July 26-August 1, 2020

Weather | 7/26, 73°, 92° | 7/27, 0.09" rain, 71°, 85° | 7/28, 61°, 85° | 7/29, 0.10" rain, 63°, 89° | 7/30, 1.90" rain, 65°, 79° | 7/31, 67°, 76° | 8/1, 62°, 79° |

• Sunday, 7/26: Bill and I started a batch of blackberry wine. The recipe calls for 4 pounds of blackberries, which amounted to 5 quarts. It also called for 2 1/4 cups of sugar, but we had to go to 3 cups of sugar to take the specific gravity to 1.090, which is the specific gravity that the recipe suggests. We figured that our wild blackberries aren't as sweet as homegrown berries. Mary picked a bowl of blackberries and said it was extremely hot on Bramble Hill. The 5 quarts in the wine dropped our freezer total to 24, but Mary's picking added 2, bringing our total up to 26. We enjoyed smoked scrambled eggs with pork meat added for flavor. We watched 2 movies selected by Bill...Galaxy Quest and The Proposal.


• Monday, 7/27: Something new...I picked more blackberries, adding 3 more quarts for an updated grand total of 27 quarts. Bill made 3 very delicious pizzas. A census taker showed up, even though we sent in information electronically months ago. Mary talked to her. She was an old hag, no teeth, smelled of cigarette smoke, had a cigarette hacker cough, and wasn't wearing a mask...what a dingbat! I added yeast to the blackberry wine must and it started fermenting immediately. The specific gravity dropped a point to 1.089 in the 24 hours since we first made it. I take an extra hour when starting the yeast and add a quarter cup of wine must heated to 95° to the yeast after it sits 20 minutes once the powdered yeast is added to water and that really gives the yeast a kick-start when added to the must in the bucket.


• Tuesday, 7/28: Bill did his laundry in the morning. Mary made a 2-bird chicken dinner. Bill left to go back to St. Louis around 4:15 pm. The blackberry wine is bubbling away, with a specific gravity of 1.080. I picked another batch of blackberries. They're showing signs of dwindling, but I still got a full bowl, which equates to another 3 quarts, giving us a grand total of 30 quarts in the freezer. I heard a deer snorting while picking berries. Mary also saw a bright red doe running north to south, east of the house. It might have been the same deer. Mary made a food menu for the upcoming month and created a shopping list. We watered plants in both gardens. We have the start of a pumpkin, tomato plants are blossoming, and a few hot peppers are showing up. We went to bed extremely tired.


• Wednesday, 7/29: It rained in the afternoon, something we really need. I caught up on my wine dairy, entering information on the watermelon wine and the blackberry wine. We made a decision that remaining unpicked blackberries we will let Mother Nature have. At 2 pm, the specific gravity of the blackberry wine was at 1.055. By 11 pm, it was at 1.042, just 0.002 higher than the mark for the first racking, so I decided to go ahead and rack it. The wine must was filled with what looked like pink cottage cheese, or as Bill said, "It looks like after someone drank way too much wine while eating chunky soup." YUM! I got Mary's help and we strained the wine through a wire strainer, covered with a flour sack towel into my 5-gallon wide mouth carboy. Next, I siphoned the wine into a 1-gallon jug, added spring water to "top off" the wine level to the neck of the jug, and added an airlock. When I went to bed, the wine looked fine (see photo below), but there was no fermentation and I saw white spots on the top of the wine, which worried me that it might be starting to mold. We went to bed real late, or really, early in the morning.

Blackberry wine after 1st racking.

• Thursday, 7/30: We had heavy rain throughout the night. I woke 5 hours after putting the blackberry wine and myself to bed, and looked at the wine. Foam filled the airlock and even started showing on top of the airlock (see photo below). I texted Bill, asking how to make a blow-off airlock. He didn't answer right away, so I looked it up, started making it, then compared texts with Bill on what I made (see video below). I reviewed the blackberry wine recipe. It advised to fill the carboy to the first curve of the jug's shoulder and then only top off to the jug's neck when the threat of foaming stops...OOPS! It helps to read wine recipes, thoroughly. Last night's white spots were obviously the restart of fermentation. It tastes wonderful, even with a strong yeast taste, which goes away with aging. By 2 pm, the specific gravity on the wine was 1.032. Mary found small, immature apples that are red with yellow/green color near the stems on what was supposed to be a crab apple tree from Arbor Day Foundation. It's planted south of the house. After a bunch of internet research, Mary determined that tree is a Stayman's Winesap apple tree. They are supposed to be very good. Who knew! Thank you, Arbor Day. It was a free apple tree.

Foam pushing through airlock with blackberry wine.



• Friday, 7/31: It was shopping day, today. Prior to going, I spotted a 2004 GMC half-ton pickup with a V-6 engine for sale in Quincy. I messaged the owner and arranged a 2 pm meeting time. We shopped at Aldi, ate burgers, pulled cash out of our bank, then checked out the pickup. It has rust around rear wheel wells and the back bumper that I wasn't going to accept in a pickup. But a test drive proved it is mechanically sound. It has 89,000 miles, year-old Michelin tires, new fuel lines, new heater fan motor, a month-old new battery, and a new drive shaft. We bought it for $3200 (see photos below). The pickup's pluses, more than outweigh the rust issue. I can fix rust. Shopped at 8 stops. The Cadillac was stuffed. I drove the pickup, with Mary following in the Caddy, and the former pickup owner behind her. In Illinois, you can move plates from one vehicle to another. Once we crossed the Mississippi, we pulled into the Ayerco gas station in West Quincy, MO, and he removed the pickup plates...didn't want to meet a Barney Fife Quincy Police squad car while driving through Quincy. We discovered that the guy I bought the truck from went to Truman State the years Bill went there, that he majored in accounting, and that he heads the business department at Culver Stockton University in Canton, MO. On the drive home, the pickup handled excellently. We ate nachos and watched the 2001 movie, Ocean's 11. 

Our "new-to-us" 2004 GMC Sierra 1500 pickup.

Rear fender and bumper rust that needs replacing.

• Saturday, 8/1: With several of the onion greens bent over and drying out, Mary harvested all of the onions and shallots. First, she pulled them, then cut off the greens and laid onion bulbs on the ground in the shade of the house to dry (see left photo below). I went into the cobweb-filled basement to get more old plastic milk crates for onion storage. First, I swept debris off the stairs, including a snake skin. Several minutes with a shop vac took care of dead and alive spiders and their webs. After removing 10 milk crates, I cleaned them all with a brush and the hose connected to the outdoor spigot. We ended up with 88 pounds of onions and 13 pounds of shallots stored in milk crates (see right photo below). My blackberry wine is still fermenting.

2020 onion and shallot crop after cutting off tops.

Left to right, Ed's Reds shallots (a cross from Montana),
Patterson onions, Red Bull onions, and White Wing onions.

July 19-25, 2020

Weather | 7/19, 77°, 85° | 7/20, 65°, 85° | 7/21, 1.23" rain, 63°, 79° | 7/22, 67°, 85° | 7/23, 63°, 83° | 7/24, 67°, 89° | 7/25, 68°, 90° |

• Sunday, 7/19: Mary picked 3 quarts of blackberries, which brings us to 11 quarts of blackberries in the freezer. There are still many red, unripe blackberries left out there. She noticed several deer snorting at her and several Bob White quail. I checked my watermelon wine. It's fermenting nicely (see video below), with a specific gravity of 1.074. After balancing the checkbook, I was a bum all day. I asked Katie when she was heading north and she called from the Dallas airport, saying she was flying to Anchorage today. She landed in Anchorage just prior to midnight, their time. She stays a few days at an airbnb in Anchorage, gets a few things for her boss, then flies north to Prudhoe Bay, then west to Nuiqsut. She doesn't know many details about her new job, yet. I asked Bill and he confirmed he's visiting us July 25-28. The chicks doubled their size overnight. They are a week old, today.

• Monday, 7/20:

• Tuesday, 7/21: Mary saw a fawn in the west yard in the morning while on her way to let out chickens. She made a shopping list for me. I checked the watermelon wine and the specific gravity was at 1.000, so I racked the two 1-gallon jugs into a wide mouth 1.4-gallon container and added potassium sorbate to stop fermentation (see photo below). I've never had yeast act so fast...only 2 days to get to the desired specific gravity. It usually takes a couple weeks. I shopped in Quincy for some food items. Most everyone is wearing masks and several stores require masks prior to entering. Mary picked 4 quarts of blackberries, bringing the total in the freezer to 15 quarts. She saw a buck, with a velvet-covered 6-point rack, snort, crash through the bushes, jump a fence, and run off through an old cow pasture. We ate nachos in the evening and watched the 2013 movie, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

Strawberry wine must (right) with leftover yeast fines (left & center).

• Wednesday, 7/22: In texts to Katie, she said she will fly north once she gets her COVID-19 test results. Mary mowed the west yard, made a big batch of tortellini soup, figured our monthly savings amounts, and weeded the far garden. We are still battling voles that now have eaten 4-5 tomatoes. I picked 4 quarts of blackberries, bringing our grand total for the year to 19 quarts. After nightfall, we looked for and saw the comet NEOWISE just below the Big Dipper. It's interesting, but hard to see with the naked eye. Binoculars help to see it better. 


• Thursday, 7/23: Mary mowed the lane. I picked 4 quarts of blackberries, bringing our total to 23 quarts in the freezer. It's a really good blackberry year. This time, I delved deep into the thorns on Bramble Hill to get to some big, ripe ones, resulting in a few hand wounds (see photo below). The end result is worth it, though. We watered both gardens in the evening, taking only 35 minutes, a new time record! The coronavirus is hitting hard, locally, so we'll stay on our property as much as possible. There are 302 cases in Adams County, IL, home to Quincy; 13 for us in Lewis County, MO; and 68 cases with an additional death today in Marion County, home to Hannibal, MO. Via emails, I talked to John Hendrix, whose son recovered from COVID-19 in Las Vegas. John is going to Homer, AK, this weekend to fish for red salmon in China Poot Bay. He owns property on the north side of China Poot and said I should visit so we can see my old haunts in Peterson Bay.

Four quarts of blackberries and 2 wounded hands.

• Friday, 7/24: Mary washed 3 loads of laundry, did some house cleaning, and made a batch of flour tortillas. I picked another batch of blackberries, adding 4 more quarts to the freezer, with a grand total of 27. I also collected up a few more chigger bites.
  


• Saturday, 7/25: Bill showed up around 12:30 pm. Mary made him his favorite dessert, pistachio tort. We celebrated Bill's birthday, even though it's really on August 3rd, because he won't be here on that date. I picked blackberries to the west and south of the house, adding 2 more quarts and bringing the grand total to 29. We built a fire outside and enjoyed a pork loin cookout. It was fun to sit around the fire, watch the stars, and talk.
  

July 12-18, 2020

Weather | 7/12, 64°, 86° | 7/13, 61°, 86° | 7/14, 64°, 89° | 7/15, 0.89" rain, 69°, 79° | 7/16, 62°, 83° | 7/17, 65°, 90° | 7/18, 73°, 90° |

• Sunday, 7/12: Except for watering gardens twice, we took the day off. Mary made a chocolate pudding pie. I ordered another watering can, so we'll have a total of four 2-gallon watering cans, allowing both of us to water at the same time. We watched the 2012 movie, The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey in the evening and ate pie.


• Monday, 7/13: Upon checking newly transplanted tomatoes in the far garden, we saw one chewed off at the base. A hole in the grass mulch indicated a possible vole chewing. I also spotted where the chicken wire was above the ground about an inch in the NW corner of the far garden fence. Mary put an outdated and generic version of Ex-Lax in the vole hole. I added chicken wire pieces to the NW corner and secured them with 3 stakes. I also added a 2"-thick stick in the gate to close up all possible rabbit entries. Mary noticed that we have several carrots sprouting. Since our chicks are supposed to be shipped today, we cleaned out the coop, and installed the interior wall and door that separates hens and rooster from new chicks. I did most of the wall installation, while Mary hauled in new hay for the floor. We watered, twice. We didn't get an email that the chicks were shipped.


• Tuesday, 7/14: Checked emails first thing this morning and our chicks (25 Frypan Special cockerels and 3 Rhode Island Red pullets) were shipped out yesterday evening. By 12:16 am they were in Kansas City. They are due into our post office Thursday morning. Mary worked up a shopping list, since I have to buy chick food, anyway. There were many more people wearing masks in Quincy. Adams County, IL, in which Quincy is the county seat, went from 61 coronavirus cases to 204 in 2 weeks. I got everything I needed, getting in and out of stores, pronto. Back home, Mary replanted a few bean seeds, put fertilizer on blueberries, watered, then mowed and put mulch on all of the south row of the near garden. Mary says some corn is popping through the ground. I noticed field corn is tasseling. After returning home, I put 2 large sacks of potting soil into six 4-gallon cat litter buckets, a 40-pound bag of oil sunflower seeds into 3 cat litter buckets, put all of the buckets away, and moved chick feed into the metal garbage can in the coop. We ate nachos and watched the 1995 movie French Kiss. We went to bed with lightning flashing in a thunderstorm NW of us in Iowa.


• Wednesday, 7/15: Woke to thunder, lightning, rain, and our dog, Plato, walking into the bedroom. He doesn't like thunder. I went downstairs, grabbed my cell phone and the dog bed for Plato. While looking at weather radar, a call came in. It was the Ewing Post Office with the message, "Your chicks are here." I woke Mary. We hung and turned on the heat lamp, filled the chick feeders, and I drove to Ewing and picked up the chicks, while Mary added chick water. I'm so, so glad I got chick food yesterday. The U.S. Postal Service was fast this year. What usually takes 3 days only took 2 days to mail chicks from Lebanon, MO, to us. We got a total of 32 chicks, so they added 4 extra chicks. There was 1 dead chick...not bad. They are very lively (see video below). Other than attending to chicks, we were rather sluggish.

• Thursday, 7/16: Karen texted that she's retiring from teaching. I told her it was a good idea, that it's better to stay alive. I picked 3 quarts of blackberries, today. Raccoons or opossums are pulling down blackberry plants to get to ripe berries. I found several big, ripe blackberries next to the swim pond and many more beyond there on what we call Bramble Hill. A crop duster flew overhead all day. Mary baked 4 loaves of bread. The acorn squash is starting to show, along with carrots, and most all of the corn. Another tomato plant was chewed at its base by a vole, so we laced all vole holes in the far garden with chocolate Ex-Lax, which has worked in the past for killing voles.


• Friday, 7/18: I made a 1-gallon batch of watermelon wine. By starting with a specific gravity of 1.087, this wine should end up at between 11-12% alcohol, mellower than previous wines I've made. The must is a pretty red color (see photo below). The recipe calls for a 6-8 pound watermelon. I used 9 pounds of watermelon meat, zest and juice of 2 lemons, and 64 ounces of white grape juice that's preserved with vitamin C, instead of potassium sorbate, which is the item I use to stop yeast production. Now I wait to add pectic enzyme tomorrow morning and yeast tomorrow evening. Mary picked 1 and 3/4 quarts of blackberries from south of the house and Bramble Hill. We watered all of the gardens in the evening. It's muggy and hot outside. There were no chewings on our garden plants. The chicks are snarfing 2 cups of food a day, growing and thriving. Our current summer heat means we only turn a heat lamp on at night. Area stores always sell chicks in March, a ridiculous time, since we often see snow, then. We prefer getting chicks mid-summer, when outside temperatures are prime for growing chicks to butchering size.

Watermelon wine must with white nylon bag in 7-gallon bucket.

• Saturday, 7/18: We continue to get really hot, muggy weather, but the chicks love it. They've doubled in size in just a couple days. Mary did housecleaning, 2 loads of laundry, and watered all garden plants. Corn doubled in height and several potatoes are coming through the ground. I picked blackberries, putting 3 more quart bags in the freezer. Poison ivy tends to grow where blackberry canes grow. Mary avoids it, because being near it causes her irritated skin. As long as I don't touch it, poison ivy bothers me less than it does Mary, so I stomp it down with my boots to get to the berries. We still have several red, unripe berries out there. I added pectic enzyme to the watermelon wine in the morning, then added yeast after dark. This time, I used a trick suggested by my son, Bill, which is to add some of the wine must after the powdered yeast is added to 95°-100° water. I heated the must in the microwave for 10 seconds to bring it to that same temperature, added it to the yeast/water mixture and waited for over an hour, then stirred it into the wine must. There was near instant yeast bubbling in the bucket, whereas in the past, it took 3-5 days prior to seeing fermentation. Thanks, Bill!

July 5-11, 2020

Weather | 7/5, 67°, 89° | 7/6, 69°, 91° | 7/7, 69°, 92° | 7/8, 71°, 93° | 7/9, 72°, 93° | 7/10, 65°, 88° | 7/11, 67°, 91° |

• Sunday, 7/5: Bill changed the spare tire out for his fixed tire on his car and got things together to go back to his place in St. Louis. Bill and I went fishing at the Swim Pond in the late morning. Mary stayed back and built framing with willow sticks to put white sheer curtains over the pepper plants that were suffering in the intense sun. Bill started with a small translucent, light green plug that was once his grandfather's and caught a bass with every cast. We kept 7 fish, but threw back loads of small bass. I caught a big one on a Hula Popper...man, that was really fun! Bill and I filleted the fish and Mary cooked it up. Freshly caught bass is really good tasting. Bill took a 45-minute nap, then left around 4 pm. We dozed while trying to read news online, then did chores and watered the garden. As we watered, we could hear the call of a great horned owl to the east as it slowly got closer. 


• Monday, 7/6: It's extremely humid and hot. I could only stand about 15-20 minutes at a time outside, today. Thank goodness for air conditioning. Mary washed 3 loads of clothes, figured our monthly savings monies, and watered the near garden. The sweet potato and pepper plants are thriving under the sheer curtains in the garden. I made 4-foot posts and small stakes to hold chicken wire to the ground out of remaining persimmon trees I cut a few days ago. Chiggers and ticks are in full bloom right now. We keep bug dope companies in good business. Literally thousands of lightning bugs were dancing across the grass during the dogs' evening walk. They like the high humidity and nighttime heat. 


• Tuesday, 7/7: Mary mowed the lane. I laid out posts around the far garden where I want to pound them into the ground. Then, I cut down some more persimmon trees and made additional posts. A total of 26 posts are needed for the far garden, the same number as the near garden.


• Wednesday, 7/8: Mary made turkey pot pie. I made chicken wire base anchors out of persimmon tree branch Y's. Then, Mary and I picked a quart of blackberries from throughout our property (see photo below). There are several almost red berries out there that need to turn a black, ripe color before we pick them. Upon returning home, we picked several ticks off us. Packing tape works great for pulling tiny seed ticks off clothing. We gained a few tick and chigger bites, which is the unpleasant cost of picking berries.

A quart of our first blackberries of 2020.

• Thursday, 7/9: I pounded all of the posts into the ground for the far garden chicken wire fence. After the first 4, which took some serious pounding to get in the ground, I got smart and first poured water on the ground where I was placing each post in order to soften up the hard, dry clay I was driving posts into. With the water trick, I could put in 5 posts in the same time it took me to pound in 1 post without first softening up the hard ground with water. I then attached 70' of chicken wire fence. Mary first hoed weedy areas in the far garden, then mowed, and finished mulching rows in that garden.


• Friday, 7/10: I finished attaching the final 100' of chicken wire fence in the far garden, then made a gate for the chicken wire far garden fence. Mary planted corn, and acorn squash. It's very late on planting, but with the longer Missouri growing season, we might see produce prior to the first frost. Katie texted me that she was offered an Alaskan carpentry job that she's accepted. Pay is $60-$70 an hour. She said it will be a major ordeal for her to go to Alaska, because she must take her temperature twice daily for 2 weeks and take COVID-19 tests prior to flying north. The job is at Nuiqsut, which is west of Prudhoe Bay. The construction job lasts until February.


• Saturday, 7/11: Since Mary planted pumpkins in the far garden, the plants grew upward, filling the 4-foot high by 2-foot wide tomato cages that we put on each of the 2 hills to protect the plants from bunnies eating them, since the cages are surrounded by chicken wire. We carefully released pumpkins from these tomato cages this morning. It was tricky, and had to be done slowly as to not damage pumpkin leaves. I put stakes in between far garden posts to hold down the bottom edges of the chicken wire. Often, 3 stakes were required for every 8 feet of chicken wire fence. With about 175 feet of fencing, many stakes were needed. Mary planted potatoes, and transplanted tomatoes, tomatillo and 2 squash plants into the far garden. We're finally done with garden planting...probably the latest we've ever finished this task. So far, 2-foot high chicken wire is successfully blocking out ravaging bunnies. We finished outside chores at 9 pm...happy, but very tired.