March 28-April 3, 2021

Weather | 3/28, 35°, 59° | 3/29, 39°, 69° | 3/30, 52°, 56° | 3/31, 32°, 44° | 4/1, 20°, 46° | 4/2, 25°, 47° | 4/3, 40°, 70° |

• Sunday, 3/28: Grafting Apple Trees
  
  • I grafted pieces from 2 apple trees we have growing in the yard to two of the 10 apple rootstocks I have growing in 4-gallon buckets. I used the saddle graft, which involves a sharp wedge carved on the rootstock and an upside down V cut into the scion that is attached on top of the rootstock. The union is bound in parafin tape, then covered with tree wound material. Since temperatures above 40° are recommended and lows of 30s and 20s are expected this week, I put the grafted trees in the upstairs south bedroom until it gets warmer (see photo below). Grafting cuts must be smooth, in order for the tree cambium layers to match up. I hope I cut them well. "You must have faith," Mary said. One consolation is that if they don't take, I can always do a bud graft in July. I have 8 more trees to graft.
    
  • Mary did major cleaning of the living room of fixtures, walls, the floor, and the ceiling. She got about a third of the room completed.
  • Mary made 2 quiche pies to use up eggs. She also washed some towels.
  • Katie traveled to Las Vegas for some National Guard training.
  • On our last dog walk, a robin flew out of a cedar tree on the lane just inches away from Mary's face.

  

  Apple tree grafts (black area on stems) made today.
  

• Monday, 3/29: Strong Winds
  
  • Southerly wind gusts reached as high as 40 mph. I thought that was high, then I saw a wind advisory from the Glasgow, MT Weather Service website posted on Facebook by an old co-worker that warned of 70 mph gusts. I remember going to a track meet that our kids were participated in. It was in Scobey, MT. On the north side of the track, they had to hurtle tumbleweeds that were rolling across their lanes in the strong wind. Runners disappeared into the blowing dirt on the NW corner of the track. It blows hard across Montana's Hi-Line.
  • I moved the portable workbench to the middle of the machine shed, sheltered from the wind blasting through the south-facing entrance, and cleft grafted 2 more apple trees. The new grafts were from a Roxbury Russet apple scion I bought from Fedco in Maine. I put the new grafted trees in the upstairs south bedroom.
  • Mary made a cherry crunch dessert.
    
  • Mary finished deep cleaning the living room.
  • We watched a couple movies: the 2008 movie, Iron Man and the 2010 movie The Sorcerer's Apprentice. We started to watch Criminal, but didn't make it 5 minutes until we turned it off...too violent. It's out of here! The cherry crunch tasted great.
    
    
• Tuesday, 3/30: Cool Wind
  
  • A strong NW wind brought clouds and cooler temperatures to our world.
    
  • Mary worked on cutting up squares of material for a future quilt.
  • I vacuumed bugs throughout the house.
    
  • Mary vacuumed dust off all of the cross stitch Christmas ornaments and cross stitch pictures hanging on walls. She stored the ornaments away in zip lock bags inside totes.
    
  • I updated my wine diary and realized from viewing notes about the last blackberry wine I made that 9 days after the initial racking, I racked that wine for the second time. Today is Day 9 with this current batch, so I racked wine from the carboy, half-gallon jug and beer bottle into the brew bucket. The specific gravity is 0.997, giving the wine a 12.6% alcohol content. The last blackberry wine I made had a 12% level. I strained the leftovers, but it still had a lot of yeast finds in it. It tasted yeasty, fruity, with a strong alcohol taste. After cleaning the carboy and sanitizing it, I racked the wine must into it and two 750-ml wine bottles. The little bit of clear wine must I had left tasted very, very good...not so alcoholic or yeasty, and very similar to the first blackberry wine I made last year.
  • Katie sent photos (see below) of hikes she's done on her own time the past 2 days in a place called the Valley of Fire, a state park 50 miles NE of Las Vegas. She's also found interesting places to eat...an authentic Mexican restaurant and a Venezuelan restaurant. She's in Vegas learning how to build K-span buildings (modern-day Quanset) using a mobile unit called an Ultimate Building Machine (UBM), which looks cool. Katie says it's an interesting process.

Katie's visit to the Valley of Fire.

Another photo from the Valley of Fire.

Petroglyphs in the Valley of Fire.

A Bighorn sheep in the Valley of Fire.

• Wednesday, 3/31: Out Like a Lion
  • On March 1st, we had clear, cool, and calm weather. Today, the last day of March, it was clear, cool, and blasting a strong NW wind.
    
  • I cleft grafted two more apple trees onto rootstocks...a Hewe's Virginia Crab and a Baldwin. While putting a cleft into the rootstock for the Baldwin scion, the trunk, that was only supposed to be split about 1-1.5", split almost to the roots. It's why one is supposed to wrap the rootstock trunk with electrical tape about 2" down from the top to prevent such a long split. I haven't been doing that step, but will do it from now on. I cut more trunk off to bring the splice closer to the ground, got Mary to help hold the two split pieces steady after putting in the scions, then wrapped it with paraffin tape and covered everything with tree seal. I hope it lives. I now have 6 grafted trees in the upstairs south bedroom, protected from nighttime cold temperatures and 4 more to graft.
  • Bill received a used big TV from his friends, Mike and Erin, who recently moved, and didn't want it anymore.
  • We watched the 2006 movie, Miss Potter and the 2002 movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
    
    
• Thursday, 4/1: Cold Morning
  
  • The thermometer was at 20° as the sun rose this morning. Fortunately, the green buds on the Sargent crabapple tree weren't affected by the subfreezing temps. The yellow flowers on the forsythia look pretty good, but there is a general brownish tinge to them.
  • I did 2 more apple tree cleft grafts. Today's grafts were Wickson and Jonathan apple trees. I didn't order Jonathan, but obviously Fedco was out of Porter's Perfection and sent me Jonathan, instead. That's okay. We have one other Jonathan sapling started, so now we'll have 2 Jonathan trees, if this graft takes. I used electrical tape to prevent a Daniel Boone tree splitting event on the rootstock, like I did yesterday. The electrical tape was removed once I finished the grafts.
  • I went to the Lewis County Democrat quarterly meeting at the courthouse in Montecello, MO, something I would have never thought I'd be doing years ago when I was an editor of the Roseau Times-Region (MN), praising Republican thoughts. January 6, 2021 made up my mind to take action against the party I once voted for. Lewis County Sheriff Dave Parrish discussed legislative efforts Missouri sheriffs are addressing statewide. On a positive note, the sheriff organization brought Democratic and Republican U.S. House reps together and worked out where they can agree on police reform. On a negative side, a movement in Missouri's legislature is developing from 2nd Amendment proponents drawing up laws outlawing sheriffs from working with the FBI on gun-related crimes and proposing to fine sheriffs up to $50,000 for involving feds in investigations. "They say we (sheriffs) are against the Second Amendment," said Parrish, "people who wear a gun on our hips throughout our work." He said the Missouri sheriffs are putting out a press release about where they stand in the next couple days. An interesting statistic he threw out. There are 17 million AR-15 gun owners in the country and in January 2021, over 2 million guns were sold. I sat next to Jake DeCoster, Lewis County's prosecuting attorney. He looks like a farmer. I read in the Quincy Herald-Whig that at 65, he participates in triathlon events and coaches a youth swim team. We picked a $500 scholarship winner from 6 applicants who is a young Black woman attending Highland High School. It was a good meeting of about 10 people. I plan to go back to their June 24th meeting.
  • Mary made 4 loaves of bread, cut out quilt material, and did chores while I was in Montecello.
  • Returning home, a barred owl flew across the road right in front of me and once I was on our gravel road, a big wild turkey flew across and then ran parallel to the road in a field to my left. It was as tall as the hood of the car. We were going the same speed. I looked at my speedometer and that turkey was running 20 mph. Man, they can sure boogie across the stubble!
    
    
• Friday, 4/2: Grafting Done
  
  • I cleft grafted the last 2 apple trees onto rootstock. I wanted to do up 2 with the Ashmead's Kernel scion, but there were too few buds on the piece I received from Fedco, so I only did one and put pieces I cut from an earlier clipping off our Esopus Spitzenburg tree onto the final rootstock. Now, 10 grafted specimens are in the upstairs south bedroom (see photo below), to spare them from below 40° temperatures, which should end tonight.
    
  • I checked on shelf brackets I ordered from Menards on 3/3. They're still on order and they don't know when they'll come in. I won't order through Menards, again.
    
  • Mary made baked chicken for our main meal.
    
  • At dusk, we had a visit from Ben Woodruff, who bought the property bordering west of us last fall, and asked Mary a year ago if we want to sell our land. He asked me the same question, saying he'd pay cash to buy it. I said our land is not for sale. He owns several pieces of acreage in the area, including some land about a mile due south of us, where he camps. He lives in Lake St. Louis and works in the Medicare/Medicaid business...whatever that means! He doesn't like his work and wants to move here and build on our property...it's not for sale! He likes to hunt and has permission to hunt turkey on the land bordering us to the north. If they see turkey on our land, could they hunt on it...answer is no, we don't give away hunting rights on OUR LAND! Do we want his phone number, in case we sell? We aren't selling! If we need help with a dozer or a skid steer, he can help. We're fine. He'll be back to see if we want to sell. The answer will be the same...we aren't selling. Since he was so pushy, I looked him up online and found his Facebook page. He once played football for West Point. He helps raise money for a non-profit, which involves taking people hunting who are Christian war veterans. I think he makes money with that endeavor, guiding vets on deer hunting camps. One positive is he's not planning on building in the property west of us.

  

  Ten grafted apple trees. I hope some take new grafts.
  

• Saturday, 4/3: Continuous Wind
  • Wind continues to blow, as it has for the past several days. It prevents me from doing the first spray on all of our fruit trees.
    
  • Bill called and talked to both of us. He recently got a raise in pay. He's visiting Mike Push, his friend, later in the day.
    
  • Mary did 2 loads of laundry that easily dried on the line. She also made flour tortillas.
  • I moved all 10 grafted trees into the shade on the east end of the machine shed and thoroughly watered them and all of the strawberries. I also added more tree seal to cover places around the grafts where original tree seal shrunk and cracked. A solid covering of tree seal keeps bugs out and moisture in, so the graft heals correctly.
    
  • Like previous days, both Mary and I vacuumed Asian ladybugs.
  • It's game night, so we played a British board game Mary bought back when the kids were homeschooling called Atlas Adventures. It's fun. I won.
    
  • Katie texted. She visited Death Valley, today.
    
  • On the last walk of the dogs, hundreds of moths were smacking against the outside of the north windows, attracted to the indoor lights. Today's warmth produced a big moth hatch. They were hard to identify, but hopefully they're not 1 of the 2 possibilities, which is a moth that eats oak leaves and sometimes decimates oak forests. Oak is the majority of our timber.
    

March 21-27, 2021

Weather | 3/21, 39°, 65° | 3/22, 46°, 69° | 3/23, 0.15" rain, 50°, 59° | 3/24, 0.37" rain, 47°, 52° | 3/25, 0.32" rain, 37°, 42° | 3/26, 40°, 57° | 3/27, .01" rain, 45°, 65° |

• Sunday, 3/21: Strong South Winds
  
  • South winds were strong enough to call off doing laundry. Mary said something about our rooster, Leo, enduring our undergarments covering his head if she put them on the line to dry. Burning cardboard boxes in the burn barrel was also a banned activity.
    
  • I helped Mary move strawberries out of the machine shed. Several are perking up, nicely. Mary hauled them back inside at dusk.
    
  • Mary made venison General Tso for our main meal.
    
  • I vacuumed Asian ladybugs for hours and Mary took over in the late afternoon. They're terrible and in some rooms, roaming about on all walls by the hundreds. I read online that lemon-scented cleaners keep them away...HAH! We have so many that gasoline lit on fire wouldn't keep them back.
    
  • I studied a couple grafting videos to decide which method of grafting I should use for scions (the top part of the graft) that are significantly smaller than the rootstock. It looks like the cleft graft is best. A cleft graft involves a straight cut to take off the rootstock's top, then a 1-1.5" slice down the center, followed by whittling 2 scion's bottom ends into a V and pushing those Vs into either side of the slice on the rootstock, then covering the work up with stretchable grafting tape (a paraffin-based tape). 
  • Online research revealed that grafting knives are sharpened only on one side to produce a clean cut. I have a stainless steel Gerber pocket knife that was given to me by Patse Hansen after seeing me struggle opening cardboard boxes during a Lewistown, MT brat feed I organized while working at Mid-Rivers Telephone. I ground the blade to one side on the power grinder, then sharpened it on our tri-stone knife sharpener. 
  • I practiced the cleft graft, using branches saved after Mary pruned all trees a couple weeks ago. It creates a gap I was concerned about, which was traditionally filled with a combination of bees wax and paraffin called orchard wax. A modern version is made flexible by the heat of your hands. I discovered a YouTube video of a guy in Seattle who advocates cheap grafting, using a box cutter, black electrical tape that must be removed in a month or two, and rain gutter sealant. Since I don't have orchard wax, I might try the cheaper alternative.
    
  • A specific gravity check of the blackberry wine showed it was already at 1.002, so I racked it to the brew bucket, added crushed Campden tablets and potassium sorbate to halt yeast reproduction, then racked the wine to a 5-gallon glass carboy, a half-gallon glass jug, and a beer bottle (see photos below). It's deep purple. I filtered the remaining liquid with the fines through two paper towels in a wire sieve, which took out the solids. We drank the sieved wine. It tasted good, but it'll be better once it ages.
  • On the last dog walk, we had American woodcocks following us as we walked down the lane and back home. We heard coyotes singing in the woods. There was a huge ring around the moon, that reached from overhead to below the west tree line.

Blackberry wine in 5-gallon carboy & half-gallon jug.

Setting airlock on the top of a beer bottle.

Aging Wine...Mary put me on winemaking probation until jugs leave the pantry.

• Monday, 3/22: Cedar Pollen
  
  • Last night, while wearing a bright hat light, I noticed fine particles floating in the air. This morning, Mary brushed a couple cedar branches on the lane and pollen flew out of them. Cedar pollen is floating in the air. As a result, our rubber boots have a yellow ting to them.
    
  • Mary did 2 loads of laundry and vacuumed tons of Asian ladybugs from all of the windows.
    
  • Mary made turkey pot pie for our midday meal.
    
  • I researched additional info about tree grafting. The side graft might be better with the size difference I have between the rootstock and the scion pieces I'm grafting to the top.
  • We keep hearing wood ducks making a racket while swimming on Wood Duck Pond.
    
    
• Tuesday, 3/23: Rain & Thunderstorms
  
  • A classic low on the online weather maps showed a line of wet weather streaming from the Gulf of Mexico up the Mississippi River, through us, into Iowa and curving through Topeka, Kansas. Not only did it drop rain, but we had thunderstorms roll through at dusk.
    
  • I did more online review of tree grafting techniques.
    
  • Mary worked on her cross stitch kit named Golden Dreams, which is something she picked up when we owned Golden Retrievers.
  • Since we put off Saturday Game Night on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, we took it up tonight. We played Acey Deucey, a variant of Backgammon. Mary taught me how to play with 2 practice games. In this game, if you roll a 1 and a 2 with your two dice, you move your play pieces one and then two spaces, then you get to move pieces as if you rolled a double. I rolled four acey deuceys in a row. Mary said she's never seen such a feat accomplished in her years of playing the game. I won the 2 practice games (with Mary giving advice), then Mary won the rest of the games (when I was on my own). It's a fun game.
    
    
• Wednesday, 3/24: Intermittent Mist
  • Even though we didn't get any measurable rain, we experienced mist every so often throughout the day.
  • Like several days in the past, we vacuumed gobs of Asian ladybugs.
    
  • Mary made tortellini soup for our main meal. She also cross stitched on her Golden Dreams project and dusted the DVDs.
  • I measured my rootstocks and scions with electronic calipers. The rootstocks average half an inch and the scions average a quarter inch. I found old cuttings of equal sizes and practiced grafting both the cleft graft and the side graft (see photo below). Due to the smaller rootstock diameter that I'm dealing with, the side graft is easier to perform.
  • While putting the lid on the water-based tree seal, the side of the plastic can collapsed, spilling some of it onto the wooden outdoor porch. I put the remaining tree seal in an air-tight container and cleaned up the spilled tree seal with buckets of water and a stiff brush.
  • We watched the 2018 movie, Green Book, and the 2010 movie, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.
    

  

  Practice cleft grafts (left) and side grafts (right).
  

• Thursday, 3/25: Rainy Day
  
  • Rain started at 11 a.m. and continued to right before dusk. Water is standing everywhere.
    
  • Mary made a pumpkin cake.
  • I read a couple chapters in an orchard book.
    
    
• Friday, 3/26: Clouds to Sunny Day
  • The shelf brackets we ordered through Menards were due to arrive at the store this week. I called the Quincy Menards and was told they're scheduled to arrive today, but that the computer information is never accurate, so arrival will probably be in a couple days. I ordered them on March 4. They aren't speedy.
    
  • Mary finished dusting books in the living room.
  • I read more of my orchard book and vacuumed beetles that continue to pour onto windows.
  • A trip around to various apple, pear, and cherry trees indicates that green buds are starting to pop. I should do my grafting. You're not supposed to graft when temperatures dip below 40° and next week's predictions are for lows in the 30s and even 29° on Wednesday night. Things aren't working out very well.
  • We walked the dogs west to the end of Bobcat Trail. A big oak fell over, blocking passage at the end of the trail. It looks like good firewood for the future.
    
    
• Saturday, 3/27: Creepy Crawlers!
  
  • I remember for Christmas of 1965, when we visited Aunt Dorothy's house in Jackson, MI, I received a Creepy Crawlers set. After putting "Plasti-Goop" in molds that resembled bugs, the molds were heated on a hot plate that came with the set. After cooling, you peeled out brightly colored plastic bugs. I don't remember Mom or Dad being upset about me playing around with an open-faced hot plate, but I bet today's hover mothers would have an absolute fit with such an idea. I thought of Creepy Crawlers as I vacuumed hundreds of live creepies: Asian ladybugs. Mary and I took turns sucking them off windows and walls. I took the first shift and Mary did the late afternoon stint.
  • We startled and saw a woodcock fly away from the lane while walking dogs in the morning.
    
  • Mary made flour tortillas and chimichangas for our main meal. She also worked on her cross stitch Golden Dreams pattern for an hour, and did some house cleaning.
    
  • I practiced grafting, specifically slicing practice on fruit tree stems. The Gerber pocket knife is poor. It doesn't hold an edge and makes wavy cuts. Grandad Melvin's old Herter's hunting knife is better, but Mary's old Rapala fillet knife is best. I discovered an online video demonstrating how to do a saddle graft, by Stephen Hayes in the UK. It looks easy, compared to other grafting methods. I'll do it with my 2 existing Esopus Spitzenburg and Grimes Golden apple trees.
    
  • We played the board game, Senet. It's become a favorite. I won the first 2 games, Mary won the next, then I won, then Mary won the final 3 to reign as grand champion for the night.
    

March 14-20, 2021

Weather | 3/14, 0.02" rain, 41°, 45° | 3/15, 0.47" rain, 34°, 39° | 3/16, 0.02" rain, 35°, 43° | 3/17, 0.98" rain, 36°, 37° | 3/18, 1.70" rain, 33°, 45° | 3/19, 25°, 49° | 3/20, 26°, 57° |

• Sunday, 3/14: Time to Reflect
  
  • After Bill left to go to his home in St. Charles (St. Louis suburb), we took it easy. A windy day turned to a rainy and windy day around 4 pm.
  • Our hens are laying a nice variety of daily eggs (see photo below). Our varied chicken breeds lay a wide range of egg colors. 
  • The blackberry wine yeast is kicking into action. The specific gravity dropped 3 points to 1.090. I squeezed the bag, turning the must to a deeper purple shade. The liquid volume increased from 5.25 to 5.55 gallons, so the berries are releasing juice. After attending to the wine, I updated my wine diary with the past week's winery activities.
  • On a late afternoon dog walk, we watched about 50 snow geese fly just over the trees, from south to north, looking for a place to land. There was a winter weather warning 5 counties north of us in Iowa and the geese know when to stop their travels without looking online.
  • We startled an American woodcock from under a cedar while walking the dogs on their last venture outside for the night. The woodcock's wings reveal their identity when they fly, giving off a whistling sound.

  

  Eggs from our laying hens.
  

• Monday, 3/15: Greening Grass
  
  • A half inch of rain today instantly greened up lawns around the house. It also brought out several earthworms crawling across our lane in the evening, when we had fog. One earthworm was over a foot long, when stretched out.
    
  • The specific gravity of the blackberry wine is 1.085. The yeast is bubbling, nicely.
    
  • Mary made 4 loaves of bread that put an amazingly yummy smell throughout the house.
    
  • I checked out safe room ideas and added 8 more feet to the length of our proposed house plans to accommodate a safe room (protection from tornadoes), an entry/mud room, and a bedroom closet.
    
  • The apple tree scions came in today's mail from Fedco. They are tiny twigs and a lot smaller in diameter than I expected. I'll have to investigate how to graft these twigs onto much larger in diameter root stock trees.
    
  • I walked the dogs to the old cow barn and watched 3 deer run away to the east.
    
  • In the evening, we watched 5 episodes of the 2017 National Geographic TV series Genius: Einstein.
    
    
• Tuesday, 3/16: Evil-Looking Wine
  
  • The top of the blackberry wine must looks "sick" (see photo below). It develops pink cottage cheese with wisps of white froth bubbling up in areas. After stirring, it mixes in revealing a deep purple liquid. Specific gravity is at 1.078 and the liquid level has increased to 5.811 gallons (22 liters).
    
  • Mary cleaned and fertilized all of the house plants. A second stalk of blossoms are open on the amaryllis.
    
  • We had chicken, potatoes, beans, and turkey gravy for our main meal.
  • I fixed the upstairs south bedroom door. Our shifting house altered elevations so the door latch didn't work. Some cardboard under a door hinge and some carving at the latch hole fixed the problem.
    
  • I did reading and online research on apple tree grafting procedures.
    
  • Mary spotted a pair of wood ducks, so they've returned for the season.
    
  • We watched the last five episodes of Genius: Einstein.
    
  • On the last dog walk, we flushed a woodcock that was on the lane and I followed it in light of my flashlight for a few seconds.

  

  Blackberry wine must with mesh bag in the center.
  

  
  
• Wednesday, 3/17: Morning Thunder
  
  • We woke to thunder cracking overhead. Mary unplugged appliances. It stormed all morning.
    
  • Mary made flour tortillas and then chimichangas for our main meal.
    
  • We ordered chicks from Cackle Hatchery, involving our normal order of 25 cockerels called the Frypan Special, that are large breed male chickens we butcher in the fall. Since sexing just-hatched chicks isn't perfect, we usually get 1 or 2 pullets out of the group that join our flock of laying hens.
    
  • A check of the blackberry wine indicated a specific gravity of 1.063. Mary and I tasted it. The wine must tastes sweet, but very good.
    
  • I sent out dentist inquiries to 5 Quincy dental offices.
    
    
• Thursday, 3/18: Most Rain of the Year
  
  • I woke at 5 a.m. and a quick tour indicated the leaking roof of our 110-year old house wasn't doing well under the heavy rain. I told Mary and we both attended to the leaks. It rained hard until 11 a.m., sprinkled until 4 p.m., then we watched the sun set with clearing skies. We received 2.68" of rain in the past 2 days. Water is laying everywhere, due to the wonderful clay soil on this property. Locals affectionately call it Missouri loam.
    
  • I made waffles for breakfast.
    
  • The blackberry wine looks wonderful. The specific gravity is 1.047.
    
  • I had 2 dentist offices reply to my inquiries. I called 2 that didn't reply, then picked one that did reply. That office was the only one to completely answer all of my questions. It is a long established business, but with new technology. I felt they were upfront in answering questions. I have an upper front tooth cap that keeps coming off and enamel missing on some teeth. My first appointment is April 21 at 8:30...it will be a bright an early day.
    
  • Mary and I split all of the firewood logs sitting in the machine shed.
    
    
• Friday, 3/19: Sunny
  • We enjoyed the first sunny day in several days.
    
  • I went to Quincy and shopped for groceries and other items.
    
  • I bought our cat litter came from Petco, this time. I was last in the Petco store, where I once worked, in December, 2019. The place was a wreck...very dirty. Ron, the dog trainer, loaded me up on all of his latest ailments. Missy was blabbering with a customer in Aquatics while Breanna struggled at the registers trying to get through a long line of customers. Two employees I didn't know were working on overstuffed shopping carts of new merchandise to put away. It felt like old times. Ron said he and Molly talk about how it would be fun if I was back working there and asked if I'd ever be interested on returning to work. "NO!" said I, "I prefer my current life." Emily, the smartest of my past co-workers, left Petco 2 weeks ago and is now a supervisor at the Salvation Army. I texted Shane Mace, the former Quincy Petco store manager who now manages an A-class store in St. Louis (Quincy is a C-class store) about the state of things at the Quincy Petco store. He said he wasn't surprised and said he's waiting for me to move to St. Louis so he can hire me. I told him not to hold his breath waiting for me to move to St. Louis. I like where I currently live, even if some of our neighbors seem as though they came out of the movie, Deliverance.
    
  • Mary did some housecleaning and 2 loads of laundry.
    
  • She moved the strawberries and 2 pots of herbs out of the machine shed for watering and to get some sun. Several strawberry plants are showing green leaves, which is good, since rabbits really munched them down to the crowns.
    
  • Mary saw 3 mallard ducks.
  • A check of the blackberry wine in the evening indicated a 1.023 specific gravity and a reddish/purple color with good yeast activation (see video below).
    
  • We watched the 2017 movie, Victoria and Abdul. It's very good.

Blackberry wine in the brew bucket.

• Saturday, 3/20: First Day of Spring
  • Sun kissed our first day of spring with warmth and brightness. More birds are singing. The grass is greening. It's nice.
  • Mary culled bad onions, garlic and potatoes from our storage supply. She saved the onion sprouts to chop up and add to the smoked scrambled eggs we had in the evening.
  • Mary fertilized the garlic. They're 4-5 inches tall and a little bit pale, due to recent cold temperatures, but looking great.
    
  • I carefully added soil and additives to the 4-gallon cat litter buckets housing the roots of the 10 apple rootstock trees. The soil sunk about halfway down in each bucket, last year. Now, with these additions, the soil is back on top of each bucket. Soon, I'll cut existing tops off the rootstocks and graft various apple varieties to them.
  • Amber and Plato were outside with us, chewing on sticks, play-growling with each other, sniffing, laying in the sun, and doing doggy things. They loved it.
  • Mary vacuumed Asian ladybugs ad nauseam. They're on the move.
    
  • A check of the blackberry wine gave me a 1.010 specific gravity reading, so it was time to transfer the wine to glass containers with airlocks (see video below). The once full mesh bag squeezed down to just a fourth of a bag of pulp and boosted the remaining liquid to about 23.25 liters, or 6.14 gallons. This wine foams once it's in a glass carboy, so I didn't fill the 6.5-gallon carboy to the top, leaving enough air gap for foam, and added a blow-off airlock involving a hose into a quart Mason jar with an inch of water in the bottom. The burping of the wine through the Mason jar adds a metronome beat in the pantry that can be heard in the bathroom and kitchen. It's as if the house has a heart that's ticking. The remaining wine must went into a half-gallon jug. When the foaming quits, I'll combine all blackberry must into one container. Because we don't want blackberry bushes growing in our compost, I threw the seed-ridden pulp away. The garbage can gives the house a strong winebrewing yeasty smell. Bedtime got late with all of my winemaking endeavors.
  Blackberry wine in 6.5-gallon carboy & half-gallon jug.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

March 7-13, 2021

Weather | 3/7, 33°, 64° | 3/8, 40°, 67° | 3/9, 45°, 71° | 3/10, 0.08" rain, 57°, 69° | 3/11, 37°, 57° | 3/12, 32°, 53° | 3/13, 40°, 59° |

• Sunday, 3/7: A Day of Rest
  • We lived a mainly sedentary life, today, on a bright, sunny day. I watered strawberries and noticed a few tiny green leaves coming out of some strawberry crowns, so the bunnies didn't murder all of the plants.
    
  • Mary washed 2 loads of clothes. We're finally caught up from our low water pressure days and subzero temperatures.
  • She also vacuumed bugs inside the house.
  • I looked at all of the trees I sprayed with dormant oil spray yesterday. The cherry trees look the shiniest, today, so I must have put heavier amounts on at the end, after it was dark. 
  • I also reviewed apple scion varieties that I'll be getting in the mail later this month and determined how many of each kind I'll graft onto my 10 apple rootstocks.
  • I cleaned the sprayer...always a slippery job when removing oil residue.
  • A few more snow geese flew overhead.
  • Bill threw balls for our 2 dogs, Plato & Amber, to fetch. It was a fun time for all involved.
    
  • We ate nachos and watched 2 movies. One was one of the BBC Sherlock Holmes episodes and the other was the 2019 movie, Angle Has Fallen. I sat in front of the woofer on our new sound system. During any large boom in the movie, wind blew across my face. That's a weird sensation!
    
    
• Monday, 3/8: Definite Bird Reduction
  • This spring shows a thorough drop in bird numbers from past springs. We usually hear lots of robins, blackbirds, titmice, bluebirds, phoebes and meadow larks. There are a few birds, but nowhere near what we're accustom to hearing. Meadow larks and phoebes are completely absent. The far south freeze definitely killed birds this year.
  • A few more small batches of snow geese flew overhead, today.
    
  • I built a fire and we enjoyed smoked scrambled eggs with added bits of pork loin. We added a bottle of Rali sauvignon blanc wine made in Chili that Bill brought with him.
    
  • Mary made some flour tortillas.
  • I measured the size of the machine shed, as a comparison to a home we're thinking of building. The machine shed measures 63' 8" by 34'. The house we penciled out is 69' by 34'. I stuck 4' long persimmon sticks in the ground representing corners of where we might put the new house.
    
  • We watched 3 episodes of the 2020 TV series, Star Trek: Picard, that Bill brought with him on a DVD. It is good.
    
    
• Tuesday, 3/9: Bottle Washing Day
  
  • I cleaned up 35 wine bottles and 5 beer bottles. If it involved just washing the insides, the job would go fast. Label removal extends the task. This time I filled 4 buckets with warm water and OxiClean, then soaked the bottles in the solution for several hours. I once used OneStep, a homebrewing product which has the same chemical properties as OxiClean. I spent $6.95 for 8 ounces of OneStep in 2012. I recently bought 10 pounds of OxiClean for $16.67. Ten pounds of OneStep at 2012 prices is $139. OxiClean is significantly cheaper. In the late afternoon, I removed labels. I still had to rub the labels off, using a kitchen butter knife...sort of like making fire by rubbing two sticks. A common trait that I discovered is the cheaper the wine, the more glue is used under the bottle label. Since we buy on the cheap, the wine label glue was excessive! Once all label paper was gone, I scrubbed remaining glue off with a green Scotch Brite pad and baking soda. It was a long ordeal. Next time, I'll try soaking bottles for at least a day.
    
  • This morning, we noticed a faint rainbow in high clouds directly above us. Mary said, "There are ice crystals in those clouds."
  • We reviewed the house corner stakes I put in the ground yesterday and decided to move its location about 25 feet south.
    
  • The spring peeper frogs came out in full force, today.
  • Mary made venison stew and biscuits for our main meal. Bill requested it.
  • Mary and I unloaded the firewood out of the wagon in the machine shed.
    
  • The wind gusted to 35 mph, today. Recent warm days means we haven't built a fire in a few days.
    
    
• Wednesday, 3/10: Winemaking
  
  • Bill and I racked the grapefruit wine into a gallon jug and a 330-ml clear beer bottle. The specific gravity was 0.994, giving it an alcohol content of 10.76%. It smells of sulfur. Several aspects can produce sulfur in winemaking, including wild yeast in the must, nutrient deficiency, too warm while brewing, too little yeast, and wine sitting over yeast fines too long. I suspect not enough nutrients, since I cut back on sugar to give it a lower alcohol content. Higher sugar, but cutting off the yeast when specific gravity is 1.000 may give better results. Racking and adding a Campden tablet can solve a sulfur smell, so that's what we did. Other than a sulfur smell and slight sulfur taste, the wine was good tasting. Get the sulfur out and it will be great.
    
  • Bill and I then racked the autumn olive wine into a 3-gallon carboy, a gallon jug, and a 330-ml beer bottle (see photo below). Specific gravity was also at 0.994, giving it an alcohol content of 12.21%. It tastes so good that Mary, Bill, and I drank every drop I put in the cylinder I use to drop the hydrometer in order to measure specific gravity. Bill says it tastes like apricot and fig. This wine is still cloudy, so it's too early to bottle.
  • Bill and I cleaned up all the winemaking stuff and washed all of the dishes.
  • Katie texted that she returns to Alaska mid-April.
  • Wind gusted to 40 mph.
  • We saw snow geese in the morning.
  • We watched 7 episodes of Star Trek: Picard. It was good. Our binge TV watching put us to bed around 2 am.

  

  2021 Autumn Olive Wine, after 2nd racking.
  

• Thursday, 3/11: Bill Goes Walk-About
  
  • Bill took a long walk around the property. He kept seeing barred owls. Bill says it was either four owls, or two owls he saw twice. He also spotted 4 deer, a dragonfly larvae at the swim pond, and 2 bass in the water at the swim pond. At one point, he was deafened by spring peepers (frogs). He also saw the carcass of a young deer.
    
  • While Bill walked around the property, Mary and I picked bag worms off the nearest cedar tree, next to the lane. We almost filled a 4-gallon cat litter bucket and we're not done with that tree, plus there are several more cedars for plucking. Last year, they really did a number on the cedar tree foliage.
    
  • Bill made some amazing pizza. Along with the pizza, we enjoyed a beer he brought with him from St. Louis called A Little Sumpin' Sumpin'. It was great.
    
  • I asked on the Quincy Area Swap Shop in Facebook suggestions of good quality dentists in Quincy and got close to 50 responses. I listed the responses and put hashes based on positive comments about specific dentists. I'm amazed at how many people responded.
    
  • Mary helped me put out 20 pounds of frozen blackberries to thaw for making blackberry wine, tomorrow. Bill and I plan on making a 5-gallon batch.
  • I heard an eastern meadowlark in the south field as I walked to the mailbox in the late afternoon. It's the first meadowlark of this year and very late.
    
    
• Friday, 3/12: Blackberry Winemaking
  
  •  I drove to the Dollar General store in Lewistown and bought a 4-pound bag of sugar, in order to have enough for making blackberry wine.
    
  • Bill & I made the blackberry wine must for a 5-gallon batch. It took 28 quart bags from the freezer to equal just over 20 pounds required for this quantity. We squeezed the berries within the bags prior to dumping them in the mesh bag in the new 8-gallon brew bucket. The recipe called for 4 gallons, 3 pints of water. We initially added 3 gallons. Extrapolated from my last 1-gallon batch of blackberry wine, I estimated 15 pounds of sugar. We stopped at 10 pounds and took a hydrometer reading. The specific gravity was 1.110, which is way too high. After 7 additional pints of water, the specific gravity was at 1.091, which is perfect. A check of the acid level indicated it has a pH of 3.9, a little too basic, but a day of the crushed blackberries sitting in the must will probably make the must more acidic. We added yeast nutrient, Campden tablets, and acid blend, then covered the brew bucket with a flour sack towel.
    
  • While Bill and I worked on the wine, Mary picked more bag worms off the cedar trees in the east yard. She also did some house cleaning, and made a venison stroganoff meal after Bill and I washed winemaking equipment and the day's dishes.
    
  • We watched the 2017 movie, Dunkirk, along with the extras from Star Trek: Picard.
    
    
• Saturday, 3/13: Blackberry Wine Yeast Starter
  
  • I added pectic enzyme to the blackberry wine must around 11 am. The pH is 3.7, close enough to the ideal of 3.6. Around the same time, I began a starter for the Lalvin RC 212 yeast for the wine. Throughout the day, on the hour, I added a 1/4 cup of wine must heated to 97° to the Mason jar housing the yeast starter. It went into the brew bucket 12 hours after I initiated the starter.
    
  • Mary made minestrone soup for our main meal. We enjoyed a bottle of 2020 pear wine with the meal. It's good tasting wine.
    
  • When I wasn't fiddling with wine yeast, I reviewed 7 of the highest recommended dentists from my Facebook request for quality dentists in Quincy, IL.
  • Mary and I walked the dogs on the south leg of the east trail and startled a deer that snorted at us through the woods for several minutes.
    
  • Saturday is game night. Bill decided we'd play Yahtzee, rummy, and Michigan rummy, keep track of scores in all 3 games, and decide the winner from that. I won Yahtzee. Mary trounced us in rummy, and won Michigan rummy, to reign supreme as the 3-game champion. I was second, and Bill held bronze. It was long, but fun. 
  • During the games we had a bottle of 2020 blackberry wine and some 2019 pear wine. The blackberry wine is the best and that's why we have only one bottle of it left 5 months after it was bottled. The 2019 pear wine is just too alcoholic. It was my first winemaking attempt. The newer wines taste better.
    

Feb. 28-March 6, 2021

Weather | 2/28, 44°, 53° | 3/1, 20°, 49° | 3/2, 19°, 53° | 3/3, 33°, 63° | 3/4, 32°, 56° | 3/5, 24°, 46° | 3/6, 30°, 57° |

• Sunday, 2/28: We Don't Care!
  • We're finding our minds are automatically turning off certain news media obsessions. "Taylor Swift..." we just don't care. "Brittany Spears' father..." forget it! "Meghan Markle and Prince Harry..." turn the page, fast! "Former President..." we've heard enough. There's obviously a public interest for these topics, or reporters wouldn't get assignments to write about just drivel. We've got more important tasks to attend to. "Mary! Can you hand me another roll of toilet paper?"
    
  • Mary pruned the remaining 2 pie cherry trees, then painted wound sealer on pruning marks. She then checked trees she worked on yesterday for missed pruning wound sealer spots.
    
  • I cut and stored sticks from branches Mary prunced yesterday to practice my grafting techniques ahead of the real thing. I also cut four 8-inch scions (pronounced sigh-ons) from Esofus Spitzenburg apple branches that Mary pruned yesterday. I'll graft a couple of these scions to apple rootstock later this spring. The scions went in the fridge.
    
  • Several Vs of snow geese flew over us today. Mary spotted 2 cackling geese trying to catch up with some Canada geese. Cackling geese are 2/3 the size of Canada geese, and possess a higher pitched call.
    
  • Mary made flour tortillas and chimichangas for our midday meal.
    
  • I took an inventory of all of our homemade wine (see photo below). I then asked Bill if he can find and bring me some clear and dark beer bottles when he visits on Saturday that I'll use for brewing and storing the remaining bits of wine from various batches.
    
  • We played the pachisi board game. The score was Mary 3, Dick 1. We come away from game night with smiling faces. It's plain fun.
    
  • A late-night online review indicated that severe winds are hitting Alaska. Ruby Hollembeak (I worked on Hollembeak's farm for 2 summers in the 1980s) said the Richardson Highway is closed south of Delta Junction due to whiteout conditions. I shared a Facebook photo of an 839-foot cargo ship experiencing rough seas with 65-70 knot (75-80 mph) winds just outside of Kachemak Bay in the lower Cook Inlet.

Wine inventory (top to bottom, left to right)
2020 pear, 2021 pumpkin, 2019 pear,
2020 blackberry, 2020 grapefruit, 2020 garlic,
2020 watermelon, & 2020 dandelion.

• Monday, 3/1: Lower Bird Numbers
  
  • Usually we notice a wide variety of birds by March 1st. This year, numbers are way down, or even non-existent. For instance, by now we often hear woodcocks in the evening, but not this year. We hope the single digit temperatures that hit as far south as Texas didn't kill a bunch of birds we usually hear right now.
    
  • I made a batch of waffles for our midday meal.
    
  • We created a want list that we will prioritize for spending our tax refund money.
    
  • I hand sharpened one of my newer chainsaw chains. I purchased 2 chains and a bar a year ago. The teeth are hardly worn. Teeth on past chains were half used up in 1 year, but by sharpening by hand with a file, instead of sharpening with a grinding wheel, my chains last longer and stay sharper. It takes longer to hand sharpen, but the results are vastly improved.
    
  • Mary picked up all of the pear, cherry, and apple branches that she pruned the past two days and hauled them off to a pile near the woods and SW of the house. She also put wood ashes on the sugar maple in the north yard. She noticed that rabbits chewed bark off the Esopus Spitzenburg apple branches left on the ground for a couple days. 
  • Mary did a load of laundry.
  • More geese flew over us, today. Mary saw a juvenile red-tailed hawk.
    
    
• Tuesday, 3/2: Geese Explosion
  
  • There were snow geese flying overhead, east to west by the thousands, all day, today. Mary spotted some Ross's geese flying in a V of snow geese. They look like snow geese, but they're noticeably smaller. While I was cleaning the chainsaw at dusk, a very low-flying group of geese went overhead. At first, I could only hear them, then I saw a group of about 100 snow geese coming right at me, just over the tree tops. They were close enough that I could hear the air rushing by their wing feathers. What an experience.
    
  • Mary washed 2 loads jeans and sweats. We're almost caught up after the stint of cold weather and our multiple-day period with low water pressure.
    
  • We prioritized our list for spending tax refund money, and put cost estimates on high priority items.
    
  • I took measurements for standard-and-bracket bookshelves that we want to put on the west and south walls of the living room. I looked up pricing at various box stores in Quincy.
    
  • Mary baked a chicken. It was our first taste from chickens we butchered in November. We thought they might be tough, because they got so big. That is not the case. This chicken was nice and tender.
    
  • Mary made a shopping list. Guess what we're doing tomorrow?
    
  • I cut firewood from 4 small-sized dead oaks on the edge of the woods SW of the house. I loaded the firewood into the trailer and parked the load in the machine shed.
    
  • I'm connected to a Historical Homer, Alaska group on Facebook. Today, someone loaded a photo of the 1973-74 Homer High School wrestling team, and there I am as a high school junior (see photo below).

  

  1973-74 HHS Wrestling Team (I'm 3rd from left, front row).
  

• Wednesday, 3/3: Shopping
  
  • Mary and I went to Quincy, IL, and bought another month's worth of food. We also got seed potatoes for our garden. They come from Sabin, MN, with black Red River Valley soil dust on them. Mary picked up 4 sweet potatoes out of County Market that she'll develop into sweet potato slips for the garden. We picked up standards and a 8 brackets for book shelves.
  • Snow geese flew over day and night. I bet we see hundreds of thousands of snow geese flying over. We heard wood cocks this evening, so they've arrived home. The first of the spring peepers (frogs) are sounding off in a pond just west of our property.
    
  • We watched a 2018 movie Mary picked out of Walmart's $5 bin called The House With a Clock in its Walls, starring Cate Blanchett and Jack Black. It's really weird and I like it.
    
  • My Red Pearl Royal Dutch amaryllis is blooming (see photos below). It measures 9 inches across the blossom when I pull open the tips of the flower.

Amaryllis (foreground) & bay tree (background).

Sun illuminates this huge amaryllis blossom.

• Thursday, 3/4: Wild Kingdom, sponsored by the Melvins
  
  • While reviewing online news drivel this morning, I spotted a juvenile red-tailed hawk sitting on a branch about 50 yards away from the south living room window. It suddenly wasn't in view, but we could see the tips of its wings above the dead grass. Then, it flew away to the south, with a mouse or a vole in its talons. It was hunting just outside our window.
    
  • Mary did 2 loads of laundry. She also cleaned the pantry, which took over 3 hours, because it's so stuffed with items.
    
  • I moved and watered all of the apple rootstock trees and strawberries, so they could enjoy warm sunlight. Mary and I moved them back inside the machine shed on high spots away from bunny teeth at dusk.
    
  • I ordered 43 more shelving brackets from Menards. They only had 8 brackets in the Quincy store and we need 51. Buy checking "Pick up at store," we don't pay shipping.
    
  • I unloaded firewood out of the wagon, then cut up 4 dead oak trees SW of the house. One tree was bigger, so I left tractor and wagon at the wood's edge. I'll load it tomorrow and drive the tractor back home.
    
    
• Friday, 3/5: More Firewood
  
  • Mary and I picked up and moved the firewood that I cut yesterday. It was a full wagon load. We noticed that there is a lot more possible firewood in that area of the woods. It's on a hill, next to the south field, which gets a lot of summer sun. With too many trees competing for waning soil moisture on dry years, several are sure to die, leaving nice, dry standing oak trees that make wonderful firewood.
    
  • I did online research on my non-starting pickup, then ordered spark testing and fuel pump pressure testing tools from Rock Auto. These will help me narrow down my starting issue. I discovered that Vortec 4.3-liter V-6 engines possess distributors that overheat and wear out, due to their location. A fix is an all-aluminum distributor, but replacing it requires a 2-way reader that costs about $500-$1000. It is used to adjust the timing to keep engine codes from showing. The old ways of timing lights and dwell meters were cheaper.
    
  • We saw 3 deer run off to the east when we walked the dogs to the cow barn and back.
    
  • Snow geese are still flying overhead, but only after dark.
    
    
• Saturday, 3/6: Bill Arrives
  
  • Bill showed up around noon for a 9-day visit with us. Before he arrived, I drilled holes in 8 used plastic Gatorade bottles, and put mothballs in them to use as critter-chewing deterrents for vehicles. I replaced one that I accidentally drove over and one that mysteriously disappeared, which I think a coyote grabbed and hauled off to play with.
  • We built an outside fire and roasted pork loins for our midday meal. We split up the partial bottle of pumpkin wine that we had in the fridge. It was great...definitely a variety to make as a larger batch. The pumpkin wine matched nicely with pork loin.
  • Wind died to nearly calm in the late afternoon, so I gave all fruit trees a round of dormant oil spray. I got everything except the very tip-tops of the large Bartlett pear, the large pie cherry, and the Sargeant crab apple trees. We need a taller ladder. 
  • By the time I got to the cherry trees, darkness fell, so I put on the bright headlamp that Katie gave me and finished spraying. While spraying the Stayman Winesap apple trees, Mary and Bill stood out in the front yard, listening to woodcocks and trying to catch a glimpse of one. Bill said that I looked like one of the ghostbusters marching around with a spray wand and a hardhat adorned with a headlamp. He looked at Mary and asked, "Who ya gonna call?"
    
  • It was Saturday Game Night, so we played a 1981 version of Trivial Pursuit. Mary won 2 games and I won 1 game. Bill says we play it like charades. In other words, the questioner gives hint after hint until the person either answers the question, or we give up. It's kind of cheating, but it's more fun.
  • I put a photo on Facebook of my red pearl amaryllis, which has 4 full blossoms and a fifth bud appearing on that stalk.