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.