- Sunday, 4/26: It was a sunny and wind-free day. Mary washed dog bedding, sheets, and furniture covers. I thought I was going to make dandelion wine, but I only did stage 1: picking dandelion flowers. Each flower is stripped of only the yellow pedals without any green parts...a slow process. I was eager to get 9 cups for a award-winning recipe. Four and a half hours later, I finally gathered a quart, enough for a different recipe, which is the one I'll use. This is only enough for making 1 gallon. I can't imagine gathering enough to make 5 gallons...it would take you a week of just plucking dandies, or an army of pluckers! And, Mary refuses to join my army. I refrigerated my quart of yellow dandy flower pieces to make wine tomorrow. It was Pollinator Day, with several blossoms and flowers busy with bees (see videos below). The garden got watered twice. Several seeds are sprouting. Mary mowed, trying to duck the goon ball in the lawn chair plucking dandy bits. We built an outside fire after finishing chores and had a weinie roast while the sun set. We watched 3 chimney swifts fly in from the south, take a few laps around the house as if to say "We're home!" and then dive down the chimney. That's the end of wood stove fires until fall. We heard 3 whip-poor-wills when it was almost dark. Then, we heard an American Toad trilling...they're very loud and have neat sound. Finally, when we were packing up to go in, we saw 2 instances of a long string of Elon Musk's communication satellites fill about 2/3 of the sky. They're very bright, alarming, and obnoxious. One person shouldn't have the right to fill the world's night sky with that kind of light pollution.
MacIntosh Apple Tree Blossoms
Sargent Crap Apple Tree Blossoms
Honey Bee on Dandelion
Sweat Bee on Dandelion (Eastern Meadowlark & Chipping Sparrow songs)
- Monday, 4/27: It was somewhat of a cloudy day. From a want list we've developed over several days, we figured costs of items and what we want to spend our tax refund money on. We ordered a new Tilley hat for Mary. She bought her present one in 2007 and the top is starting to rip up. From Fedco in Maine, I bought 5 bottles of various kinds of orchard spray, grafting wax, Parafilm grafting tape, and PVC grafting tape. Mom's birthday money to me that originally went towards a grafting seminar, but got refunded since that event was canceled, paid for the grafting supplies. I picked a few more dandelions. Mary mowed. We raked grass from the front east yard. I got a package sent from Ruby Hollembeak of photos and a photo album that I'd left behind at Delta Jct., AK. Texted her and thanked them for sending it to me. She said to call Scott (her husband) anytime. We saw a bald eagle in the morning. Mary took a photo (see below) of a Swallowtail butterfly on cherry blossoms. Garden report: most all of the radishes have sprouted, along with some lettuce, spinach, and some peas. Out of 52 strawberry plants, 30 are showing green leaves. All apple rootstock have buds with leaves starting to develop. Our largest Sargent crab apple is in full bloom (see photo below).
 |
| Swallowtail butterfly in cherry blossoms. |
 |
| Sargent crab apple in full bloom. |
- Tuesday, 4/28: Woke at 5 and couldn't go back to sleep, so I got up, walked dogs, and raked some more of the lawn that Mary mowed yesterday. Eventually, I raked up all of the mowed grass and added 9 feet of mulch in the far garden. Mary took out all of the firewood stored inside the house and the metal wood rack and moved the firewood to the woodshed and the rack to the machine shed. She also made flour tortillas. In the evening, I went through all of the dandelion pedals with tweezers and a fork and removed any green bits and bugs. That's sure tedious work. This dandy wine better taste good, because preparing it is very time-consuming. I put the dandy pedals in a nylon mesh bag and poured boiling water over them in a brew bucket, covered that and set it into the pantry. The recipe calls for me to stir and squeeze the mesh bag 3 times for the next 3 days.
- Wednesday, 4/29: I ordered underwear from JC Penney. I also reviewed ordering some more wine making equipment, but didn't order anything. Through the day, I did the mandatory dandelion blossom squeezing of the bag in my wine brewing bucket. Mary made a pear cake. It was cold in the house, so I turned on our portable 4-foot electric baseboard heater in the living room and we huddled around the electrical fire...no woodstove now, because we don't want to smoke out the chimney swifts. We watched 2 movies, Monuments Men and London has Fallen.
- Thursday, 4/30: Mary did 2 loads of laundry and mowed the lane. I moved firewood from the trailer to appropriate locations. I now have a ton of wood to split. I also finished filling in Churchill's grave and moved cement blocks that covered his grave to a new location to the north of the Machine Shed. Mary watched an American Kestrel fly with several turkey vultures. We have gobs of honey bees in the crab apple. The lilacs are blooming.
- Friday, 5/1: I made waffles for breakfast. Mary did 2 loads of laundry. Had smoked scrambled eggs for our main midday meal and finished off a bottle of pear wine that we opened yesterday. It's much better, more refined, with a soft pear taste to it. The order of orchard tree spray is shipping via FedEx, so I changed its delivery to Walgreen's in Quincy, IL. Bill texted us that his hours are cut to 35 per week and hopes that is only temporary. In the evening, I removed the dandelion pedals from my batch of wine...it smelled like an old, slightly rotten bale of hay, so I hope the wine tastes better than what it smells like. Added to the wine brew the following: zest from 3 oranges and 3 lemons, then the juice from those fruit, 3/4 pound of minced golden raisins, and yeast nutrient. Juicing out oranges that have had their outer skins scraped off is like working with small water balloons. All of this sounds like a simple chore, but it took me 4 hours...a lot of time is eaten up with sanitizing everything. While chopping up raisins, I had an entire collection of pets nearby. I turned around and there was Holly sitting on my portable table that I sanitize so I have a place to put sanitized items. "Damn it, get the hell off!" I shouted, and all the pets scattered. They ended up with Mary, who was in the sun room copying an online cross stitch pattern. After finishing, my wine must smelled like a citrus fruit stand. It now waits 12 hours, then I add pectic enzyme and yeast. The oak trees are pollinating...you can especially smell them during night dog walks.
- Saturday, 5/2: I texted Mom for a bit. She talked about when Dad did sales work for Teslow's (out of Great Falls, MT) in the early '60s, Hutterites wanted to trade him dandelion wine for whiskey. She said it's working up to be a dry year in eastern Montana. I added pectic enzyme to my dandelion wine, then added Red Star Premier Cote des Blancs yeast, the same yeast I used when making pear wine. The specific gravity was at 1.127, higher than yesterday's reading of 1.120, obviously getting an additional sugar boost from the soaking raisins. My hydrometer indicates the alcohol at 17%, if I take it down to 1.000 on specific gravity. Mary mowed the far garden. I took apart some supports on the north corners of the far garden fence and then weedwhacked the north end. We didn't use that garden last year, so several lower wires are under decaying tall grass. Mary and I raked most of what she mowed and added another 11 feet of mulch to a row we're building on to bury weeds and make a garden bed. Lightning striking north of us made us quickly finish our mulching chore. Unfortunately, we didn't get any rain. The garlic is in need of water. Most seeds are sprouting, except for shelling peas and 2 lettuce varieties. We saw our first hummingbird in the comfrey patch.
No comments:
Post a Comment