- 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 Mary put an outdated and generic version of Ex-Lax in the vole hole.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.
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| 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!
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