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.