Nov. 10-16, 2025

Weather | 11/10, cloudy, 17°, 35° | 11/11, cloudy, 25°, 51° | 11/12, sunny, 35°, xx° | 11/13, xx°, xx° | 11/14, xx°, xx° | 11/15, xx°, xx° | 11/16, xx°, xx° |

• Monday, 11/10: Wood Duck Blind is Ready & Bottling Peapod Wine
  • We had a real hard overnight freeze. Leaves dropped off most of the trees, except the oaks. Whole collections of leaves tumbled out of the pecan trees at almost every second.
  • Mary picked a lot of pecans off the tree nearest the house. Those pecans are larger and possess thicker husks, which squirted juice with every squeeze. "Man, was that messy!" exclaimed Mary.
  • I weedwhacked the rest of the Wood Duck Trail, cleaned leaves out of the Wood Duck Blind, stuffed grass in gaps in the hog fence surrounding the blind, wired a lauan wood roof to the blind, and put several oak branches with leaves over the roof and weighed them down with heavy sticks. That blind is ready for deer hunting season.
  • On the way to the blind, I saw eight wild turkeys walking on the trail near the north field. They flew in several directions once I got too close to them.
  • At twilight, three deer were looking over the south orchard apple trees while smacking their lips. I ran outside and clapped loudly to send them running.
  • I racked the peapod wine for the fifth time and bottled it. The wine is still a little hazy. The specific gravity was 0.990 and the pH was 3.2. The alcohol content is 12.445, which is rather high, caused by the very low final specific gravity level. I corked five bottles. Mary and I tasted the remaining wine. This wine needs a lot of aging. Right now it has a strong alcohol flavor. It's actually a complex taste. It's flowery, with a citrus accent, along with an essence of grape Kool-Aid, which is odd! The color is yellow/green (see photo, below). I'll hide it for a year and then give it another taste.

  

  2025 peapod wine in a clear bottle.

• Tuesday, 11/11: Bottling Cherry Wine
  • A strong southwest wind blasted through most of the day.
  • Mary picked pecans from on the ground and off the tree nearest to the house. She used a ladder to get up higher on limbs of the tree. She said she's officially done picking pecans.
  • I racked and bottled 11 gallons of cherry wine. It amounted to seven hours of work, ultimately corking 56 bottles. The specific gravity was 0.995 and the pH was 3.0. The alcohol content is 10.15 percent. I added 1.1 grams of Kmeta to the wine from the 6-gallon carboy and 1 gram to the wine from the 5-gallon carboy and the 750-ml bottle. Mary and I drank the leftovers, which was an amount just shy of 750 ml. It has the strongest cherry flavor of any cherry wine I've ever made. It's also very smooth, which is amazing for a newly bottled wine. This will be a great wine, well worth the effort of picking all those cherries and making the wine.
  • Bill called with dates of when he's visiting us for the two upcoming holidays, which are Nov. 26-28, and Dec. 24-26.
  • Katie and Mary sent texts back and forth in the nighttime hours. Katie showed several photos of the aurora dancing above Anchorage. 

Nov. 3-11, 2025

Weather | 11/3, p.cloudy, 34°, 61° | 11/4, p. cloudy, 39°, 68° | 11/5, sunny, 49°, 60° | 11/6, sunny to T-storm, 0.02" rain, 30°, 62° | 11/7, sunny, 46°, 67° | 11/8, cloudy, 0.06" rain, 36°, 52° | 11/9, sunny to cloudy, 25°, 33° |

• Monday, 11/3: Ladybug Invasion Begins
  • We picked more pecan nuts. Mary gathered several in the morning and in the evening. I grabbed some from above the first bin roof during our morning collection.
  • I cut down a medium-sized hickory that had bark shedding, so I knew it was dead. The big Stihl chainsaw did fast work at sawing it up. Six pieces went into the machine shed next to the woodsplitter. The rest went into the woodshed. It amounted to two wheelbarrow loads.
  • Mary finished popping the last two varieties of garlic in preparation to planting it.
  • The Asian ladybug invasion of our house began (see video, below). It's a yearly event that starts on the first warm day in autumn after a killing frost. 
  • I moved tall cut grass with a wheelbarrow to the Boys' Fort deer blind and filled holes in the hog fence surrounding it with handfuls of grass to block a deer's view of me.
  • Mary spread compost on the three future rows of garlic in the far garden and turned all of the soil in the western first row. 
  • I used a pitchfork to move weeds I cut yesterday off the trail between the ponds and weedwhacked head-height lespedeza weeds on the Wood Duck Trail. I got to Bramble Hill.
  • I checked the pear wine and squeezed the nylon mesh bags. The specific gravity was 1.048.
  • We saw the twin deer that hang around the house on the lane during our evening walk with Plato. Several minutes later, while walking to the compost bins, I heard deer thundering away on the other side of the cedar trees. That was probably those same two deer.
   
  Asian ladybugs on the south living room window.
  

• Tuesday, 11/4: Planting Garlic & Racking Apple Wine
  • Mary picked pecan nuts off the ground in the morning and evening.
  • I racked the apple wine for the third time. It had a specific gravity of 0.998 and a pH of 3.0. I lost a wine bottle's worth of liquid and put the must into a 3-gallon carboy and a half-gallon jug. Mary and I tasted the leftovers. It had a lemon flavor and was very tart. The apple taste will come out with aging.
  • Mary planted the Siberian and Georgian Chrystal garlic varieties in the first row of the far garden and turned over the third row's soil.
  • The battery was dead, again, on the 8N Ford tractor. I set up the charger, then marched east with the big chainsaw and eventually reached the cedar forest prior to what Mary calls the Banana Field, a clear cut area just west of the dry creek bed. Dead trees I thought were there have all decayed, so I walked north, then west along a gully. Finally, close to the old cow barn, I found and cut a dead cherry tree. I walked back, started the tractor, then drove it to the cherry tree, loaded the trailer with firewood, hauled it home, unloading seven trunk pieces next to the woodsplitter, with the rest in the woodshed. I NEED TO BUY A NEW BATTERY!
  • I saw an American kestrel fly overhead as I was at the cherry tree. It eyeballed me, then flew on. 
  • Mary vacuumed Asian ladybugs from inside the house for the second day in a row.
  • I moved downed weeds out of Wood Duck Trail that I cut yesterday.
  • While I was near Dove Pond, I heard whistling sounds from duck wing beats as they took off. Mary looked it up and that's probably the sound of common goldeneye ducks that are migrating through here. 
  • I checked the pear wine. The specific gravity was 1.039, so it's brewing along, slowly. This is good. Slow brewing produces a better taste.

• Wednesday, 11/5: Firewood & Garlic Planting
  • Mary picked up more pecans with morning and evening nut searches.
  • I removed the air conditioner in the upstairs north bedroom.
  • The oven baking element came via UPS and I installed it. The old element really looked fried where it burst into flames.
  • Mary planted two more garlic varieties. They were Music Pink and German Extra Hardy.
  • I drove the tractor and trailer to just east of the old cow barn where a large dead ash tree stands that has six trunks and cut down one of the trunks. After loading the firewood, I ended up with a three-quarters full trailer of wood. Several big pieces went to near the woodsplitter in the machine shed, while the rest was stacked in the woodshed.
  • Today, the 8N Ford tractor started, probably because I never shut the engine off once I got it running yesterday, thereby fully charging the battery. I'm still getting a new battery, so I can depend on starting it when I need to when cold temperatures arrive.
  • The rising full moon was huge this evening. Mary took a nice photo of it (see below).

  

  A large full moon viewed from our east yard.

• Thursday, 11/6: Eye Exam & All is Well!
  • I went to Quincy for an annual eye checkup. I have 20:20 vision in my right eye and 20:25 vision in my left eye. After a thorough look, the doctor said there are no signs of macular degeneration or glaucoma, so how I'm dealing with diabetes is working. It was a quick visit.
  • Mary found more pecans, several of which are falling as husks open in the trees.
  • She turned the soil over in the last garlic row of the far garden and planted garlic cloves. Today the Samarkand and Shvelisi varieties went into the ground, finishing all garlic planting.
  • Mary threw out the Halloween pumpkin. She usually cooks the meat up and freezes it, but due to the oven mishap, cooking pumpkin meat was delayed several days and it was too late, even with the pumpkin stored in the refrigerator.
  • After my eye checkup, I bought a new battery for the tractor from Farm & Home, a 2.5 gallon jug of glysophate for killing autumn olives and lespedeza, and a few other food items, such as a turkey for 89 cents a pound.
  • A check of the pear wine gave me a specific gravity of 1.026. This is a slow brewing batch of wine.
  • Mary and I enjoyed a bottle of 2022 blackberry wine. It's very good.
  • We had a brief heavy rain from a small thunderstorm that rolled through right after we walked Plato for his last outing before bedtime.
    

• Friday, 11/7: Pickled Jalapeños & Clearing a Trail
  • Mary made four quarts of refrigerated pickled jalapeños. 
  • She also did a bit of mowing under the maple tree next to the woodshed to clean up leaves.
  • Mary picked pecans off the ground under the trees.
  • I removed the last air conditioner, which was in our bedroom. There were lots of bugs that emerged from it...both Asian ladybugs and flies.
  • I used a full gas tank in the Stihl trimmer and whacked weeds and grass from the Wood Duck Trail. I also mowed where I'd whacked weeds on the trail in order to catch pieces sticking up. Finally, I trimmed overhanging branches so I don't have to duck while driving the 8N Ford on the trail. Any autumn olive saplings were left standing. I want to hit them with glyphosate weed killer this year, so I don't have to continue trimming them out every single year. I reached the cut through the fence just prior to entering the east forest.
  • We covered the tubs of autumn greens with blankets before going to bed. We noticed that a north wind dropped temperatures when we walked Plato, so we figured it best to cover the plants.
  • Katie was visiting Mekoryuk, a native village on Nunivak Island, near Bethel. While watching the Native Youth Olympics at the school, Katie texted about various achievements by winners in specific events. It was fun to read how well the athletes performed and to look up the different events.
    

• Saturday, 11/8: First Racking of Pear Wine
  • Mary picked up another nice batch of pecans off the ground. She got several off the tree nearest to the house, which is more of a commercial tree, as compared to the others that are native Missouri pecan trees.
  • I racked the pear wine for the first time. The specific gravity was 1.013 and the pH was 3.4. I got just under 6 gallons after I squeezed juice out of the two nylon mesh bags. Liquid went into a 5-gallon carboy and a 1-gallon jug with an ample amount of room at the tops of both containers to handle foam expansion. We didn't taste any, but the aroma is marvelous.
  • I split firewood and stacked four wheelbarrow loads into the woodshed. The splitter's engine runs very nicely, now that I updated a few things on it.
  • I cut a new sheet of plastic to cover the greens. Mary helped me anchor it down over the tubs of greens with bricks and a couple large chunks of old firewood.
  • A brief bit of rain swept through in the afternoon. After dark, a strong northwest wind started blowing. 
  • We watched the first half of the Ken Burns' documentary on Mark Twain while we enjoyed two pots, each, of hot cinnamon spice tea, made by Harney & Sons.
    

• Sunday, 11/9: Winemaking Day
  • We woke to colder temperatures and witnessed a couple snow flurries today. We kept chickens in the coop with a strong northwest wind blowing and subfreezing temperatures prevailing. We also kept the greens covered with plastic.
  • While dumping ashes this morning, I heard quiet honking sounds, looked up and watched six trumpeter swans fly overhead, heading south.
  • I racked two wines for the second time today, which were jalapeño and parsnip:
    
    • Jalapeño - The specific gravity was 0.992 and the pH was 3.1. I added 0.6 grams of Kmeta. Made from mainly ripe red peppers, the fines had an orange pumpkin moon crater look to them. The liquid filled a 3-gallon carboy and a 750-ml bottle. Mary and I tasted leftovers. It's warm, but not overwhelming. This will be a good drinking wine.
    • Parsnip - The specific gravity was 1.000 and the pH was 3.5. Fines were quite flowable and the racked liquid is cloudy. I added 0.8 grams of Kmeta. I filled a 3-gallon carboy, a gallon jug and a 375-ml half bottle. Mary and I tasted leftovers. It is amazingly good, considering how young it is, with an earthy, citrus flavor.
  • Mary and I picked pecan nuts off the ground in the morning and she did another collection in the evening prior to darkness. Several nuts are falling from husks left in the trees.
  • Mary added blankets to the outside of the plastic covering the greens, then put the old plastic cover over the blankets. It sort of gives them a double pane effect of plastic, plus insulation. We'll see how well it keeps the greens warm in subfreezing weather. 
  • One of our two white hens met its demise today after Mary witnessed it landing on top of a young pullet and ripping at the pullet's comb. This has been an ongoing issue. We can't have a hen that we didn't order, which was an extra from last year's chicken shipment, trying to kill young pullets that we ordered and paid for this year. Mary killed that chicken tonight. Instantly, the coop was settled down without so much fussing. 
  • We watched the second half of the Ken Burns' documentary on Mark Twain.

Oct. 27-Nov. 2, 2025

Weather | 10/27, cloudy, 48°, 65° | 10/28, 0.05" rain, cloudy, 45°, 52° | 10/29, 0.69" rain, cloudy, 44°, 55° | 10/30, p. cloudy, 33°, 54° | 10/31, sunny, 30°, 58° | 11/1, 0.05" rain, cloudy, 39°, 46° | 11/2, fog, hard freeze, 25°, 51° |

• Monday, 10/27: Parsnip Wine & Garlic Garden Prep
  • The pecan trees were messy with squirrels this morning. I shot one squirrel.
  • Bill and I checked the parsnip wine. The specific gravity was 1.070, so sugar content increased from soaking the raisins. The pH stayed the same at 3.5. We created a yeast starter from Red Star Premier Classique (Montrachet) yeast. Late at night, the specific gravity was the same, at 1.070, when I pitched the yeast into the brew bucket. As usual, it smells wonderful!
  • Bill left  mid-afternoon for his apartment.
  • I mowed tall grass in the near far garden and put grass mulch on the first two rows. Mary plans on planting three rows in garlic as soon as she adds compost and turns the soil over.
  • Mary picked a few more pecan nuts from the ground under the trees.
  • The colors of autumn are slowly creeping in. Fall is late this year for us.
  • Katie texted Mary, "I'll be helping do damage assessments on villages affected by the typhoon with my regular job."

• Tuesday, 10/28: Quail, Deer & Webex on Bats
  • In the morning and evening, we experienced misty rain.
  • When we walked the puppy first thing this morning, a covey of Bob White quail burst from under the cedar trees next to the lane.
  • I chased away three squirrels from the pecan trees with .22 bullets. I never hit anything.
  • Around noon, while on a dog walk, Mary turned to face me and realized that two young deer were just a few feet away on the other side of the hazelnut bushes. They weren't too concerned about us, walked away with their tails up, then stopped to eat. In the evening while putting chickens to bed, Mary had a doe deer near her just outside of the chicken yard.
  • Mary picked a few pecan nuts that dropped to the ground.
  • The parsnip wine is slowly bubbling and emitting a wondrous odor. 
  • I ordered a 50-pound bag of oatmeal and after searching for the best price, ordered a roll of newsprint paper from Staples. The paper is for starting fires in the woodstove. We're almost out of our newspapers that once was a high stack.
  • I watched a Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) Webex about bats. One bat will eat 600-1000 insects in one night. Less than one percent of bats have rabies. You have a better chance of getting rabies from a domestic cat or dog. The MDC employee lecturing on this topic from Joplin, MO, said she once saw a snake hanging from the top of a cave opening catching bats as they flew out of the cave.
  • We watched the seventh Harry Potter movie.

• Wednesday, 10/29: Pecans & Pear Wine
  • We saw a doe and a partially grown fawn around 10 a.m. on the lane.
  • Mary picked pecan nuts for most of the day. After picking several off the ground, she got on a ladder and used a garden rake to release pecans from branches above the grain bins. It worked very well.
  • I worked on pear wine all day. First, I cored and sliced up Bartlett pears, putting the pieces in a ReaLemon/water solution. This year's pears are significantly larger. In year's past, I used just over 100 pears. Today I only used 70 pears to get 31 pounds of fruit. Another difference was the weight measured in the past was prior to coring the pears. This year's weight was after cutting out cores. I chopped about three pounds of black raisins, which included two partial boxes of raisins, one of which was golden raisins. I juiced 15 lemons that produced a quart of liquid. The fruit and raisins went into two nylon mesh bags. Smashing fruit with my fist produced about two gallons of pear juice. I added the to the brew bucket:
    
  • 1 quart of lemon juice.
  • 2 gallons of water.
  • 1.1 grams of Kmeta
  • 5 pounds sugar for a specific gravity of 1.073.
  • no acid blend, since the pH was 3.1. 
  • The brew bucket went into the pantry for an overnight soak.
  • Winemaking activities went late into the night. At one point, I accidentally poured lemon water down the front of my pants while moving the largest stainless steel bowl of cut up pears to the sink to pour out the liquid. From that point forward, I walked with a sticky, crunching sound across the kitchen floor. Mary helped me by moping the sticky crud off the floor after I finished.  
  • I had to move the parsnip wine to a smaller brew bucket in order to use the larger bucket for the 6-gallon batch of pear wine. The parsnip wine's yeast is leisurely fizzing along. The specific gravity was 1.050.
  • I watched a webinar at 5 p.m. hosted by Anderson Windows on tips for installing windows and doors. It actually involved listening to three architects complaining on how hard it is to get construction crews to follow their directions on window installations. I did pick up some good information, such as only using windows that open and close in strategic locations and using solid glass windows in other spots, because solid glass windows are less expensive. Most people think they want UV reflective windows until they realize colors viewed through the windows are altered. Sliders and double hung windows leak air much more than casement or European windows. Cut WRB (water-resistant barrier) an inch from the rough window edge, so that tape is applied correctly for strong adhesion.

• Thursday, 10/30: Winemaking Activity
  • I saw three deer when I opened the curtains on our bedroom windows this morning. A big doe was staring directly at me while two other deer walked along the far garden fence.
  • We were a bit lazy today, due to the lateness of getting to bed last night.
  • Mary gathered more pecans that dropped to the ground under the trees.
  • I shot a squirrel while facing north at the burn barrel. 
  • A check of the parsnip wine 12 hours after the last test revealed a specific gravity of 1.040.
  • I added 7.5 teaspoons of pectic enzyme and 3 grams of diammonium phosphate to the pear wine. Then I worked up a starter batch of Red Star Côte des Blancs yeast that I added pear wine must to throughout the day. Twelve hours after adding the pectic enzyme, a test showed the specific gravity still at 1.073, so I added another pound of sugar to bring it to 1.082, which is a similar level to past pear wines I've made. I pitched the yeast into the brew bucket exactly 24 hours after creating the pear wine must. 
  • We watched the eighth and final Harry Potter movie.

• Friday, 10/31: Pecans, Peppers, Pears, & Pumpkin
  • I moved the big 10-foot step ladder to under our main pecan tree and picked nuts while Mary grabbed pecans from under the tree on the ground.
  • I went through all of the pears that are wrapped in newspaper in the upstairs landing chest of drawers and threw out bad ones, which almost filled a 4-gallon bucket. We have enough pears for me to make two more 6-gallon batches of wine, but we don't need that much pear wine! Then I wrapped the Kieffer pears that Mary collected and put them in the chest of drawers.
  • Mary chopped up and froze sweet peppers, placing 23 packages in the freezer for grand total 72 sandwich bags of frozen bell peppers from this year.
  • The specific gravity of the parsnip wine was 1.020. I'll need to rack it tomorrow. The pear wine is fizzing and foaming, so the yeast is doing it's job. 
  • Mary made a chocolate zucchini cake...YUM, YUM!
  • I carved an owl Jack-o'-lantern for our Halloween pumpkin (see photo, below). I got the idea of a BBC wildlife article.
  • In the evening, we ate a salad from our winter greens, two huge pears for each of us, some chocolate zucchini cake, and finished it off with a bottle of spiced apple wine.
  • Katie treated herself and bought a piece of Yupik loon artwork made by a UIC (the company she works for) shareholder (see photo, below).
  • We watched the 1993 film, Hocus Pocus.
  • I researched and then ordered an Anker power bank, a charger, and a cord to help us if and when we have an electrical power outage. 

Our owl Jack-o'-lantern that I carved.

Yupik loon artwork that Katie recently bought.

• Saturday, 11/1: Oven Element Fire
  • We picked more pecans off the ground and from branches I reached with the tall ladder.
  • While preheating the oven to cook some pork loin meat, the lower element suddenly burst into flames, shooting up an eight-inch shot of fire. Mary, who was in front of the oven, immediately turned it off. I tried ordering a new element. Today and tomorrow is a youth deer hunting season and our neighbors on the land west of us are here. We can always tell when they show up, because they soak up all of the bandwidth off our cell towers resulting in extremely slow internet service. It took me 40 minutes to work through an appliance parts website for me to finally check them out when I didn't notice the normal https secure protocol for using a credit card online and found out they provide very poor service. I quit the order. I'll order in the future when we have a stronger signal.
  • We built an outdoor fire and cooked the pork loin outside. In the middle of that, light rain started to settle on us. We ate quickly, then went inside for a potato cooked in the microwave.
  • Mary took down the Halloween tree and decorations.
  • She then popped garlic cloves for planting. Mary got through four of the six varieties. Popping garlic equals sore fingers.
  • I racked the parsnip wine for the first time. The pH stayed at 3.5 and the specific gravity was 1.010. Liquid filled a 3-gallon carboy, a gallon jug, and a 750-ml wine bottle. Mary and I tasted the remains. It was sweet, earthy, and resembled the taste of grapefruit juice...weird!
  • A quick check of the pear wine showed that the yeast is fizzing, producing a good amount of foam. 
  • Rain fell off and on through the afternoon, wrecking my plans to cut firewood. I shot a squirrel and sent a couple more away, chased by bullets. When it's raining, the east end of the machine shed is a good place to sit, just inside the edge of the drip line off the roof.
  • At dusk, we covered the tubs of winter greens with blankets, since a hard hard freeze is predicted for tonight. By bedtime, the outdoor thermometer showed a temperature of 32.

• Sunday, 11/2: First Autumn Hard Freeze
  • Our first hard freeze of autumn put a layer of white frost on everything outside. We also saw dense fog in the morning.
  • I ordered an oven element. It's an original GE part, instead of an aftermarket knockoff.
  • Mary and I picked more pecan nuts. Occasionally we find clusters of 4-6 nuts. When grabbing nuts while using the tall ladder I'm noticing that some husks still on the tree opened enough to shed the actual nut.
  • A check of the pear wine gave me a specific gravity of 1.063, so the yeast has a ways to go. I squeezed the two nylon mesh bags of fruit and stirred the must.
  • I cut firewood from small dead oak and ash trees just north of the machine shed. It's close enough for me to use a wheelbarrow to move the wood. One load went inside next to the woodstove and the other went into the woodshed.
  • Using the Stihl trimmer with the metal blade, I cut trails to the ash pile just beyond the far garden, to the Boys' Fort Deer Blind, and to between the ponds.
  • While knocking down the trail to the ash pile, I saw two young deer run away that were eating on garden vegetation piles that Mary created while removing plants from the far garden.

Oct. 20-26, 2025

Weather | 10/20, sunny, 39°, 73° | 10/21, sunny, 45°, 57° | 10/22, sunny, 35°, 59° | 10/23, sunny, 33°, 60° | 10/24, cloudy, 35°, 61° | 10/25, cloudy, 49°, 59° | 10/26, cloudy to sprinkles, 47°, 62° |

• Monday, 10/20: Nuts!
  • We noticed a small patch of frost on the grass near the lane prior to sunrise this morning. It was a very windy day.
  • Several robins were flying about in the morning. We suspect a number of them flew in from the north.
  • Mary picked pecans twice, today, gathering a nice number of nuts. I helped in the evening by using a step ladder to collect several off branches above the first grain bin roof.
  • I gathered black walnuts that fell from trees over the lane. Over two days, I collected enough in a milk crate to give me only two more inches before I need to start putting nuts in another crate. At first, I was wiping gooey husk sludge off the nuts in the grass, but it takes too much time. I've progressed to swiping the husks off the nuts in a quick backward foot motion while wearing boots with aggressive cleats. This takes less time. I feel like a bull tossing dust on his chest when I'm kicking walnut husks off the nuts. I hope to collect several milk crate loads of walnuts.
  • Mary mowed several portions of the lawn and left the grass lay, instead of picking it up. Mowing goes faster with this method. I helped her by mowing the stretch just north of the house.
  • We watched the sixth Harry Potter movie.

• Tuesday, 10/21: Harvesting Prior to Frost & First Woodstove Heat
  • Strong west winds blew today. At one point, Mary heard a tree crash in the north woods. I took a look and spotted a large hickory tree down just northwest of the north end of the chicken yard.
  • I removed the air conditioner from the living room's west window. It was leaking too much cold air, especially with a strong west wind. Mary and I moved it to the machine shed. 
  • I collected a handful of black walnuts that fell on the lane, due to the wind.
  • Mary collected pecans that fell on the ground under the trees two times today.
  • I drove to Lewistown for high octane gasoline for trimmer and chainsaw use and put $20 of gas in the pickup. The price is $2.59 per gallon.
  • Mary picked tomatoes, one last acorn squash (there are now 75 stored away), and several hot and sweet peppers. A chance of frost prompted this harvest session.
  • I picked the last of the apples off the Granny Smith and Goldrush trees. Later in the evening after cutting apples open, I discovered the Granny apples were too far gone. I should have picked them a month ago. However, the Goldrush apples were firm and great tasting. They indeed can be picked well into October.
  • I ran a tank of gas in the Stihl trimmer to clear more tall weeds and grass from the trail to the ponds. Today, I ended just before the area between Bass and Dove Ponds. Head-high lespedeza is really thick right there.
  • Right at sunset, I lit a fire in the woodstove for the first time this autumn with several windows open to let the wind blast smoke out of the house. It only took a minute or two for high heat to burn mineral oil off the stove pipes that Mary applied in the spring. That oil keeps the metal pipes from rusting through summer. After closing windows, the wood heat felt really good.
  • The dog bed placed in front of the woodstove attracted feline friends next to Plato this evening (see photo, below). There's nothing cozier than a large, warm puppy on a big bed in front of the fire.

  

  Left to right, Mocha, Gandalf, & Plato on the big dog bed.
  

• Wednesday, 10/22: Picking Kieffer Pears & Transplanting Saplings
  • Mary picked the equivalent of one four-gallon bucket of Kieffer pears. She said the area under that pear tree smelled like the makings of bad wine, but with a higher alcohol content. Rotting pears covered with yellowjackets were in the tree and all over the ground. It was hard to find good pears. Mary says she was late at collecting the Kieffers.
  • I transplanted two Sargent saplings that were under the east side of the large Sargent crabapple tree to the spot in the south orchard where an earlier transplant died. After the transplant was done, I gave the saplings four gallons of water, a bucket of sawdust and shavings from under the woodsplitter, plastic tree protectors tied to a rebar stake, and a two-foot wide tube of quarter inch hardware cloth tied to a second rebar stake.
  • I used a pitchfork to toss weeds and grass that I cut down yesterday from the trail to the ponds. Then I mowed that section of the trail with the push mower.
  • Mary picked pecans in the morning and evening. I helped her in the evening by grabbing pecans off the tree from a six-foot ladder.
  • We covered the winter greens with blankets, since frost is expected in the morning. 
  • Mary and I ate two Goldrush apples, each, as an evening snack. They have excellent taste.

• Thursday, 10/23: Quincy Library Book Sale
  • A solid frost covered the ground when we walked Plato this morning, prior to sunrise.
  • We had our first morning woodstove fire. It felt very nice.
  • We bought the following books at the Quincy Library Book Sale for 50 cents an inch, or $6 total:
    • Einstein. Relativity: The Special and General Theory.
    • Oberrect. Home Book of Picture Framing, an excellent DIY book.
    • Time-Life Foods of the World. American Cooking: Southern Style, to add to Mary's collection.
    • Strickland. Alaskans: Life on the Last Frontier, featuring several people I recognize.
    • Queenan. One for the Books, a collection of essays on authors, books, and reading.
    • Mordal. 25 Centuries of Sea Warfare, translated from French to English.
    • McCullough. The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, to add to Mary's collection by this author.
    • Beard. Confronting the Classics, a series of essays arguing for the reading of ancient Greek and Roman literature.
    • Haygood & Grossfeld. Two on the River, on traveling the Mississippi River in the 1980s.
    • Teyckare. The Lore of Ships, a very thick reference all about ships through the ages, written by a Swedish author.
    • American Heritage (August 1956).
    • Horizon (Spring 1970).
  • We also did a bit of shopping. Two foot-long sandwiches, plus drinks, from Subway was $33.09! And we thought it was outrageous when Subway's charge was over $20.
  • After we returned home, I emptied the pickup and put our purchases away while Mary raked up grass cut a couple days ago and stored it inside the second grain bin.
  • Mary and I both picked pecans.
  • We spent the evening reviewing the books we bought today. The two seafaring reference books are very good.

• Friday, 10/24: Nuts & Firewood
  • We watched two young deer walk on the lane in front of our house early this morning and then turn east on our trail to the far garden. Mary went outside with Plato while the second deer was near the northeast corner of the near garden. It looked at Mary and Plato, then slowly meandered further east. We're just part of the scenery to our resident deer population.
  • I hunted squirrels in the pecan trees and shot two of them. I saw a barred owl fly into those trees a couple times and the squirrels just ignored it. There were also gobs of nuthatches going up and down the tree trunks.
  • Mary and I picked pecan nuts. Mary searched the ground and I grabbed nuts off the tree while standing on a step ladder.
  • I moved probably about 100 black walnuts from the grass along the edge of the lane, then mowed the lane.
  • I cut firewood from the hickory tree that toppled over northwest of the chicken run. When I tried to start the 8N Ford tractor, the battery was dead. I left the ignition switch on about a month ago when I moved it prior to butchering chickens. I attached the charger and let it run while I cut wood. The chainsaw's bar became stuck on one cut when the tree shifted and the end of my cut wedged up against another tree. Mary held the saw while I used a hatchet to remove wood under the saw. Boy! Hickory is really, really hard wood! After several whacks with the hatchet, it came loose. The tractor started, so I moved it to south of where I was cutting and hoofed several arm loads of firewood up the hill to load the trailer. When I tried starting the tractor, the battery was dead, again. I got wrenches, removed the battery, hauled it to the machine shed, and set the battery charger to it, again. After several minutes charging and after a two minute 30-amp boost with the charger, I hauled the battery back to the tractor while using a hat light. After installing the battery, the tractor fired up and I drove it back to inside the machine shed with the first of many loads of firewood for the season.

• Saturday, 10/25: Splitting Firewood
  • There were seven squirrels in the pecan trees this morning. I shot one. Our pecan trees are like neon signs to squirrels from miles around.
  • Bill arrived around 11:30 a.m. He's here for three days.
  • I split firewood and stacked most of it in the machine shed to dry. 
  • The wood splitter started on the first pull and ran better than when we first arrived here in 2009. Maintenance I did earlier on the engine and hydraulics really made a big improvement. It split hickory logs with ease, which usually are usually difficult, since it's such hard wood that often splinters.
  • A quick check of the 8N Ford tractor's battery indicated that it held a charge and works fine in starting the tractor. 
  • We had turkey chimichangas covered with winter greens, ripe garden tomatoes, and Greek yogurt for our midday meal. It was super filling.
  • Mary was on the pecan nut search for about an hour in the afternoon and found several. Squirrels, blue jays, and wind knock nuts to the ground. 
  • After dark, we watched two movies that Bill picked out, which were Super 8 and Stardust.

• Sunday, 10/26: Parsnip Wine & Cleaning Far Garden
  • Bill and Mary pulled parsnips from the near garden. It was an average harvest. Most had good, straight roots. Only a few grew weird, stubby roots. The first parsnip that Bill pulled out had about a four-foot whip root at the very end. I cleaned a little over half of them with a brush and a bucket of water. Mary finished the task.
  • While Mary and Bill harvested parsnips, I removed husks off black walnuts that fell in the path between the gardens and collected enough to fill the rest of a milk crate of this year's nuts, along with starting a new crate.
  • Bill and I made a four-gallon batch of parsnip wine. Bill did a lot of the work. He chopped up 60 ounces of black raisins while I washed parsnips. Bill also zested eight lemons and squeezed juice from them. He chopped up 11 pounds, 10.3 ounces of parsnips, ending up with nine pounds, 11.8 ounces of finished product, equaling only 16.4 percent waste. Raisins and lemon zest went into a nylon mesh bag. We boiled two batches of sliced parsnip roots in 1.5 gallons of water each time. A little over a gallon of liquid went into the brew bucket after each of the two boils. After getting to a rolling boil, we let the roots boil for 15 minutes. By making parsnip wine immediately after harvesting the roots, the parsnip slices stayed intact and didn't turn to mush, which happened the last time we made this wine. After each boil, I removed most of the slices with a spoon. Then we poured the liquid through a colander and into the brew bucket to collect remaining parsnip slices. The leftover parsnip pieces went into the compost bin. Added to the brew bucket was: 1.5 gallons of apple juice, 0.7 grams of Kmeta, 1 teaspoon of tartaric acid to yield a pH of 3.5, 2 pounds of sugar for a specific gravity of 1.059, and a cup of tea brewed from 2 tea bags. The brew bucket went into the pantry for an overnight soak.
  • Mary cleaned all partially dead plants from the far garden. It involved several wheelbarrow loads that were stacked neck high with plants, complete with green tomatoes, peppers, and squash that went through a couple frosts.
  • We watched two movies, which were The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Practical Magic. 

Oct. 13-19, 2025

Weather | 10/13, 0.01" rain, cloudy, 61°, 76° | 10/14, sprinkles, cloudy, 59°, 78° | 10/15, cloudy, 59°, 79° | 10/16, p. cloudy, 57°, 81° | 10/17, p. cloudy, 61°, 81° | 10/18, p. cloudy, 61°, 75° | 10/19, 0.49" rain, sunny, 45°, 60° |

• Monday, 10/13: Ladybugs & Jalapeño Wine
  • I installed the woodstove's outer casing nuts and bolts to secure it into place. One connection required small hands, so Mary helped. She couldn't get her fingers into place, so she used tape to attach the nut to an open end wrench and I screwed the small bolt into the nut.
  • I didn't deal with the stovepipe. Old stovepipe bolts are #8 hex head screws and the holes they go through in the stovepipe sections are so worn that the screws don't stay in place. I decided I need to move up to #10 x 1/2" hex head screws for better stovepipe connectors. I'll get them during our next shopping trip.
  • Mary washed all of the house curtains and cleaned all the interior house windows.
  • The first of the autumn Asian ladybug invasion started today, so Mary vacuumed bugs from all of the windows. They were thick outside. I always thought that a frost followed by warming temperatures triggered Asian ladybugs to seek out our house, but that's not the case this year. The actual trigger must be fewer minutes of sunlight in the day.
  • Mary picked 60 jalapeño peppers that I made into three gallons of jalapeño wine. A vast majority of these peppers were ripe red (see photo, below). After cutting off stems, I had one pound, 14.52 ounces of peppers. The past two years, 50-60 peppers weighed 2.5 pounds, but that was before stems were cut off. I think I have about the same amount this year. I ground the peppers in Mary's food processor, then chopped up one pound, 14 ounces of black raisins. After putting the peppers and raisins in a nylon mesh bag, dark red liquid oozed into the brew bucket. I added 2.5 gallons and 3 cups of water, 4.5 teaspoons of acid blend to yield a pH of 3.1, 0.6 grams of Kmeta, and four pounds of sugar for a specific gravity of 1.067. The resulting liquid resembled root beer in color. I covered the brew bucket with a flour sack towel and put it in the pantry. A strong pepper odor soon filled the air.
  • While finishing evening chores, I spotted a great horned owl on the top of a cedar tree southeast of the south orchard.

  

  Freshly washed jalapeño peppers in the kitchen sink.
  

• Tuesday, 10/14: Squirrel Hunting & Winemaking
  • Rain was falling right when I opened the curtains after waking up, but it quit immediately. It wasn't even enough to register in the rain gauge.
  • I hunted squirrels before breakfast with five shots that didn't hit anything. Around noon, I tried, again, and shot two big squirrels. The three shots I made in the evening missed the mark, but at least I sent the little demons away. I found a branch from the pecan tree on the ground with husks that surrounded pecan nuts about to open. That's probably why squirrels are on the attack to pecan trees right now.
  • I saw a small doe deer in the north woods near the Boys' Fort Deer Blind this afternoon.
  • I worked on jalapeño wine throughout the day. I added two teaspoons of pectic enzyme to the brew bucket, along with 2.2 grams of diammonium phosphate. I created a starter batch of Red Star Premier Blanc yeast and added healthy amounts of must to it two times. Before bedtime, the specific gravity was 1.078, an 11-point increase in sugar content from yesterday, due to the raisins releasing more sugar. I pitched the yeast into the brew bucket.
  • Mary watched five blue jays escorting a sharp-shinned hawk out of the area and into the southwest woods. She said that they were absolutely silent and surrounding the hawk on three sides. "It was as if they were escorting a dangerous prisoner," Mary said.

• Wednesday, 10/15: Shopping
  • We went shopping in Quincy, IL, today. We got a used spray painting device at Salvation Army. We also got a new-to-us rice steamer at Goodwill that looks like it was hardly used. Mary found a Missouri history book and a wildflower identification book at Goodwill. I picked up various woodstove parts at Menards. I discovered that unlike what their website says, O'Reilly's won't take used hydraulic oil, but Walmart will take it.
  • When I hauled the garbage down our lane at dusk, two deer ran off the lane at Bluegill Pond. One young deer stood at the edge of the trees outside the pond and watched me walk by without moving. When I returned home, four deer ran away at that same location.
  • Our Missouri Conservation Department calendar states that the average first frost date in northern Missouri is Oct. 12, which was Sunday. Frost will come later this year.

• Thursday, 10/16: Pecan Nuts & Cleaning Stove Pipe
  • The jalapeño wine is fizzing with intense yeast activity. A hydrometer check 36 hours after pitching the yeast showed a specific gravity of 1.051, a 27-point drop.
  • Mary picked pecan nuts off the trees and from the ground under the trees throughout the day, gathering a significant amount to dry in the upstairs south bedroom. She noticed a lot fewer nut chewings from squirrels compared to what we saw in previous years. Mary also picked up dead branches under the pecan trees to store in the machine shed for future kindling.
  • I dismantled and worked on stove pipe. I took a long wire barbecue grill brush to the inside of each stove pipe section. I also used an old screwdriver and a putty knife to scrape off hardened stove cement at the ends of each stove pipe section, which took quite a bit of time. In past years, I've had to rush this job, because we needed heat at night. That's not the case this year, giving me extra time to do a thorough job. We burned better dry wood last heating season, because there's less soot inside the pipes and no pile of soot where the last stove pipe section goes into the chimney. I hope to finish this dirty job tomorrow.
  • As I cleaned stove pipe sections a little bit east of the Granny Smith apple tree, I occasionally heard walnuts dropping from trees growing on either side of the lane. We had a big nut year and wherever black walnut trees grow, the ground around the base of these trees are covered in walnuts that have fallen. The path between the gardens is filled with nuts (see photo, below).
  • I grabbed the dog bed we stored for several years in an upstairs closet and brought it downstairs for Plato. It was in storage because two cats who are gone, Merlin and Rosemary, were constantly using it as a toilet. After Mary cleaned it with cat urine remover, she stored it away. Plato doesn't go upstairs to sleep on his bed anymore, because he can't manage successfully going down the steep stairs, due to old age. So, his bed is now permanently on the first floor. The big dog bed gives him more comfort. Mocha, our youngest cat, also likes the bed, along with Plato (see photo, below). 

Black walnuts on the path between the gardens.

Plato and Mocha on the large, soft dog bed.

• Friday, 10/17: Stove Pipe Installed
  • We experienced a strong south wind today.
  • Mary picked over half of a bucket of ripe tomatoes from the garden, 10 green, but ripening tomatoes, and some cherry tomatoes. She also picked nine acorn squash.
  • She picked a bunch of pecans nuts from under the pecan trees.
  • I cleaned three partial bucket loads of soot from the inside base of the chimney. Then I cleaned the outside of each stove pipe section and installed stove pipe a section at a time. Stove cement went into each stove pipe connection, along with new stainless steel #10 x 1/2" hex head screws. I finished after the sun went down.
  • Mary watched four wood ducks fly over the cedar trees, just east of the house, heading for Wood Duck Pond.
  • We watched the 2001 film, Monsters, Inc., that we picked up from Goodwill on our last shopping trip.

• Saturday, 10/18: Racking Jalapeño Wine & Woodstove Gaskets
  • Mary picked several more pecans from the trees and off the ground.
  • I racked the jalapeño wine for the first time into a 3-gallon carboy, a 750-ml bottle, and a 12-ounce bottle. The specific gravity was 1.019 and the pH was 3.0. This batch has a rusty/orange color, due to all of the red jalapeño peppers that were used in its making (see photo, below). The wine's yeast is still producing lots of fizz. Fortunately, this wine doesn't foam up with that much fizz like blackberry or cherry wine. Mary and I tasted the tiny bit of liquid left over. It was sweet and warming, but not overwhelmingly hot. It also has a solid pepper flavor. It might be the best jalapeño wine I've made.
  • We watched two big flocks of snow geese fly overhead. The first group was flying due south. The second flock was flying east and dropping for the night.
  • Mary heard a blue jay making a perfect imitation sound of a red-shouldered hawk.
  • I scraped out the old woodstove door gaskets, cleaned the grooves with a wire brush, applied stove gasket cement and new door gaskets. By closing the woodstove's doors onto opened newspapers, the cement dries without sticking the gaskets to the wrong parts of the stove. I also added a bit of cement to where the stove pipe enters the chimney, making sure there is a tight seal at that location.
  • We watched the fifth Harry Potter movie.
  • A nearby lightning strike cut off power for a second and ended our movie watching. Fortunately, we were a few minutes away from the end of that film. We had a good rain after that lightning strike.

  

  A rusty/orange color of the jalapeño wine.
  

• Sunday, 10/19: Clearing Trails
  • The cool weather makes it finally feels like autumn around here, which is nice.
  • When we walked Plato this morning, at least two red-shouldered hawks were calling from a couple different locations.
  • A flock of juncos blew in with yesterday's storm and are here for the winter.
  • Mary froze three gallons of tomatoes. They are destined for future homemade soup.
  • She also brought in the wood rack and some firewood, in case we need it overnight.
  • Mary picked several more pecans. 
  • I used the steel blade on the trimmer to knock down tall weeds and grass on the trail to the ponds. Two tanks of gas in the trimmer got me to where the fence once was into the north pasture.
  • I finished reading Alexander Kent's 13th British Navy novel, The Inshore Squadron, and started the 14th book, A Tradition of Victory.

Oct. 6-12, 2025

Weather | 10/6, sunny, 60°, 82° | 10/7, 0.60" rain, cloudy to sun, 55°, 65° | 10/8, sunny, 43°, 70° | 10/9, sunny, 43°, 73° | 10/10, .41" rain, p. cloudy, 52°, 69° | 10/11, fog to p. cloudy, 49°, 70° | 10/12, p. cloudy, 46°, 76° |

• Monday, 10/6: Halloween Decorations
  • We heard coyotes howling during our predawn walk with Plato. Coyotes aren't usually howling at that hour.
  • I took the .22 rifle north to the machine shed to blast squirrels first thing in the morning. Two squirrels bounded across that building's tin roof and gave me a quick eyeball look, then spun around and loudly ran away. There's nothing quiet about a squirrel running on a tin roof! I never got a shot off.
  • An American kestrel flew over the yard as I was looking for squirrels this morning. Mary saw it, too.
  • After we let the chickens out and were back inside, I spotted a buck deer between the machine shed and the grain bins. He had a nice rack.
  • I picked up all of the soiled wall calendars and chicken feathers on the dirt floor of the machine shed. In past years, I left this stuff. I'm trying to eliminate feathers that mice stuff into the cracks and crevices of the woodsplitter engine.
  • Mary vacuumed spiders from throughout the house and found 11 Asian lady bugs, so the autumn/winter bug invasion has commenced.
  • I hunted squirrels in the late afternoon while sitting on a stool at the east side of the machine shed. I saw nothing. Then during evening chores I checked and two squirrels were in the tops of trees northeast of the machine shed. I tried a long shot and got another fox squirrel.
  • We put up the Halloween tree and decorations (see photos, below).
  • I finished Alexander Kent's 12th nautical novel, Signal—Close Action!, and started the 13th novel of the series, The Inshore Squadron.
  The fully decorated Halloween tree, this year with blinking lights.
   

  

  New Halloween pumpkin lights over a door in our kitchen.
  

• Tuesday, 10/7: House Plants & Racking Wine
  • We experienced a big rain at 4:30 a.m., when we weren't supposed to get much moisture. It amounted to 0.60 inches. Lightning and thunder got Mary out of bed to unplug appliances. She said rain was pounding on the house roof.
  • Mary cleaned all of the house plants and repotted the bay trees, which were brought inside the house from the woodshed where they were for the summer. She also started three plants, which were the rosemary plant, a ficas tree, and a pothos plant. The rosemary plant is 3-4 foot long and hangs to the floor off an old wooden chair seat. She wants to keep the ficas tree small. The pothos plant grew to about 25 feet long, wrapped around the pot. Once her restarts grow, she'll discard old plants.
  • Mary also cleaned the sunroom.
  • I racked the following two wines:
    
    • Apple - Deep fines meant I lost about a half gallon of liquid from must that was in a 3-gallon carboy and two 1-gallon jugs. The resulting must filled a 3-gallon carboy, a half-gallon jug, and a 750-ml wine bottle. This was the second racking, so I added 0.7 grams of Kmeta. The specific gravity was 1.000 and the pH was 3.0. Mary and I tasted a bit of it. This batch has a very strong apple flavor.
    • Cherry - Fines were much smaller on the third racking of this wine. The resulting liquid filled a 6.5-gallon and a 5-gallon carboy, along with a 750-ml wine bottle. I went directly from carboys to carboys, without adding any additives. The specific gravity was 0.994 and the pH was 3.1. The 500 ml of leftover wine was our before supper treat. It was good, even for a young wine. It will get better with aging.
  • Mary spotted the first duck of the season. It was impossible to identify...a small, dark form against a dim sky.
  • She also heard a big tree fall in the southwest woods. The sound of it falling at first resembled firecrackers. A few seconds later she heard creaking and groaning, followed by a loud crash. We might have future firewood to seek out. It's not far from the west yard.

• Wednesday, 10/8: A Woolly Worm Army
  • This year's woolly worm numbers are huge. They're everywhere and it's hard not to accidentally step on them.
  • Mary and I washed a big amount of dishes, mainly because after racking two wines yesterday, I produced several dirty items.
  • I drove to Quincy to pick up three drug prescriptions. I also got a few other items.
  • Mary picked and froze more tomatoes. She started gallon bag number 14 in the freezer. Fifteen is the magic number of gallons we need for making enough salsa for a year, so we're almost there.
  • We watched the third Harry Potter movie.

• Thursday, 10/9: Purple Painting Property Lines & Picking Pears
  • During our predawn walk of Plato, we heard a white-throated sparrow for the first time this autumn. HERE is a link to their pretty song.
  • Last year we bought a gallon of what was supposed to be purple latex paint from Menards, but it turned out to be blue. I added several ounces of red paint to the can and turned it into purple color for painting our property borders. In Missouri, purple paint on tree trunks or fence posts indicates no trespassing to hunters.
  • Mary picked four cat litter buckets full of pears from the big Bartlett pear tree. Some were exceedingly big (see photo, below). Each bucket weighed about 20-25 pounds, so she brought about 80-100 pounds of pears into the house. She wrapped each pear in a piece of newspaper and put them in a chest of drawers at the top of the stairs landing, with the drawers partially open to release humidity.
  • I purple painted our property borders, starting on the south border running adjacent to the gravel road. Tomorrow is the start of a three-day early anterless deer hunting season. I won't be hunting, because the temperatures are too warm for adequately cooling venison meat. I had to stomp down emerging autumn olive saplings that grew next to our south fence line. I walked half of the west property line and only painted a couple trees with purple paint. Most old paint marks were perfect. A walk down the north property line showed excellent paint marks, so I didn't add any paint. The same was true down the east property line. 
  • I heard deer running away in two different instances during my march around the property.
  • I noticed that just a few feet west of our west field, our neighbor has a fresh salt block planted in front of a trail camera. We are a CWD (Chronic Wasting Disease) county, so salt blocks to attract deer are unlawful. Deer possessing CWD pass on the disease in saliva left behind in the soil under a salt block, so that's why they are outlawed. I might have to say something to the Lewis County Conservation Agent.
  • I scared up a wood duck at the east side of Wood Duck Pond. I never saw it, but heard the telltale call of a female wood duck flying away.
  • On the way home from the east property line, I cut through the woods and walked home via the trail to Wood Duck Pond. It's filled with weeds. I dropped by the blind I built last fall that's next to Wood Duck Pond. It looks to be in good shape and just needs a roof on top.

  

  A massive Bartlett pear dwarfs Mary's hand.
  

• Friday, 10/10: More Nice Rain
  • Bright lightning, followed by a thunder crash, woke both of us around 5 a.m., when we jumped out of bed and pulled the electric plugs on appliances. The thunderstorm gave us 0.41 inch of rain.
  • On a morning squirrel hunt, I shot one that at first peered at me from the northeast corner of the machine shed roof. It crawled into some small trees along the north side of the machine shed, where I got off an easy shot.
  • I gave Mary a haircut. She says it feels wonderful.
  • Some of the lilacs are blooming. Nature is whacked out, this year!
  • I heard four shots before darkness fell. They were all from down in the Troublesome Creek bottom, west of us. Today is the opening day of an early anterless deer season that ends on Sunday. 
  • We watched the fourth Harry Potter movie.

• Saturday, 10/11: Working On the Woodstove
  • A bunch of cardinals were eating ragweed seeds just outside of the living room's west window in the morning. We keep seeing more and more cardinals on this property.
  • Mary picked and froze more tomatoes. She finished filling the 15th gallon bag for the freezer, so we now have enough for salsa. She started on the 16th bag. Now we save tomatoes for wintertime soup-making.
  • I worked on the woodstove. First, I removed the stovepipe from the stove's exhaust flange, and then the outer casing, using the ratchet box wrenches that Mom gave me a few months ago to remove 10 nuts. Mary and I moved the outer casing to the machine shed, where I'll remove peeling paint on the back and paint it, tomorrow. I thought I'd have to order one or two grate support angle iron pieces, but they were fine. The defective part I found once I cleaned out ashes was a cracked and warped grate. 
  • I checked the woodstove stored in the first grain bin. It was in this house when we first moved here in 2009. I thought because Herman, Mary's uncle, owned it and probably abused it, that it was nearly shot. It's actually in better shape than our current stove, which we bought in 2011. Herman's old stove just has rust on the outer casing. I swapped one of the grates in Herman's old stove with the warped grate in this stove.
  • I removed two of the three nuts and bolts holding the brick retainer and swung it up to gain access to the firebricks. Two were cracked along the back of the stove. I replaced them with two I stored in the machine shed and replaced the nuts and bolts to the brick retainer. Several other nuts were loose, so I got Mary to help as we tightened all nuts. I swept hairy dust off internal parts that were out in the open now with the outer casing removed. I closed off the end of the stovepipe by tying a plastic grocery bag over it. I'll proceed with more woodstove work tomorrow.
  • We heard a number of barred owls while walking Plato at night.

• Sunday, 10/12: Big Pears & Repainting the Woodstove
  • When I walked to the east side of the machine shed to see if squirrels were in the pecan trees, a barred owl flew into the top of one of those trees. Three bluejays were instantly interested in harassing the owl and flew in to nip it, occasionally. A flock of noisy crows flew by to the north. After a bit, the barred owl moved to the cottonwood tree north of the machine shed and several crows started calling. I clapped real loud. The crows and bluejays flew away, leaving the owl in peace. 
  • I attached small wire brushes to the DeWalt cordless drill and removed rust and chipped paint from the woodstove's outer casing. For the first time in several months, I recharged the 20 volt batteries to those tools, and I use them almost every week. I used a natural hair paint brush and a clean cloth to remove dust, then spray painted these areas with flat black Rust-Oleum paint that's good to 2000°F. I touched up a couple places on the front with flat aluminum spray paint with the same temperature capability. The casing dried through the afternoon. Mary and I moved it back inside prior to sunset and put it over the woodstove's interior burner section.
  • Mary made flour tortillas and then venison fajitas. I picked a bowl of greens from our tubs. Mary included some ripe garden tomatoes. It was yummy!
  • Mary finished picking pears from the big Bartlett tree. She collected even bigger pears than when she picked them two days ago. I weighed the largest pear (see photo, below) and it weighed 1.21 pounds. The chest of drawers at the top of the stairs is full of pears wrapped in newspaper, as is an apple box. There are more pears on the tree, but we probably have enough. The Kieffer pear tree is also loaded with fruit that we haven't touched.
  • I put on old boots, rolled walnut husks off nuts that fell on our lane, and collected black walnuts. I got about two inches in the bottom of a milk crate.
  • We watched the film, The Sorcerer's Apprentice. 
  • While watching the movie, we shared a wonderful bottle of 2021 pear wine. After aging almost four years, this wine is super smooth and has a marvelous taste. It also has a deep golden color and a great aroma that fills the house the instant the bottle is opened.
  • Mary discovered that an early morning shooting in South Carolina where four people were killed involved folks who were celebrating at a popular bar who were alumni of Battery Creek High School, which is the school that Mary graduated from in South Carolina's Sea Islands. She's hoping that no one she knows was killed or injured.

  

  Our biggest pear picked today that weighed 1.21 pounds!

  
   

Sept. 29-Oct. 5, 2025

Weather | 9/29, sunny, 57°, 83° | 9/30, p. cloudy, 56°, 85° | 10/1, p. cloudy, 57°, 80° | 10/2, p. cloudy, 59°, 86° | 10/3, sunny, 60°, 85° | 10/4, sunny, 61°, 83° | 10/5, sunny, 56°, 83° |

• Monday, 9/29: Deer CWD
  • After three very late nights, we're tired.
  • When letting chickens out of the coop this morning, we opened the gate between the south and north yards so that the five new pullets, the hens, and Leo, our rooster, could get to know one another. 
  • I cleaned up chicken butchering stuff. I still need to put away the lights that I set up.
  • I took a nap while Mary watered the gardens, picked tomatoes and a few tomatillos.
  • I took in a Webex session by the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) on deer management. Missouri is one of the better localities in North America at managing Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in whitetail deer. Statewide, less than one percent of the deer herd has CWD. Wisconsin and Alberta have much higher concentrations of the disease. In northwest Arkansas, over 50 percent of the deer have CWD. It's very fatal to deer and takes 1.5 to 2.5 years before a deer dies as the disease slowly attacks the spine and brain. There is no known cure for CWD. The best remedy is to cull deer from areas where an outbreak occurs. MDC works with landowners to cull deer after hunting seasons. Landowners can have the meat of deer culled that don't have CWD, or the meat is donated to the state's Share the Harvest program, in which surplus venison is donated to needy families. We have a good conservation department in this state.

• Tuesday, 9/30: Buying Chicken Feed
  • The cockerels that we butchered ate up two bags of food in just a few days. At the end, we could only get five days out of a 50-pound bag. So, I drove to Quincy to get more hen food. I also picked up a few other items, like another 2.5 gallon container of hydraulic fluid and a swivel coupler for the woodsplitter. Mary gave me a list of a few food items, too. While at Sam's Club, I got my second shingles shot. The pharmacist said, "You're set for life," once he gave me the shot.
  • While I was away, Mary froze more tomatoes from the garden. We now have 9.5 gallons in the freezer.
  • We watched the first Harry Potter movie.
  • While walking Plato at night, we saw a rare moon dog, a rainbow-like feature similar to a sun dog, but created by the moon. It was unique.
  • The soreness of the shingles shot grew more intense so that by bedtime, I took a couple acetaminophen to ease the pain.

• Wednesday, 10/1: Shingles Shot is Severe for Me
  • While getting my blood glucose reading, I became so light headed that I passed out in the bathroom. Our bathroom is tiny. The top of my head hit the lower cabinet door with a bang. Mary hollered from upstairs, asking if I was okay. I didn't hear her, because I was out cold. I came to noticing a severe crook in my neck and rolled over to relieve the pain. I sloughed off to the couch and Mary covered me. For much of the rest of the day, I was cold, so I wore extra clothes and slept a lot. The second shingles shot really knocked me for a loop! Mary said it's a good thing I got the shot, because developing shingles might have been devastating for me. She also thought I was low on liquids and as a result, I drank a lot today. By evening, I felt much better and was able to do the evening chores.
  • Mary pulled down all of the garlic from the machine shed rafters, sorted it, and stored the garlic in cardboard boxes. She said that this year's garlic crop was smaller, but of a better quality.
  • She also picked more tomatoes and peppers.
  • We had a taco salad for our midday meal, complete with lettuce and arugula picked from the winter greens tubs, along with ripe tomatoes from the garden. It was really good.

• Thursday, 10/2: Katie News
  • We are very hot and dry. It doesn't feel like October. It's more like August.
  • Mary washed winter coats and dried them on the line. It was an excellent drying day.
  • She also strung hot peppers to dry. The different varieties make for a colorful arrangement (see photo, below).
  • Mary also harvested comfrey leaves and laid them out to dry.
  • Mary watered all of the gardens.
  • She recently took some photos of autumn flowers (see one of them below). 
  • I removed the wall inside the chicken coop that separates the adult hens from the chicks. I swept off all of the boards and studs and stored them in the rafters of the machine shed.
  • I started taking down the lights that we used for chicken butchering in the machine shed.
  • Mary spotted a really giant Carolina wolf spider on the lane that was carrying babies. We have a lot of them on this property. 
  • We ate a Granny Smith apple after I cleaned out bad sections from it. The taste is so different from store-bought apples.
  • After dark, Mary and I enjoyed a bottle of 2023 pumpkin wine. This wine tastes the best when chilled with ice. It's a nice tasty fall drink after a hot autumn day.
  • Katie texted. She spent three weeks of August in Hawaii on a National Guard stint where she was the enlisted person in charge of coordinating small projects for 60 people. In her full-time job, she's starting one project, in the middle of another, and closing out a third. She was in Nome for a day last week and in Barrow Saturday through Tuesday. Snow is on the Chugach Range next to Anchorage and it's winter in Barrow (see photos, below).

Hot peppers hung to dry. They are Ho Chi Mihn (yellow),
Bulgarian carrot (orange), and hot Portugal (red).

A photo taken by Mary of a heath astor.

Termination dust, or snow, covers the Chugach
Mountains south of Anchorage.

It's now winter in Barrow, AK.

• Friday, 10/3: Air Conditioner Mishap
  • As we stepped out in the predawn light to walk Plato, two deer snorted at us and ran away from the south orchard. They stood in the field and looked at us, so I marched into the tall grass until they finally ran away into the west woods.
  • I took down the rest of the lights that were up in the machine shed that we used while butchering chickens. I cleaned them up, along with all of the extension cords, and put them away.
  • While cleaning house, Mary discovered water on the floor below the air conditioner in our bedroom. Condensation from the AC was leaking all over the place. I removed it. The AC was leaking into the channel below the bottom sash, swamping it with water that overflowed into the wall and beyond to the floor. After wiping up water from the window sill, I directed a fan on it to help dry it out. I rinsed out the AC, but Virginia Creeper leaves and what I call "frog snot" was still inside, so I removed the cover and flushed it thoroughly with a high pressure setting from the garden hose. I cut a new 2x4 to length that supports the inside of the AC, since the old one was waterlogged. When I installed the AC in the window, I positioned it more level, since lowering the outside end of the AC downward put the drain hole under the AC's compressor directly above the window channel. I taped it all back up and now condensation drips to the outside, like it's intended to do.
  • Mary picked and froze tomatoes. Even though she's throwing away more tomatoes away than she's keeping, she's still getting several. She started the twelfth gallon of tomatoes in the freezer.
  • Mary also picked and hung more hot peppers to dry.
  • We watched The House with a Clock in Its Walls. It's a fun movie.

• Saturday, 10/4: Cleaning the Coop
  • I cleaned the chicken coop. Several wheelbarrow loads of manure went to the compost bin. I swept loads of cobwebs and three wasp nests from the ceiling and walls. While sweeping the floor, our oldest white hen stuck her head through the south chicken door three times and squawked real loud to me, as if to say, "Hurry up, Buster!" Mary hauled three large wheelbarrow loads of hay and spread it on the coop floor, giving the coop a nice cut hay smell. I built nests in the milk crate nest boxes with some of the hay. 
  • Mary watered the gardens, then mowed part of the north yard. She put mulch on some of the small apple trees in the south orchard.
  • We ate the Roxbury Russet apple. It's a motley looking apple (see photo, below). I let it stay on the tree too long. It was mealy and without much juice, but it tasted very good. Most of the taste was in the skin. Most online sources indicate October as the time to pick this variety. It's not so for us. This apple should be picked in September when grown here.

  

  The Roxbury Russet apple feels fuzzy to the touch. It's tasty.
  

• Sunday, 10/5: Woodsplitter Ready & Acorn Squash Harvest
  • Online agriculture sources show us to be in a moderate drought. Most all ground shows big cracks, due to the dry clay soil.
  • Mary picked and froze tomatoes. She finished the twelfth gallon in the freezer. She also hung hot peppers. She harvested 65 acorn squash (see photo, below). There are still a few unripe squash in the garden, but Mary decided to stop watering squash plants. She watered both gardens, which takes less time with fewer plants.
  • Mary had a speckled kingsnake cross her path between the gardens. She said it's a very pretty snake. It is sometimes called a salt and pepper snake, due to white spots on a black body. HERE's a photo of it. 
  • I cleaned chicken items, such as the hanging feeder, a chick grit dish, and three ceramic eggs that we put in the nests to let young hens know where to lay eggs.
  • I hooked up the last hydraulic hose on the woodsplitter by adding a new swivel coupler. I removed the old hydraulic tank breather, which was nothing more than a 90 degree 1/4 inch black pipe street elbow that a mud dauber filled up with dried mud. I added a new breather that has a bronze screen. I added five gallons of hydraulic fluid and started the splitter's engine. After fully extending and detracting the hydraulic ram three times, I tested the splitter on a piece of apple wood and it split the log just fine. I dumped the old fluid into the empty hydraulic oil containers and discovered I removed 3.5 gallons from the splitter. It means the oil level was low by 1.5 gallons. Right now, the level is at 6 inches in a tank that's 8 inches high, which is about perfect. After checking all fittings, I tightened two to stop slow leaks. The woodsplitter is now ready and 16 years after I first set eyes on it and said that we need to change hoses, it's finally done!
  • In the middle of evening chores, I heard nut shells dropping on the grain bin roof. I grabbed the .22 rifle, snuck into the machine shed, spotted it high near the top of a pecan tree, and shot a big fox squirrel that bounced off the top of the grain bin with a mighty loud thump.
  • We watched the second Harry Potter movie.

  

  65 freshly-picked acorn squash in the wheelbarrow.