Feb. 21-27, 2021

Weather | 2/21, 0.02" mist, 20°, 37° | 2/22, 27°, 46° | 2/23, 31°, 56° | 2/24, 32°, 46° | 2/25, 21°, 45° | 2/26, 0.02" rain, 23°, 49° | 2/27, 0.01" rain, 31°, 56° |

• Sunday, 2/21: Heavy Mist
  
  • While bad weather roared across Iowa, north of us, we experienced a day of only heavy mist. Snow levels are shrinking.
    
  • Mary dusted 5 shelves of books in the sun room. She also did some cross stitching.
    
  • The specific gravity of the grapefruit wine was 1.032 at 1 p.m. and 1.028 at 10 p.m. It's getting close to a move into a carboy with an airlock. It tastes and smells very good.
  • Mary saw a barred owl in the Kieffer pear tree, west of the living room window, towards dusk.
    
  • We played a game of Scrabble. I won, but I cheated. An online look reveals that any combination of letters is an acronym...ha, ha, ha. We agreed that online checks and acronyms are outlawed in future Scrabble games. Other Scrabble cheating methods (Melvin Rules) are allowed.
    
    
• Monday, 2/22: Big Snow Melt
  
  • Our snow is melting a great deal now that temperatures are well above freezing.
  • Mary cooked up the last pumpkin that we raised last summer and froze 4 quarts of pumpkin meat. She also did 2 loads of laundry, and finished cleaning book shelves in the sun room.
  • I walked through the woods, immediately north, south, and west of the house looking for dead trees to saw up for firewood. Critter tracks are everywhere. I found some nice firewood trees.
    
  • The grapefruit wine's specific gravity was 1.016 at noon at 1.014 at 8 p.m. I'm sure I'll be siphoning the must into glass jugs tomorrow.
  • Our water pressure is dropping, so Mary filled 13 plastic gallon jugs, so we have water if it stops running from the tap altogether.
    
    
• Tuesday, 2/23: Faucet Dribbles
  
  • We still have running water...barely. I called the Knox County Water District #1. Knox County is west of us. They supply water to us that comes from Mark Twain Lake, located about 50 miles due south of us. I was told several people are without water or have low water pressure in a wide swath and a crew is looking to find the leak. At bedtime, we still had water, but it was about an eighth of what we usually see for pressure.
  • Mary was going to wash clothes, due to warm temperatures for drying outside, but didn't with hardly any water. I coined a little ditty for our situation..."Trickle, trickle, little water. You aren't running like you oughter!"
    
  • The grapefruit wine's specific gravity was at 1.004 and it should be moved to an airlocked glass container at 1.010, so since the move was overdue, I transferred the wine must into a gallon glass jug and a clear glass wine bottle (see photo below). By using 1 of my new #2 stoppers, I was able to fit an airlock on the wine bottle. If I had a clear glass beer bottle, I could have racked even more wine must. There was a little less than a full wine bottle left, so Mary and I drank the rest (see photo of happy taste tester below). It's very good and much better than last year's grapefruit wine attempt.
  • Mary dusted 2 shelves of living room books.
  • Mary also sorted bad garlic out of our garlic supply, eliminating about a third of the bulbs. Mary said she's impressed with this crop, because it's usually shot by now.
  • I vacuumed Asian lady bugs and flies from the inside of house windows, twice.

2021 grapefruit wine's 1st racking.

Oh, woe is me...tasting the wine dregs.

• Wednesday, 2/24: Wildlife Abounds
  
  • After walking the dogs this morning, we heard a coyote howling in the north field, very close to our house. We usually don't hear coyotes howling during the day.
  • While eating breakfast, we saw either a bald eagle fly across the west field twice, or 2 bald eagles.
  • While walking to the woods to cut firewood, we saw a mourning cloak butterfly.
    
  • This evening, we saw a bunch of snow geese flying east to west. Mary saw some prior to our big snow and cold temperatures, but this is the first batch we've seen since the warm up.
    
  • We walked down our lane to the south of the house and cut firewood from dead trees and limbs in the woods just south of Bluegill Pond. Mary stacked the cut firewood on branches. We'll pick it up in the morning when the ground is frozen. The ground looked relatively dry, but after walking through a spot several times, water was oozing down the newly walked-on trail. 
  • We spotted one cherry tree where you could see how a lightening strike sizzled the bark off in a swirling pattern from the tip to the base of the tree. Woodpecker holes were drilled into the tree. One hole had a mouse nest in it. I didn't cut it down, because live green branches were showing at its top. Cherry trees might look dead when they're still alive.
    
  • I also spotted a mounded up pile of mud, kind of resembling an ant hill, in the tiny stream in the heart of the trees. This is home to a type of crawfish that lives here in Missouri.
    
  • Around 11 a.m., we started to see our water pressure go back up. It dropped again, but after we returned from cutting firewood, it was near full strength. We also had our 3-week supply of garbage get picked up...YAHOO! We ran out of garbage cans with tight-fitting lids.
    
  • Katie's birthday and Father's Day gift to me arrived via UPS. It's a sound bar and sub-woofer sound system for our TV.
    
    
• Thursday, 2/25: Firewood Day
  
  • We got up with the first shades of sunrise red showing on eastern clouds, lit a fire, ate an oatmeal breakfast, then drove the 8N Ford tractor and trailer to our stacked pile of firewood, picked it up, drove it back to the machine shed, and stacked wet, dry, big to-be-split logs and kindling branches of firewood into appropriate piles. We finished at 9 a.m., right before frost started going out of the ground turning it to mush.
    
  • Mary did 2 loads of laundry and hung them on the outside line.
    
  • I racked the gallon jug of pumpkin wine into a new jug to remove fines. Specific gravity is at 0.994, which puts alcohol levels at 13%. The wine is dark, yet clear, so I added a crushed Campden tablet. I bottled 4 bottles and one 3/4 of a 750 ml bottle, which I put into the fridge. If I had a few beer bottles, I could bottle the last partial into a full bottle. Mary and I tasted the fines. It has a fairly strong alcoholic flavor that shifts into tasting the dark raisins and finishes into the pumpkin taste. You cannot taste the cinnamon, so I'll need to add more in the next batch. Also, I should drop sugar content to lower alcohol levels. With aging, this wine should be very good.
    
  • Mary spotted 2 red-tailed hawks circling high above us. They looked like they were into a courtship dance.
    
  • Mary did more cross stitch while waiting for Mr. Wine to get out of the kitchen.
    
  • We cut up a white oak tree for firewood that was leaning into other trees SW of the house on the edge of the south timber and stacked it on the grass, so we can pick it up tomorrow morning when the ground is frozen. Afterwards, I thoroughly cleaned the chainsaw.
    
    
• Friday, 2/26: Freeze to Thaw
  
  • We were up at sunrise, again, to eat a grapefruit (for me) and a glass of water (for Mary). Then, I fired up the tractor, we loaded the trailer with the firewood I cut, and stacked it in appropriate piles. The ground was nice and frozen, allowing us to easily move a heavy load of firewood. It became thawed and gooshie as the day transpired.
    
  • I filled out the county's property tax form and mailed it.
    
  • Mary and I inspected the planted garlic. A few green shoots are just starting to show.
    
  • There were several Vs of snow geese flying very fast overhead, from east to west, this morning.
    
  • Mary did 2 loads of laundry, and made a venison General Tso dish for our main meal.
    
  • I set up the TV sound bar and subwoofer speaker that Katie got me for my birthday. It has amazing sound.
    
  • We watched the first Pirates of the Caribbean 2003 movie, because it has booming sound and music. What an experience with this sound system. Back when we got this DVD, we watched it on an old tube-type TV. We've finally caught up with the rest of the world.
  • A little light rain fell after dark.
    
    
• Saturday, 2/27: Working on Fruit Trees
  
  • Mary pruned the fruit trees and blueberry bushes. The tree that takes the longest time pruning is the Sergeant crab apple tree, which involves branches that spread out over 30 feet. She snipped, sawed, and painted pruning wound sealer on that tree for 2 hours. She did the same work on 2 Bartlett pear trees, the Jonathan apple tree, the Esopus Spitzenburg apple tree, 2 Stayman Winesap apple trees, 3 pie cherry trees, 1 sweet cherry tree, and 4 blueberry bushes. There are 2 pie cherry trees yet to prune.
    
  • I put an old bar and an old chain on the chainsaw so I could cut just above the ground and not dull a newer chain. I started cutting down small cherry trees surrounding our largest pie cherry tree. The chain grew loose. Upon trying to tighten it, I noticed I couldn't tighten it further without removing a link, so I grabbed the other old chain. It was very dull, so I sharpened it. I then filed down rakers in front of each cutter of that chain, so it will bite correctly, a procedure I learned from hand-filing chainsaws. It cut like a champ while finishing sawing down the little cherry trees...there were probably 50 of these little guys. Now the big cherry tree has less water competition and lower branches that can breathe. Plus, Mary can get to it to prune it, and we can mow under and around it.
    
  • I cleaned the chainsaw. It was full of dead grass from cutting so low to the ground.
  • Several Vs of snow geese flew overhead. We heard our first killdeer and red-winged blackbirds, today. We also saw our first robins.
  • A birthday card Mom sent 11 days ago finally arrived. The U.S. Postal Service is now about as good as it was several decades ago.
    
  • I reviewed inexpensive roofing ideas.