Feb. 7-13, 2021

Weather | 2/7, 3" snow, 0.22" moisture, -8°, 5° | 2/8, skiff snow, 0.03" moisture, 0°, 9° | 2/9, 3°, 15° | 2/10, 2" snow, 0.11" moisture, 5°, 15° | 2/11, 1°, 19° | 2/12, -3°, 13° | 2/13, skiff snow, 0.01" moisture, -7°, 5° |

• Sunday, 2/7: Snow
  • Snow fell all day. We haven't seen a pile-up of snow like this for a couple years. We kept chickens inside the coop, changing water regularly, and keeping the electric heater in the coop on throughout the day.
  • In past years, we always see on Super Bowl Sunday coyote hunters driving the gravel road, with their hounds baying throughout the country. Everything is wrong about the way they hunt. They drive country roads with their windows down, ready to shoot from the road onto private property. Their dogs trespass across everyone's land. Shooting across, or from, a highway is illegal, yet they do it. Fortunately, today it was too cold for the little he-men to go pickup hunting with the windows rolled down. GOOD!
  • Mary made a wonderful minestrone soup. There's is nothing better than a good soup on a cold winter day.
  • I swam through gobs of online winemaking blogs.
  • We listened to the Super Bowl on the radio while playing a game of Rummy. Mary soundly defeated me. The team we wanted to win, the Kansas City Chiefs, lost to the great football messiah, Tom Brady, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 31-9.
  • A late night check of the autumn olive wine showed a specific gravity of 1.001, so tomorrow I'll rack the wine to draw yeast cells in the lees off the wine and help end fermentation.
    
    
• Monday, 2/8: Second Day of Single-Digit Cold
  
  • Latitudinal geography significantly alters attitudes about weather. At above 64° latitude in Fairbanks, AK, schools started thinking about keeping kids home when temperatures entered the -35° range and us college students walked to classes even if it was -50°. Here at 40° latitude, schools close with temps in the single digits above zero range. In Roseau, MN, at latitude 48°, road graders, front end loads, and dump trucks scraped up, loaded, and hauled away snow that fell overnight on town streets almost every morning. They'd start around 3-4 a.m. and have it all cleaned up by 8. Snow days, where kids stayed home from school, were rare. Here, a half inch of snow results on no school. I saw a piece on KHQA, a Quincy TV station, showing how a wet T-shirt will freeze in minutes in subzero temperatures. What idiot would be outside with a wet T-shirt when it's below zero? Such a piece wouldn't be newsworthy in Fairbanks for Roseau, but it is here, where below zero is a rare event.
  • I racked the autumn olive wine to a new glass carboy (see photo below) and added 4 crushed Campden tablets and 3.5 grams of potassium sorbate to stop fermentation. The specific gravity was 1.000. The remaining red lees were fizzing in the bottom of the carboy after wine was removed (see photo below). The resulting wine is quickly clearing as yeast and material settles. The only factor keeping the wine must pink was fermentation bubbling berry bits to the surface. Mary and I tasted the wine. It tastes great, but like no other taste imaginable. Autumn olive wine is unique.
  • On the last daytime walk of the dogs, we watched an American kestrel fly overhead. Deer tracks are everywhere in the snow.
    
  • We watched the last 2 episodes and extras of the 5th season of Downton Abbey.

Racked autumn olive wine, (1st carboy, left; 2nd carboy, right).

Remaining lees fizzing after racking.

• Tuesday, 2/9: A Snowy Dessert
  
  • Mary made a persimmon pudding dessert. It's really quite good. Snow reminds us of it, because in 2011, when it snowed 18 inches, the deepest snowfall seen around here (they called it Snowpocalypse), Mary first made this dessert, which we ate at intervals while shoveling snow.
  • I texted Katie throughout the day. She's heading north the beginning of March, instead of today, which was originally planned. The reason in Katie's words, "I guess the company wants to wait, since I'm sensitive to the cold. The windchill in Nuiqsut has been -50 to -75." She said healing is going okay and that she's feeling better.
    
  • Mary spotted a deer meandering along the edge of the SW woods, next to the yard, about midday, and I saw a deer crossing the gravel road about a quarter mile west of the end of our driveway, when I got the mail and took the garbage down on the plastic toboggan in the evening.
    
  • I reviewed leather tools and supplies that I own versus what I need for doing an extreme three-dimensional leather project of a fish from a how-to booklet I got 2 Christmases ago.
    
  • We watched 3 episodes of Downton Abbey's 6th season.
    
    
• Wednesday, 2/10: Snow Keeps Piling Up
  
  • We're into a real winter, now, with snow that's piling up on the ground. An additional 2" of snow fell today. We probably have 6" on the ground.
  • Mary made 2 quiche pies and we ate 1 for our main meal, with corn on the cob, because we needed something summery on our plates.
  • I created a list of winemaking items I want with pricing from 5 online sources, then ordered from 2 places, The Home Brewery, out of Ozark, MO, and MoreWine!, from California and Pennsylvania. These suppliers have larger inventories and better prices than Midwest Supplies, from Minneapolis, MN, where I used to order. Plus, they both employ less expensive shipping. These are my birthday gifts.
  • With a NE wind blowing, I wore my down parka with a coyote ruff on the hood while getting the mail. Yesterday, I wore it with layers underneath and it was too warm. Today, I wore just coveralls underneath and it was just right. We bought these down parkas while living in Roseau, MN, in the early 1990s. We don't wear them much, here, but they're perfect for wind blowing in colder temperatures.
  • We watched 4 episodes of Downton Abbey's final and 6th season.
    
    
• Thursday, 2/11: Bird Antics
  
  • We have at least 2 Carolina wrens staying on our property this winter. They overnight inside the woodshed. Today one was pecking on the outside of the vinyl siding of the house and occasionally on the sash outside living room windows while picking bugs out of crevices. Before we could see it, Mary banged a couple times on the wall, thinking the sound was a mouse chewing on the inside of the wall. While in sight of the windows, it kept cats and dogs very interested in its activities. At one point our youngest cat, Mocha, and Plato, one of our dogs, stared intently at the bird through the window.
    
  • Mary did house cleaning, and some cross stitch work.
    
  • I rinsed a brew bucket and a mesh bag that I had soaking in bleach.
    
  • I also assessed what size kitchen we'd prefer if we built new and discussed it with Mary.
    
  • We watched the last 2 episodes and bonus features of the final season of Downton Abbey.
    
    
• Friday, 2/12: Bummed Out with Missouri Senators
  
  • We have jerks representing us at our nation's capital. U.S. Senators are to be jurors in Trump's second impeachment trial. Some make a mockery of the entire proceeding. Our junior senator, Josh Hawley, hangs his feet over a chair in front of him in the Senate Chamber's visitor's galley in a show of complete disrespect. Both he, and our senior Missouri U.S. senator, Roy Blunt, voted that the proceeding was unconstitutional. I disagree, vehemently. I will do everything in my power to make the two of them former senators.
  • Mary made a delightful chicken dinner. She also did some cleaning.
  • I measured and contemplated living room sizes in a future home.
  • Alison Rabich Boyce invited me to the "Historic Homer, Alaska" group on Facebook. I spotted a photo of Joel Moss and added my 2 bits about the Moss family. It's a fun online location.
    
  • We watched the 2019 Downton Abbey movie that Katie gave her mother for Christmas. Now, we're done with all things Downton.
    
    
• Saturday, 2/13: Single Digit Temperatures
  
  • We were in the single digits, both below and above zero, on the thermometer. Mom said it was -24 in Circle, MT.
  • Some of my winemaking birthday gifts came in today from The Home Brewery in Ozark, MO (see photo below). They really did a great job of packaging everything up, including two half-gallon glass jugs. I now have a spoon with a 28" handle. The end opposite of the spoon fits through the hole of a carboy, allowing for stirring after adding powdered items. I used the vinometer, which measures alcohol by volume (ABV) content of dry wines, on the 2019 pear wine. It's at 19%. We always knew it was high. It was my first attempt at winemaking. I now try to make wines in the 10-12% range, because they taste better.
  • I checked both the pumpkin and autumn olive wines that are aging. The pumpkin wine is dark, probably from black raisins and cinnamon. The autumn olive wine is becoming very clear, with quite a bit of lees settled out on the bottom of the carboy.
    
  • We shelled several hickory nuts. I crack the nuts and Mary pulls meat pieces from nut shells. Mary is going to use some of them on top of a Valentine's Day chocolate summer squash cake, tomorrow.

  

  Winemaking items from a Missouri supplier.