Weather | 10/28, cloudy, 45°, 73° | 10/29, p. cloudy, 64°, 81°
|10/30, 0.02" rain, cloudy, 65°, 79° | 10/31, 1.38" rain overnight, cloudy, 51°, 53° | 11/1, sunny, 30°, 57° |
11/2, p. cloudy, 37°, 57° | 11/3, 0.53" rain, 50°, 69° |
- Monday, 10/28: Two Garlic Varieties Planted & Done With Pecans
- Mary planted the first two garlic varieties. They are Samarkand and Shvelisi. These are the longest keepers and the tastiest.
- She also turned the second row in the far garden in preparation for planting another row of garlic tomorrow.
- Mary mowed up fallen leaves and grass for a compost mixture.
- I husked 220 pecans, which is a new daily record. It brings the grand total to 4,285 nuts. Since starting on Oct. 14th, I've husked 1,942 pecans. I'm done! My thumbs and wrists tell me I should have quit long ago. Mary said this was a good activity to keep me away from the temptation of lifting heavy items during the weeks I needed to be careful, due to cataract surgery. Tomorrow is my three-week limit, according to the eye surgeon, so enough with scraping husks off nuts.
- Even with strong southeast wind gusts, Asian ladybugs constantly landing in my face made me move to a spot east of the pecan trees where the wind kept them down. Mary vacuumed them a couple times inside the house, which seems to be a daily event.
- I only saw one squirrel running away from me, but I really wasn't even watching for the nut-thieving buggers.
- Tuesday, 10/29: Garlic Planted & Chimney Cleaned
- Mary finished planting garlic, putting four varieties (Music Pink, German Extra Hardy, Georgian Crystal, and Siberian) in the far garden. She also turned over ground on the last row to get all garlic planted. She to finish planting garlic, because a large amount of rain is expected in the next several days and it's no fun mudding in garlic cloves.
- I cleaned soot out of the chimney and the stove pipe. Mary found safety goggles she bought for scientific experiments back when we homeschooled our elementary-aged kids in Circle, MT. They are perfect for protecting my eyes during dirty jobs, which cleaning soot out of the chimney is the dirtiest of jobs. I can tell that we burn good wood, because the soot level was low this year.
- I found a chimney swift nest near the top of the soot pile in the chimney (see photos, below). It's amazing how they hold the sticks together with solidified saliva that looks just like glue. The nest is very bare bones. The only other bird with a skimpier nest is a dove.
- We watched sharp-shinned hawk get blown through our east yard by a very strong southwest wind. It was struggling to drop down into the bushes, but the wind held it up in the air and it went flying by us.
- We experienced gusts over 40 mph. A lot of leaves are on the ground, now.
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A chimney swift nest.
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The shiny appearance is solidified chimney swift saliva.
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- Wednesday, 10/30: More Pecans & Firewood
- We're just as hooked on nuts as the squirrels. With 38 mph south wind gusts thrashing branches about, pecans in their husks were falling from the tree nearest the house. Mary and I picked 300 pecans off the ground. We only kept the nuts that immediately released their husks. Most that we picked up did so. We also learned that with this pecan variety, which is some commercial tree and not a native Missouri pecan tree, when the husk is slightly yellow, the husk comes off easily. We now have a grand total of 4,585 nuts.
- I used the small Stihl chainsaw and cut firewood from pecan and maple branches that have dropped out of trees in the lawn over the past year. I also sawed up persimmon poles saved in the machine shed with the bark on. They turn out to be poor poles that rot quickly when left in the elements, but burn nicely in the woodstove. I put three wheelbarrow loads of small firewood pieces in the woodshed.
- We have our own natural weather service. We heard a frog calling from somewhere east of the house at sunset. After a dry spell, when you hear a frog croaking, rain is on its way.
- A hard rain fell with several thunderstorms as we were going to bed. We saw 1.38 inches in the rain gauge this morning (10/31).
- Thursday, 10/31: Happy Halloween
- I brought the metal rack into the house that we stack firewood on and four armloads of firewood. Then, I started a small fire in the woodstove, opened all of the windows, and burned off the oil protecting the stovepipe. That puts smoke into the living room, but with a north wind blowing through the house, the smoke disappeared quickly. We now have wood heat in the house, which Rosemary, our eldest cat, really likes. She parked just behind the stove right after I lit the fire.
- We gathered more pecan nuts...31 in the morning and 15 in the evening.
- Mary made a double batch of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies while I did several of the evening chores.
- I looked online and sketched a simple witch pattern on the pumpkin, then carved it (see photos, below). It was fun and took little time to do with a small fillet knife. Mary cut the top off the pumpkin and cleaned out the seeds.
- We enjoyed cookies and a bottle of 2024 cherry wine. Even though I bottled this wine a little over a month ago, making it a very new wine, it tastes marvelous. This has a strong cherry flavor, a nice red color, and a very smooth taste. It ought to be amazing after aging, if it lasts that long.
- We watched the 1993 movie, Hocus Pocus, which has become a Halloween tradition for us.
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Carving a Halloween jack-o'-lantern.
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Gee!! Can you spot the shining gourd?
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This year's finished jack-o'-lantern. |
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With the candle lit.
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- Friday, 11/1: Halloween Tree Back in Outside Storage
- We experienced calm winds for first time in several days. There was an east breeze in the late afternoon.
- We saw an almost white barred owl perched on several different tree limbs at the edge of the woods southwest of the house during our morning dog walk. We also had a large deer eating shrubs at the base of the black walnut tree northeast of the house and several more crossing the lane at Bluegill Pond. Mary saw a large buck with short antlers. I call it headhunter's Darwinism. Hunters always shoot bucks with large antlers. Over time, the genetics of the deer herd changes to large bucks with tiny racks.
- We picked 111 nuts, most of them coming right off the lower branches of the nearest pecan tree. Mary says, "It's a done deal and I mean it." Um, I've heard that before.
- Mary took down the Halloween tree, vacuumed dust off cross stitch ornaments, and stored the sticky cedar tree in the north woods next to an old dead round baler. It stays there until next October.
- Mary baked the bottom half of the pumpkin and put two quarts of pumpkin meat in the freezer.
- I worked on my newest deer blind that Mary calls the boys' fort in the woods. I hauled out the large Stihl chainsaw and cut down a two-inch sapling that grew through a hog panel between two hazelnut bushes south of the house. I removed three hog panel pieces from the hazelnuts and used a couple of them to make the fence around the blind higher. Then, I dug up some old Osage orange fence posts laying and sometimes sunk into the forest floor just inside the north woods and stacked them along the north hog fence of the blind. I cut some to fit with the chainsaw. They have a deep yellow wood, even after laying in a pile for decades in the woods. I wired each log into place through the hog fence panels.
- We watched a couple deer in the field southeast of the house after sunset. One was a buck that was following a scent. Another smaller deer started heading toward our south apple trees, so I walked outside to encourage it to go somewhere else..
- Saturday, 11/2: Deer Burgers of Youth Hunting Season
- Our puppy, Amber, always looks north when she steps outside and onto the porch. If she sees any squirrel movement, she's off to the races. Often, she's only a few feet behind a squirrel that was too slow to notice a bullet train fur blast heading its way. Then, she bounces around tree trunks while looking up at squirrels. She's really fun to watch. Plato watches Amber, too, but he's more into sniffing where squirrels once chewed on nuts.
- Today is the first day of the first two-day youth deer hunting season. We heard shots to the south. They were rapid-fire shots from a smaller caliber rifle. I'm guessing it's an assault rifle. They use a .223 caliber bullet, which is only three thousandths of an inch larger than a .22. We'd hear "bang, bang," then "bang, bang." There's not much aiming with that kind of shooting...just making deer burger if the animal is actually hit with bullets.
- We watched a bald eagle fly over the south field from the living room window. It circled above Bluegill Pond, then flew further south.
- Mary made wonderful pizza for our midday meal.
- I worked on my deer blind, the boy's fort, by adding more Osage orange logs to the north and east sides, wiring them into place, and wiring down two lengths of old barn tin as a roof. The south side has old cedar branches woven into hog fencing that was at the old Bobcat Deer Blind that I might just refresh with new cedar boughs. I'm running out of time for the upcoming deer hunting season to stack logs on that side, which is what I need to eventually accomplish.
- We enjoyed a bottle of parsnip wine corked in April. This is a wine that's suppose to age for two years, but it tastes very good with only a few months of aging. It has a unique taste that's hard to identify. This parsnip wine is earthy, tart, and somewhat bitter, in other words, delicious. It has a pretty gold color and this batch fizzes when initially poured into a glass (see photo, below). We definitely need to plant more parsnips, for it makes excellent wine.
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Parsnip wine photo taken by Mary in an obviously fancy glass...ha, ha!
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- Sunday, 11/3: New Blind & Christmas Shopping Done
- I put three one-gallon bags of frozen apple sauce, amounting to over 22 pounds, out to thaw in preparation for making some apple wine. There was still ice in the center of these bags at night. I should have put them out to thaw last night. We put them in the refrigerator before going to bed.
- I did some checkbook balancing that I've neglected for over a month. Then, Mary paid the bills, including a big one for my recent cataract surgery and lenses.
- I finished up work on my newest deer blind, the Fort, by weaving cedar branches through holes in the south and east hog fence walls. I also stuck cedar branches into all roof edges to help disguise me while sitting in the blind. It's done (see photos, below).
- We finalized our Christmas shopping, sent wish lists to our kids, and made several online purchases to finish most all of our gift buying.
- We celebrated today's accomplishments with a bottle of 2022 blackberry wine. It's almost two years since I bottled this wine and aging vastly improved its taste. The wine is very smooth, but boy, does it have a kick. It's a beautiful dark red wine with a strong blackberry flavor that's quite good.
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Northwest corner of the Fort Deer Blind.
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Southwest corner of the same blind in the north woods.
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