June 27-July 3, 2021

Weather | 6/27, 0.03" rain, 66°, 82° | 6/28, 0.77" rain, 69°, 81° | 6/29, 1.03" rain, 69°, 85° | 6/30, 0.16" rain, 70°, 78° | 7/1, 0.12" rain overnight, 68°, 83° | 7/2, 60°, 82° | 7/3, 60°, 83° |

• Sunday, 6/27: Week Old Chicks
  
  • Our chicks are a week old, today (see photos, below). They're growing nicely. We now think we have an entire bunch of Buff Orpingtons, which means I'll be spitting feathers while butchering in 14-15 weeks.
    
  • When Mary plugged in the heat lamp, after turning it off during the hot part of the day, the light blew. I suspect the issue to be the clamp lamp fixture, which I "fixed" last fall after it blew bulbs while I worked on the house roof. I tore it apart. Connections are too rusty. I resurrected another clamp lamp fixture, which has a smaller reflector minus the bulb guard, but possesses a ceramic base. I installed an old heat lamp bulb into the fixture, and we hung it at the correct level above the floor of the chick's side of the coop. We need to get a replacement fixture, soon, since the current one is without a bulb guard.
    
  • Mary picked a large bowl of spinach leaves, processed them, and froze 5 quarts of spinach for future minestrone soups.
    
  • She also picked a half a quart of black raspberries.
  • Mary removed the row of spinach plants in the near garden.
    
  • I finished transplanting strawberries and pinning new runners. There were 17 original buckets of old strawberry plants. I added 16 new buckets, each holding a strawberry plant. I now have 49 Styrofoam cups of potting soil with runners pinned into the soil. There are only 3 buckets of soil left that once held apple tree rootstocks. Once they're filled with strawberry plants, I'm going to plant strawberries in plastic tubs or old galvanized metal stock watering tanks.
    
  • While pulling spinach plants, Mary found a yellow woolly bear caterpillar. She looked it up. It's the larvae of the Virginian tiger moth. The brown and black woolly bear caterpillars that we usually see in the fall turn into Isabella tiger moths.
  • We first heard, then saw a whippoorwill on our front porch railing after dark.
    
  • We hit the hay at a normal human bedtime, instead of our night owl going-to-bed time, so that I could get up early enough to drive 45 miles west and pick blueberries...weather permitting.

Our chicks are one week old.

Chicks at the feeder. These are Buff Orpingtons.

• Wednesday, 6/28: No Blueberries Today or Tomorrow
  
  • At 5 a.m., I checked outside. Rain was pouring down and I heard thunder in the distance. A quick check online showed thunderstorms approaching from the SW. I decided to forget blueberry picking for today and went back to bed.
  • I called Roberts Garage. Our truck is done, so we drove to Roberts to pick it up.
  • Instead of driving east, we went north and bought a new brooder light fixture at Davis Hardware in Lewistown.
  • The owner of Roberts told me GM pickups have rusty brake line issues and they replaced all of the brake lines with a stainless steel kit. The air conditioner issue involved a bad controller and fan motor, which were replaced. The distributor cap and rotor were replaced, and the engine received a tuneup. While driving home, about a mile west of Ewing, the pickup's front started bouncing. I stopped and smelled hot brakes from the passenger front wheel. We turned around and went back to Roberts. They figure rusty brake calipers aren't releasing. I asked them to look at all 4 calipers and replace them, if needed. We don't know the bill, since it wasn't calculated, but we guess it will be high, especially with the added work on brake calipers. We went home without a pickup.
  • Mary made 2 pizzas, that we had for lunch and supper.
  • Garden tours indicate that recent rains are really boosting plant growth. I nipped 4 strawberry runners and re-pinned an unruly runner trying to rise out of the potting soil.
  • Mary moved fabric from the upstairs south bedroom built-in drawers to drawers in our bedroom and sorted it all.
  • I changed out some gas can spouts with faulty gaskets to newer spouts I recently bought. I also replaced the brooder light fixture for our chicks in the coop.
  • Rain fell about every hour in short spurts. I tried to knock down poison ivy next to our lane, but every time I started to get the grass trimmer ready, it started raining, again.
  • With a 90% chance of rain predicted for Brashear, MO, near where the blueberry farm is located, I decided against trying to go blueberry picking in the morning.
  • Mary heard chimney swift chicks at head level on the second floor stairs landing through the bricks of the chimney. We purposefully don't use the chimney through the summer. These birds winter in the upper Amazon River basin. Mary also saw an indigo bunting and a blue grosbeak at the same time in the west yard. A sassy house wren follows me around the gardens, mouthing off as I inspect garden plants.
    
    
• Tuesday, 6/29: Work Between Rains
  
  • I woke up at 5 and walked downstairs. Rain was pounding on the roof and on the air conditioner metal boxes. I went back to bed.
  • Rain showers tracked through our area all day. Weather radar shows them starting in mid-Texas and traveling into Ontario...SW to NE. Rains approaching from the SW tend to materialize, whereas rain clouds approaching from other directions often dry up. Soils are saturated and water stands everywhere. The chicken yard is a muddy, slippery mess. We're not complaining. Blackberries ought to be plentiful, once they ripen.
    
  • Instead of knocking down poison ivy along the lane, like I want to do, I worked on the porch, where I can quickly move tools inside at the start of rain showers. The deck boards on our porch were installed with drywall screws. They're green treated boards, so these metal screws rusted and quit holding. Walking across that decking was like traversing several mini teeter-totters. After removing screws, I drilled new holes, followed by drilling countersinking holes, and installed new stainless steel square-head screws. The countersunk screws makes winter snow and ice removal easier. Snow shovels always hit screw heads in the past. Rain stopped me from finishing, but most of the porch now feels solid, underfoot.
  • A female hummingbird kept buzzing me as I cooked smoked eggs for our midday meal. Mary saw the doe with her fawn. Her small fawn is growing quickly.
    
  • Mary mended some clothes. She also trimmed suckers off the bay trees. She sprayed citrus trees with Dawn soap and baking soda to kill scales and powdery mildew.
    
    
• Wednesday, 6/30: Katie to Venetie, AK
  
  • Katie texted that she was flying into Fairbanks and we could call midday (her time), while she was in Fairbanks, so we did call her. Katie and 2 carpenters were flying into Venetie (pronounced VEEN-i-ty) with Wright Air in the afternoon. While Katie readies for an arrival of a C-130 Hercules freight plane, the carpenters will rebuild an old teacher housing, what Katie calls a dry building, into housing for construction workers. The Herc airplane won't carry all of their supplies. Additional smaller airplane flights are needed, since a larger telescopic boom had to be rented, due to the unavailability of a smaller unit. The new boom eats up 75% of the aircraft's weight capacity, requiring additional payloads of other airplanes. She has other concerns to handle, like sweet-talking the Venetie school into using their internet service this summer for communicating back to the main office in Anchorage. If she can get an internet connection worked out, she will take a break the first week of August for National Guard duty in Florida. Katie said she was running around acquiring supplies and tools for this summertime job in Venetie, fixing their school. On another topic, she hasn't secured her Alaska residency. One problem is the U.S. Postal Service returned all of her mail, since she wasn't at her Anchorage apartment through the winter, including utility bills and bank mail. Consequently, she had to reinstate her online banking and ensure utility companies that she was still living in her apartment. She filled out a postal card this morning, telling the postal service she lives in her apartment. It all means she doesn't have documents, yet, proving her Alaska residency, due to the mail mess.
  • I decided prior to calling Katie that I wasn't driving west to pick blueberries, due to storms moving in from the west shown on weather radar.
    
  • Mary made flour tortillas.
  • I knocked down chicory stalks with the trimmer's saw blade, then cleaned up poison ivy forests behind our mailbox and halfway the east side of the lane. Poison ivy loves our recent rains.
    
  • Mary did evening chores in the afternoon while I whacked poison ivy, with more rain arriving from the west.
  • Rain fell off and on through late afternoon and evening. Mary spotted a leopard frog that took up residence in what we call Lake Cadillac, a large puddle behind the car.
  • I'm enjoying a book that Mary ordered through Barnes & Nobel, using a gift card my mother gave Mary on her birthday. It's a 2017 book entitled The Great Quake, by Henry Fountain, an excellent write-up about the 1964 Alaskan Earthquake. It contains interesting history. I wish I knew some of the information in this book about Valdez and Thompson Pass when I drove tour buses through there in the '70s and '80s.
    
    
• Thursday, 7/1: Blueberry Day
  
  • A morning online check indicated that the Lost Branch Blueberry Farm changed to being open every day this week and next week, due to huge numbers of berries becoming ripe, so I drove west to their location, which is only 8 miles shy of Kirksville, MO.
  • Their hilly location is nice. There are 3 large blueberry patches. The section I was in held the oldest bushes (see photos, below). Some are over head-high, but loaded with heavy, large berries, so their tops bent to the ground. I picked about 6 pounds an hour and came away with 12.8 pounds of blueberries. In talking to the young couple that runs the place, I discovered they hail from western Oregon. They once lived deep in the woods in Oregon. They were quite happy to be here, since the Pacific Northwest is currently in unheard of 110-degree heat.
  • After driving home, Mary packaged up the blueberries into sandwich bags of 40-50 berries per bag, that we'll use in wintertime breakfast oatmeal. I then put 10-12 sandwich bags of berries in quart freezer bags and we froze 61 bags of blueberries. They will be a nice winter treat.
  • Mary said she cleaned out several strawberry runners while I was gone blueberry picking. I picked 3 runners in a morning check. She also saw where voles nipped off corn leaf tops, so she put chocolate generic Ex-Lax pieces into vole holes in the far garden.

A bush overloaded with ripe blueberries.

Looking down the hill along 2 blueberry rows.

An entire hillside of tall blueberry plants.

Two hours of picking and 12.8 pounds of blueberries.

• Friday, 7/2: Blackberry Harvest Starts
  
  • Mary picked blackberries and dew berries while hoofing around the property. She found berries SW of the house, then beyond Swim Pond and Dove Pond in an area we call Bramble Hill. I helped her pick on that hill.
  • A plant we see on Bramble Hill that we thought was a type of milk weed turns out to be Indian hemp, also known as dogbane. It's actually in the same botanical family as milk weed. Native Americans used its bark as cordage. It's all over Bramble Hill. That hill also grows shrubby St. John's wort, partridge peas, and a plant we call mimosa, which is really named sensitive briar.
    
  • Mary found some of the tops of our pepper plants eaten, leaves eaten off a third of our sweet potato plants, and one muskmelon leaf eaten. The culprit could be deer, rabbits, but probably voles. Mary found and blocked a 1.5" tunnel under the chicken wire fence with brick pieces and added Ex-Lax into any vole hole she could locate.
    
  • Mary also weeded a third of the east row on the south end of the far garden.
  • I finished replacing rusty sheetrock screws with stainless steel screws on porch boards. In the process, I removed 5 galvanized nails and replaced them with countersunk screws, since I always hit those nail heads with snow shovels in the winter. I ran out of screws...still have to replace 48 screws in step boards, 8 screws on the porch, plus add more screws on the south and north end boards. I also want to change the railing on the steps, eliminating balusters under each handrail, which also get in the way of shoveling snow in winter.
    
  • I have 7 chigger bites on my right ankle, and 2 on my left ankle, probably because I didn't shower in bug dope when I mowed down poison ivy a couple days ago. I soaked the bites with a paper towel filled with comfrey/rosemary tea, as prescribed by Mary. It effectively stopped the itch.
    
  • Katie texted how she can send, but not receive Messenger texts, but she has 2-way capabilities with her phone's text app, so I sent her a link to this blog via a text and asked her how things are going in Venetie. Here is her response: "It's going. Lots of coordination, still. Hiring local help. Getting housing set up. Still waiting on supplies."
  • We have a Rhode Island Red hen with a green leg band that we call Greenie. She runs out of the coop while Mary feeds sunflower seeds, hides under the coop, and refuses to go inside at closing-the-chicken-door time. She's now spent 2 nights under the coop. When we saw feathers on the ground this morning, we thought she was gone. However, while Mary fed morning sunflower seeds, Greenie appeared. She had feathers missing on her back. Either something tried to grab her and failed, or she accidentally tore feathers off while going under the floor joist on the edge of the coop. Tonight, I helped Mary and shut the chicken door the moment after Greenie went inside the coop. Various tactics are needed to help these birds stay alive when dealing with chicken brains!
    
    
• Saturday, 7/3: Garden Crisis
  
  • We discovered more far garden plants eaten. This time, almost all of the corn tops were bitten off, as were all but one tomatillo plant. Fortunately, all of these plants can recover. Something went right down the NW row and munched every plant. We decided it has to be an animal bigger than a vole...something probably going through the electric fence, which isn't activated, and over the 2' chicken wire fence. We haven't turned on the electric fence, due to wire strands taken out by a deer last winter in the near garden, and major weeds growing up along all fence lines. It's time to change all of that and get the fence powered up.
    
  • We decided to split into night shifts and watch the garden for intruding critters. Mary took the first shift, from dusk to 2:30 a.m., and I took the second shift, from 2:30 into the daylight hours.
  • Mary saw several flashes in the sky from fireworks going off. With extremely liberal fireworks rules (as in none), neighbors love to spend hundreds of dollars and blow things up. She heard coyotes south and east around 1 a.m. A deer snorted just south of her on the other side of the cedars around 1:30. Then just before 2:30, an opossum walked to the south edge of the garden, right in front of her. Mary turned on the flashlight and it put 2 paws on the chicken wire, readying itself to crawl over the fence, then changed its mind and skirted the garden fence. Mary chased it around the garden and to the north. I walked out as she returned. She thinks that was our garden plant eater.
    
  • Earlier in the day, Mary and I picked blackberries, freezing 2 quarts, for a grand total of 3 quarts after 2 days of picking berries.