April 25-May 1, 2021

Weather | 4/25, 38°, 62° | 4/26, 52°, 83° | 4/27, 62°, 83° | 4/28, 1.43" rain, 65°, 69° | 4/29, 55°, 73° | 4/30, 46°, 73° | 5/1, 52°, 81° |

• Sunday, 4/25: Promising Apple Buds
  
  • Since predicted cold temperatures are history, I moved the grafted apple trees from the south upstairs bedroom to outside in the shade. I looked at each one, carefully, and painted tree seal on any crack in the prior applications. There are several swelling, greenish buds that show promise of developing into leaf sprouts.
    
  • Mary mowed the west yard.
  • I put fish fertilizer on the strawberries.
    
  • I raked the rest of what I mowed yesterday and finished filling in the rest of the near garden rows with grass mulch.
    
  • Mary dug about an 8-foot stretch in near garden, turning over the mulch.
    
  • Mary and I checked the cherry trees, that are full of blossoms. We moved a cow panel that was encircling what seems to be a dead cherry sapling to a live cherry sapling that's outgrown its chicken wire-covered tomato cage.
    
  • I worked on my dandelion wine by first skinning the white pith off the peels of 2 lemons, a lime, and an orange, adding them to my ugly pot of dandelion flowers that have soaked for 2 days, and bringing it to a low boil for an hour. The 2-day soaked dandelion flowers look like bad seaweed! But after boiling an hour with fruit, the kitchen smelled like fruit loops. I dumped the concoction into the brew bucket and added a 1.5" section of diced ginger and a pound of sliced up golden raisins. What a sticky mess it is dicing raisins! While I was letting it cool, the house smelled like Christmas cookies. Once the elixir cooled to 75°, I added a crushed Campden tablet and a teaspoon of yeast nutrient. As usual, all of this took more time than I planned and more is online for tomorrow.
    
  • Quite a bunch of coyotes were howling at the end of our lane when we walked the dogs for their nighttime outing.
    
  • We saw tree swallows for the first time, so chimney swifts are soon to follow.
  • The final blossom of my amaryllis is showing (see photo below), this time with just 2 flowers.

  

  The last 2 blossoms of the Samba amaryllis.
  

• Monday, 4/26: Gusting South Winds
  
  • We had southerly gusts to 40 mph that blasted through the opened windows. It was our hottest day this year.
    
  • Mary mowed the far garden, both inside and outside of the electric fence. The high grass next to the rows made the job harder.
  • She also watered the garlic, herbs, blueberries, and the asparagus bed.
  • Mary cut another batch of asparagus spears that added to some she cut yesterday. We ate them, sauteed in garlic wine, in the evening...very yummy.
    
  • I was into dandelion winemaking for most of the day. I first measured specific gravity prior to adding sugar. The fruit and raisin sugars in the wine must gave it a 1.045 specific gravity. I had troubles sucking up juice with the thick dandelion flowers getting in the way. The recipe didn't call for it, but I went ahead and poured the wine must through a nylon mesh bag that Mary held open, to capture all of the soupy flower particles. Mary said it looked just like cat barf. After getting pure liquid, the wine must looked like it came from a sewage truck...sort of greenish brown (see photo below). But, it smells great. Then I added a pound and 7.5 ounces of sugar, to bring the specific gravity to 1.089. The sugar amount was about half of what other recipes called for. A check of the pH indicated it was 4, which is too basic. I need a pH reading of 3.7. Online research revealed that 1 gram of tartaric acid drops acidity levels in a gallon of wine by a tenth of a pH factor, so I tried to measure 3 grams on my scale. It wasn't accurate, because it went from 4 to 3 grams by eliminating half of what I had on the scale. I then used an online grams-to-teaspoon conversion to determine that 3 grams is 0.71 of a teaspoon, so I put 3 quarter teaspoons into the must. That gave me my desired 3.7 pH reading. I developed yeast starter throughout the afternoon and evening, using Red Star Cote des Blances yeast and pitched the yeast after midnight. My starting specific gravity is 1.087, which is perfect for 12% alcohol.
    
  • Bill said he's planning on visiting during Memorial Day weekend.
    
  • We watched the 2016 movie, La La Land. We liked it very much.

  

  Dandelion wine must prior to adding sugar.
  

• Tuesday, 4/27: A Mow Day
  
  • I mowed the lane and some areas adjacent to the east side of the lane full of poison ivy stalks. I also mowed the lawn between the house and the woodshed and the north yard to finish all mowing, except for the trails. We wanted to get all mowing done before tomorrow's predicted rain. I finished after sunset.
    
  • A check of the dandelion wine at noon revealed fast-moving yeast...the specific gravity dropped from 1.087 to 1.075 in 12 hours. Another 12 hours, at midnight, it was at 1.056. The wine's color is now yellow. We took a small taste test...it's very good.
    
  • Mary raked and put mulched grass clippings in the far garden.
  • She also sorted stored vegetables in the back porch closet, throwing away any soft onions and potatoes. Surprisingly, we still have several good onions from last year's garden. 
  • Mary also did several hours of work cleaning the back porch closet.
  • Exactly a week ago, snow covered our trees and the ground. A week later, windows are open and we're thinking about installing air conditioners.
    
    
• Wednesday, 4/28: A Rainy Winemaking Day
  
  • Rain started the moment I let dogs out in the morning and it continued until late night. We sure aren't dry!
  • A noon check of the dandelion wine showed the specific gravity as 1.023, a drop from 1.087 in just 36 hours. That's the fastest wine yeast, yet. I racked the wine into a gallon jug and 2 beer bottles and the resulting yeast bubbling was intense (see below video). Mary and I tasted it. Mary said this dandelion wine has an initial grapefruit taste and a dandelion flower taste at the end. For me, it is just plain good and much better than last year's attempt.
  • Next was the blackberry wine. It was still slightly bubbling. Once I racked everything into a bucket, a hydrometer test showed a specific gravity of 0.994 for an alcohol level of 12.97%. It's higher than I wanted. A look at last year's blackberry winemaking attempt pointed out 2 differences. First, I racked the wine earlier, at a specific gravity of 1.042, rather than 1.010. Second, I strained the must through a flour sack towel last year. By removing more yeast particles earlier in the process, there was less fermentation into alcohol, resulting in a nicer taste. Straining might be an answer to a better tasting dry wine. I added 2 crushed Campden tablets, 2/5 of a full dose, so as not to add too many sulfates to the wine, then racked it into the 5-gallon carboy, a wine bottle, and a beer bottle. Mary and I tasted it. Mary says it has a fruity, almost Kool-Aid taste. It's more alcoholic than I'd like, but it's quite smooth.
  • We watched the 1983 movie, The Right Stuff. 
  • I asked Katie if she's working, yet. She isn't. They're waiting for ice to break, in order to get a barge of building supplies into location at her next jobsite.
    
  First racking of 2021 dandelion wine.
  
  
  

• Thursday, 4/29: Homemade Bread
  
  • Mary baked 4 loaves of bread and put that amazing aroma throughout the house.
  • She cross stitched, an exercise she always does while baking bread, so she can guard rising bread dough from marauding cats. 
    
  • Mary also weeded and fertilized the garlic beds.
  • The dandelion wine drastically quite bubbling. It took only 48 hours for this wine yeast to expend itself, which is extremely fast fermentation.
    
  • I read the manual to the new smaller chainsaw. When I first started it, the saw didn't want to stay running. I'm used to a much larger saw and I adjusted the chain too tight. Once I loosened the chain, the saw ran well.
    
  • I cut down probably 500 persimmon saplings with the small chainsaw. It runs like a charm and is so light, compared to the bigger chainsaw, that it didn't feel like I had anything in my hands. The trees I cut down surrounded the Prairie Fire crabapple tree and were located between the tree and the house. Now, we can see to the far garden's south end from the house. I have a lot more small persimmon trees to cut down in what once was our east yard. 
  • It looks like we have a dead Jonathan apple tree sappling, which was planted in 2014, but greatly neglected. I have a Jonathan graft, but it is only showing swelling buds.
  • Today's wild critter report:
    
  • A bluejay that was trying to rob a nest was attacked and chased away by a robin.
  • I watched a hawk fly into a walnut tree in the next to the far garden. With glasses, Mary identified it as a Cooper's hawk. It flew towards the chicken yard, so I walked to the west of the yard. I heard a bird's call different from the usual sounds and checked it out on allaboutbirds.org, Cornell University's website, and sure enough, I heard a Cooper's hawk call. Mary sighted another, or the same, Cooper's hawk.
  • She also saw about 50 cedar waxwings buzz through our yard.
  • Two chimney swifts showed up just before sunset, so they're home for the spring/summer.
  • Yesterday's rain put a bright spring green on everything.
    
    
• Friday, 4/30: Raining Maple Keys
  • The maple trees are full of seeds and whenever the wind blows, maple keys come raining down like little helicopters. As they hit the metal machine shed roof, the sound resembles an animal running across the roof.
    
  • I cut 26 four-foot long stakes out the small persimmon trees I sawed down yesterday. Then, I mowed the inside of the near garden and pounded in most of the stakes where I'll put up a two-foot high chicken wire anti-rabbit fence. I'm driving the stakes exactly a lawn mower width inside of the electric fence, which keeps out raccoons, ground hogs, and deer. Without all of our fences, it's not worth planting a garden.
    
  • Mary made flour tortillas, did 2 loads of laundry, and removed the wood rack from the living room...no more woodstove fires until fall.
  • She also dug parts of the rows in the near garden.
  • We checked the pear and cherry trees and saw many tiny fruits starting to develop.
    
  • The autumn olive trees are blooming, releasing an amazingly fragrant smell. Bumble and honey bees especially like the white, trumpet flower shaped blossoms (see photos, below).

Autumn olive blossoms.

More blossoms, with small persimmon trees in background.

• Saturday, 5/1: Gardening
  • Mary finished turning over soil in the near garden. With each shovelful of soil, she'd see 6-8 earthworms. Some were up to 10" long. 
  • She then planted potatoes. The potato patch got larger than expected, so Mary says the sweet potatoes are going out into the far garden.
    
  • I pounded the rest of the chicken wire fence posts into the ground. Then, I stretched the chicken wire we used on the same garden last year around the posts. I'm only about a foot shy of completing the circle. I tied chicken wire to 19 of the 26 posts. Last year, I installed a chicken wire gate that we never opened, so we decided this year to forego the gate and step over the 2-foot high fence. I'll weedwhack grass down inside the chicken wire, instead of trying to battle a mower to inside of that fence.
  • Even though the bunny chicken wire fence isn't completely installed (see photo, below), when we walked the dogs on their last nightly walk, I shot the flashlight out into the garden and there was a big rabbit between the chicken wire fence and inside the electric fence, which is why we put up the chicken wire. I still need to fix the electric fence, after a deer did a tight rope act on it last December and stretched the wires out.
    
  • I saw several swallowtail butterflies throughout the day.
  • For the past 2 days, we've been letting the dogs lay out in the sun or shade while we work in the garden. A concern of them running off hindered us from doing this in the past, but they're older and stick around, now. They love the outdoors.

  

  Chicken wire in near garden. Potatoes planted in foreground.