Jan. 31-Feb. 6, 2021

Weather | 1/31, 0.52" rain, 27°, 31° | 2/1, 25°, 28° | 2/2, fog, 15°, 29° | 2/3, fog, 21°, 39° | 2/4, 0.18" rain, 1/2" snow, 21°, 35° | 2/5, 0.06" rain, 17°, 27° | 2/6, 2" snow, 0.11" moisture, 7°, 17° |

• Sunday, 1/31: Rain Here, Snowing North
  
  • We received over an inch of rain the past 2 days. North of us, in Iowa and northern Illinois, several inches of snow came down. We're just south of the snow fields.
    
  • Mary baked 4 loaves of bread, and then did some cross stitch.
  • The autumn olive wine is progressing nicely. Foam developed on top of the liquid. The specific gravity is 1.084...slightly down. I squeezed the bag at noon and midnight and stirred the must. After bag squeezings, the must is turning slightly pink. It has a nice berry taste and smells like almonds. I think it will develop into a nice wine.
    
  • I figured our 2020 income taxes and sent them to the IRS, electronically.
  • We watched the 2 last episodes and special features of Downton Abbey's 4th season and enjoyed teatime, which included China Yunnan loose leaf tea, hard boiled eggs, fresh bread with apricot jam, an apple, pepper jack cheese slices, and the last of the pumpkin cake.
    
    
• Monday, 2/1: Tastes Great, Looks Horrible
  
  • I continued my twice-daily squeezing of the autumn olive wine nylon mesh bag. The wine must tastes and smells marvelous. Mary said it tastes like a cranberry meets raisin concoction. It smells flowery. With a mauve colored bag surrounded by beige foam, the top of the brew bucket looks hideous. There are also bits of what I call "pink cottage cheese" floating in the must. It looks horrible, but tastes and smells wonderful. The specific gravity is at 1.078, so the sugar content is dropping and the alcohol level is rising.
  • Mary made the General Tso venison/brown rice dish that we ate for our midday meal. It included garden-raised snow peas. She also figured out the February meals menu.
  • Mary and I took the dogs on a walk to Wood Duck Pond. We saw a great many deer and coyote tracks on our trails. Water level was up on the pond, but ice teepees around twigs indicated the pond's water levels are dropping. We heard, but didn't see, a wild turkey fly off to the NW.
    
  • I read Jack Keller's online winemaking info, then found a brewing supply store in Ozark, MO (a town south of Springfield, MO) called The Home Brewery, that has more variety and better prices than other suppliers I've used in the past. Mary suggested I write a birthday wish list.
    
    
• Tuesday, 2/2: Living in Wildlife Preserve
  
  • When I looked out the window right after getting up, I saw what I first thought was a deer. As it moved toward the house, I saw it was a large dark-colored coyote. It was the size of a German Shepherd. It quickly visited and sniffed all of the spots where the dogs sniff to the side of the lane, then took advantage of the short grass of our lawn and headed to the west. The color and size of this coyote could easily make people misdiagnose it as a wolf. But, I've seen wolves in Alaska and I know that this was no wolf. It was one big coyote, though.
    
  • The autumn olive wine is progressing nicely and each time I test it, we're given the treat of tasting it. "This might move into being my favorite," Mary told me. The morning specific gravity reading was 1.064 and it was 1.055 in the evening.
    
  • Mary made a shopping list and some flour tortillas.
  • We moved the refrigerator out from the wall and removed the gunk under the fridge, which included cat toys and a desiccated dead mouse. The night before, we agreed to clean up the fridge and Mary said, "And, get the dead mouse from underneath it." When we moved the refrigerator, Mary said, "I was only kidding!" I removed the cover over the condenser and vacuumed hair and dirt out of that area. It runs much better, now.
    
    
• Wednesday, 2/3: Shopping Day
  
  • I drove to Quincy to shop. Nothing new, except for missing items and the need to visit several stores to find all that is on the shopping list. I never quit marveling at how ancient so many people appear while shopping. Several times, I came to complete standstills as old duffers blocked entire aisles while standing stock still, staring at a product for several minutes, as if inanimate objects put them in a complete trance. I hope I'm never too old as to "move it" through a store while shopping.
    
  • Mary did house cleaning and 3 loads of laundry while I was gone.
    
  • She also found rabbit chewings on the trunks of some of our apple tree rootstocks in the machine shed. She move all 12 little trees in 4-gallon buckets to areas above ground in the machine shed.
    
  • Mary saw the first snow geese of the season.
    
  • She also saw a bald eagle and heard a red-tailed hawk at same time. It reminded her of how many times movies and TV shows picture an eagle, yet put the cry of a hawk in the audio.
    
  • With subzero temperatures predicted, Mary added more hay to the chicken coop floor.
  • After I got back from shopping at 8:30 p.m., we ate Reuben sandwiches and watched the first episode of Downton Abbey's fifth season.
  • The specific gravity of the autumn olive wine was 1.048 in the morning and 1.033 at night.
    
    
• Thursday, 2/4: Rain to Snow to Partly Cloudy
  
  • The day started with hard rain that kicked on the basement sump pump. Then, around noon, a SE breeze changed to a strong NW wind and heavy snow came down. After dark, it was partly cloudy, with stars showing. We had a complete weather cycle, today.
  • Yesterday, after reading my comment about old slow pokes shopping, Bill replied, "Haha I don't think you'll ever be an old duffer shopping. You and mom go through stores like your special ops taking out Bin Laden. No messing around."
  • Katie texted that she got her tech sergeant stripes (see photo below).
    
  • The autumn olive wine's specific gravity was 1.022 in the morning. It was at 1.017 in the evening. The magic number to move it from the plastic bucket to a glass carboy is 1.015, so with it being only 0.002 above that number, I went ahead and transferred the liquid to the carboy, adding a sterilized airlock. I squeezed about 3 quarts of liquid from the nylon mesh bag before the transfer, resulting in just a quart under 5 gallons of liquid, after starting brewing with 4 gallons. Tiny autumn olive berries contain a lot of juice. The berry mash that I dumped out of the mesh bag was weird...mauve pulp with fluorescent yellow/green seeds throughout. The wine looks like pink lemonade. It develops an inch of white foam on the top, then in a mater of about a minute, the foam disappears. Then, it slowly foams back up, again (see below photos). The cycle repeats itself, over and over, again. I'm glad I put 4.75 gallons in a 5-gallon carboy, or foam would occasionally overflow through the airlock.
    
  • Mary and I paid the bills for the month.
  • We watched a red-tailed hawk battle strong air currents as it flew overhead.
  • We watched 2 episodes of Downton Abbey's 5th season.
   

  

  Katie's tech sergeant stripes.
  

  
  

Autumn olive wine must, no foam.

Autumn olive wine must with foam.

• Friday, 2/5: Clear Windy Day
  
  • An otherwise warm and sunny day was blunted by a strong NW wind. 
    
  • Mary cut up and froze a pork loin that I bought while shopping on Wednesday. She also made a turkey and rice dish for our main meal.
    
  • We got the last of our garden seeds for the year.
    
  • The specific gravity of the autumn olive wine is 1.010. At 1.000, I'll add potassium sorbate and crushed Campden tablets to stop the fermentation process.
    
  • At dusk, I watch a great horned owl fly across the south field to a tree next to bluegill pond. A look through binoculars showed two large tufts on the bird's head, revealing its identity.
    
    
• Saturday, 2/6: Snowy Day
  
  • We had another snow that started roughly at noon. This time the snow was coming down heavy enough to block visibility to about 1/8 of a mile. We got about 2"-3" of snow. Then, it started clearing at sunset and temperatures dropped significantly. By midnight, it was 1° and dropping.
  • The specific gravity of the autumn olive wine was 1.004 in the morning and 1.003 in the evening, which signifies that the sugar-to-alcohol conversion is slowing down.
  • I researched online how to halt wine fermentation with cold temperatures. to pull it off, we need a refrigerator dedicated to wine production. Time to look for old fridges and a new house to put them in.
    
  • Mary made an apple pie.
    
  • We decided to do game night tomorrow, while listening to the Super Bowl. We watched 4 episodes of Downton Abbey's 5th season. The apple pie tasted good.