  makes it possible for there to be purified water available as needed as it does take time for water to go completely through the system.  We have a separate faucet for the RO water, as shown in the picture below.

In part two I’ll tell you a bit about another water purifying system we have recently obtained.

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Our House—The Walls

Many new homes have drywall.  Putting up the sheets of drywall goes pretty fast but taping and mudding the joints, sanding them down and doing a second and maybe a third application of mud takes a lot of time.  And, it takes some experience to get the joints done so there is no indication of a joint after the walls are painted.  We just didn’t want to go through all of that on any more walls than necessary.  We did put up drywall on two walls in the kitchen and in the bathrooms.

The above picture, taken during our construction, shows the two walls in the kitchen that were drywalled and painted. 

We decided to put up pre-finished paneling on the rest of the walls.  Installation isn’t much more difficult than putting up drywall but there was no further finishing necessary.  However, we did incur a bit of a problem with some of the paneling.  What we felt we could afford is not real wood but a synthetic material and is quite thin.  Most likely due to the humidity we have here some of the sheets tended to warp.  Perhaps had we put up drywall and used a panel adhesive this would not have happened but that would have nearly doubled the cost.

By the time we were ready to do the walls in the addition we had come up with another idea.  We discovered that Lowes carried a product made by ABTCO called Knotty Barnboard, a textured panel siding that came in 4’ X 8’ sheets and was 1/2” thick.  It is manufactured for exterior use so we were sure that there would be no warping.  It did require painting but no taping and mudding as with drywall.  And, if we decide we want a different color we can paint it with the new color.

Above is a close-up of a section of the barnboard.  The color isn’t quite true.  We painted it Antique White but at least you can see the texture.  On some of the areas you can see “saw” marks as if the board had been cut on a circular saw mill.  We wish we had known about this product earlier as we would have used it throughout the house. We were told by some of the folks at Lowes that many people are using it in their homes.  We toured some log homes a couple of years ago and found that the folks in one had paneled all of the rooms in their basement with this product.

This view is of a section of wall in our living room.  If you click on the picture you can get a larger view and can see the individual “boards” in the panels.

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