Dec. 26, 2021-Jan. 1, 2022

Weather | 12/26, 27°, 45° | 12/27, 41°, 53° | 12/28, 0.46" rain, 31°, 43° | 12/29, 20°, 30° | 12/30, 2 or 3 snowflakes, 27°, 34° | 12/31, 29°, 53° | 1/1/22, 2" snow, sleet, or 0.58" moisture, 9°, 19° |

• Sunday, 12/26: Cherry Wine, Bill Leaves
  
  • I made a double batch of waffles for breakfast.
    
  • Bill and I made a 5-gallon batch of cherry wine. He juiced 2 bags of mandarin oranges while I made waffles. Bill also took zest off 2 oranges. After breakfast, Bill and I squished 24 quart bags of cold, and in some cases, partially frozen cherries and dumped just over 17.5 pounds of fruit into a new nylon mesh bag. About 12 pounds involved 2020 cherries and 5.75 pounds were 2021 cherries. We added the orange zest to the mesh bag. Into the brew bucket went a mug of strong tea, 3 gallons of water, 5 teaspoons of yeast nutrient, 5 crushed Campden tablets, and 8 pounds of sugar to get a specific gravity of 1.084. The pH is 3.6, so no acid is needed. We covered it and moved the brew bucket to behind the woodstove in the living room, since the cold, cold must is at 47°. The must tastes like sugar water.
    
  • Bill packed his car and left for his apartment in St. Chargles around 2 p.m.
    
  • During evening chores, Mary saw a flock of snow geese.
  • Katie ran on the gravel road to Highway J. The neighbor's dog, a young Lab, followed her east to the stop sign, then all the way back to our house. He was playful and just bounced around when she told him to go home. I light 2 fire crackers, then chased the dog down our lane. He ran back to its home.
    
  • We played Yahtzee. Mary won, because she kept playing to allow someone else to get a yahtzee, which Katie eventually accomplished. In the meantime, Mary got 3 yahtzees in that final game. It was fun. We shared a bottle of 2021 dandelion wine, which is very good, with a fruity taste from the 2 lemons and a lime I added, a flower taste, plus a little zing from the ginger root.
    
    
• Monday, 12/27: Katie Leaves, More Firewood
  
  • Katie left around 9:30 a.m. She dropped off a return of the doubled-up gift at the Ewing Post Office.
    
  • Mary and I cut another wagon load of firewood from dead trees in the woods south of the west field, then stacked wood next to the splitter and in the woodshed.
    
  • We received texts from Katie as she got to Lambert Field in St. Louis, flew to Chicago, and landed at O'Hare. She called to say that after realizing she couldn't get into the secure area of the airport until 4 hours prior to her flight, which was 18 hours later, and after seeing homeless people sleeping in the public part of the airport, she got a hotel room, so she could eat a decent supper, take a shower, and get some sleep.
    
  • I added 2.5 teaspoons of pectic enzyme to the cherry wine 24 hours after making the must. The specific gravity was still 1.084, indicating these sour cherries are low in sugar content. The temperature is 69, the must is redder in color, and it tastes like cherries, instead of sugar water. I worked up a starter of Red Star Côte des Blancs yeast that I added heated must to every couple of hours. I pitched the yeast 12 hours after adding pectic enzyme. Immediately, a nice yeast aroma emanated from the brew bucket in the pantry.
    
  • We watched the first year, or 6 episodes of Keeping Up Appearances, a gift from Katie to Mary. It is really funny.
  • While watching these episodes, I got a text from Wells Fargo that our credit card was charged over $900 with Aero Mexico. I checked to make sure the number listed was legitimate. It is the 24-hour credit card number listed on our bills and on the Wells Fargo website, so I called. They canceled our card and issued new credit cards, which we'll see in 4-5 days. Thank goodness for their fraud alert system.
    
    
• Tuesday, 12/28: Anchorage Return for Katie, Christmas Tree Comes Down
  
  • Katie got up at 5 a.m. in Chicago, checked into the airport, got on her Alaska Airlines flight, and flew 7 hours to Anchorage, starting at around 7 a.m. CST.
  • Rain fell through the morning, ending around noon. It was our first major rain for the month.
  • Mary took ornaments off the Christmas tree, dusting each one before putting it away in various plastic totes. I helped remove the strings of lights. Mary wrapped small-bulb strings on cardboard rolls. I put the 2 strings of large-bulb lights into their original packages. We took down the Christmas tree, packed branches away in bags, then into old computer screen boxes. We had the tree up from Nov. 26th until today, or for 32 days. It's good to move on.
  • I reviewed KN95 surgical masks to use during the trip with Katie to Seattle and back home on Jan. 12-15. Since we're without a credit car for a few days, I saved the website and I'll order once we receive a new credit card.
  • The cherry wine yeast is bubbling. The specific gravity is 1.081, down just a little bit from yesterday's 1.084 starting point. There is now a significant cherry taste to the must. I gave Mary a sample to taste and her response was, "Wow, that's really good."
  • Katie called. Her apartment building is soon going to be sold. Eviction is possible and rent might go up significantly with new owners, her current building manager told Katie. She was bummed with the news. I told her to get looking right away. I made a quick online check, found 7 Anchorage apartment rental groups on Facebook's Marketplace and 147 apartment rental listings on the Anchorage Craig's List. I forwarded that info to Katie. She messaged back with a link to an inexpensive house for rent that was recently listed. I urged her to contact them immediately. She did. We'll see what happens. There are several rentals on the market in Anchorage. I wonder if recent heavy snows have pushed some former Anchorage residents not used to "normal" wintertime weather to move to the Lower 48 states.
    
    
• Wednesday, 12/29: 31st Anniversary
  
  • Mary and I have been married 31 years, as of today. It was a really cold day in Red Lake Falls, MN. We had a mob of people in the little white house we were renting at the time. The high for the day on 12/29/90 was -29. Snow was falling, too. Ruth, Mary's mother, left the next morning for her home in Hannibal, MO. Mary and I have been together ever since then. We never fight or squabble. Okay, that's a big, fat, hairy lie. We yell at each other when she's a miserable hard head, or when I'm an old nose-out-of-joint toad, which happens about once every other month. Other than that, we live in perfect harmony. Ha, ha, ha! (Mary just threw a pillow at me.)
    
  • We were rather lazy throughout the day.
  • Katie texted that the inexpensive house was a scam.
  • Bill called after dark and said that Mike, his friend, who was going with him to the NHL Winter Classic in Minneapolis, tested positive for COVID, today. Mary suggested I go with Bill. He felt immediately relieved. Bill didn't want to go up there, alone. He will overnight at our home on 12/30. We'll leave the morning of 12/31 in the Cadillac. It's a better car for winter driving than his Hyundai Sonata. We overnight in a bed and breakfast in Minneapolis. The game starts 6 p.m. on 1/1/22 outdoors with subzero temperatures predicted. That ought to be toasty. Meanwhile, at home, a winter storm is supposed to drop 5-7 inches of snow. Mary figures she will be shoveling out on 1/2/22. We leave the morning of 1/2/22 for home. Bill then drives from our house to his apartment in St. Charles, MO, since he works the next morning. Interesting times are coming!
  • The specific gravity of the cherry wine is 1.070, so those active yeast beasts are eating up sugar and fizzing profusely. A quick taste test indicates this will be a yummy wine.
    
  • I cleaned labels off 10 wine bottles that were soaking for over a week in baking soda water. Four had stubborn mold inside, so I pour a liberal amount of OxyClean into them, added water, and set them aside to soak.
    
    
• Thursday, 12/30: Shopping & Trip Prep
  
  • I got in the Cadillac to start it up this morning. The battery was dead. After half an hour on the charger, the car started. Then, we headed for Quincy to do some shopping. Upon pulling into Ewing, about 10 miles away from our house, Mary realized we didn't have face masks, so we turned around, went home, let the dogs out for a quick leak, picked up the face masks, and headed out, again.
  • While shopping, we noticed that everything costs a lot more. Some items are double what they were just weeks or months ago. We had a new battery put in Mary's cell phone. Stores were packed with about as many shoppers as 2 days before Christmas. We were glad to go home.
  • Once home, Mary unloaded the car while I changed oil and the oil filter in the Cadillac. After bringing all fluid levels up, I inflated the tires to appropriate levels.
  • Mary made a chicken pot pie that will make 2 meals for Bill and I while we're in Minneapolis.
  • Bill showed up just after 6 p.m. We ate nachos soon after he arrived.
    
  • I moved the winter greens to inside the machine shed and covered them with plastic, since 3-7 inches of snow is predicted for New Year's Day and another inch that night. I was going to move the strawberries, but ran out of time. Mary says if it snows, she'll mound snow on them to protect the plants.
  • Mary and I hung the heater in the chicken coop.
  • I got a text from Mom that her grandson, Kevin, who is Karen and Lynn's son, lives near the area in Boulder, CO, where there are wildfires, tonight.
    
  • I made a list of things to pack in the morning for our trip to the Winter Classic. Bill and I tried on clothes to make sure we could sit down in them. We can.
  • The cherry wine's specific gravity is 1.050. It's fizzing like crazy. Bill and I are going to try to move it into a carboy tomorrow morning, prior to leaving.
  • Dense fog is predicted for tomorrow morning both here and in eastern Iowa. The fog advisory ends at 10 a.m., so that's when we'll leave. I estimate about an 8-hour drive from here to Minneapolis.
    
    
• Friday, 12/31: Driving to Minneapolis
  
• We woke at 6 a.m., ate breakfast, then Bill and I moved the cherry wine must from the brew bucket to a 5-gallon carboy and part of a half-gallon jug. The specific gravity was 1.040, the highest amount to safely move it to a carboy. We put a overflow airlock on the large carboy and a regular airlock on the half gallon. It only took an hour to do this job, complete with clean up.
• Bill and I packed up and left at 10 a.m. We encountered light fog until Iowa City, Iowa, then it rained lightly. Snow was on the ground shortly before Iowa City and all the rest of the way to Minneapolis. We stopped at Walmart in Iowa City for some oil, gas at Cedar Falls, IA, and got into our B&B in the Twin Cities at 7 p.m. We ate half of the chicken pot pie Mary made for us and watched TV until after midnight.
• Back home, Mary had a nice, lazy time, watching TV, besides doing chores.
  
  
• Monday, 1/1: NHL Winter Classic
  
  • Bill and I were up by 9 a.m. (it was -11), fixed a bacon and egg meal, lazied around, ate a bean burrito meal at 2 p.m., then got $10 in gas, drove to Target Field, got lost while trying to park and ended up on Highway 394, heading west. We finally found a parking garage, walked around a bit, then stood in a line to enter Target Field. Luckily, it was Gate 6, where we were supposed to go to get to our seat. It opened at 4 p.m., just minutes before we got in line.
  • We found our seats with hardly anyone there (see photos, below). But, in the next 2 hours, the entire place filled up. It was a capacity crowd of 38,600. The temperature was -6. The game started at 6 p.m. At the end of 1 period, my feet were getting cool. At the end of 2 periods, it was 6-2, with the St. Louis Blues leading the Minnesota Wild. I couldn't feel my right toes. The Wild pulled their goalie with 6:30 left in the game. They scored 2 more goals. I thought they were going to tie the game, the way the came on so strongly. Time ran out. Mr. and Mrs. Beer, to my left, drank at least a 6-pack. The whole place was dancing anytime the loud "boom, boom" music played. While walking to the car, our feet warmed. When we got back to the B&B, we were pretty warm. It was -14.
  • We watched Crash Course: US History on Bill's tablet via YouTube, after texting with Katie and talking to Mary.
  • Back home, Mary worked out her plans for 2022 and got them written down.

Our view of crews on the rink.

When people stood, we looked left to this.

Dec. 19-25, 2021

Weather | 12/19, 18°, 35° | 12/20, 22°, 43° | 12/21, 15°, 42° | 12/22, 16°, 39° | 12/23, 33°, 57° | 2/24, 41°, 67° | 12/25, 0.05" rain, 41°, 47° |

• Sunday, 12/19: Four Bald Eagles at Once
  
  • I spotted a bald eagle out the west living room window. Mary and I both looked and then saw 2 bald eagles circling one another, with one aggressively chasing the other one. Then, we saw a second pair doing the same thing. There were 4 bald eagles in the sky. That's a first!
    
  • Today is Nick's 12th birthday. He was born under the Christmas tree during the early morning hours of 12/19/09. He outlived his sister, Holly, who died in September. His mother, Rosemary, still bounces around like a kitten.
    
  • Mary made minestrone soup. This way, she doesn't have to fix a main meal for 3 days and can spend time making Christmas treats.
  • She also cracked several hazelnuts that will go into tomorrow's batch of lime zinger cookies.
    
  • On a dog walk to the cow barn, I moved the deer stand from the south side of the building to inside the structure. Upon checking an old maple log of a tree south of the cow barn that I cut down a couple years ago, the wood is still fine. I'll need to get back and saw it up.
    
  • While searching for dead hardwood to cut up for firewood, I spotted a metal deer stand just 6 feet west of our property line, off the NW corner of the west field. It's facing west, but if someone in that stand took a shot to the east, the bullet could reach our house, yard, and chicken coop. There's firewood to cut just 10-20 feet east of that stand. Alternative (muzzleloading 40-caliber rifles & handguns, pistols, 40-caliber air-powered guns, longbows, compound bows, recurve bows, crossbows, and atlatls) deer hunting season runs Dec. 25 through Jan. 4. Except for Christmas Day, I'll be cutting and gathering firewood in that area. I guess it's typical of a city dude to crowd your property.
    
  • I cut up a large white oak a few feet in the woods south of west field. Parts of it were too large to move, so I cut those chunks in half and stacked it all in the wagon (see photo, below), which made for a large load. The high wind a few days ago brought down a lot of dead wood in the forest. I'll be going back there for more, some of which I cut, but was unable to load.
  • David Parmeter (Homer High School classmate) texted me that he's driving through Missouri, tomorrow, on his way to Virginia (D.C. area) to see grandchildren. With a photo he sent, I can see he's driving a pickup, pulling a camper/trailer.

  

  Big white oak firewood pieces overfilled the trailer.
  

• Monday, 12/20: Garlic Wine & Lime Zinger Cookies (Not at the same time!)
  
  • Flipping and hoisting around huge white oak logs strained a few body parts, so I decided not to do firewood work, today.
  • Katie texted, asking whether to go with studded, or non-studded snow tires. I recommended studs for driving around Anchorage in the winter. She's considering a Toyo tire. I told her it looks like a good choice.
    
  • Mary washed towels.
  • I racked the garlic wine for the second time, due to a half inch of sediment in the bottom of the carboy. The yeast was still fizzing when I started, but ended after racking. The specific gravity is 0.999, dropping just one-thousandth from 1.000. I added 3.75 crushed Campden tablets. We didn't taste it this time. 
  • While I did winemaking, Mary finished a cross stitch Christmas ornament (see photo, below). She did the evening chores while I washed up winemaking stuff.
    
  • Mary made lime zinger cookies (see photo, below), my request for Christmas goodies. Crushed hazelnuts, lime juice and zest, among other ingredients, go into these cookies. They taste wonderful with pots of loose leaf tea.
    
  • I brought my wine diary up-to-date with the 3 wines I'm working on right now, which are pear, parsnip, and garlic. The pear wine will be bottled on Friday and cherry wine will be started on Saturday. I guess I'm a real wino...maker!

Mary's newest ornament, called Bunnies in the Snow.
To the left is a loon ornament & to right, a puffin.

Lime zinger cookies, ready for the oven.

• Tuesday, 12/21: Winter Solstice
  
  • Several of my old Alaskan friends mentioned that today is the winter solstice. In Alaska, this day is a big deal, because each future day until summer solstice is a day of more sunshine.
  • Mary made a triple batch of butterscotch oatmeal cookies. They're yummy!
  • She also finished her cross stitch Christmas gifts.
  • I split dried wood, stacked it in the woodshed, then started splitting wood from the large white oak tree I cut up 2 days ago. The wood, inside, is wet, so I'll need to stack it in the machine shed to dry. Only less than a quarter of the wood from the white oak tree is now split. It's a big tree.
  • From 5 sources, I put together and wrote a sour cherry wine recipe in my wine diary.
    
  • Eight more bottles are without labels, as I keep chipping away at wine bottle delabeling.
  • Katie felt an earthquake while at work in Anchorage. The Anchorage Daily News reports that it was a 5.9 earthquake centered near Mt. Illiamna, across the Cook Inlet from Ninilchik.
  • Mom texted that she helped serve at the Circle (MT) Senior Citizen Center's Christmas dinner. They served 65 people.
    
    
• Wednesday, 12/22: Firewood & Kid's Tires
  
  • Mary cleaned the house and made flour tortillas.
  • First I stacked firewood that I split yesterday and then split all of the rest of the firewood that I cut up from the large oak tree. It took 3 hours to perform this firewood splitting. The wagon is filled with split wood. Because these trunk pieces are wet, the entire machine shed smells like the inside of a whiskey oak barrel.
  • Katie and I were on the phone and texted throughout the day. She got new studded snow tires on her vehicle. She said her vehicle has a much greater grip on the road. Katie also said most people told her she'd be fine driving around Anchorage with all-season tires. That proves something I've always thought...Anchorage residents are crackpots about Alaska winter weather and it's why so many crash and burn each winter. 
  • The place she went to performed a vehicle inspection and replaced some burned out light bulbs. She thought her brakes needed replacing, but they found them to be adequate. Her vehicle has worn out ball joints. I did some online research for her vehicle, a 2010 Jeep Liberty. Ball joints on that rig are notorious for failing. Replacements have grease fittings, while originals don't. The mechanic informed her that they were over-greased, the rubber caps broke, water leaked in, and they're failing. The fact there is a grease fitting says they aren't original. A ball joint coming apart at highway speeds is catastrophic. I looked up pricing on RockAuto, and the replacement cost of all 4 control arms and the 4 ball joints is about $40 more than what she was quoted. I recommended Katie should go ahead with replacing them. She plans on doing that next month.
  • Katie will be boarding her flight to here in Anchorage after 4 a.m. on 12/23. She has a 13-hour layover in Seattle. Her flight gets into St. Louis around 10ish on 12/24. It's worse going back, when she has an 18-hour layover in Chicago.
  • Bill texted that he had glass embedded in a tire on his vehicle. He held his breath while running on a donut spare tire for 2 days and got it replaced with a new tire, today.
  • Mom informed me that I got her post office address off by one digit on a Christmas gift I'm sending her. We're hoping the small size of Circle, MT means the post office will put it in the correct mailbox.
    
  • The garlic wine is now changing from its eggnog color to a clearer, more golden shade.
    
    
• Thursday, 12/23: Getting Veggies on Christmas Eve Eve Day
  
  • We think we saw a peregrine falcon dipping down over the west woods this morning. Robins and cedar waxwings are flying all around the yard, today.
    
  • Mary did 2 loads of laundry. Wind gusts to 30 mph from the SW dried clothes fast. 
  • She also made black raspberry bars (her Christmas snack choice), pistachio torte (Bill's Christmas snack choice), and 2 pumpkin pies (Katie's Christmas snake choice). The house smelled wonderful.
  • I drove to Quincy and bought Christmas smorgasbord veggies used with Ranch dip. Quincy city traffic was fierce, as were the crowds in all stores. I only made 2 stops. Bought two 5-gallon cans of gas for the tractor and wood splitter engine. Gas is $2.94 a gallon.
  • Our neighbor east of us is trenching more pipe to drain onto the gravel road. His field drain tile project already washes gravel off the road and produces gullies we have to drive across. I feel like asking the county board if a ferry system is planned after Farmer Turd-Butt drains more water across the gravel road.
  • After returning home, while Mary did evening chores, I stacked the firewood I split yesterday into criss-cross stacks in the machine shed. These stacks dry wood in the fastest manner. I was wrong. After splitting the wood, I can see it was a red oak, not a white oak tree. Two huge 1.5" black beetles with big mandibles came out of that firewood.
    
  • Mary washed, sliced, and bagged up all of the Christmas veggies, which are green onions, baby carrots, radishes, cauliflower, broccoli, and celery. She made Ranch dip earlier, today. We're now ready for Christmas eating. Now, we just need eaters. Katie and Bill will be here, tomorrow. Bill will show up around 10 a.m. and Katie is due in at roughly 2 p.m.
    
    
• Friday, 12/24: Christmas Eve, Kids Arrive
  • Mary and I got the north and south upstairs bedrooms ready for Bill & Katie.
    
  • Bill arrived around 10:30 a.m.
    
  • Bill and I bottled the pear wine after transferring it to a brew bucket and adding 4 crushed Campden tablets. The tartaric acid is 0.65, which is perfect for white wines. The specific gravity is 0.998, giving it 11% alcohol. It tastes marvelous, even though it hasn't aged at all. This is the best pear wine I've made. It's incredibly smooth, with not any taste of alcohol. This pear wine tastes like a pear cider, due to a slight bit of tang in the taste.
    
  • Katie arrived at 2:30 p.m. She was smart and slept for a little bit in Hannibal while drive north from St. Louis in her rental car.
    
  • Mary started the 2 amaryllis bulbs in a couple pots.
    
  • Katie wrapped her presents and discovered she had 2 of the same gift for her mother, because one that she ordered from Walmart arrived in an Amazon box. We weren't opening her gifts as they arrived to our address.
    
  • After evening chores were done, and cleanup after bottling pear wine finished up, Mary cut up salami and various cheeses and we had a smorgasbord of food.
    
  • Mary saw a of flock cackling geese during chores.
    
  • We played Michigan rummy for 6 hours. It was a blast. We shared in drinking a bottle of jalapeño wine and a bottle of autumn olive wine. Katie said she had a glass of wine at an airport restaurant while flying south from Anchorage, but it wasn't as good as the wines I make. Brownie point for her!
    
    
• Saturday, 12/25: Christmas Day with Katie & Bill
  
  • We had a bacon and eggs breakfast.
  • We opened presents from late morning into the early afternoon.
    
  • When Katie opened a present from Mary and I that was a Verilux happy light, there was a surprise. The box contained not one, but 6 happy lights. At first, Katie asked if we got 2 lights. As she pulled one out she laughed, realizing several were inside the cardboard box. We never opened it when the package arrived, figuring it was just a big light. A Walmart employee who can't read didn't see that a case of 6 lights was sent to us, instead of just 1 light that we ordered. She gave a light to Mary and one to Bill, then packed 4 lights in her plastic tote to take back with her to Anchorage.
    
  • Mary made venison stroganoff for our Christmas dinner. A side dish of frozen muskmelon added to the flavor. We shared a bottle of blackberry wine with this dinner.
    
  • While walking dogs during evening chores, Mary and Bill spooked up 5 wood ducks off Bluegill Pond.
    
  • Because it was calm and warm, I decided to fix the loose shingle on the roof. I was going to put the extension ladder on the roof to climb up to that shingle. Katie stepped up onto the roof to help pull the ladder up, then proceeded to march around on the roof like a monkey and said she could fix it without a ladder. She expertly removed 3 nails, pounded in 6 new nails once she pulled the shingle into place, then applied some strips of tar in appropriate locations to help hold down shingle edges. I told her she did a nice job and she replied, "Well, I do this for a living."
    
  • I called Mom. It snowed several inches, which she finished shoveling. It was -5° in Circle, MT, when I called. She talked to Bill and Katie for quite a bit, then to me. We were on the phone with her for over an hour.
    
  • We watched the movie, Leap Year. We've all seen it several times, which is a good thing, since there were some closed eyelids during the movie. We shared a bottle of 2020 pear wine while watching the movie.
    

Dec. 12-18, 2021

Weather | 12/12, 29°, 55° | 12/13, 33°, 53° | 12/14, 34°, 58° | 12/15, 55°, 71° | 12/16, 29°, 45° | 2/17, 0.03" rain, 21°, 37° | 12/18, 29°, 37° |

• Sunday, 12/12: A Quiet Sunday
  
  • Mary did 2 loads of laundry after I dumped all of my various hunting clothes into the basket. She also made a venison General Tso meal and did some cross stitching.
  • I set 2 buckets up to soak labels off wine bottles in a baking soda/water solution.
  • I also went through this blog and updated my wine diary for wines I made this year, especially comments about how wines tasted after they were bottled and aged. It's educational and fun recounting the making and enjoyment of various wines.
  • Today is the last day of the anterless rifle deer hunting season. We aren't hearing rifle shots close to us...only shots far away. There is an alternative season, from Dec. 25th to Jan. 4th, when you can use spears and black powder guns, but hunting numbers are greatly reduced. Who wants to hunt a deer with an atlatl on Christmas Day? (Atlatls are a rod or board-like device used to launch, through a throwing motion of the arm, a dart 5 to 8 feet in length.) The end of regular deer hunting season means we can walk around without blaze orange vests outside of our coats and without the fear some idiot trespasser might be lurking in our woods with a high-powered rifle.
  • I saw 2 bald eagles fly over our house just above treetop level.
  • The garlic wine still bubbles profusely. Its yeast is taking a long time to settle down.
    
    
• Monday, 12/13: Watching Geminid Meteor Shower
  
  • Mary washed coats, including blaze orange hunting gear. She also did some cross stitch work, and evening chores. 
  • I cleaned labels off 6 wine bottles, 3 of which were big 1.5-liter bottles. I rotated 8 more bottles into a bucket of baking soda/water solution.
  • After driving the 8N Ford tractor and trailer to the SW corner of the north field, I chainsawed up a red oak tree that fell over the corner post of the fence around that field. That gave me just over a half a wagon load of firewood, so I cut down another small dead red oak (base was about 7-8" in diameter), and filled the rest of the wagon. I unloaded small firewood pieces into the woodshed. The remaining larger firewood chunks, about a third of a wagon load, I'll split tomorrow.
    
  • Mary fixed baked chicken, corn on the cob, and potatoes covered with turkey gravy she froze and reheated from our Thanksgiving dinner.
  • After the nighttime dog walk, when deer stomped off while snorting at us, we stood in the lawn to watch the sky during the height of the Geminid Meteor Shower. We were out there for an hour and saw several bright streaks in the night sky. To the east of us were 2 barred owls who were really talking. They were almost making a cat purring sound. Mary says now is the height of their mating season. We also heard a coyote howling session.
    
    
• Tuesday, 12/14: High Temperatures, Hoofing Out Firewood, & Trumpeter Swans
  
  • "It's beginning to feel a lot like Easter," is my new song. Local news sources are predicting that we will break a record high tomorrow, which is 70° in Quincy, IL, set in 1948.
    
  • I sharpened the mower blade and Mary mowed the lane.
  • After unloading large firewood logs out of the trailer, I drove the tractor/trailer to where I was yesterday and cut another load of firewood from small dead hickory trees, parts of a downed red oak and a dead white oak that I dropped. I found a large turkey feather and stuck it in my hardhat. I hauled the entire wagon load, an armload at a time, up a hill in the forest and dumped the wood over the fence, then loaded the firewood in the wagon. It's the best exercise plan on earth. When I drove home, darkness was falling. Mary told me we weren't getting rain until tomorrow night, so instead of unloading firewood, I just parked the tractor/trailer in the machine shed.
    
  • Mary made a week's supply of popcorn, then did the evening chores. 
  • While doing chores, she heard trumpeter swans in the neighbor's field east of us. Then, they lifted off and 15 trumpeter swans flew over our lane. Mary was walking dogs at that moment and Plato and Amber thought loud, flying swans were very interesting.
  • We watched the 2006 movie, The Holiday.
  • Katie texted me asking for our dog's height and length measurements. She's guessing that her dogs are the same size and needs the numbers to fly them from New Orleans, LA to Anchorage, AK, which she plans to do on Jan. 16th.
    
    
• Wednesday, 12/15: Crazy Winds
  • A southwest wind blew hard all day, but after dark, gusts shook our house enough that floor boards in the kitchen were vibrating. Ventusky, a weather app we use, indicated gusts to 63 mph. We checked the roof prior to going to bed and one shingle in the tan-colored area is hanging loose, attached by only one end. That's a result of putting on shingles in cooler weather. The tar under the tips of the shingles doesn't get a chance to melt and stick in summer heat, resulting in the chance of high winds to flip them up. I'll have to try to use ladders to get to that shingle and repair it. Thankfully, it's lower on the roof and not on top.
  • On our last dog walk, we smelled a strong whiff of grass smoke on the wind. It made us stay up into the early morning hours, concerned a out-of-control grass fire was close. I walked down to the gravel road, but couldn't see anything to the west, which was the direction of the wind by 1 a.m. As I walked back to the house, I sensed a wind change to the NW and the smoke subsided. This morning, we read online that fires in Kansas were making Kansas City residents call 911 to complain about smelling smoke. Maybe that was the smoke we were smelling.
  • Quincy set a new high temperature record of 75. We were lower, at 71. Flies loved the heat and swarmed all inside windows. Mary vacuumed flies twice, today.
  • Mary also cross stitched and made a shopping list. Since we were up very late, we decided we'll go shopping on Friday.
  • I cleaned labels off 11 wine bottles and added more bottles to the baking soda water soup in 2 buckets. I also balanced the checkbook.
  • Katie texted that she purchased airline-approved crates for her pets and her 2 dogs and 2 cats are officially confirmed on a flight to Anchorage, mid-January.
  • Bill is game for helping me bottle pear wine Christmas Eve, as long as it doesn't hinder the traditional Christmas Eve smorgasbord that we do. Mary texted him that he has his priorities straight.
  • Opossums must roam on high-wind nights. I almost stumbled on one that was just in front of the porch steps after dark. We saw one while walking the dogs midway down the lane and Mary and I saw a big, roly-poly one when we checked the chicken coop for wind damage. The coop was fine.
  • We saw a juvenile bald eagle zip over the house around noon.
    
    
• Thursday, 12/16: Haircut, Firewood & Bottles
  
  • Mary received a haircut from her favorite hair dresser, her husband. She feels human, again.
  • She also worked on a craft project.
  • I unload firewood from the wagon into the woodshed, and put large pieces next to the splitter. I also rinsed winemaking mesh bags to clear bleach from them and hung them out on the clothesline. I took the bleach water and cleaned 2 coolers to make sure old mold was completely killed and set them in the woodshed to air out.
    
  • I cleaned labels off 7 wine bottles and put more labeled bottles into the baking soda water. Some of the wine bottles I recently purchased are from Spirit Knob Winery, located in Ursa, IL, just north of Quincy. Nobody rinsed out those bottles, so a dark line of dried sweet wine lines the inside bottom edges. I'm glad that I'm cleaning these bottles, first.
    
    
• Friday, 12/17: Shopping
  
  • We went shopping in Quincy, IL. Lots of shoppers, everywhere. Maybe 1 in 20 people wore masks. We found everything we wanted, except for tangerines for future cherry winemaking. Instead, I bought 2 bags of Clementines. A quick online lookup indicates that clementines, sometimes called "cuties," are a type of Mandarin orange, as are tangerines. So, I got what I needed! We also picked up the last 2 gifts Katie ordered for Christmas and sent to our address, but I diverted for a Quincy Walgreen's store pickup.
  • We watched 2 movies after unloading the car. They were The Seeker and The Polar Express.
  • On our last dog walk of the night, we heard a call that we couldn't identify. At first, we thought it was a coyote howling, but the sound was different. Checking online, it was either a bobcat in heat, or a fox during mating season. The sound was more like that of a bobcat.
    
    
• Saturday, 12/18: House Cleaning, Firewood & Bottles
  
  • Mary baked up 4 more New England long pie pumpkins, then froze 3 packages of pumpkin meat. She washed sheets and did a bunch of house cleaning.
  • Katie called me. The company that gets airline tickets for Worker's Comp still hasn't purchased them for her mid-January laser burn work in Seattle. She's contacted them, asking for some action and received an email back promising answers soon.
    
  • I split all of the big firewood logs that were next to the splitter, then stacked a wagon load of wood into the woodshed (see photo, below). The first stack of firewood is about halfway up the building and it goes down a little each day as about 4 armloads go into the house. I need to stack to about 6 feet, then fill up 2 more rows and there is enough wood for the rest of the winter.
    
  • I took labels off 10 wine bottles and cleaned them up, which finished up old bottles that we've saved. I'm now starting to work on bottles I recently bought. I threw away a bottle that had brown paint on the inside of it. Ten more bottles were added to the baking soda water soup in the large bucket.
  • While Mary did cross stitch and I worked on bottles, we celebrated...something...that required drinking a bottle of autumn olive wine I made in January. It tastes like cranberry raisins, which means it's really good.
    
  • Mary and I watched cedar waxwings in the maple tree above the woodshed pass a maple bud back and forth between them until one finally ate the bud. It's a trick they often perform.
  • A deer snorted at us when the dogs and I walked for the last time down the lane under a full moon. It was near Bluegill Pond and snorted for a long time as it went off to the SW of the pond.

  

  Stacked firewood of 1st row in woodshed.
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

Dec. 5-11, 2021

Weather | 12/5, 31°, 59° | 12/6, 25°, 33° | 12/7, 17°, 33° | 12/8, 25°, 38° | 12/9, 35°, 57° | 2/10, 0.14" rain, 29°, 55° | 12/11, 29°, 43° |

• Sunday, 12/5: Food Planning & Hunting
  
  • Mary did some planning, including making a food menu that better encompasses our own homegrown garden produce, chicken and venison meat. She also did some cross stitching, cleaned the house, made a turkey/rice casserole, and accomplished all of the evening chores.
  • I hunted at a new location. Wind blew out of the west, so I went east, across the dry creek bed, to an old cottonwood tree that leans almost perpendicular to the ground. Years ago, I had a deer stand on it. I thought I'd go up the hill, east of there, next to our east property line, but cedars have grown up so you can't see very far. There are lots of game trails and bed-down spots at the base of these cedars. I ventured a little bit to the north of there, just into the woods where I could see further, and leaned up against a wide oak tree. At 4:10 p.m., I saw the legs, belly, and rump of a deer walking north to south in the grass on the west side of the dry creek bed. I think it was a buck. About 20 minutes after sunset, a small deer walked north to south up the hill from me in the woods. I couldn't see whether it had antlers or not, so I didn't try to shoot. Then, a bigger deer stepped into the woods where the first deer exited. It slowly walked in a semi-circle to the north, then west of me, turned around, and retraced its path out of the woods. Both of these deer should have smelled me, because they were downwind from where I sat. The last deer stepped with sharp and loud foot falls, like deer do when they know you're there. I'm wondering if they know my scent, were wary, but not enough to snort and run away. I only want to bag a small deer, so I never shot at the large one. Besides, it might have been a buck, and antlered deer are illegal to shoot, now. Other animals...lots of squirrels...one that barked at me for a full 20 minutes. I also had 2 big Canada geese fly right over my head.
  • Wind switched to the NW after dark and really picked up with a steady 22 mph blast, and gusts to 38 mph.
  • Yeast is bubbling along nicely in the garlic wine. A quick test and bag squeeze in the evening gave a 1.092 specific gravity, a drop from 1.100. The house smells like a bad Italian restaurant.
    
    
• Monday, 12/6: Got COVID Boosters
  
  • From the living room's south window, I spotted a large bird flying above the trees. Mary grabbed the binoculars and identified it as a golden eagle. We only see them this time of the year as they migrate through our region.
    
  • On a call to the pharmacy at the Quincy, IL, Sam's Club, I discovered we can get COVID booster shots as Missouri residents and appointments aren't necessary, so we drove to Quincy, got the shots, and bought a few things. The young woman administering the shots was very good. More people are wearing masks in Quincy.
    
  • I called Lisa at Mid-Rivers Telephone Cooperative in Glendive, because we were supposed to get directions in October, then in November, on steps to take regarding the pension that Mid-Rivers is dropping. I'll still get it through an annuity. Lisa said they still haven't finished figuring up pension totals for everyone. That job was supposed to be done last week, so she said hopefully this week the job will be complete and letters will go out. I asked how she likes her job. Her response was that it's quiet, with not a lot to do. They've gone from 190 employees to 120, with a goal of reducing down to 90 employees. They're automating everything, so eventually customer questions will be answered without a customer ever needing to talk to a person. That's a 180-degree turn from when I worked there. I predict that eventually Mid-Rivers won't exist.
  • Since it was below 40° outside, I checked the foundation vents I recently bought from Lowe's. They closed within minutes when I took them outside. Great! They work. Brought them in and they opened right away. They will vent a future greenhouse.
  • Katie called us regarding Christmas gift packages sent to us. She was diagnosed today with a corneal ulcer. She got antibiotic drops and artificial tears, and might get a steroid prescribed to her. She bought a 2010 Jeep Liberty as transportation in Anchorage. She was delivering a proposal from UIC to Soldotna for a potential construction job, today.
  • I called FedEx once we got home. One of Katie's packages has been in Quincy since Saturday and they've failed to deliver it for 3 days, straight. A sign is up on State Highway J stating that the road is closed 5 miles from the Highway 156/Highway J junction. Our turn-off is a mile up that road. When I explained the sign to the guy at the FedEx Ground office in Quincy, he figured the temporary drivers running this route don't realize they can still get to our location, and aren't delivering the package. He put a hold on the package, so I can pick it up tomorrow at their Quincy facility. There's another package that was delivered according to USPS tracking, but we never saw it. I'll have to see what happened with that one. You'd think we live in the middle of a desert they way packages can't get to us!
    
    
• Tuesday, 12/7: Package Chasing
  • I spent daylight hours chasing packages and came home empty. First, I asked the Hispanic couple across the road from us if they saw a package. They didn't. Next, I drove to the Ewing post office. Kathy, the post mistress, told me the tracking number I gave her was for someone else's package, which was delivered yesterday to an address east of Ewing. She suggested Katie contact whomever she purchased the item from to get the correct tracking number. I sent Katie a text to this effect. I then drove to Quincy to pick up the package from FedEx Ground. Even though the guy at FedEx I talked to yesterday said they'd pull the package out of the truck, they didn't do that. It's still on the truck running around to be delivered. The woman I emailed directions to couldn't find my directions on her computer, even though the guy I talked to yesterday on the phone saw my directions. So, I wrote out directions, again, this time adding to ignore the sign indicating Highway J is closed. I doubt they'll deliver the package, but I'm sick and tired of wasting my day. This happens every year and it's ending right now! Either items arrive at our home, or they're lost. I don't have time for this nonsense.
    
  • We aren't feeling perfect, due to the COVID booster shots. It's like you're just entering, or just leaving, a sickness. Mary feels worse than me, achy with a headache. My arm hurts, too.
  • A check of the garlic wine showed a specific gravity of 1.067. The yeast is fizzing, nicely.
    
  • I cut out room sizes to scale on graph paper for a new house. Then, Mary and I tried different configurations with our graph paper rooms and came up with a similar arrangement to our original rough draft sketch of a few months ago. The only difference is we will build in 3 stages, making the project hopefully more affordable.
    
    
• Wednesday, 12/8: Harvested 2nd Deer
  
  • Mary cross stitched and did the chores.
  • I got a text from Sandy, the woman who runs a business staging events in Quincy, IL. She has 12 cases of wine bottles for me, and all are bottles that take corks. She'll sell them to me for $70. That's $5.83 a case, or 49 cents a bottle. I said I'd buy them. I pick them up on Friday at 11 a.m.
  • I scrubbed up the 4 coolers I bought last week for $15. They'll be perfect for storing wine.
  • I walked to the Cherry Tree Stand in the NE section of our property at 3 p.m. I heard what seemed like chewing just beyond the cedar trees in front of me the whole time I was in the stand. I saw lots of woodpeckers. Right at sunset (4:41 p.m.), a doe walked through the cedars and up the hill, just below me. I took a right-handed shot and she dropped like a rock. It was a neck shot that hit her in the spine. Other deer ran off that were behind this doe. Mary told me to get a small deer, due to limited freezer space. I failed. She says this is the grandmother of Bambi, not Bambi. It's a large doe (see photo, below). I walked home and got Mary. She and I unloaded firewood out of the wagon, then I fired up the 8N Ford and drove it to the deer. We field dressed it...lots of fat. Deer on our property eat well. We drove it home, cleaned out the body cavity with the garden hose, then hung it in the machine shed. We must get at butchering early tomorrow morning. The forecast calls for 48° by 10 a.m. We now have more than enough venison, so deer hunting ends for me. Missouri's anterless firearms season ends on Sunday.

  

  The doe I harvested today. Lot's of good venison meat!
  

• Thursday, 12/9: The Final Butchering of the Year
  
  • Late last night I labeled the 21 bottles of jalapeno wine and stored them on their sides in a cooler.
    
  • We butchered the doe, today. Before going to bed, last night, the temperature was at 30°, which was great for cooling off the meat. Throughout today's butchering, that meat stayed cool. My shot wiped out all of one shoulder and half of the other. Even so, 35 packages of venison meat came from this very long-bodied deer. We have lots of venison to eat for a year. We feel happy to be done with the yucky job of butchering animals for the year.
    
  • Prior to me finishing up skinning the deer, Mary washed a load of laundry. 
  • She also moved packages of watermelon from the largest freezer to the smaller freezer, which had room after she did two batches of salsa last week, thereby using up several frozen bags of tomatoes, tomatillos, and hot peppers. By moving watermelon, we had room for new venison meat. 
  • Mary also set the kitchen table up for butchering and prepared several freezer zippered bags with necessary wording. The Missouri Department of Conservation requires venison to be labeled with the hunter's name, address, the date the deer is harvested, and the confirmation number sent back to the hunter after the deer is telechecked via a cell phone.
  • Mary swept up a mostly tan wooly worm, then looked up online "wooly worm winter predictions," which told her that this colored wooly worm means we're going to have a very mild winter.
    
  • After butchering clean-up, Mary did chores, and raked leaves, while I moved firewood logs to the splitter and split the wood. I finished after sunset and got my hat light. Mary helped me load the split firewood into the woodshed.
  • FedEx delivered Katie's package that arrived in Quincy on Friday to the neighbors across the gravel road, even though taped to the outside of the box was my emailed directions that included turning north (right) and driving up our lane to our house. The neighbors drove it up to us. We could tell from the outside of the box that it wasn't the item that Katie ordered. Katie talked to the seller, who is sending out the correct item and emailed a prepaid FedEx return shipping label. She forwarded that email to me. I'll send it out when I go to Quincy tomorrow to get my 12 cases of wine bottles.
  • Tonight, the garlic wine's specific gravity is 1.033, dropping from 1.050, when I checked it last night. It should be ready to move to a 5-gallon carboy tomorrow.
    
    
• Friday, 12/10: Wine Bottles & Tornadoes
  
  • Mary baked 4 loaves of bread. She also did some cross stitching.
  • I drove to Quincy and picked up 12 cases of used wine bottles. Rain started to fall right when I loaded the wine bottles. All 12 cases fit in the Cadillac's trunk. Next, I printed out the FedEx label and Katie's invoice at Staples, wrote a note on the invoice and slipped it inside the package containing the fancy bottle capper that must be returned, since it is the wrong item ordered. I taped the package up thoroughly, then added the label on the top. I drove to the FedEx Express office on the north edge of Quincy, and dropped the package off, then drove home, filling the car with gas on the way home.
  • I left the wine bottles in the car after getting home, since rain was falling. It's so nice to be inside and next to a warm woodstove with not a single drip coming through the roof. The new roofing works wonderfully. While doing chores, I stood at the SE corner of the house for several minutes and just smiled, because it looked so nice watching rain run off that roof.
    
  • We watched the 1989 movie, Christmas Vacation.
  • We tried our first bottle of jalapeño wine with omelets for dinner. The wine has mellowed and tastes very good. It tastes best while eating something. I munched on carrots while finishing off the wine.
    
  • Tornadoes swept through St. Charles, MO, in the evening, where Bill lives. He went to a main floor bathroom/laundry area in his building. Nothing happened where he lives. Across the river in Edwardsville, Illinois (an east St. Louis suburb), a tornado hit a large Amazon warehouse and took walls and part of the roof off. As of this morning (12/11/21), two died in that building. The National Weather Service reports that 37 tornadoes touched down in Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Fortunately, all of that occurred about 100 miles south of us.
    
    
• Saturday, 12/11: A Hobby Day
  
  • Mary cross stitched all day.
  • Winemaking filled my day. A specific gravity of 1.013 on the garlic wine was close enough to 1.010 that I moved the wine into a 5-gallon glass carboy, a 750 ml wine bottle, and a 330-ml beer bottle. It is this wine's first racking. We tasted a little of it and the wine was surprisingly good, kind of semi-sweet, as it would be with still some sugar for the yeast to burn up. There is a fruity, floral taste to it. The 3 containers continue to burp CO2 gas, because of the still-active yeast.
  • I moved the 12 cases of wine bottles into the house and checked all of them. Some have labels removed and are cleaned. Most require label removal. All need cleaning. I was able to fit them all into the ground floor, west room closet under the stairs, where I keep winemaking stuff. There are several winter inside days worth of bottle cleanup in my future.
    
  • I racked the parsnip wine from a gallon jug and a wine bottle to a gallon jug and a beer bottle. The process removed a great deal of fines. The specific gravity is exactly 1.000. The wine with fines tasted earthy. We also tasted it without the fines. It had the tang from the lemon, a floral essence, and still a slight earthy taste, but mellow. This is going to be an interesting wine when its done. The wine must went into a brew bucket, where I added one crushed Campden tablet, then into the glassware for its second racking.
  • I put away cleaned, dried, and empty wine bottles and carboys in the west room closet.
  • We heard snow geese flying west to east in the dark as we walked the dogs. They are smart to fly at night. No hunters are shooting are around, then.
  • We read online news accounts and watched a few videos of tornado destruction in the St. Louis area and in Kentucky. Debris from the Amazon building in Ewardsville, IL, was discovered 3 counties away. It all makes me more determined to build a safe room in new house construction.
    

Nov. 28-Dec. 4, 2021

Weather | 11/28, 29°, 43° | 11/29, 29°, 57° | 11/30, 33°, 55° | 12/1, 0.09" rain, 37°, 60° | 12/2, 47°, 61° | 2/3, 37°, 57° | 12/4, 33°, 45° |

• Sunday, 11/28: Bill Leaves, Cutting Firewood & Fast Fermentation
  
  • Bill packed up and left at 1:30 p.m. Initially, his car didn't start, yet he started it yesterday. I gave it a shot of starting fluid, twice. On the second try, it started. Later, after he returned to St. Louis, it started fine.
  • I cut up 2 ash trees that fell down near the cow barn in the center of our property, loaded the cut firewood into the 8N Ford's trailer, and drove the load home. We used some of the ash firewood for our evening fire. It's so much better than the weeping willow wood we've been burning. Willow firewood has the heat content of ice.
  • Mary worked on a cross stitch project and the evening chores.
  • We watched the 2017 movie, The Man Who Invented Christmas, about Charles Dickens writing A Christmas Carol. It's a really good movie.
  • A check of the parsnip wine showed the specific gravity to be 1.020. Fermentation is moving along very quickly. It should be ready to move into a gallon jug tomorrow.
    
    
• Monday, 11/29: Racked Parsnip Wine
  
  • I received a call in the morning from The Home Brewery in Ozark, MO related to an order I made last night for corks, airlocks and wine yeast. He said the yeast is out of stock, but will be in stock in a week. I told him to wait and send it all when the yeast arrives. It was very thoughtful for him to call.
    
  • Mary cross stitched, and watered the garlic planted in the far garden. She also thawed  ingredients for making a batch of salsa, tomorrow.
    
  • A specific gravity check gave me a reading of 1.006 on the parsnip wine, so I racked it into a gallon jug and a 750-ml wine bottle (see photo, below). I added about 90 ml of spring water to top up the wine bottle. The wine must bubbled for a couple hours after I racked it, but died off soon after the racking.
  • I checked the bottles I need for future wine and called a woman with wine bottles she saved for crafting to see if she had any that once had corks in them. Apparently, making "crafty" things out of wine bottles is a thing some women do. After a check, she has only 8 bottles made for corking. We agreed I'd pick them up at her home in Quincy tomorrow at 4:30 p.m.
  • I moved 2 wheelbarrow loads of firewood from the trailer behind the 8N Ford tractor to the woodshed.
  • We ate all Thanksgiving leftovers, except for turkey meat, today.
    

  

  Parsnip wine after 1st racking. Bill says
  it looks like I have too many eggs in the eggnog.
  It needs to go through a whole lot of settling!
  

• Tuesday, 11/30: A Salsa-Making Day
  
  • Two wood ducks flew from the field to the SE of the house, north to Wood Duck Pond, while we walked the dogs this morning. Before we walked, we saw a hawk in a persimmon tree, just east of the house, with blue jays all around it pestering the hawk. It flew off to the east before we opened the door.
  • Mary had a big day preparing and canning a big batch of salsa. She canned 13 quart jars, and 1 pint jar.
    
  • I called a guy who had 4 coolers for sale for $15, which is a good price. He lives in Shelbina, MO, which is 35 miles south of us. I drove the pickup there and got them. After a good cleanup, they're perfect for full wine bottle storage.
    
  • I then drove to Quincy, IL. I returned the foundation vents I bought at Menards. They never closed, even when the temperature was 13 last Friday. I bought new foundation vents at Lowe's. They cost $2 more per vent, but if they work, they're worth it. I got 5 bottles of white grape juice for future garlic winemaking, some hen feed, and bought the 8 bottles from the Kate, the crafting woman, for $5. I bought gas on the way home. It was $2.99 a gallon.
  • I also called a woman who runs a custom event planning business in Quincy. Kate suggested her as someone who has lots of empty wine bottles. This new person is Sandy Blickhan, who runs Something Borrowed. She said she's been working on a big project, involving lots of empty wine bottles, that she's abandoning, so she has a need to get rid of several bottles. She's going into surgery next week, but will gather up all of her bottles that once were corked and give me a call to work out arrangements for me to pick them up. She will let them go for $5 a dozen. That's a great price. New bottles run $15 to $35 a dozen. 
    
  • Mary fixed up turkey meat, potatoes with Ranch dressing, and acorn squash for a nice meal. For dessert, we each ate a quart of thawing muskmelon. I cracked open a bottle of homemade blackberry wine. What a feast!
  • Below is a photo of Mary's Christmas cactus in full bloom.

  

  Mary's Christmas cactus (tree in background).
  

• Wednesday, 12/1: We're Bulging with Salsa
  
  • Mary made her last batch of salsa for the year...2021 batch number 4. It's also the last canning episode for 2021. She canned 13 quarts of salsa, today. The total on the shelves is 46 quarts. We're in the salsa now!
  • I worked on an interesting Christmas project. Hope it works out. That's all I'm going say about that!
  • In the evening, a big flock of Canada geese flew over the house. They were lifting up as they flew over us and you could hear the wind rushing over their wing feathers. One goose squeaked with each wing beat, sounding as though it had a rusty joint.
  • We watched the 1994 movie, Little Women.
    
    
• Thursday, 12/2: Katie Starts New Job Tomorrow
  
  • A text from Katie informed us that she's in Atlanta. Her plane was experiencing mechanical difficulties, so she switched flights, putting her into Anchorage 3 hours late. She got her new job and begins her new work in the UIC Anchorage headquarters tomorrow morning.
  • Mary did a couple loads of laundry, some cross stitch, and vacuumed flies out of  windows. She also did the evening chores.
  • I worked on my Christmas project.
  • I also worked up a new 5-gallon batch of garlic wine. It was a long haul. I started at 2:30 p.m. and ended at 2:30 a.m. I popped 100 bulbs of German extra hardy and Music pink garlic. That produced 465 cloves, which I peeled. I had 5 bad cloves. The good cloves were sliced in half (see photos, below). Then, I ground the 460 good cloves in the food processor instead of slicing them by hand. The ground garlic was placed in a nylon mesh bag. Next, 2.5 gallons of white grape juice and 2 gallons of spring water was added to the brew bucket. The pH was 3.2, so I didn't add acid blend. Five ground Campden tablets went in, along with 5 teaspoons of yeast nutrient. I added 8 pounds, instead of 6 pounds, 10 ounces of sugar called for in the recipe. This gave me a specific gravity of at 1.100, instead of 1.105 to 1.110 prescribed by the recipe. I figured that 14.4% alcohol at a 1.100 specific gravity is fine. The alcohol is 15.1% with a 1.105 specific gravity, or 15.7% at a 1.110 specific gravity. More alcohol does not make the wine better. The brew bucket has a very garlic smell, giving the house a strong odor.
    

460 garlic cloves.

Slicing garlic cloves in warm, silly MU booties.

• Friday, 12/3: Buck, Garlic Wine Yeast, Seed & Tree Ordering
  
  • We saw a limping buck in the west field as we opened the coop to let the chickens out in the morning. He ought to be safe. Tomorrow is the opening day of the firearms anterless deer season.
    
  • Mary washed 2 loads of clothes. She also figured out garden seed requirements for next year.
  • I checked the garlic wine must's pH. It was too basic at a 4.4 reading, so I added 5 teaspoons of acid blend and brought it down to 3.5, which is perfect. I added pectic enzyme, then worked up a yeast starter with Lalvin EC-1118 wine yeast, a champagne yeast. I fed the yeast starter 2 ounces of garlic wine must heated to 95° to 97° throughout the day. The wine's specific gravity was still at 1.100 when I pitched the yeast into the brew bucket 11 hours after adding the pectic enzyme.
  • I worked on my Christmas project for 30 minutes.
    
  • I did online research and decided on getting a Liberty apple tree and a Porter's Perfection crab apple tree. We then ordered garden seeds and apple trees from Fedco. They were out of 2 onion seed varieties and acorn squash seed, so we ordered onion seeds from Territorial Seeds and Table Queen acorn squash seed from Victory Seeds.
  • I also ordered a Missouri Conservation 2022 Natural Events Calendar. 
  • Katie texted that all went well on her first day at the new job in Anchorage. Her first project involves new elementary school construction at Bethel, AK. She said Friday is a good first day for a job, because she can hit the ground running on Monday.
  • Mary and I reviewed online design ideas for building a conservatory, or sunroom/greenhouse into a home.
    
    
• Saturday, 12/4: Doe Deer Season Begins
  
  • Today is the start of firearms anterless deer season. This morning, some dingbat was plinking away with a shot every minute. He was shooting just east of our property line. Such an action makes no sense, when ammunition is nonexistent in area sporting good stores.
    
  • Mary paid bills and worked out adding monies to various savings funds. She washed sheets, made flour tortillas, then chimichangas covered in winter greens for our main meal.
  • I went to the cow barn deer stand to go hunting. It's a cow barn in the tiniest sense. This is a small metal building with a partial concrete floor. Some of the tin covering the building is deteriorating. I lean a deer stand built with a metal ladder on the building's front. The seat of the deer stand lays perfectly on the metal building's roof. Sitting on it, I face east. Wind was blowing from the east, making it a perfect location. I didn't see any deer. Instead, I saw lots of squirrels and a black opossum. They're usually white or tan, not black. I heard splashing in Dove Pond, located just west of the cow barn through cedar trees. At sunset, a flock of ducks blasted off the pond. I think they were teal ducks.
    

Nov. 21-27, 2021

Weather | 11/21, 39°, 55° | 11/22, 21°, 35° | 11/23, 24°, 53° | 11/24, sprinkles, 40°, 57° | 11/25, 0.04" rain, 21°, 29° | 11/26, 13°, 41° | 11/27, 29°, 57° |

• Sunday, 11/21: Autumn Olive Wine Bottling
  
  • Bill and I cleaned up bottles I put in OxiClean about 2 months ago (cutting trees and putting on a roof with a lift got in the way). Those bottles were only supposed to be in that solution for a week. Needless to say, the labels came off easily.
  • We racked the second batch of autumn olive wine I made this year. The specific gravity is still 0.990, giving it a 12.34% alcohol content. The acidity is 0.625 tartaric, which is close enough to 0.650. There were very few fines. We tasted it. The wine contains a good autumn olive taste, but with a tang. It's very smooth. We added 4.75 Campden tablets. The other quarter tablet went into cork soaking solution. We bottled 25 750-ml bottles. We soaked the 3" long solid corks for 3 hours, which wasn't quite long enough. Some of the corks are slightly wider and don't go all the way into the bottles. I re-corked 3 bottles.
  • It was nice to take a day off from deer hunting. A strong NW wind, with gusts over 30 mph, blew all day.
  • Mary cross stitched and did the evening chores.
  • Mary saw a pair of bald eagles flying side-by-side, circling over the house, and calling.
    
  • I built a small fire outside and we cooked up smoked scrambled eggs. We drank a bottle of Bill's strawberry wine. It's very good. We also ate one of the Sweet Dakota Rose watermelons. They are known as a long keeper and, indeed, that's what we experienced. This watermelon was picked in early September and we're eating it the week of Thanksgiving. That's amazing.
  • I texted Katie, asking how she was coping with low Alaska temperatures and she replied that she is sitting in the Atlanta airport. She flew out of Venetie, AK, yesterday around noon. She wrote, "It's so hot down here! It was -26 the morning I left Venetie, and to be honest, I think I was pretty acclimated to it."
    

• Sunday, 11/21 Addendum: Stuff I Forgot
  
  • Bill aired the Minnesota Vikings game via his smart phone and a Bluetooth speaker while we worked on bottling wine. He tuned into KROX, out of Crookston, MN, the same town Katie was born in. It was fun listening to the Vikings beat the Packers and it was a stroll down memory lane listening to radio ads from an area where we once lived. We even heard an ad for a lumber yard in Red Lake Falls, MN, the exact town we lived in from 1990 to '92.
  • I worked up a recipe from 2 other parsnip wine recipes.
    

• Monday, 11/22: Shot a Young Button Buck
  
  • I didn't like the parsnip wine recipe I developed, so after talking about it to Mary & Bill, I looked up ideas online. Most parsnip wine recipes are from the UK. I like one by a woman in New Brunswick, Canada. Her recipe is simple, a factor I prefer.
  • Mary made a delicious venison stew and biscuits meal.
  • I left for the Wood Duck Deer Stand at 3:10 p.m. and was on the stand and loaded my rifle by 3:25 p.m. The air was very calm, with a hint of a breath of air out of the southwest. I didn't see a thing, other than an army of squirrels running around like kids at a county fair's amusement ride section. They made a ton of noise. As the sun faded away, I heard turkeys flying into trees south of me. At 5:10, just five minutes shy of the end of legal shooting time, I heard loud footsteps west of me. It took awhile before I saw 2, maybe 3 deer. The leader, stood still and looked up my way on the far edge of the dry creek bed. While looking through the rifle's scope, I noticed the deer didn't have a rack. It walked across the dry creek bed toward me. I took a right-handed shot and hit it through the shoulders. It dropped instantly. After a couple hours of silence, other than raucous squirrels, the report of my 30:30 rifle firing was extremely loud. The deer turns out to be a button buck (see photo, below). The meat will be very tender and good.
  • After telechecking the deer in through my phone, I texted Mary and Bill that I got it, then walked home. They were dressed for helping field dress a deer as I walked through the door. They headed out while I changed to lighter clothes, poured gas in the 8N Ford tractor, and drove it to Bramble Field, just SW of where I shot the deer. Mary and I field dressed it and hauled it through the woods, while Bill held flashlights, knives, and saws for us. After driving it home in the trailer behind the tractor, we washed the body cavity out and hung it up from a machine shed rafter. It's below freezing, tonight, which is a perfect temperature for hanging a deer. We'll be butchering venison in the morning.

  

  A button buck I harvested at 5:10 p.m. today.
  

• Tuesday, 11/23: Deer Butchering
  
  • We butchered the button buck deer today, and added 27 packages of venison into the freezer. With venison from last year, we have a grand total 58 venison meals in the freezer. Mary says if I get another deer, it has to be a young one, because we're limited on freezer space. This was a deer with a long body, which gives us more meat. With an overnight low of 24°, we had nice, cool meat today. It looked like very nice venison. I deposited the carcass in the north woods for our wildlife friends.
  • Today was the last day of firearms deer season. Anterless season runs Dec. 4-12. I might hunt during that season, but I don't have to, since we have enough meat.
  • Bill washed 2 loads of his clothes and bedding. It's cheaper for him to wash at our house.
    
  • We watched the movie Forrest Gump, which was Bill's choice. 
  • We enjoyed some beer Bill brought with him, as we watched the movie. One was a Russian Kölsch beer and the other was a vanilla porter. Both tasted good.
    

• Wednesday, 11/24: Smoke & Shopping
  
  • I opened the curtains upon waking and there was a young red-tailed hawk in a walnut tree in the east yard. A cardinal and several blue jays were pestering it. The hawk flew off to the east the moment Mary stepped onto the porch.
  • As we walked down our lane for the morning dog walk, we smelled smoke from burning grass and a few black pieces of grass floated down from the sky on a strong south wind. Concerned some idiot lit off a fire in gusty wind, we jumped in the car, drove east, then south to Highway 156, then west to try to find the fire. We didn't find it. Then, we drove back to near the house and took a small gravel road south until it turns into a dirt road. Still we couldn't find the fire, so we went home. Bill and I later saw the smoke from a fire lit by a farmer about 2-3 miles due south of us. Today was a poor day to be burning anything.
    
  • Bill and I went shopping in Quincy. It was Edgewood Orchard's last day of the season, so we bought a 1/2 peck of Jonathan apples from them. I got items to make the greenhouse on our south-facing porch at Menards. We got another turkey to eat later in the year from Sam's Club. We also got veggies for the Thanksgiving meal from a couple food stores. The whole town of Quincy was packed with shoppers.
  • Mary baked 2 pumpkin pies and several flour tortillas while we were gone. She also did some cleaning.
  • After getting home and finishing evening chores, Mary fixed up chimichangas with fresh winter greens. 
  • We tried the first bottle of 2021 grapefruit wine. It's very good. The wine tastes like alcoholic grapefruit juice. Bill says it has an olive taste to it.
  • Mary whipped up some homemade cranberry sauce for tomorrow's Thanksgiving meal. I felt lucky enough to be around to lick the spatula...yum, yum!
    
  • Light rain is falling tonight. It's so nice to have a solid roof over our heads.
    

• Thursday, 11/25: Thanksgiving Day
  
  • Mary made a glorious Thanksgiving Day meal with a 20-pound turkey, homegrown sweet potatoes and beans from our garden in the green bean casserole. There were mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, and Mary's cranberry sauce from a recipe she dreamed up, which makes it extra good. We also had radishes, green onions, cauliflower, broccoli, celery, carrots, and olives, all to be drawn through dip Mary made from whole milk Greek yogurt, Miracle Whip, and ranch dressing mix. Bill selected blackberry wine, which he said matched the turkey similar to the way cranberry sauce goes well with turkey. He was right. After two big helpings of everything, we didn't have room for the pumpkin pie, again, made from a homegrown pumpkin.
  • While Thanksgiving meal prep took place, I used info from a Popular Mechanics article signifying baking soda and water as the best way to take labels off wine bottles. It does work, although I had one bottle label that seemed like it was put on with Contact cement. I cleaned labels off 10 bottles.
  • After eating, Mary cleaned meat off the turkey for future meals. Mary and I marched the turkey carcass to the north field and left it for the wild, furry friends.
  • Bill helped me start a brew of parsnip wine. I scrubbed parsnips from our garden while he cut out bad parts and sliced them. Our garden parsnips gave us only 2 pounds. We added 2 store-bought parsnips to get 3 lbs., 14 oz., which is close enough to the 4 pounds needed for a 1-gallon batch of wine. We boiled them for 15 minutes, until the slices were soft, but not mushy. We all tasted them and agreed parsnips aren't worth growing, again. After dipping out the parsnip slices and pouring the liquid through a wire mesh strainer, we added a can of apple juice concentrate, zest and juice from 2 lemons, and a pound of golden raisins that Bill chopped up, which we put in a nylon mesh bag. A crushed Campden tablet went into the mix, along with a teaspoon of pectic enzyme. We covered it to let it sit overnight.
  • Katie called while we were making parsnip wine. She made apple crisp, a caramel sauce, and added ice cream, which she took to a turkey dinner party. She came back with turkey meat and trimmings. She should get notice by Monday of getting hired for her new UIC job in Anchorage. She's planning on moving her pets north via air flights in March. Katie also plans on selling most of her belongings in Gulfport, such as vehicles, and picking up newer items in Anchorage. The date of her medical work in Seattle for her burns is Jan. 14th. Flights haven't been arranged for that, yet, but I'll be with her in Seattle. They'll use lasers to knock out hard tissue in burn areas, which stops itching that she has today. She'll be knocked out, so that's where I come in, to help her get home to a hotel room after the work is performed. Katie said they wrapped up the work in Venetie, AK, and the school district was happy with the repair done to their school. She said they worked through several sub-zero days while putting steel on the school's roof.
    
  • I put 29 wine corks into a bowl of water to soak for corking jalapeno wine, tomorrow.
  • Mary, Bill, and I played Michigan Rummy from 9 p.m. until around 1:15 a.m. Mary kicked our butts. Twice, she won on bad hands of cards, leaving both Bill and I high and dry with handfuls of paying cards. Her winning ways were uncanny! At the end of the game, the combination of Bill's chips and my chips were less than all of Mary's chips. We had a lot of fun and laughs. Midway through the game, we ate pumpkin pie.
    

• Friday, 11/26: Dusting Books & Handling Wine
  
  • While opening up chickens at the coop in the morning, the hens put up a fit, then Mary spotted a young red-tailed hawk in tree branches south of the coop. At first, the hawk looked like a broken branch, but when the branch flew, we knew it was a hawk. I chased it southward and noticed major animal trails in the south pasture.
    
  • Mary stayed out of the kitchen all day, a reprieve from yesterday's kitchen work.
  • She dusted and cleaned out the books and book shelves in the living room, since parts of them become smothered by a Christmas tree for a month.
  • Bill and I finished the parsnip wine and bottled the jalapeño wine. 
  • Concerning the parsnip wine, we added a strong cup of tea (2 teabags in a cup), a teaspoon of yeast nutrient, 2 quarts of water (for a total of 5 quarts), and only 13 ounces of sugar. Parsnip wine recipes call for 1.75 to 2 pounds of sugar per gallon, which would produce knockout amounts of alcohol. Specific gravity initially was 1.074, with a goal of 11% alcohol. The pH was over 4.4, which is way too basic, so I added 2.5 teaspoons of tartaric acid, which brought the pH down to 3.4. I created a yeast starter with Red Star Premier Classique (Montrachet) yeast, adding wine must to it throughout the day. I pitched the yeast starter into the brew bucket 7.5 hours later and by bedtime, a nice aroma already penetrated the pantry. The pH when I added yeast was 1.079.
  • Bill and I washed and sanitized 29 bottles. We racked the jalapeño wine from 2 containers into a bucket. Since the specific gravity was unchanged, at 0.990, for 13.76% alcohol, we elected not to add Campden tablets or potassium sorbate. Hardly any fines were at the bottom of the carboy and half-gallon jug. It tasted wonderful...hot, but really good. We had 600 ml left after bottling, plus 3 cups with fines in it. Between the 3 of us, we drank all but 1 cup with fines. This is not a wine to be slugged down. It's a sipping wine that certainly heats up your insides. The 3-inch long solid corks soaked for 18 hours, which is too long. If I didn't get them into the bottles all the way, they simply oozed back out of the bottle's neck. I threw away 3 that couldn't be squeezed tight in the handheld corker after a day and a half of soaking. We corked 25 bottles of jalapeño wine.
    

• Saturday, 11/27: Waffles, Wine, Pizza, & Christmas Tree
  
  • Since we had turkey omelets yesterday morning, this morning I made waffles. It was a smokey time of it. Two smoke alarms went off.
  • I racked the pear wine for the 3rd time. It's very clear, yet after draining the carboy, the leftovers held a large amount of fines. We had a small taste test. It's marvelous and the best pear wine I've ever made. The specific gravity is 0.999, compared to 1.000 the last time I racked it. The wine went right back into the 6.5-gallon carboy, after I cleaned and sanitized it. I added 1 cup of spring water to top the liquid up to the neck of the carboy.
  • A check of the parsnip wine showed good fermentation and a specific gravity of 1.070, down from 1.079 when the yeast went in yesterday.
  • Mary got out all of the Christmas tree boxes and decoration tubs.
  • Bill made 3 pizzas. While Bill did this, he played Patrick Stewart reading A Christmas Carol on his bluetooth speaker. We also drank an IPA beer Bill supplied made by Breckinridge Brewery in Colorado.
  • Katie texted that she bought Christmas presents and seven boxes are arriving here to our address.
    
  • Mary, Bill, and I put up the Christmas tree while listening to Christmas music and sipping China Yunnan tea. Great fun was had by all.
    

Nov. 14-20, 2021

Weather | 11/14, 33°, 39° | 11/15, 30°, 57° | 11/16, 29°, 61° | 11/17, 0.01" rain, 47°, 50° | 11/18, 26°, 40° | 11/19, 19°, 45° | 11/20, 26°, 55° |

• Sunday, 11/14: Preparing Lift for Departure
  
  • Northwest wind gusts up to 41 mph meant for a poor hunting day and I didn't hunt all day.
  • On the first morning dog walk, Plato caught a whiff of something and was upset through the entire walk. Then, on the way to the house, Mary and I caught the smell of a skunk. While dumping ashes from the woodstove, I noticed the strongest skunk smell near the electric fence of the near garden, right next to the hydrant. We think a skunk got zapped by the electric fence, let go with a little of its stink, and rambled off.
    
  • Mary finished moving books from the downstairs west bedroom to the sunroom.
  • I drove to Prairieland near LaBelle, twice, bought diesel in 5 gallon increments, and topped off the fuel tank in the lift that will be taken away tomorrow morning. After over $6000 in rental fees over 6 weeks, we won't have that 11-ton beast on our property, anymore.
    
  • I moved and stacked good shingles that were in the lift's basket to appropriate locations in the machine shed.
    
  • I took the garden hose and a stiff scrub brush to both sides of the 8 DuraDeck panels. Then, Mary and I loaded them into the pickup.
  • I did online research on building deer stands and blinds. It's time I developed better concealment possibilities for hunting deer.
    
    
• Monday, 11/15: Mom's 87th Birthday
  • I talked with Mom this evening. She had an eventful birthday and was even taken to dinner to a new restaurant in Glendive, MT. Mom heard from lots of relatives and friends, which pleased her, immensely. We talked for about an hour about lots of things.
  • The United Rental truck driver was scheduled to pick up the lift between 10 a.m. and noon. He knocked on our door at 8:15 a.m. I knew he'd be early, since he always is early, but this is earlier than I expected. He drove the lift down the lane, loaded it, and left.
  • I grabbed receipts, tied drip flashing that I bought, but never used, into the back of the pickup, and drove to Quincy. I fueled at Fastlane. It cost $65 to put 21 gallons in the truck. Gas was $3.09 a gallon. I got credit at Menards for the flashing and 11 tubes of roofing cement that I returned. I dropped off the DuraDeck panels at Sunbelt Rentals and received credit back for 2 weeks of rental for the panels.
  • Mary did 2 loads of laundry and dusted and sorted books.
  • After lunch, I walked to Bobcat Deer Blind in the north woods and watched squirrels bounce around in leaves all afternoon. I heard a deer snort at me out of sight to the east, but never saw it. After sunset, I kept hearing footsteps, but couldn't see the dastardly deer. It turned out to be an opossum heading for the creek bed below me. I went home. After 2 days, I've fired zero bullets. Mary said, "Think of all of the money you're saving."
  • Mary mowed the grass immediately north of the house.
  • I'm not hunting tomorrow morning, because if I shot a deer, we'd have to butcher it in 70° temperatures. That's too hot! Temps below 40° are preferable.
    
    
• Tuesday, 11/16: One Shot, No Deer
  
  • After updating the checkbook, I checked to make sure the rental refunds came through. They didn't. I'll be checking daily and if I don't see anything in a week, I'll be called to find out why I'm not getting a refund.
  • Mary washed a load clothes.
  • With a SSE wind blowing, I went to the Cherry Deer Stand at the NE area of our property. I didn't see anything for about an hour. Then, a doe ripped by, running SE to NW, followed by a grunting buck with short horns. A few seconds later, a bigger buck ran into sight, did a loop in front of me, then ran through the cedar trees below me, crashed through a fence and disappeared. Not more than a few minutes later, a just legal buck appeared, turned sideways to me, so I shot. It ran to the north and I thought I got it. Two more bucks showed, one with a huge rack. I let them run off. It definitely was a day of horny deer when one doe running by raised the alert sign for 5 bucks. I got out of the stand and wandered around, but never saw any blood or any sign of the deer. I walked back home and got Mary. Together, we looked everywhere near the Cherry Deer Stand, but didn't see a thing. Evidently, I pulled the rifle when I squeezed off the shot, and completely missed the deer. It was probably a good thing. Venison from bucks in a lather during rut tastes like tough leather. The deer shooting gods helped me out, today.
    
  • By pulling Mary away for a half an hour to look for a nonexistent deer, she wasn't able to rake up grass she mowed around our compost bins and in the south part of the far garden. She wants to put that grass over the rows of planted garlic.
  • I weedwhacked tall grass down on a 100-foot path just west of the Bartlett pear tree, tacked up a target and sighted in the 30:30 rifle...something I should have done before going hunting, but didn't have the time. The first shot was in the ring just outside the bullseye. I raised the scope up 2 clicks. The second shot was in the bullseye. It wasn't that far off. I definitely pulled the gun as I shot at the buck, today. It's sighted in, now, so I know for sure it wasn't a gun malfunction, just a dipshit human shooting the gun.
  • Mom says they experienced horrible winds in Eastern Montana, today. She said wind blew a semi over. A check online reveals they had gusts to 65 mph.
  • Mary scared off a flock of Bob White quail when she came rattling home with the hand truck, after taking the garbage can down to the end of our lane.
  • Bill sent us the following photo, taken by Paul Friz, a fellow member of the Truman State University Astronomy Club, of which Bill was a member. Bill says Friz works at Langley research and is a cool guy to follow on Facebook. The photo is of the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii.

  

  Kilauea & night sky, by Paul Friz.
  

• Wednesday, 11/17: Shopping in Quincy
  
  • We drove to Quincy for a shopping trip. When we left home, rain was falling. We think that was the only rain that fell at home. In Quincy, we ran into more rain. We made 12 stops and returned home 4.5 hours after leaving for our shopping trip. Yes, Bill, we shopped like the Navy Seals taking out Osama bin Laden.
  • Fortunately, we got home in time to get the chickens put away in their coop well before darkness fell. Amber literally smiled when we let her out of the house. I emptied the Cadillac while Mary did most of the evening chores.
  • The rain and a strong NNW wind meant deer hunting would have been miserable. We heard one shot after sunset from property to the north of us. Otherwise, it was quiet.
  • The following photo Katie took of the Aurora Borealis in the sky over Venetie, AK a couple nights ago.

  

  Northern Lights above Venetie, AK, by Katie Melvin.
  

• Thursday, 11/18: Second Shot, No Deer
  
  • Mary cleaned house, today.
  • I didn't get up early to hunt. Instead, I went to the cedar trees NE of Swim Pond for a couple hours starting at noon. A strong WNW wind veered to NNW in the 2 hours I sat leaned up against the trunk of a cedar tree. There are plenty of tracks in the trail that goes down to the base of the pond's dam. I didn't see anything but a squirrel.
  • After lunch and at 3 p.m., I walked to the Bobcat Deer Blind. A deer spooked and ran north that was standing on the trail to Bobcat. At sunset, 2 deer downwind of me snorted and ran east. At about 5:10 and with only 9 minutes left of legal shooting time, 3 does came down the valley north of me, crossed the dry creek bed and ran up the valley just west of me. I took a shot and missed, again. I just can't hit the broadside of a barn this year. I searched up the hill and didn't find anything. I walked home, shed clothes, grabbed a flashlight and searched the woods all the way to the west field...nothing. I've shot at moving deer in the past and hit them, but I sure can't seem to do it this year. Two shots and no venison for me as of today.
  • I saw a pileated woodpecker in the north woods while hunting. It was really loud and quite large. I also watched a hawk fly through trees, tipping sideways to dodge branches, then land in the top of a very large oak tree. Mary says it was probably Cooper's hawk, that has rounded wings, enabling it to navigate well through timber.
  • The full moon was rising to the east and through the trees just before I saw the 3 does.
  • I read today that the infrastructure bill recently signed into law raises federal infrastructure spending to its highest share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) since the early 1980s. Who was our U.S. President in the early '80s? Ronald Reagan. Republicans in the 1980s had no problem approving infrastructure spending. But, it seems to be a problem, today. I call it yellow-bellied and two-faced. Der Führer said "Nein!" so most U.S. House GOP lemmings followed suit. That's not an impressive action.
    
    
• Friday, 11/19: Two Stints Sitting On Plywood, Viewing Deer
  
  • I got up at 4:30 a.m., ate 2 pieces of toast, and put on my winter gear. Mary walked dogs and caught the end of the lunar eclipse.
    
  • I left the house at 5:30 and walked to the Cherry Deer Stand to the NE. The moon was full and shining brightly in the west. When it was just starting to lighten, but I could barely see (well before legal shooting time), I saw 2 deer walking quietly from north to south a few feet to my east. A flock of small ducks flew over and landed in Swim Pond, south of that deer stand. For over an hour, I heard them splashing around in the water. Right as the sun started rising, a buck with only 4 points on its rack, in other words, not legal to shoot, walked out into the open just east of me, and stood there for about 20 minutes surveying things. He was a nicely filled out animal with beautiful markings. I was glad he wasn't legal. He gets to live another year. Occasionally, he raised his nose and sniffed the air. I think he was getting faint wisps of my scent. Finally, he walked off to the north. I returned home by 8 a.m. 
  • On the way home, a huge great horned owl lifted off from a bare grass spot in the north field and flew west, to the north woods. It had a huge wingspan.
    
  • Mary washed the curtains, then washed the inside of all house windows. After the curtains dried a little, she brought them in, ironed them, and hung them back up.
  • I replaced the storm door latch.
    
  • I left the house at 1 p.m. and went back to the Cherry Deer Stand. A strong south to SE wind blew, with gusts to 22 mph. I never saw a deer, but I heard deer snorts 2 different times, from deer downwind, or north of me, who smelled me on the wind. Something was rustling around beyond the cedar trees south of me, but I never saw what type of animal was making the noise. A big flock of Canada geese flew over during this rustling. I walked home at 5 p.m., with a very sore butt from sitting on a piece of plywood for hours.
  • We enjoyed a bottle of 2021 dandelion wine (see photo, below), celebrating wrapping Christmas presents the earliest we've ever accomplished this task. The wine tastes very good. Mary says the wine begins with a tang, and then moves through a warm phase, from the ginger. It finishes with a dandelion floral taste.

  

  2021 Dandelion Wine...it's yummy!
  

• Saturday, 11/20: Pig-Pen Goes Hunting
  
  • I didn't get up early to go deer hunting. After the roof job, I'm tired, these days.
    
  • Mary washed sheets.
  • Bill showed up at 12:30 p.m. He's here for a week.
  • I walked to the Southeast Cedar Deer Blind at 1:30 p.m. Even though I didn't see deer, I sure heard them. I felt as though I was Pig-Pen from the comic strip Peanuts going hunting. Deer snorted from far away to the east of me, to the west of me, and to the north of me. Then, after sunset, a shot rang out. It was the guy (nephew of the owner) on the metal deer stand just east of our property and next to Wood Duck Pond. All of the deer might have been snorting from his scent. The end of legal shooting time was 5:18 p.m. I packed it up and left then. I thought I was hearing deer moving around in the woods east of me, but when I left, I realized it was a rabbit. Squirrels are thick in those woods. Lespodeza is growing south of that area, where deer once moved around. I don't think they like moving through lespodeza and we need to work to get rid of it, because lespodeza is taking over our property, along with cedar trees.
  • Mary and Bill raked up grass she cut a couple days ago and used it as a mulch over top of the newly-planted garlic.
  • We all ate nachos and watched the 2019 movie, 1917, about World War I.