Sept. 26-Oct. 2, 2021

Weather | 9/26, 51°, 84° | 9/27, 63°, 87° | 9/28, 56°, 85° | 9/29, 58°, 83° | 9/30, 60°, 82° | 10/1, 56°, 77° | 10/2, 0.08" rain, 65°, 75° |

• Sunday, 9/26: Removing Pickup Spare Tire
  
  • I removed the spare tire from under the pickup. WHAT A CHORE! First, I read online about the horror stories involving the cabled mechanism designed by GM for storing the spare tire under the pickup bed. If it isn't cleaned and lubricated every 3 months, it rusts up and doesn't work. The guy I bought the rims from is a part-time mechanic. He said taking them off with a grinder is the best idea. I did the tricks I read online for lowering the spare tire. That didn't work, so out came the grinder. First, I filled a 5-gallon bucket with water and stretched out the garden hose...a suggestion by Mary. After the first few seconds of grinding, I smelled smoke. Little smolders were in the dry grass under the pickup. A squirt from the hose squelched them quickly. I doused the grass regularly after that. After grinding the cable end off, nothing happened. Next, I ground each side of what's best described as a large wing nut, which fits the center of the rim. Then, I beat one side of the huge wing nut back and forth with a large ball-peen hammer. Next, I grabbed it with vise-grips and bent it back and forth until it broke off. I wedged a spud bar from the ground to the backside of the bumper to keep the tire from falling on me, then did the same procedure to the opposite side of the huge wing nut. With the wing nut wings gone, the spare tire finally dropped. The rim is shot. The tire looks good. I unbolted this horribly-designed gizmo and tossed it in the metal junk pile. The future spare tire will ride in the bed with a bicycle cable lock through the rim and through the steel loop in the bed.
    
  • Mary picked the last of the peppers and some green tomatoes for piccalilli she's making tomorrow. She picked several strawberries and watered the few things left in the garden.
  • Mary did some cross stitch.
  • We ate a wonderful meal of baked chicken, potatoes, sliced tomatoes, and fresh watermelon.
    
  • We heard a woodcock in the west woods as we walked the dogs at night.
    
    
• Monday, 9/27: Making Piccalilli
  
  • Mary made 13 pints of piccalilli. This year, she added more jalapeño peppers. We add this relish to egg dishes, like quiche. It's interesting, because after the ingredients are chopped and combined, it sits for 3 hours and ferments. It actually fizzes. Then, she cans it. Piccalilli is a yummy addition.
    
  • Mary turned the hay she cut down a few days ago. It's drying nicely.
    
  • I called the landfill on the east side of Lewis County (we live on the west side of the county). They take asphalt shingle waste. The minimum cost is $99 per load and a requirement of a hard hat and a safety vest.
    
  • I picked 150 mulberry leaves that I'm drying for making mulberry leaf tea, which is supposed to help control blood sugar levels.
    
  • The mulberry bush grew this summer from the stump of the tree I cut down last fall located just outside the sun room's south windows. Since it started growing in May, it shot upward to completely block sun from entering the south-facing windows. I cut it down today with the small chainsaw and hauled the branches off to a pile SW of the house, where last year's mulberry branches were piled.
  • I also sawed up branches that fell out of the weeping willow tree earlier this summer and stacked the small logs in the woodshed.
  • While walking the lane to get the mail, a young doe walked a few steps toward Bluegill Pond, stopped and watched me walk by. I guess it thinks I'm a regular. It was gone when I walked back home with the mail.
    
    
• Tuesday, 9/28: Salsa Batch #1
  
  • Mary made the first batch of salsa for 2021. She canned 13 quarts and 1 pint of salsa. It's an all-day job.
  • I drove to Quincy and had Sam's Club change tires on the pickup. It now has aluminum rims, instead of rusty steel rims, even on the spare. I waited 2.5 hours, but paid only $38 for the change out, which included getting rid of 6 old tires. The pickup rides smoother with the aluminum rims.
    
  • I paid off the rest of the Cadillac loan.
  • I dropped off 6 steel rims at the recycling business in West Quincy, MO, and received $30. It was amazing watching their giant magnet on the end of a big crane suck the tire rims out of the bed of my pickup. I watched them jump about 18 inches from my pickup bed to that magnet.
  • I bought three 10-foot long by 2-foot wide sheets of "W" roof valley flashing and six 10-foot long drip edge flashing pieces from Menards, along with some other things.
  • The Menards roofing nails were cheap Chinese crap, so I bought 30 pounds of Vietnamese-made roofing nails from Home Depot for $50.
  • When I left Home Depot, I saw a funny sight in the car parked next to me (see photo, below).
  • I got home with the sun setting. After finishing her salsa-making, Mary picked tomatoes, watered, and hauled garbage to the end of the lane. She was putting chickens away when I arrived.
  • You can see green and white flashing spider eyes in the grass if you wear a bright LED headlamp, I discovered tonight. We have gobs of them in the tall grass on our property. I showed Mary and she thought it was the coolest thing to see.
    

  

  Parked next to me in the Home Depot parking lot.
  

• Wednesday, 9/29: Hay, Salsa, & Compost
  
  • Mary picked up hay that dried on the lawn since Saturday and stacked it along the walls inside the second grain bin. She said we have enough for putting hay down inside the chicken coop throughout this winter and into spring.
  • I washed dishes for Mary while she did hay duties.
  • Mary made another batch of salsa, putting up 14 quarts. With batch number 2, she's halfway through salsa making for the season.
  • I cleaned compost out of our third compost bin, filling eight 4-gallon buckets. I closed off that bin by adding sheet metal to the north and south sides and wiring the two panels onto steel fence posts used as corners of each bin. When we're pulling compost out of a bin, we remove a couple panels for better access. Then, I added the sweet potato vines from the garden, garlic stalks leftover from when Mary processed garlic, and tall grass I cut near the compost bins when I was getting compost for transplanting strawberry plants. I'll add grass cut from mowing a trail to the chicken killing cone, tomorrow. We always move to a new compost bin prior to chicken butchering as a method of composting chicken butchering refuse. After a couple years at the bottom of a compost pile, all that's left are wing and breast bones. Tomorrow night, we start butchering chickens.
    
  • Mary picked 2 New England long pie pumpkins and 22 Table Queen acorn squash. She also picked a basket and a half of hazelnuts.
  • I unloaded roof flashing from the pickup, then ran a 6-foot bicycle cable and combination lock through the spare tire's rim and a steel loop in the pickup bed to lock the spare tire into place.
  • I walked down to get the mail after darkness fell and realized that a big yard light is now shining atop a large electric pole across the gravel road at what we call the middle trailer. Why is the whole world afraid of the dark? Bill recently sent us a video of his old physics professor explaining the effects of light pollution. This processor said right after a 1994 earthquake in LA that caused a widespread power outage, panic set in as 911 calls came in with people asking if the earthquake was caused by the strange silver cloud in the sky. City residents didn't realize they were looking at the Milky Way, because they never see it with all of the city night lights. See this professor's entire presentation for the Missouri Chapter of the International Dark-Sky Association HERE. It's pretty good, and done in front of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.
    
    
• Thursday, 9/30: First Chicken Butcher Session
  
  • We prepped for chicken butchering, then spent most of the night butchering 9 chickens.
  • I cleaned up junk in the west end of the machine shed, then fit the tractor and trailer in there, out of future rain. I hung lights, laid out buckets, and got the butchering area inside the machine shed ready.
  • Mary baked 2 pumpkin pies for snack purposes during breaks while butchering. She made venison fajitas, watered the garden, and did evening chores.
  • With a late afternoon thunderstorm approaching, I weedwhacked open the trail to the killing cone. The old railroad tie that was once a post as part of a fence, but is now holding up the killing cone, wobbles back and forth in its concrete footing, so I propped 2 metal fence posts against it to stabilize it. Mary nipped back some black walnut branches that were encroaching. I picked up grass I cut with the grass trimmer and put 2 large wheelbarrow loads into the compost bin. The thunderstorm split and went around us. We felt 1 or 2 drops.
  • I sharpened knives. They were so dull that I didn't get them all done after over an hour on the sharpening stone.
  • We started butchering at 8:30 p.m. and ended at 3:15 a.m.  These chickens are 14 weeks, 3 days old. They're not as large as last years' 16-week old birds, but there's less fat, therefore less wasted chicken feed. Overnight temperatures while butchering ranged from 65° to 60°, so we only worked on 3 chickens at a time in order to process them quicker. We took 2 breaks.
  • I heard coyotes 4 different times through the night. 
  • At one point, Mary was looking up into the stars, uttered something and told me to come look. An orange, slow-moving, atmosphere-grazing meteor streaked from the NW to the SE across most of the night sky. A tail of sparks followed it and after it disappeared, there was a visible trail of smoke that lasted for about 45 seconds. It was a once-in-a-lifetime moment.
  • We watched a sliver of a moon rise through clouds to the NE after midnight. Occasional flashes were seen in the northern sky from the lightning storm that went through us, but was in northern Iowa.
  • We got to bed very late, or very early, depending on your perspective. It was 5 a.m. There are 18 more chickens to butcher. UGH!
    
    
• Friday, 10/1: Second Butcher Night
  
  • Up by 9 a.m., we slept for only 4 hours. It was the day of the walking dead around here.
    
  • I cleaned up buckets and other chicken butchering items. 
  • Mary picked tomatoes and watered strawberries, parsnips, and winter greens.
  • After an hour-long nap, I sharpened knives while Mary washed dishes.
  • We started butchering chickens at 7:45 p.m. and finished at 1:30 a.m. From killing a chicken to placing a gallon zippered bag of a cut-up chicken in the freezer, we averaged 30 minutes per bird, and gave ourselves a 15- to 30-minute break between each set of three birds. It worked out perfect, because sometime after we went to bed, rain fell, and we were done by the time it was wet, outside. We now have 18 of this year's chickens in the freezer. Ten chickens remain. One is a pullet that we'll keep with our current egg-laying flock. The other nine go in the freezer. Rain is in the forecast, so we'll see if Mother Nature postpones Saturday night's chicken butchering, or if we finish Sunday night.
    
  • It was barred owl night. I heard them calling all night. At one point, an owl was just outside the machine shed making a racket. Clouds cloaked the stars and the moon. The air was warm and humid, with temps starting at 69° and falling to 67°, when we finished butchering. There were more bugs hovering around the bright lights in the machine shed. It brought out spiders and frogs. Twice, I saw frogs that were less than an inch long hop across the machine shed floor.
    

• Saturday, 10/2: Third Night of Chicken Butchering Rain-Delayed
  
  • My daylight routine was the same...clean up buckets, get ready for another butchering night, sharpen knives, and take a nap for an hour.
  • Mary made a huge batch of popcorn and a big pile of macaroni casserole.
  • We butchered 6 chickens, starting at 7:45, but ending earlier than planned. The larger chickens seem to be the last to get butchered, probably because they're on the top rung of the roost and those lower in the pecking order and on the lower rung, get selected first. It was cloudy, 90% humidity, with rain clouds approaching from the south and showing on the radar after we started the second batch of 3 chickens. We quit at 11:45 p.m. Rain poured off the roof around 12:45 a.m. If we'd proceeded with the final 3 chickens, we would have gotten soaked. Instead, we were bathing and heading for bed. Only another hour and a half and we'll finish chicken butchering for the year, but that will be tomorrow.
  • It was really buggy in the lit up machine shed. At one point, I heard something tinging off the aluminum light fixture, looked up, and saw a half-inch green round bug. You just have to concentrate on skinning the bird and ignore moths and crane flies buzzing by your face. Several glow worms, or next year's lightning bugs, border the trail we walk from the machine shed to the killing cone. With enough moisture, we should see another great lightning bug year next summer.
    

Sept. 19-25, 2021

Weather | 9/19, 61°, 86° | 9/20, 0.96" rain, 65°, 85° | 9/21, 56°, 69° | 9/22, 47°, 69° | 9/23, 42°, 70° | 9/24, 0.08" rain, 49°, 79° | 9/25, 45°, 79° |

• Sunday, 9/19: Hazelnuts & Jalapeño Wine
  
  • Mary picked hazelnuts that were ready, then husked 2 baskets of hazelnuts, gaining a large basket of pure nuts (see photo, below).
  • She did a load of laundry, drying the clothes inside on racks, due to heavy ragweed pollen in the outside air.
    
  • I racked the jalapeño wine, to remove deep fines from the bottom of the containers. One of the L-shaped clamps holding the silicone top on the 5-gallon big mouth carboy is broken, but the 2 other clamps still hold the top in place. The specific gravity is 0.992. There was a little bubbling prior to racking, but after racking, bubbling ceased. The alcohol level is at 13.5%. Once I combined all liquid from 4 containers into the brew bucket and took a specific gravity reading, I racked the wine back into the 5-gallon big mouth, a half gallon jug, and a 330-ml beer bottle. We tasted the 200 ml of wine left over. Initially, you get a shock of heat. After a couple more sips, it becomes addictive. You need more, more, more! It's not for everybody, especially people who don't like spicy food or drink.
  • I cleaned 8 wine bottles that soaked for 2 weeks in Oxy Clean and put 8 more in the soap solution. Soaking immensely helps remove labels off wine bottles.
  • I estimated wine bottle requirements for upcoming winemaking. I have 77 empty bottles and I need another 76 bottles. "Houston, we have a problem!"
    
  • Mary and I watered garden plants.
  • Because we need more empty bottles, we emptied a bottle of 2020 pear wine. It's very good.
    
  • Katie called. Her project is still a few weeks from completion. Snow fell this morning in Venetie, AK. She offered to help on my fall construction projects, but she won't be available until November. It's okay. Fall freeze forces us to get projects done in October. After the call, she sent us a long Christmas wish list.

  

  2021 ripe hazelnuts, with many more to pick and husk.
  

• Monday, 9/20: Soon to Buy Orchard Ladder
  
  • I arranged to buy a 12-foot wooden orchard ladder for $40 that I found for sale on Facebook.
    
  • I went to Quincy to get chicken food. I also picked up a few groceries.
  • While in Sam's Club, I set an appointment for next Tuesday at noon to swap the pickup tires onto the aluminum rims I recently bought.
    
  • Mary picked tomatoes and froze 3.5 gallons of tomatoes. We now have 26 gallons in the freezer and need 4 gallons more for various future items, such as salsa and minestrone soup.
  • We learned via texts that Karen and Lynn are in the process of buying a home in Cleveland, Georgia.
    
  • We ate nachos and watched the 2012 movie, Snow White and the Huntsman. A thunderstorm interrupted the movie for an hour.
  • Nearly an inch of rain fell and there was no water entering the back porch closet through electrical boot to the house. My patch job on the roof around the electrical boot worked!
    
    
• Tuesday, 9/21: Failed Wine
  
  • The late Jack Keller, a home winemaking guru, wrote that occasionally batches of wine will turn out bad. Such is the case with watermelon wine I made last year. I opened a bottle of it and the wine is rotten. I dumped it and 2 other bottles down the drain. Mary says the wine is probably melting sewer pipes right now. I now have 3 more empty bottles for future wine.
  • For the first time in months, we didn't run air conditioners. A northwest wind brought in deep blue skies and much cooler air. What a wonderful feeling!
  • For the first time in weeks, we didn't water garden plants. What a wonderful feeling!!
  • We only got 4 strawberries from evening garden picking. What a bummer!!!
    
  • I cleaned labels off 8 of my wine bottles after they soaked in OxyClean and water for 2 days.
    
  • Mary made 2 quiche pies. 
  • She also cleaned a food-grade bucket, then filled it with 4 containers of oatmeal. A plastic bucket is harder for a mouse tooth to penetrate, compared to the thin cardboard of an oatmeal container.
  • Mary made and set out 4 fruit fly traps. The traps, an idea from our son, Bill, are simple to make. Put apple cider vinegar in small stoneware bowls, cover with plastic wrap, and puncture the plastic with 4 small holes. Fruit flies are attracted to the vinegar, enter through the holes, can't get out, then die. This homemade fruit fly trap is very effective.
    
  • I researched online how to apply new asphalt shingles.
  • Mary saw a group of northern pintail ducks.
    
    
• Wednesday, 9/22: Moving Houseplants
  
  • With nighttime temperatures predicted in the 40's tonight, Mary transplanted and brought in houseplants that spent the summer either around the base of the weeping willow tree, or just inside the woodshed. She washed aphids off all of the pots. The ficus tree/bush is now 7 feet tall. It makes the sunroom feel like a jungle (see photo, below).
    
  • Removing the ficus revealed carpenter ant sawdust at base of willow tree. We must take down the weeping willow before it falls over and takes out part of our house and the electric line.
  • Mid-Rivers is terminating their pension plan. Email communications with Lisa Gross, Mid-Rivers' human resources person, confirmed that my pension payments will remain the same.
    
  • I measuring heights and distances that I'll need reach to shingle the SE roof of our house.
  • After doing that I moved the extension ladder to the south wall and washed the outside of the upstairs south bedroom window. I also cleaned the inside, since some houseplants go just inside that window.
    
  • I communicated via emails to Sunbelt Rental in Quincy. I probably can't get the 50-foot towable lift they have when I want it on Oct. 8th, due to a 2-month rental on it and 2 others on a wait list.
    
  • I checked tar paper stacked in the nearest bin. We have 1600 square feet of it. We need 600 square feet, so there is plenty.
  • I moved the tar paper, hundreds of ice cream buckets, and a cooler out of the first grain bin and into the machine shed.
    
  • Mary vacuumed spiders from inside the house. Cooler weather is forcing them through the the immaculately sealed walls of our house to the inside.
    
  • We picked more tomatoes. We also picked 9 strawberries...it will be a yummy breakfast tomorrow.
  • While letting chickens out and feeding them in the morning, we saw 2 broad-winged hawks circling to the west and migrating through our area. We also startled a wood duck in Bluegill Pond while walking the dogs on our lane.

  

  Mary bought an ancestor of this plant for her first apartment in Kirksville, MO, in 1989. Every time we moved, she took a cutting and restarted it. This 7-foot tree/bush is from about the 10th cutting.
  

• Thursday, 9/23: Processing Garlic
  
  • Mary cut down the clumps of garlic hanging in the rafters of the machine shed, cut them off their stalks, sorted out 75 of the largest ones in each of the 6 varieties for planting in November, and put the rest in mesh bags that once held 18 pounds of grapefruit. We now have 4 of those large bags of garlic, which is more this year, than in other years. Mary threw out only 8 bad garlic bulbs, which is very good.
    
  • I called United Rentals in Quincy and asked about their towable 50-foot lift. It's out forever, so I asked about a comparable lift that they deliver. I was given a rental price for a 45-foot articulating lift on heavy lugged tires. It's comparable in price to the towable one, plus I don't have to bring it here and take it back to Quincy. After talking with Mary, I reserved it for a month, with delivery on Monday, Oct. 4th.
    
  • I called a local landfill and left a voicemail message asking about delivering asphalt shingle waste.
  • I looked at the current 4 center caps on the pickup, versus the 3 caps that came with the aluminum rims I bought. They're quite different. I texted JC Auto Salvage in Monroe City, MO and emailed photos of what I need to them. They have one that I can get tomorrow. That puny piece of plastic costs $25, used. These center caps are better than the old metal hub caps, because they screw onto each lug nut and wheel stud, keeping moisture and road grime off. They'll have a Chevy logo on them, but I don't care.
    
  • I checked the Esopus Spitzenburg apples...all rotten. That tree needs vastly more attention.
    
  • Two deer crept off to the edge of Bluegill Pond when I walked down to get the mail. I saw ears among the tree leaves as I walked by on the lane.
    
    
• Friday, 9/24: Sweet Potato Harvest
  
  • Mary dug up sweet potatoes from the garden. It was a tough go, digging a 30-foot long row that's 30 inches wide about 2 feet down with a hand trowel. She tried a shovel and sliced a nice sweet potato in half. With a hand trowel, she felt like she was on an archeological dig, but it saved tubers. We got about double what we usually harvest (see photo, below), which amounted to 2 milk crates about 2/3 to 3/4 full. Some tubers are 3.5 inches in diameter and a couple are over a foot long. Mary said some of the sweet potato vines were 10 feet long.
  • I called the bank that financed the Cadillac, since our last payment is in November, so we can pay off the entire loan when I go to Quincy next Tuesday.
    
  • I ordered a magnet that can lift 25 pounds from American Science and Surplus, plus five 9-volt battery snaps, and a bottle brush. The magnet is for collecting errant roofing nails out of our lawn during the roof project.
    
  • I drove the Cadillac 38 miles south to the JC Auto Salvage yard at Monroe City via back roads. What an enjoyable drive! Combines were out everywhere, harvesting corn and soybeans.
    
  • The center hub I picked up at JC is better than the other 3 I own.
  • I drove to Hannibal and bought groceries, chick, and pet food. A higher tax is charged in Hannibal, in the low-tax state of Missouri, than the tax charged in Quincy, in the high-tax state of Illinois.
    
  • I thought Quincy was bad about wearing masks until I showed up Hannibal, today. It's full of virus-spewing, anti-mask wearing people. No wonder the Hannibal Regional Hospital is always in the local news about being overstuffed with COVID patients.

  

  2021 sweet potato crop in the wheelbarrow.
  

• Saturday, 9/25: No Hickory Nuts, Husking Hazelnuts
  
  • Mary cut hay with her scythe around the apple trees in order to reclaim that part of the south lawn, then moved the hay with a pitchfork to a mowed portion of the lawn to dry.
    
  • I washed the aluminum pickup tire rims with a degreaser, then sprayed penetrating fluid on rough spots showing on the outside of the rims and cleaned those areas up with steel wool. They look much better.
    
  • Mary checked the woods north and south of the west field for hickory nuts. There are none, so far, but there might be some later.
  • She picked 2 big baskets of hazelnuts.
    
  • I drove to Hannibal and met a guy at the Lowe's parking lot to purchase a 12-foot wooden orchard ladder for $40. New, these ladders are worth about $170 in Maine, or $200 in Canada. You just don't find them, here. This was advertised in Facebook's Marketplace. It's well-built and probably from the 1960s or 1970s. The guy I bought it from said it was in a shed when they bought the home where they currently reside.
    
  • We watched the first Harry Potter movie, while husking hazelnuts, since it's a movie we've seen multiple times and don't need to necessarily watch it while husking nuts.
    

Sept. 12-18, 2021

Weather | 9/12, 65°, 85° | 9/13, 60°, 85° | 9/14, 69°, 83° | 9/15, 52°, 79° | 9/16, 52°, 81° | 9/17, 56°, 87° | 9/18, 60°, 85° |

• Sunday, 9/12: Morning Bass Fishing
  
  • Bill, Mary, and I went fishing in the Swim Pond (see photo below). We kept 8 bass. On our first casts, we all hauled in fish, immediately. Several were too small. The largest fish was one Bill caught on a walleye lure. I ventured to the north side of the pond. Plant life is over head-high and needs to be cleaned out. There are also increased weeds in the water along the pond's edges. We need to get a grass carp to clean that out.
    
  • On the way back from the pond, we spotted a monarch caterpillar feeding on a milkweed (see photo below).
    
  • Bill and I filleted out the fish, after which, Mary cooked them up. We had fish, fresh tomatoes, garlic toast, followed by a muskmelon. All were home grown, but the toast.
    
  • We loaded Bill up with 12 dozen eggs, a watermelon, and 5 bottles of wine. Bill put all of the dried hops into 3 one-gallon bags and squeezed the air out of the bags. It equaled over 8 ounces, which he says is more than enough to make into a batch of beer. He left to go back to his place in St. Charles at 1 p.m.
    
  • Mary and I picked pears off the big Bartlett pear tree. There's no way we'll be able to use all of the pears. We took 4 buckets into the house, each weighing 20 pounds. The rest of the pears will have to be picked to save the tree from breaking any more branches. Already, about 4 branches are broken from too much weight.
    
  • I sorted 226 pears and tossed 81 of them. The remaining 145 I wrapped in newspaper and put in dresser drawers on the upstairs landing to ripen. I'll use around 100 for pear wine and we can eat others. In the future, I want to make a fruit press and make discarded pears into pear cider.
    
  • Mary froze 4 gallons of tomatoes. We now have 20 gallons in the freezer, which is enough for canning 3 batches of salsa and 1 batch of slumgullion. Now, we freeze 12 more gallons of tomatoes for minestrone soup for 1 year.
  • Seeds sprouted in the winter greens tubs of Astro Arugula, Winterbor Kale, and Fun Jen. I still have armies of aphids on the rims of the kale tubs that I squish throughout the day.
    
  • I checked the jalapeño wine. Yeast is fizzing nicely. The specific gravity is 1.080. Mary and I tasted it. It tastes like jalapeño bread, which means it's very good. It's filling the house with a flowery pepper smell that you notice the instant you walk through the front door.

Bill and Mary fixing fishing gear at the Swim Pond.

A monarch caterpillar feeding on milkweed.

• Monday, 9/13: New Pickup Wheels
  
  • I drove the pickup 114 miles south to Hawk Point, MO, and bought 5 aluminum rims with tires for $75 that came off a 2002 Chevy Suburban. A rusty steel wheel comes with the deal that I'm going to toss out. The tires on these rims aren't worth keeping, but the rims are a vast improvement from the extremely rusty steel rims currently on the pickup. This was a sale I saw last week on Facebook's Marketplace. On the way south, I stopped in Palmyra to get money out of a branch of our bank, then stopped at the Farm & Home store in Hannibal, MO, and bought dog, cat, and chick food. A strong SW head wind was blowing as I drove south. I got back home with the sun setting in the west.
    
  • Mary processed and froze 7 quarts of green beans. We now have enough beans in the freezer for another year.
  • She also picked more tomatoes. There are no more muskmelons to pick. Mary did all of the evening chores, too.
  • Before leaving to get the pickup wheels, I moved all 6 of my winter greens tubs to between the woodshed and a maple tree. I killed another army of aphids on the rims of 3 tubs. When Mary covered them with sheets to keep rabbits from chomping off new sprouts, she only killed one aphid. So, moving the tubs solved the aphid problem. They are thick under the weeping willow tree.
  • I checked the jalapeño wine in the evening. In 48 hours, the specific gravity dropped from 1.095 to 1.030, which means this is fast moving yeast. It will be ready to rack into glass containers tomorrow morning.
    
    
• Tuesday, 9/14: Holly Died (see Holly photos, below)
  
  • Holly, one of our cats, who was born on Dec. 19, 2009, under the Christmas tree, died today at 12:28 p.m., with Mary stroking her fur. She lost a lot of weight since about a year ago. She lived longer than we expected. Before she got skinny, Holly could out jump any other cat, even though she was the runt cat of the household. I wouldn't say she was a great cat...I cussed her antics quite often. But, Mary and I have lumps in our throats today. We buried her on the west edge of the north yard, just beyond where we buried Churchill, who was a lab/mastiff cross, last year on Feb. 29th. Merlin, a cat, and Klondike, a golden retriever, are also buried there. Molly, another golden retriever, is buried on the edge of the east yard.
  • A morning check of the jalapeño wine indicated that the specific gravity was 1.013. I racked the wine must into a 5-gallon wide mouth carboy, a half-gallon jug, a 750-ml wine bottle, and a 330-ml beer bottle. Clean up was interrupted by pet burial duties.
  • After burying Holly, Mary and I had a glass, each, of homemade autumn olive wine.
  • I picked over a half bucket of tomatoes while Mary killed hornworms. We watered garden plants.
    

Holly as a kitten on Jan. 27, 2010.

Holly & Nick (her brother) as kittens.

Rosemary (mother), Holly (daughter) and Nick (son).

Holly in sunroom, Sept. 1, 2011.

Holly (left) and Rosemary (right).

Rosemary, Merlin, Holly & Nick. Yup, Merlin was big.br />

• Wednesday, 9/15: Pears Off Bartlett Tree
  
  • I pulled the remaining pears off the big Bartlett pear tree. I hauled 155 pounds of pears and dumped them at the edge of the north woods. I kept 25 pounds of the best pears. I removed broken and loose branches. There are broken and attached branches I still have to saw off, along with sawing off jagged areas where branches tore off the tree.
    
  • Mary picked about a quarter of the hazelnuts (see photo, below). Most years, all hazelnuts are mature by now. This year, several are still green.
  • Mary froze 3 quarts of muskmelons and is happy to report that muskmelon season is finally over.
  • She also froze 18 quarts of watermelon. The best variety is the Sweet Dakota Rose watermelon. This variety develops small fruits that are very tasty.
  • Mary took the large nippers and pulled 3 large Diablo pumpkins, and 9 small watermelons (see photos, below) from the garden.
  • After a chicken dinner, we put on the 1998 movie You've Got Mail, while Mary husked several hazelnuts and I wrapped pears with newspaper.
  • I put 76 pears in 2 drawers of a chest of drawers owned by Bill. We have 221 pears ripening, enough for two 6-gallon batches of pear wine, or one batch of wine and too much to eat. What a problem!

A quarter of our hazelnuts.

Watermelons: dark Verona and striped Sweet Dakota Rose.

Diablo pumpkins.

Mary with a 22-pound pumpkin from our garden.

• Thursday, 9/16: Messing With Plants
  
  • Mary froze 5 gallons of tomatoes. These are designated for minestrone soup.
  • She also picked about a half a bucket of tomatoes.
  • In another gardening project, Mary harvested ripe hot peppers, and then strung them up to dry in the upstairs south bedroom.
    
  • I cut heavy wire that I bent into hoops for the winter greens tubs. Then, I cut 1-inch wooden dowels, drilled holes in them and put the dowels on the top center of the hoops to add stability to the contraption. Finally, I covered the hoops with white netting, or tulle fabric. The main purpose of these coverings is to keep sulfur butterflies off the kale and fun jen plants. I moved tubs so the winter greens get a little more sunlight and secured tulle with clothes pins and bricks (see photo, below). In the evening, we covered these hoops with sheets, to help keep out varmints. The sheets make them look like miniature covered wagons.
    

  

  Winter greens with new netting. "Wagons-Ho!"
  

• Friday, 9/17: Strawberries on Waffle Breakfast
  
  • I made waffles for breakfast. We had enough strawberries to put on one waffled for each of us.
  • Due to some critter eating on green bell peppers and an urgent need to get them used before they were gone, Mary made and canned 12 quarts of slumgullion. With 5 quarts from last year, we have a total of 17 quarts of "slummy" on the shelves. We use it in spaghetti sauce and macaroni casserole.
  • I picked 3 quarts of autumn olives from trees just east of our lane and near the gravel road. Quite a few honey bees were in the lespedeza and goldenrod flowers, nearby.
  • We both watered remaining garden plants. Afterward, Mary found 5 hornworms. I saw 2 swallowtail caterpillars in the parsnip leaves. We're leaving them. The parsnips are about done and we like swallowtail butterflies.
    
  • I figured out remaining wines I intend to make, extra ingredients, yeast types, volumes for each wine variety, and estimated make dates, in order to plan winemaking purchases, available winemaking primary ingredients, and subsequent production dates. I still need to check if I have enough bottles and available carboys for the 7 future wines (pear, parsnip, garlic, cherry, pumpkin, blackberry, autumn olive) and 2 wines currently in carboys (autumn olive & jalapeño). I also need to plan in shingling a roof, butchering chickens, deer hunting prep, hunting, deer butchering, wood stove pipe and chimney soot removal, building a greenhouse, and firewood collection. While I was discussing things with Mary, she said her hobby is easier. All she has to worry about is a pattern and some floss.
  • We're very dry. We've only seen 0.15" of rain for the month of September.
    
    
• Saturday, 9/18: Tired of Heat
  
  • Summer heat continues for us. We see highs in the 80s, with a prediction for tomorrow in the 90s. Cracks are forming in our clay-bound soil. I yearn for cooler weather.
  • I was in the afternoon heat, standing on a step ladder, picking autumn olives. I froze 3 more quarts. I needed 12 pounds for a future 3-gallon batch of wine. After weighing all of my quart bags, I'm a half an ounce shy of 13 pounds, so autumn olive picking is done for this year.
    
  • Mary cleaned floors and dusted.
  • She also froze 8 quarts of watermelon for a grand total of 50 quarts in the freezer. Any other watermelons from the garden are to be eaten.
  • We both watered garden plants and picked tomatoes. I found a ripe muskmelon on vines that were supposed to be done.
  • Mary fixed venison on biscuits that we ate in the evening, along with some watermelon.
  • I added winemaking dates to an online calendar, including estimated racking dates, to determine if I need more carboys. I'll be fine, as long as I back up the start of making blackberry wine from the end of January to mid-February. After adding other necessary activities and discussing them with Mary, we might butcher chickens a week earlier, so that I can start roofing the SE of the house roof by Oct. 1st, in order to erect a greenhouse on the south-facing porch by Oct. 20th. Roof waste has to slide off the roof and hit the ground/porch right where I'm building a greenhouse, so roofing must be completed before dealing with a greenhouse, which needs to be in place prior to freezing. All timelines get tight, especially if we have early freezes.
    

Sept. 5-11, 2021

Weather | 9/5, 56°, 80° | 9/6, 60°, 85° | 9/7, 63°, 87° | 9/8, 54°, 77° | 9/9, 52°, 77° | 9/10, 53°, 87° | 9/11, 61°, 87° |

• Sunday, 9/5: Unknown Apples
  
  • Mary and I cleaned the apples we picked from last night and sorted them between good and not-so-good. We'll eat the lower quality apples first. We then spent an hour trying to determine the identity of the apples. They definitely are not Staymon Winesap apples, because they are too dark red in color. They might be winesap apples, but our apples ripened the first week of September, when winesap apples ripen in October/November. Whatever they're called, we call them very good apples. We each had one with cheese and crackers. They're sweet, but with quite a bit of tang, or tartness. They're juicy...just perfect.
    
  • Bill used ladders to crawl up to the roof's edge of the NW corner of the house and picked 2.5 baskets of hops (see photos, below). Some of the hop cones are 2" long. Some are bug-eaten and Bill tossed those. They contain a strong, pleasant IPA beer odor. Hopefully, he can use them in brewing up a nice beer. Once again, we have no idea what kind of hops are growing here. They were probably planted decades ago by a former owner of this land.
    
  • Mary watered the gardens. With fewer crops to harvest, only 5 out of a total of 9 rows need watering. 
  • She also picked a big basket of green beans, 2 muskmelons, and a normal third of a bucket of tomatoes.
    
  • I racked the autumn olive wine. All of the bottoms of the containers held at least a half inch of lees. The specific gravity is 0.990, giving it an alcohol content of 12.34%. I added 5 crushed Campden tablets after racking it all into a bucket, then I moved the wine into a 5-gallon carboy and a wine bottle, topping both with airlocks. We drank the 8 ounces leftover. Bill says it has an olive taste. Mary said it has a strong alcohol taste. To me, it is still yeasty tasting and needs aging. The autumn olive taste isn't there, yet.
    
  • We had smoked scrambled eggs containing sliced bell peppers and shallots, with fresh cherry tomatoes and 2 muskmelons split three ways. We also drank a bottle of 2020 pear wine, which matched the eggs, excellently.

Volunteer hop vines in a maple tree.

Bill picking hop cones from an extension ladder.

• Monday, Labor Day, 9/6: South Porch to Greenhouse
  
  • We decided to put a plastic-covered greenhouse on the south-facing porch that we never use and access it through an exterior door from the sunroom of our house. That porch is solid, but the hand rail around it is rickety, so I tore down the rail. It was poorly built. Drywall screws attached 4x4 posts to the porch through 1-inch porch planks...talk about wobbly! The top rail included two 1x4 boards tacked together with finish nails and these nails poked through the underside the second board...OUCH! It's all gone, now, except two 4x4s cemented into place at the base of the stairs.
    
  • Mary froze 1 gallon and most of a second gallon of tomatoes. She also finished freezing tomatillos.
    
  • Mary made tortellini soup, which was Bill's choice, for our main meal.
  • I looked up pie cherry wine recipes.
  • Bill and I helped Mary water gardens. Bill and Mary saw 4 nighthawks and 2 great blue herons, all at the same time, in the evening.
    
  • We watched 2 movies picked out by Bill...Apollo 13 and Cinderella Man.
  • On the final dog walk, the electric fencer unit showed only 2 red lights, so it was shorting out. We found 3 dead praying mantids and fence wires badly wrapped around one another in 4 places. Some critters really got shocked by the electric fence.
    
    
• Tuesday, 9/7: Trip to Quincy
  
  • Bill and I drove to Quincy, mainly to buy chick food. While in town, Bill opened a checking account at our bank for the eventual closing of an account he has had since college days at a Kirksville, MO bank. We also got some groceries.
  • Mary processed and froze 8 quarts of green beans and 10 quarts of watermelon, which took a bulk of the day.
    
  • I picked a half of a bucket of tomatoes. Mary picked 2 muskmelons, 7 watermelons, and a few strawberries.
  • Mary, Bill, and I watered the gardens.
    
  • We played Michigan rummy and drank a bottle of pumpkin wine into the wee hours of the night. I lost miserably. Bill won, with some amazing hands. We gave him a hard time, because his big wins were when he dealt the cards. We had a great time and laughed throughout the game.
  • Mary took some fall flower photos recently (see below).

Beggar Tick flowers in the north yard.

Closeup of Beggar Tick blossoms.

Boneset blossoms in our yard.

Bright blue dayflower in the chicken yard.

• Wednesday, 9/8: Bill's Car Maintenance
  
  • Bill changed oil and the oil filter on his car. He also picked more hops and set them out to dry in the upstairs south bedroom.
    
  • I put holes in the bottoms of 6 Rubbermaid totes, added 1/4-inch hardware cloth on the inside of the holes, some gravel, then wood chips. I collected 3 totes half filled with rotten wood from a downed oak tree NW of the chicken yard to put in the bottom of these containers, which will eventually be planted with winter greens that we will place in a yet-to-be-built greenhouse.
    
  • Mary mowed the west yard.
  • She picked a big basket of green beans, 2 muskmelons, and a bunch of tomatoes.
    
  • Bill made 3 pizzas, which were the best he's ever made. We ate them all.
    
    
• Thursday, 9/9: The Joy of Youth
  
  • Bill mowed the near east yard and the entire lane. He finished the lane in 1 hour, a job that takes me a half a day to accomplish. I asked him if he was tired, later in the day. He wasn't. Life's great, when you're young.
    
  • I finished adding wood chips and rotten wood to the 6 totes, then added soil to from old blueberry containers to 5 of the 6 future winter green totes.
  • Mary froze 3.75 gallons of tomatoes and 5 quarts of muskmelons. She also picked tomatoes and 2 muskmelons. I helped her water gardens.
    
  • We saw a number of honey bees on goldenrod flowers just north of the near garden. Normally, this isn't a big deal, but we haven't seen honey bees in any large quantities all summer.
    
  • Bill and I started an outdoor fire before the sun set in the west and we had a wienie roast. It was a beautiful night, with stars out in full glory. Bill showed off his green laser pointer to indicate specific stars and galaxies in the night sky. We talked about almost everything. It was really fun.
    
    
• Friday, 9/10: Winter Greens Planted
  
  • I finished filling the 6 totes with a soil mix of old soil from dead blueberry tubs, compost, wood ashes, old potting soil, and new potting soil. Then, I planted the following seeds: Fun Jen Chinese cabbage, North Pole Lettuce, Winter Bloomingsdale Spinach, kale mix, Winterbor Kale, and Astro Arugula. I moved all totes to under the weeping willow tree, then watered them thoroughly.
  • Mary picked another big bag of green beans, hot peppers, 1 muskmelon, and half a bucket of tomatoes. We now have enough green beans, so that's one more garden crop we don't have to water or pick.
    
  • Bill and I took the early jalapeño peppers and created a batch of jalapeño wine. The recipe calls for 16 large peppers. We took the largest peppers and weighed them. They were 14 ounces. Since they were more of a medium/large size, we estimated 16 large peppers at a pound. Bill chopped up 3.75 pounds of raisins. The recipe calls for a pound of white raisins for every gallon. We only have dark raisins and since we aren't entering our wine in a beauty contest, we went with them...the wine will be brown...so what! Bill also cut stems off 5 pounds of peppers we weighed out, and cut them into thirds. Mary showed us how to use the food processor and we chopped up the peppers. Because cutting stems reduced our total weight, he added a few more peppers to get to a total of 5 pounds. We alternated between adding a cup of raisins, then a cup of peppers to the nylon mesh bag. We then added 4.75 gallons of water, 3.75 teaspoons of yeast nutrient, 7.5 teaspoons of acid blend, 5 crushed Campden tablets, and 8.75 pounds of sugar to the brew bucket. Specific gravity was 1.080, which should result in an alcohol content of 11.266%. We tasted it. The wine must has some heat. It ought to be interesting. We covered the brew bucket with a flour sack towel and set it in the pantry. Bill helped in a big way, probably cutting down winemaking time by more than half.
    
    
• Saturday, 9/11: Winemaking
  • Most of today was spent developing a yeast starter for the jalapeño wine. I used Red Star Premier Blanc yeast, starting with adding dry yeast to 97° water, then every hour, adding 2 oz. of must to the yeast starter. This was after I added 2.5 teaspoons of pectic enzyme to the must. About 11 hours later, a pH test showed 4.4, which is too basic. Based on my 2021 dandelion wine notes, 1 gram of tartaric acid drops the pH a tenth of a point per gallon of wine must. Again, based on tartaric acid I added to dandelion wine, I figured 1 gram equals 0.2366 of a teaspoon. To drop my 5-gallon batch to a pH of 4.0, I needed to add 4.75 teaspoons of tartaric acid. I added 3.75 teaspoons, stirred the must, and the pH was 3.8, a drop of 6 tenths, or more than expected. Lesson learned: stir the brew bucket before testing the pH level...the starting pH was probably more like 4.1. I added another teaspoon of tartaric acid to get a pH of 3.6, which is good. The specific gravity was 1.095, which means the soaking raisins significantly increased the sugar content. The higher number equals an alcohol level of 13.23%, similar to the last blackberry wine, which tastes good, so I didn't add water to lower it. I pitched the yeast and put the wine must back in the pantry to percolate. Bill helped me with the winemaking.
  • Mary picked a bunch of tomatoes and a muskmelon. Bill and I helped Mary water the gardens.
  • Mary made flour tortillas and chimichangas.
  • An army of aphids developed on 2 of my 6 tubs holding winter green seeds. Fortunately, nothing has sprouted. I smooshed them a couple times during the day.
  • Our governor, like other Republican governors, is going to call a special session of the Missouri Legislators to fight the president's COVID vaccination mandate. Missouri mandates that all K-12 students to be vaccinated for diptheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitus B, and varicella before entering school. That's okay. But, it's not okay for a nationwide COVID vaccination mandate. I'm convinced that Republicans have completely lost all connection to logic.