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.