Sept. 27-Oct. 3, 2020

Weather | 9/27, 64°, 73° | 9/28, 0.51" rain yesterday & overnight, 46°, 61° | 9/29, 0.01" rain, 47°, 61° | 9/30, 51°, 68° | 10/1, 43°, 57° | 10/2, 37°, 59° | 10/3, 0.13" rain, 43°, 53° |

• Sunday, 9/27: Activities:
  • Mary moved the garlic and 2 pumpkins from the back porch closet to the upstairs south bedroom.
  • She then raked up recently mowed grass, picked a half bucket of tomatoes from the garden, and froze 3 more gallons of ripe tomatoes.
  • I cleaned the inside of the Cadillac, where lime, sand, and concrete dust leaked out from paper bags. The pickup bed would be a better transportation device.
  • I checked the 7-prong trailer plug-in on the pickup. It tests out fine, but the hanger attaching it to the rear bumper is rusted, so I wired the plug-in to the bumper, thereby transforming the pickup to a true baling wire farm truck. I also changed the pickup's air filter right when it started raining.
  • We had bacon, shallots, tomatoes, and eggs for our main meal.
  • I reviewed applying flashing to a chimney that has one side right at the peak of the roof, like our chimney is built. From several photos, I figured out what I need to do.
    
  • I used Messenger with Katie to find out she's flying south out of northern Alaska tomorrow to take in 2 months of Air Force Guard monthly stuff that she does (can't remember the lingo).
    


• Monday, 9/28: We did:
  
  • Mary finished cleaning the upstairs south bedroom.
  • It was rainy outside, so I was inside researching methods of laying brick and building chimney flashing.
    
  • I looked for bricklaying tools, found several that once belonged to Mary's Uncle Herman, and cleaned up several of them with an electric wire brush.
    


• Tuesday, 9/29: Events:
  
  • I drove the pickup to Quincy, got the manlift, and towed it home (see photo below). While in Quincy, I also bought chick & hen food, plus other items I need for fixing the chimney.
    
  • Once home, I hooked the tractor to the manlift and backed it into place on the west side of the house. It took a lot of time to do this, since the 1950 8N Ford tractor is a piddly thing with as much power as a chicken scratching dirt.
    
  • Mary froze the last of the corn, picked and froze more tomatoes, and made a 3-day supply of tortellini soup.

  

  The towable manlift behind our pickup.

  
  
• Wednesday, 9/30: Today we did:
  • I figured out how to operate the manlift. After getting it running, I went up to the roof and right away decided that the manlift wasn't close enough to the house, so I spent an hour putting chains on the tractor. Then, Mary helped me as we worked to back it further to the house.
  • I went up on the manlift a second time and determined that the chimney exposed to the outside was really shot, with bricks that were wobbly and about ready to fall. I still wasn't as close as I wanted to be, so I decided I would run to Quincy and get brackets, so I could place a plank to stand on nearer to the chimney. I made one piece of flashing, and determined I needed more flashing material. I went to Quincy as the moon was rising, bought brackets, more flashing, and gas for running the manlift and the tractor.
    
  • Mary made Mississippi mud, an intensely chocolate dessert, did some cleaning, picked more tomatoes, and harvested the 6 hills of sweet potatoes (see photo below).

  

  This year's sweet potatoes from just 6 hills.

  
  
• Thursday, 10/1: Work today involved:
  
  • I took off extremely loose bricks that were just about ready to fall from the chimney. Then, I nailed 2 brackets to the roof and nailed a 5' long 2x10 to the brackets. After that, I detached and removed chimney bricks down to close to the roof. Next, I removed piles of dried up tar, aluminum flashing, and shingles around the chimney. Uncle Herman's roofing job included vast amounts of nails, both into the shingles and into bricks of the chimney, which cracked the bricks. At one point, there were 5 nails that I removed from a 1" square area! I cleaned up the worksite, then washed up 15 bricks, of which I have many, many more to do. Below are photos that Mary took of me on the roof.
    
  • They are predicting frost for Sunday night, so Mary was busy getting garden items. She harvested and hung a bunch of comfrey. She picked 2 buckets of sweet peppers and a bucket of hot peppers. She froze most of the hot peppers and strung up and hung the ripe hot peppers to dry. She picked 7 pumpkins, 24 acorn squash, and 4.5 buckets of tomatoes. The upstairs south bedroom is loaded with garden produce.

Removing bricks from the chimney.

Leaving roof with a load of bricks.

Up in the sky.

Old bricks from the chimney.

• Friday, 10/2: Why is it that every project takes so much longer to accomplish than the time I figure it will take? And, I don't seem to get better at estimating time allocations with age. I'm nearly halfway through my rental of a lift and I'm no way near halfway through my chimney project, let alone getting another roof issue, a leaky roof where an old gas heater exhaust pipe exists. The other problem is the "Persnickety Dicky Syndrome," when I have to get everything "just so." I'm afraid I inherited that from my grandfather, Willis G. Melvin. He was the ultimate in being precise.
  
  Happenings today:
  
  • I took a few more loose and split bricks off the chimney. It's down to 3 bricks high on low side of the roof and a brick or 2 below the roof peak on the high side of the roof. Then, I used a mortar chisel and hammer and ever so lightly tapped at old mortar and stucco to remove it from remaining bricks. Most of the 100-year old mortar is impregnated with black soot, but it's twice as strong as the stucco that was put on by Mary's Uncle Herman. Still, Herman's stucco job helped fill recesses in the original mortar job.
  • Mary made flour tortillas and chimichangas for our midday meal.
    
  • In between 2 loads of laundry, Mary scrubbed bricks all day...a total of 82 bricks. That was a lot of work for her.
  • I decided to call the rental place and reserved the lift for another week, just in case I don't finish by next Tuesday at 1:30 pm, when the week's rental is due. 
  • I carefully removed more asphalt shingles to a point where I can put new ones back into place. In several places, I carefully cut them, making sure cuts will be overlapped by new shingles. While doing this, I noticed how warm it felt while working above old black tar paper. The temperature was only in the upper 50s, but it felt like it was above 70. I would hate to be working on a roof at 90°.
  • Next, I put stucco on the existing bricks exposed to the outside of the roof. Finally, I added tar paper to the left and right roof sides of the chimney.
  • After cleanup and chores, I went back up with a sheet of plastic, stuffing edges under shingles, tar paper, and the board I stand on, to guard against tomorrow's expected rain. I noticed a lot of warm air coming up the chimney. When I returned inside, I asked if the damper was open. "I don't know," said Mary. Then, we both looked in the living room. Of course, I took the stove pipe off the stove on Monday to remove soot at the bottom of the chimney prior to working on the chimney, and I didn't put the stove pipe back. Mary asked, "How the hell are we supposed to shut the damper?" There we stood, looking at thin air. We both laughed until our bellies hurt.
    


• Saturday, 10/3: Today:
  
  • We woke up to rain. It lightly rained until noon, then heavy mist started in at dusk. Crawling around on a 2x10 wet plank on our 45° angle roof was not an option today for me. Instead, I contemplated my next moves on the chimney project with bricks and flashing. 
  • Mary froze 3 gallons and most of a 4th gallon of tomatoes. We now have 12 gallons of tomatoes in the freezer. We also have a dump truck (not really) of green tomatoes ripening in the upstairs south bedroom. Any tomato with a tinge of ripening color is put in 2 large bowls and an ice cream bucket that Mary stores in the microwave when it's not in use. Somehow, the enclosed environment inside the microwave speeds up the ripening process. A pale green/yellow tomato ripens in about 4 days in the microwave. The same tomato on the kitchen counter might take a week to ripen, or not ripen at all. It's an amazing discovery.
  • Mary made a venison General Tso Chinese midday meal.
  • While walking down to the gravel road to get the mail, we saw a nighthawk zipping by, and then 7 wood ducks flying around looking for a place to land.
  • I took the manlift up to the chimney to take measurements and stuff plastic that blew out today into the cracks between the chimney and the roof that are open right now, since the prediction is for an 80 percent chance of rain tonight.
    

Sept. 20-26, 2020

 

Weather | 9/20, 43°, 76° | 9/21, 43°, 74° | 9/22, 53°,78° | 9/23, 53°, 77° | 9/24, 55°, 78° | 9/25, 53°, 79° | 9/26, 60°, 83° |

• Sunday, 9/20: What we did:
  
  • I crawled up the 45-degree of the NE valley of our roof to the chimney and measured distances for putting together scaffolding for a chimney repair job. It would be extremely difficult to construct. The chimney is in desperate shape, with 2-inch splits at the top on the north and south sides through several layers of brick. I was hoping to cinch it back together and patch if up, but it probably needs to be replaced with newly laid bricks. Mary and I talked about our options for quite some time.
    
  • I picked 2 more quarts of autumn olive berries.
  • Mary baked bread.
  • She also picked and froze 27 ears of sweet corn.
  • We both picked tomatoes.
    


• Monday, 9/21: Today:
  
  • Our chicks are 10 weeks old today.
  • I was online for most of the day, looking up bricklaying details and where I can rent a manlift in Quincy for helping me to get safely on our roof for chimney repair. Three locations exist in Quincy and one has a towable 34-foot articulating manlift. One of the businesses also is a masonry contractor that covers 40 miles around Quincy, which would include us.
    
  • I measured heights to our rooftop...it's 22.5 feet and 9 feet in from the west side of our house to the peak. The 34' manlift would work. I checked the angle of the roof peak. It's at 90 degrees, so our roof slope is 12/12, or for every 12" out, it drops 12" down.
  • While I was going up the ladder for roof measurements, I spotted 4 pelicans high overhead, riding air currents while floating eastward. 
  • At one point in the afternoon, I heard chickens raising a stink, then Mary hollered and I went running outside. She saw a big red tailed hawk fly off and we had a dead chicken, a buff Orpington cockerel, in the north chicken run. The hawk ate most of the bird...feathers were spread out in a 2-foot square area, and the mostly-eaten carcass about 10 feet away. Most all of the young chickens were in the coop, but a few were hiding in the weeds along the fence lines. 
  • Later, when we put the chickens to bed, we had a barred rock cockerel outside of the fence on east side of the north chicken run. He must have flown over the fence when the hawk struck. I had to wade through head-high ragweed and stickery cedar branches to chase it south to the human gate, where Mary drove it into the chicken run. Then, we chased it out of inside the fence line of the south chicken run, where hens stay, through the gate separating the north and south chicken runs, and then through the north coop chicken door to where he and his mates roost safe inside the coop. What an ordeal!
    
  • Mary picked tomatoes and 15 ears of corn. We both watered the gardens. I transplanted 2 strawberry plants into 4-gallon buckets. These plants were once shoots off our existing strawberry plants. I've got 12 more prior strawberry shoots that are now plants to transplant.
    
  • Mary washed and dried half of our fall and winter jackets and coats.
  • On the way to get the mail, I saw a doe and a yearling deer midway down our driveway. They trotted off to the west, but just watched me walk by, then went back to munch clover on our lane. Then, a cooper's hawk flew overhead.
    
  • We watched QBVII, a television 3-part series about a London trial between an American playwright and author of a WWII holocaust book and a Polish doctor who practiced in a German concentration camp. It was quite a moving series about forced sterilization of Jews. It hits home with recent reports of hysterectomies of Hispanic immigrants in ICE facilities in this country...an eerie example of history repeating itself.
    


• Tuesday, 9/22: Undertakings:
  • Before letting chicks outside, Mary said, "I hope today is a better day...nope, there's a red tailed hawk!" It was sitting in a tree just NW of our north chicken run. It flew off to the south. Mary walked to where it flew, made some noise with a plastic tree guard, and walked back while I released the chicks. We kept a keen eye out for hawks all day long, but didn't see any.
  • Mary picked and froze most of the ears of corn remaining in the garden. She also picked more tomatoes. They are slow to ripen, this year.
    
  • Mary mowed grass in the west yard in front of the chicken coop and south chicken run.
    
  • She also picked the rest of the hazelnuts, which amounted to a large full basket. We both husked them in the evening, while dinner was cooking.
    
  • I picked another 3 quarts of autumn olives. We now have 16 quarts from this year in the freezer.
    


• Wednesday, 9/23: I read a piece of news today that quite literally put terror in my heart. Our president says he will have to see whether he will peacefully transfer power if he loses the election. This guy is teetering on the brink of dictatorship. I don't like anything at all with the tone of his comments. My only hope is that all elected members of our government demand that the oath of office and the U.S. Constitution be implemented to the fullest extent.
  
  In other activities:
  
  • Mary checked the woods for hickory nuts. They don't exist, just like black walnuts are nonexistent this year. We're guessing that the snow we got this April nailed tree blossoms. Then, we got several weeks of dry weather, which didn't help. It might be tough on squirrels this winter.
  • Mary watered the gardens and picked some tomatoes. 
  • I picked a quart of autumn olive berries to raise our total from this year to 17 quarts.
    


• Thursday, 9/24: Today's events:
  
  • Mary cut down, sorted and put away our crop of garlic. Six varieties of garlic filled 3 old grapefruit bags that once held 18 pounds, each, of grapefruit. She also put away 6 boxes of the largest bulbs to be replanted in November for our next garlic crop. Only 4 garlic bulbs were thrown out. One was bad and three were chewed by mice, although Mary thinks they didn't develop a taste for garlic.
  • Mary also finished washing coats and jackets, and made a turkey pot pie for dinner.
  • Mary and I picked several more tomatoes and Mary found 3 more small ears of corn. She froze another gallon of ripe tomatoes, giving us 4 gallons in the freezer.
    
  • I balanced our checkbook.
  • I found old bricks and laid them on a sheet of plywood to determine their configuration to make our chimney that is 17.5" on the outside and about 8" on the inside. Each course of bricks includes 6 bricks.
  • I then dug out bricks stored behind the machine shed and sorted them according to size and condition. I came up with enough good bricks for 17 courses of 6 bricks each, way more than I require to redo the top of our chimney.
    


• Friday, 9/25: Merchandise packaging is stupid. In an attempt to disguise higher prices, stuff is packaged into diminishing sizes, plus volume amounts are all over the place. I checked out prices for stuff to use to fix our roof and chimney today. Blackjack tar is sold in 10.1-ounce tubes, when it once was in 12- or 16-ounce sizes. You can find mortar in 80-pound, 75-pound, 70-pound, 65-pound, 60-pound, 55-pound, and 50-pound bags. Want to buy a can of roof cement? It's not in a gallon can, but in a 0.90-gallon can. I wish merchandisers would be honest in their efforts to squeeze more money out of our wallets. Just raise the price. Don't squish the quantity down in size!
  
  Events:
  
  • Mary washed and dried sheets and blankets, figured 2 months of our savings funds, and stored hay that she cut several days ago in the 2nd grain bin.
  • I read books on laying bricks, then went to Quincy, shopped for a few groceries, and items to fix the chimney. The manlift isn't available through the weekend, because it's rented out. I reserved it for a week to be picked up on Tuesday at noon, which is perfectly matched to weather predictions of rain on Sunday through Monday. I found prices for mortar and other supplies at Lowes, Home Depot, and Menards and bought Portland cement, lime, and sand at the last place. My kids would have loved this trip...hours staring at bags of cement at 3 different home supply stores. It's kind of a standing joke in our family. I added 2 bushels of potting soil and a bag of chick feed, then drove my loaded Caddy home.
  • Meanwhile, Mary mowed 2 sections of lawn.
    
  • Mary and I picked tomatoes. I unloaded the car as Mary watered the gardens.
  • We ate nachos and watched a horrible movie call The Heartbreak Kid, starring Ben Stiller. We'll donate that DVD back to the Salvation Army. It's garbage.
    


• Saturday, 9/26: My sister has been posting autumn colors on Facebook as Karen and Lynn drive their pickup and camper trailer through northern states. I remember driving tour buses in late August along the Alaskan Highway between Beaver Creek, Yukon Territory, and Tok, Alaska, with brilliant yellow fall colors in aspen trees along the highway. We start seeing fall colors here in mid-September. First, it's yellow goldenrod flowers. Then, ash trees turn red to dark purple. Virginia creeper, a vine in trees, turns a bright red. It's beautiful right now. Next, shagbark hickory trees turn yellow. We're just starting to see the first tinge of that, now. Finally, deep dark shades of red and purple show as oak trees turn, which is a few weeks away. I love how our autumn in Missouri evolves over several weeks. It gives you time to enjoy the fall colors.
  
  Our day:
  
  • Mary did partial cleaning of the upstairs south bedroom...what we call the room of requirement, from the Harry Potter movies. It's one place in the house where we can block cats from marauding through our stuff. With freezing temperatures expected next week, it's where green tomatoes will be put to ripen. That's why Mary is trying to free up space in the room.
  • She also re-potted several of the house plants and moved them into the house. Tin foil covers the tops of pots, to keep cats out, which works well. We now have a large ficus tree in our living room (see photo below).
  • I transferred sacks of mortar materials into 4-gallon plastic cat litter buckets, giving the Portland cement, lime, mortar sand, and old Rapid Set mortar mix a drier place to be and it gets it out of the house. I labeled all 11 buckets and stored them in the machine shed. 
  • I found an old roll of aluminum flashing, left over from when we re-roofed our house in Circle, MT. It's 15' long, which is enough for putting new flashing on our current chimney.
  • Mary and I picked half a bucket of tomatoes, the most we've collected so far this year.
  • It was almost dark when I got the mail. A quarter of the way back from the mailbox, I mumbled something to myself and a deer that was probably only 10 feet away snorted. I watched 2 white tails bob up and down as they ran off to the west.
  • We watched the movie, Darkest Hour, one of our favorites.
    

Ficus tree in living room.

Sept. 13-19, 2020

 

Weather | 9/13, 0.02" rain, 52°, 73° | 9/14, 52°, 73° | 9/15, 53°, 79° | 9/16, 57°, 80° | 9/17, 53°, 74° | 9/18, 49°, 70° | 9/19, 42°, 68° |

• Sunday, 9/13: Today:
  
  • We experienced an electric outage between 5:30-11:09 am, which made us realize we're low on propane for using a campstove and the Coleman lantern.
  • Mary did laundry.
  • She also picked hops, tomatoes, and tomato hornworms.
  • I cleaned filters and inside covers on our 4 air conditioners.
  • I checked autumn olive trees throughout our property. They are ready to be picked, which means our plans for the week are altered. While marching around our property, I spotted a new wild flower, a rough blazing star. I also saw lots of monarch butterflies, and tons of honey bees in the goldenrod flowers that are now blooming.

Freshly picked hops.

A rough blazing star wildflower.

• Monday, 9/14: Yesterday, I couldn't get photos to load correctly, but I got the above photos related to the prior day's blog to load today, so there they are.
  
  Happenings:
  
  • Mary washed 2 loads of laundry and cut another area of tall grass with her scythe, laying it out to dry.
  • I picked autumn olive berries from one tree, then Mary joined me after lunch and together, we picked berries off 3 more trees to give us 7 quarts of autumn olives that we froze.
  • We picked several more tomatoes. Mary found just 1 army worm.
  • Our chicks are 8 weeks old and growing big, fast. We hear several half-baked attempts at crowing from cockerels every morning. We might be butchering at 12 weeks, rather than the normal 14-week stage, due to fast growth.
  • We had bacon, then shallots browned in bacon grease, then over-easy eggs dropped on the shallots, all with fresh tomatoes and toast...a truly amazing meal. It's the first time we've had bacon in about 10 years. We found smoked bacon at Aldi, instead of nitrate-treated bacon, so we gave it a try...the best!
  • Katie called. She is the foreman of her job site, constructing an electrical generation building in Nuiqsut, AK. There are 5 workers, so she does everything. The job superintendent is gone right now, so she's the acting job superintendent, too. Katie's also in charge of maintenance on the 3 Caterpillar generators currently providing electricity for the village. She procures construction items. And, she cleans and disinfects rooms once subcontractors leave. The steel subcontractor arrived today. Steel walls and roofing is going up, soon, with the building enclosed by Oct. 1. She said it was warm today...got into the mid-40s, which she says is about average for there, at this time of the year. It freezes at night. She'll be leaving on Sept. 28 to handle Air Force National Guard drill in Florida, returning to AK on Oct. 14, but her return flight to AK was just cancelled, so she has to figure that out. Her Christmas break is Dec. 18 through Jan. 14, but we don't know, yet, if she'll be visiting us, due to her many travels and this pandemic. While I was on the phone with her, one of her co-workers who also lives in the village gave her 2 boxes full of fresh produce, a rare commodity in Alaska's bush country. She was oohing and aahing over the contents at that moment. Katie told her mother that the villagers are friendly to her.
    


• Tuesday, 9/15: We did the following:
  
  • I went to Quincy and bought chick feed, along with picking up a package of coffee beans that we ordered through Sam's Club.
  • Mary checked an ear of corn that's furthest along in development. It's not ready, yet, but close.
  • She made and canned 9 pints of dill pickle relish (see photo below). She kept one pint out, which would have been the 10th pint, to refrigerate and use. She modified a recipe, adding garlic, extra dried dill, and additional onions. It tastes great. The canning process ended at 11 pm.
  • She also picked tomatoes, froze tomatoes and tomatillos, shredded and froze summer squash, and watered apple rootstocks and strawberry plants.
  
  

  

  Nine pints of dill pickle relish.

• Wednesday, 9/16: There's an inherent advantage to owning several acres of land. We own 160 acres. Probably 60-70 acres are wooded...might be more, because we're letting trees develop on land where pastures once stood. We saw up dead trees for firewood, which is our main heating source. I shoot 1 or 2 deer each hunting season, which adds meat to the freezer. We gather hickory nuts from trees in our timber. We pick raspberries, blackberries, and autumn olive berries every year, that we freeze and make into food and wine. Large gardens give us even more food. Most importantly, our 160-acre land provides home to a wide variety of wildlife that we enjoy anytime we take to the outdoors. Added to that, we enjoy hundreds of wildflowers, feeding thousands of bees (see videos below), native pollinators, and butterflies.
  
  Events:
  
  • I picked 3 quarts of autumn olives, mainly from a tree close to the gravel road and opposite from our neighbor's house, about a third of a mile SE of where our house sits. I drove the tractor cross-country on a beeline from there to our house and spotted a couple more autumn olive trees loaded with berries. Some parts I picked from had berries completely surrounding a branch of the tree.
  • After removing a plastic spigot from a glass 1.4-gallon widemouth bubbler fermenter for winemaking, I discovered a crack developing in the glass near the hole cut in the side of this container. I looked it up online and others have experienced this same flaw. I decided I don't want a replacement. It's poorly made, because the glass is too thin. Since I mainly use it to put wine in right before bottling, all I need is a bucket with the spigot installed. Food grade buckets, that were out-of-stock, are now available at Menards. They are $4, versus $20 from brewing suppliers. We decided to go buy 1 or several, tomorrow, since the stock went from 30 to 26 in a few hours at the Quincy Menard's store (obviously a hot commodity).
    
  • Mary did a load of towels.
  • She also picked and husked a big batch of hazelnuts.
  • We had a weenie roast at dusk and into the night. We tried Mary's newly-made dill relish. It's really, really good. When we started, skies were heavy with high-level smoke from fires in the Pacific NW. Clouds arrived and the wind switched to the NW, clearing the skies and allowing stars to twinkle with more brilliance. We finished around 10:30 pm.
  
  

• Thursday, 9/17: Our day:
  
  • We went to Quincy to get food grade buckets at Menards. There were only 2 left. We checked with a store employee. They didn't get the full pallet of buckets as stated on their shipping invoice, and 4 were sold to someone just prior to us arriving. We'll keep looking. 
  • We bought a nice couch for $40 at Salvation Army. They saved it for us, so we can drive the pickup in tomorrow to take it home. Mary bought a large square basket with a lid that originally was a picnic basket. She transformed it into a sewing basket.
  • We picked another bunch of tomatoes. Mary found a hornworm.
    


• Friday, 9/18: Events:
  
  • We drove the pickup to Quincy, bought 4 food grade 5-gallon buckets and 5 Gamma Seal bucket lids at Lowe's, then we picked up our new-to-us couch at the Salvation Army. I picked up another bag of chick feed that I put on top of the couch cushions. It rode very nicely in the pickup bed to home. We also bought 4 extra couch pillows at $2 each from the Salvation Army. With those and the 2 couch pillows that came with the couch, Mary looked like a stuffed pillow hugger on the way home.
  • We moved a cabinet from the living room to the west first-floor bedroom/storage room, moved my old chair to where a dog bed once was in the living room (it's now a chair for a dog), then moved in the couch. It fits perfectly and is more comfortable than the chair.
  • Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg died today.
  • We moved house plants, that are outside all summer, into the wood shed, due to a cold low temperature prediction. It went down to 42° overnight.
    


• Saturday, 9/19: Happenings:
  
  • Mary and I picked 116 pears off the Bartlett pear tree. I used a step ladder and an extended handle fruit picker to get those at the top of the tree. We got all but a couple that were high and above criss-cross branches. Several were quite small, with some so small, we threw them out. I have enough to make a big batch of pear wine after they fully ripen. At night, I wrapped all of them in quarter-sheets of newspaper and put them in 2 drawers of an old chest of drawers on the upstairs landing.
  • Mary picked 16 ears of sweet corn. She processed and froze them after dark.
  • Mary also picked another bunch of tomatoes. She froze more. We now have just over 2 gallons of tomatoes. When we have 5 gallons, she'll make a batch of salsa.
    
  • I picked what amounted to a little over another quart of autumn olive berries for the freezer.
  • Mary picked more hazelnuts and took the husks off. There are still more green hazelnuts on the bushes.
  • When walking to the tractor to go autumn olive picking, the chickens were putting up a stink, so I ran to the chicken yard. I dropped my picking bowls when I saw a Cooper's hawk fly up and then down to a post on the west side of the chicken run. Once I hollered, it flew off into the north woods. All chickens, both young and old, were hiding in the tall weeds that I leave in place in a 3-foot swath next to all fencing. They're smart birds. We didn't lose any, but they were greatly disturbed.
  • Mary saw 30-40 pelicans flying in formation from the west. Once they got over our north woods, they caught updrafts, circled for a bit, then streamed off to the east.
    

Sept. 6-12, 2020

 Weather | 9/6, 70°, 87° | 9/7, 68°, 79° | 9/8, 0.01" rain, 57°, 61° | 9/9, 0.72" rain, 53°, 60° | 9/10, 0.17" rain, 52°, 59° | 9/11, 0.15" rain, 58°, 70° | 9/12, 2.66" rain, 60°, 77° |

• Sunday, 9/6: Happenings:
  
  • We had high SE winds throughout the day, so we stayed inside during the day. 
  • We watered gardens. Bill and Mary picked worms and worm eggs. 
  • I took a video of a native bumblebee on a thistle blossom (see below). 
  • We lit a campfire on our cement pad in the west yard after the wind died down. I filled 4 buckets with water and took our big fire extinguisher and laid them all near the fire, as a precaution. We roasted pork loin pieces on long weenie roasting forks. We had to use flashlights to determine if the meat was done. We were there for 2-3 hours. 
  
   
• Monday, 9/7: I don't know why, but catching fish is an absolute joy. First, you try to use a lure that matches something fish are eating on that day, at that time. Then, how you show off the lure helps entice fish to bite. For instance, I love flipping a surface lure into waters occupied by bass. A Hula Popper is my favorite. I discovered today that 2 pops with that lure, followed by slowly reeling it in a couple feet, often resulted in a big bass gulping it up. Bill caught a bass on a lure he recently bought. It's a generic lure that we always name a "Walmart Special." It's cheap and always catches fish. You can guess where he bought the lure. He also used a lure he bought me for my birthday, and caught another fish. Mary, Bill, and I caught several bass, threw back little ones, and kept 5 large fish. It was really fun. Fishing photos are below.
  • After we finished fishing, Mary cooked a fish dinner that included a cucumber salad and garlic toast.
  • Bill left  around 4 pm to go back to his place in St. Louis.
  • Mary and I picked about a half of a bucket of tomatillos, hot peppers, and tomatoes.
  • In the evening, thunderstorms passed us to the north, again, as usual!

Bill with a bass caught on his new lure.

Dick with a bass caught on a Hula Popper.

• Tuesday, 9/8: Rain is such a pleasant event, especially when it's been absent for several days. Rain clouds are marching through, from the SW to the NE, which is a prominent moisture-producing direction at our property. Today, it was mainly mist, but future weather forecasts predict higher possibilities. Rain gives garden plants needed sustenance. Rain swells cracks in our clay ground shut and puts a sponginess underfoot. Rain gives us a chance to hibernate inside without remorse. Rain is soothing, really.
  
  In other events:
  
  • Mary did her worm and worm egg picking early, happily reporting that the gardens didn't need watering.
  • She made flour tortillas and fajitas for our main meal, using 2 large bell peppers and onions from our garden, venison meat from last year's hunting, and salsa generated from our garden.
  • I did a bunch of chimney fixing research online...yikes...I'm still not looking forward to that job.
  • I replaced the wheels on a hand truck that we use to haul the big plastic garbage can down our quarter-mile gravel lane.
  • I finished Patrick O'Brian's The Thirteen Gun Salute, his 13th book of the Aubrey/Maturin series.
  • We had a sudden crack from a thunderstorm in the late evening.
    


• Wednesday, 9/9: Happenings:
  
  • Mary thawed, removed ice, and cleaned our oldest deep chest freezer. She tossed outdated packages of blackberries, corn, strawberries, and a 2010 package of pear butter.
  • I drove the pickup to Quincy, mainly to get another bag of chick food...picked up a few other things. Bought gas for $1.79 a gallon on the way back home.
  • We watched the 1998 movie, You've Got Mail.
    


• Thursday, 9/10: We did:
  • Today was a drizzly day, with a lot of mist outside...a good day for hibernating.
  • It was the first of several times when we froze garden items. Mary froze her first bag of tomatoes. I helped her husk several tomatillos, which turned into almost 3 bags in the freezer.
  • I helped Mary husk some hazelnuts. It was only a fraction of nuts still out on the bushes.
  • We ate nachos and watched the 2007 movie, Stardust.
  • Katie texted that she was going to try the taste of whale.
    


• Friday, 9/11: Nineteen years ago on this day, our family woke up in a campground in southern Saskatchewan. The day prior, we left our home in Circle, MT, heading to Besnard Lake in northern Saskatchewan. At the U.S./Canadian border, a very nice Canadian border patrolman leaned in our pickup's window and chatted with us for several minutes. As we drove north on Sept. 11th, car after car passing us, honking as they went by. We didn't have a radio in the 1989 Chevy 1-ton crew-cab pickup, so we didn't know what was happening. We stopped at the Prince Albert (SK) Visitor's Center and the woman at the desk said, "I was hoping people like you wouldn't come in today." We asked why and she said, "It's World War III out there. Oh, you don't know, do you?" Then she pointed to the TV screen and explained. The borders were closed. We stayed at a campground on the edge of Prince Albert. That evening, we walked around the campground peering at TV screens viewed by other campers, seeing the horrific images played over and over, again. We didn't know how long we'd be in Canada, but decided to get on with our vacation. While the world was scared, we camped, fished, and enjoyed our vacation, including an evening watching an amazing northern lights display. We were about the only campers in the campground. It was great. After a few days, we headed home. The U.S./Canadian border was open just a few hours prior to us arriving. A team of about a dozen U.S. Border Patrol personnel met us, asked questions, and checked us out. They even looked underneath the boat trailer and the pickup, using mirrors on handheld extensions. Even so, we went through the border in just a few minutes. A husband and wife with 2 kids and 2 Golden Retrievers don't look like terrorists, I guess.
  
  In today's happenings:
  
  • I racked the blackberry and watermelon wines. The blackberry wine was still at 1.001 specific gravity and the watermelon was at 0.998, or a little stronger. The blackberry tastes amazing, while the watermelon still smells bad, tastes a little better, but not great. I removed a quarter of the lees out of the watermelon wine, reducing it to a full gallon.
  • Mary made venison stew and biscuits.
  • She also picked some tomatoes and tomatillos before an expected rain.
  • It rained in gushers throughout the evening. We kept adding buckets into the sunroom, catching drips in the ceiling and decided to stay up overnight.


• Saturday, 9/12: Events:
  • The rain ended at 4:30 am, so we ate breakfast, did chores at daybreak, then slept for a couple hours.
  • I burned boxes, an old foam pad, and an old boat tarp, all piled up in the machine shed.
  • Mary picked hazelnuts. I helped her husk them.
  • We went to bed early.