August 29-Sept. 4, 2021

Weather | 8/29, 0.01" rain, 70°, 89° | 8/30, 66°, 83° | 8/31, 0.58" rain, 67°, 78° | 9/1, 63°, 78° | 9/2, 56°, 78° | 9/3, 0.15" rain, 63°, 75° | 9/4, 67°, 71° |

• Sunday, 8/29: DUCK! Incoming Food
  
  • Mary cut the tips off a huge bunch of green beans, processed them, and froze 15 pkgs of beans.
  • She scooped, then froze 1 more package of muskmelon. We now have 30 quarts in the freezer, which is our quota. However, if we can't keep up with eating them, more muskmelon quarts might end up frozen. A 1.5 gallon amount of tomatoes went into the freezer.
    
  • Mary picked 40 ears of corn. That's the end of harvesting corn. Any remaining ears of corn are rubbery and we have enough. Instead of processing them after dark, we found room for them in the refrigerator. We need to open the fridge door slowly, or something will fall out.
  • Mary and I picked another 1/3 of a bucket of tomatoes. Mary picked 8 more muskmelons. We ate one for an evening fruit meal. Mary found a bunch of worms...too exhausted and in a "who gives a hoot" mood to count.
    
  • I picked and froze 3 quarts of autumn olives. I first went to several trees near the gravel road on the south side of our property, but most of the fruit was orange, therefore it wasn't quite ripe. After running home with thunder booming overhead, I went east to a tree loaded with deep red berries (see photo, below). That tree has so many berries, the branches droop to the ground. While picking berries, I heard a loud buzz, looked up, and there was a hummingbird checking me out.
    
  • As usual, we had thunderstorms roar toward us, diminish to vapor, then build back up over top of us and rain elsewhere.
  • We watered all garden plants late into the evening. Fortunately, we aren't watering corn...WAAHOOO!!!
    
  • We watched a nighthawk fly over us late in the evening. Mary frightened a squirrel with baby in its mouth from under the front steps. It ran to a cedar tree next to the woodshed and scared a rabbit from under the tree. I heard whip-poor-will to the NE after sunset. Mary saw a bald eagle.
  • The pantry smells of autumn olive wine yeast, muskmelons, and tomatoes...kind of a weird combination.
  • The wine brew is foaming (see photo, below), but a check of specific gravity shows no change.

Deep red autumn olive berries.

Yeast making foam in autumn olive brew bucket.

• Monday, 8/30: Cleaning Out Freezers
  
  • Mary defrosted our 2 large freezers. In the process, she threw out 2018 corn, one 2015 chicken, and 2019 pears. It all became donations the local wildlife. Surely, some raccoons and opossums loved the corn.
    
  • I went shopping in Quincy, mainly because the chick food ran out. All store employees wore masks, but most shoppers didn't. I call it defiant stupidity. "You can't tell me what to do...GASP, GASP...I can't breathe!" I wore a mask. I'm not a lemming.
    
  • Mary processed and froze 40 cobs of corn. We're now all done with corn.
    
  • We picked another batch of tomatoes. Mary picked 4 muskmelons. I picked a nice number of strawberries. We both watered gardens. Mary found 11 hornworms and 2 army worms.
    
  • We enjoyed a bottle of blackberry wine with Reuben sandwiches in the evening. It's 3 months since I bottled it and it's absolutely divine.
  • The yeast in the autumn olive wine is perking along (see video, below), with the must at a specific gravity of 1.065.
  Yeast bubbling in autumn olive wine.
  

• Tuesday, 8/31: A Good Rain
  
  • We woke to falling rain...YIPPEE...we don't have to water the garden!!! It rained until noon.
  • I picked autumn olive berries and froze another quart for a grand total of 6 quarts in the freezer.
    
  • Mary froze 6 more quarts of muskmelons, since we can't keep up with what's coming out of the garden by just eating them. She froze 8 quarts watermelons and 2 gallons of tomatoes.
  • Mary picked 1 muskmelon. We're finally coming to the end of this fruit from the garden. Unfortunately, we have 5 sitting in the pantry, waiting to be eaten. Mary picked some ripe hot peppers. We both picked tomatoes.
  • We heard geese for the first time in several weeks. I saw 3 deer on our lane while walking to the mailbox, and a big owl on an electric pole while walking back from the mailbox.
  • The autumn olive wine specific gravity was 1.045 at noon and at 1.020 at 9 p.m. It's fast-moving yeast, which is generating its own heat. The temperature is at 78°. A more common brewing temperature is 65°.
  • Katie called and talked to Mary while I was working on wine. The school superintendent, the person involved with the school's grant, and someone else, visited this week. Katie gave them a tour of the project. They were happy with the work. There's 2-3 weeks left of work to do, then some downtime until the roof metal arrives. She's not sure what she will be doing during that time. Katie is feeling better. In Mississippi, Matt, who she lives with, reports that there were only a couple downed branches, the electricity stayed on, and the house is too far inland to be involved with any storm surge from Hurricane Ida. Katie had a call from someone doing a survey on burn victims, who asked if she was getting out in the community and if she's doing her own grocery shopping. Katie's reply was that there's no grocery store nearby to shop in. The woman asked, "How do you get your groceries?" Katie replied, "We order them and they come in on a plane." The woman replied, "Wow! You really are in the boonies!"
    
    
• Wednesday, 9/1: Autumn Olive Wine Transfer
  
  • I woke an hour before Mary did and couldn't go back to sleep, so I checked the autumn olive wine. The specific gravity was at 1.005, beyond the 1.010 mark when it's to be moved into glass containers attached with airlocks. I was squeezing juice from the mesh bag of autumn olive berries when Mary got up. I gained an extra 3 quarts of liquid after compressing the bag. The liquid went into a 5-gallon wide mouth carboy, a half-gallon jug, a 750-ml wine bottle and a 330-ml beer bottle, all with clear glass. The wine bottle got a bulk of the sediment, so foam immediately started pushing into the airlock tube. I pulled the airlock, replaced it with a hose with the other end blowing into a quart Mason jar half-filled with water. All 4 containers bubbled throughout the day.
  • I spotted a pickup shell for $25 at Palmyra, a half-hour drive from home, so I drove the pickup there to view it. For the price, I should have known it was trash. A sliding window on the passenger side was gone and molding on the driver's side was coming loose. GOODBYE! I bought 2 foot-long sandwiches at Subway in Palmyra and drove back home.
  • While leaving home in the pickup, I spotted over a dozen vultures on the gravel road just beyond our property. They were feeding on a dead young deer. Dried blood on the road indicated that a car hit it and someone then dragged the body to the road's edge.
    
  • Mary trimmed branches off the forsythia bush. She also trimmed dog toenails.
  • Mary pick more green beans, 3 muskmelon, and several tomatillos. We both picked tomatoes. Mary got more hornworms. Some were quite large.
  • I snipped grass from around the strawberry buckets in the near garden and marked what I thought are the buckets holding the 11 oldest strawberry plants.
    
  • We ate 2 muskmelons in the evening. They were amazing. You just don't get that taste from store-bought melons. Our property is great for growing melons.
  • Katie sent a photo of smoked caribou. She said it's tough meat, but tastes good.
    
  • The pickup tires shimmy and shake too much at 65 mph. The rims are rusty and shot. I worry about a tire blowout at highway speeds. Online research showed several rims available for $40 each at JC Auto & Truck Parts, a salvage yard 33 miles south of us in Monroe City, MO.
    
    
• Thursday, 9/2: More Garden Harvest
  
  • Mary froze 3 gallons of tomatoes and 4 quarts of muskmelon.
  • She also did 2 loads of laundry.
  • I transplanted 14 new strawberry plants into 7 buckets. With each bucket, I removed 2-year old plants, tossed them, removed the soil, added compost, wood ashes, sand, and a little potting soil to the existing soil, put it all back into the bucket, transplanted 2 new plants, then put dry grass mulch around the 2 plants. There are 8 remaining new plants that I need to transplant.
  • Mary picked 6 watermelons, a bucketful of bell peppers, 2 muskmelons, and a big New England long pie pumpkin. She and I both picked almost a half bucket of tomatoes. I picked a bowlful of strawberries.
  • I have 7 chigger bites on my left foot/ankle that itch and swell into blisters. I hate chiggers.
    
  • In the evening, I looked at online plans for a bow-roof greenhouse that looked interesting.
  • The autumn olive wine is slowing way down on CO2 emission through the airlocks.
    
    
• Friday, 9/3: Bell Pepper Processing
  
  • Mary cut up and packaged 13 bell peppers (see photo, below) into 25 bags for the freezer. Frozen green peppers are used as homemade pizza toppings and in our smoked scrambled eggs throughout the year.
    
  • I transplanted the last 8 new strawberry plants into 4 buckets, after throwing away the 2-year old plants in these buckets. We now have 53 first-year strawberry plants in 36 4-gallon buckets and 21 plants in 4 totes, for a total of 74 year-one strawberry plants. This is an improvement from this spring, when only 11 strawberry plants sprouted after enduring rabbit chewing through the winter.
  • During transplanting one of the strawberry plants, while finishing up placing potting soil around it, I noticed a tree frog perfectly camouflaged against a strawberry leaf. Mary says every summer a tree frog lives daylight hours in the woodshed, where I was parking the wheelbarrow holding new strawberry plants. I moved the frog to the shade under the weeping willow tree.
    
  • I saw a doe deer on our lane during evening twilight, when I got the mail.
  • Mary made the venison General Tso dish for an evening meal. We drank a bottle of pumpkin wine (see photo, below) with dinner. It's marvelous. You can taste the pumpkin, the raisins, and the cinnamon. The ginger is more a feeling of warmth, instead of a taste. Mary says pumpkin wine is like dessert in a glass. It's definitely a fall/winter wine and one worthy of a 5-gallon batch.

Revolution bell peppers.

Pumpkin wine is destined to be brewed in bigger batches.

• Saturday, 9/4: Son Is Home For a Week
  
  • Bill showed up around 1 p.m. He has a week off and will be with us until next Sunday. His sister gave him an early Christmas present of 2 tickets to the NHL Winter Classic on New Year's Day in Minneapolis. Bill and his friend, Mike, are going.
  • Mary froze 2 more gallons of tomatoes. We now have 12 gallons in the freezer.
  • I used gallon and quart liquid measuring cups with my 3 carboys at the outdoor hydrant and accurately measured them. These glass carboys are made in Italy according to metric specifications. I've noticed in the past that they don't seem to hold exact amounts. My measurements showed this to be correct. The 6.5-gallon carboy actually holds 6 gallons, 3 quarts and half a cup. The 5-gallon is really 5 gallons, 1 quart, and 3 cups. The 3-gallon carboy hold 3 gallons and a quart. Now I know.
  • Mary picked 3 big muskmelons and several tomatillos. We have all we need of tomatillos for salsa-making. I picked about a third of a bucket of tomatoes. Army worms seem to love the Rutgers variety of tomato. I also got a normal bowlful of strawberries.
  • Mary and I checked the large Bartlett pear tree. We're guessing pears will be ready to pick in a week. Four fishing lines I strung up around that tree were broken, so I repaired them.
  • I checked the fishing lines strung up around the Stayman Winesap apple tree and noticed apples on the ground, a sure sign the apples are ripe. Four apples on the ground were chewed on, but others were not. Mary, Bill, and I picked all of the Winesap apples off the tree (see photo, below). They look good and give the pantry an amazing apple smell. 
  • A quick check of the Esopus Spitzenburg apples shows they're mostly rotten. There aren't too many. I've got to do serious work on that tree.
  • Mary and Bill looked at hops plants growing next to the house and in a grove of persimmon trees.
    
  • We ate nachos and watched the 2003 movie, Seabiscuit, which was Bill's choice.

  

  Stayman Winesap apples...2nd year of fruit off this tree.