Nov. 28-Dec. 4, 2021

Weather | 11/28, 29°, 43° | 11/29, 29°, 57° | 11/30, 33°, 55° | 12/1, 0.09" rain, 37°, 60° | 12/2, 47°, 61° | 2/3, 37°, 57° | 12/4, 33°, 45° |

• Sunday, 11/28: Bill Leaves, Cutting Firewood & Fast Fermentation
  
  • Bill packed up and left at 1:30 p.m. Initially, his car didn't start, yet he started it yesterday. I gave it a shot of starting fluid, twice. On the second try, it started. Later, after he returned to St. Louis, it started fine.
  • I cut up 2 ash trees that fell down near the cow barn in the center of our property, loaded the cut firewood into the 8N Ford's trailer, and drove the load home. We used some of the ash firewood for our evening fire. It's so much better than the weeping willow wood we've been burning. Willow firewood has the heat content of ice.
  • Mary worked on a cross stitch project and the evening chores.
  • We watched the 2017 movie, The Man Who Invented Christmas, about Charles Dickens writing A Christmas Carol. It's a really good movie.
  • A check of the parsnip wine showed the specific gravity to be 1.020. Fermentation is moving along very quickly. It should be ready to move into a gallon jug tomorrow.
    
    
• Monday, 11/29: Racked Parsnip Wine
  
  • I received a call in the morning from The Home Brewery in Ozark, MO related to an order I made last night for corks, airlocks and wine yeast. He said the yeast is out of stock, but will be in stock in a week. I told him to wait and send it all when the yeast arrives. It was very thoughtful for him to call.
    
  • Mary cross stitched, and watered the garlic planted in the far garden. She also thawed  ingredients for making a batch of salsa, tomorrow.
    
  • A specific gravity check gave me a reading of 1.006 on the parsnip wine, so I racked it into a gallon jug and a 750-ml wine bottle (see photo, below). I added about 90 ml of spring water to top up the wine bottle. The wine must bubbled for a couple hours after I racked it, but died off soon after the racking.
  • I checked the bottles I need for future wine and called a woman with wine bottles she saved for crafting to see if she had any that once had corks in them. Apparently, making "crafty" things out of wine bottles is a thing some women do. After a check, she has only 8 bottles made for corking. We agreed I'd pick them up at her home in Quincy tomorrow at 4:30 p.m.
  • I moved 2 wheelbarrow loads of firewood from the trailer behind the 8N Ford tractor to the woodshed.
  • We ate all Thanksgiving leftovers, except for turkey meat, today.
    

  

  Parsnip wine after 1st racking. Bill says
  it looks like I have too many eggs in the eggnog.
  It needs to go through a whole lot of settling!
  

• Tuesday, 11/30: A Salsa-Making Day
  
  • Two wood ducks flew from the field to the SE of the house, north to Wood Duck Pond, while we walked the dogs this morning. Before we walked, we saw a hawk in a persimmon tree, just east of the house, with blue jays all around it pestering the hawk. It flew off to the east before we opened the door.
  • Mary had a big day preparing and canning a big batch of salsa. She canned 13 quart jars, and 1 pint jar.
    
  • I called a guy who had 4 coolers for sale for $15, which is a good price. He lives in Shelbina, MO, which is 35 miles south of us. I drove the pickup there and got them. After a good cleanup, they're perfect for full wine bottle storage.
    
  • I then drove to Quincy, IL. I returned the foundation vents I bought at Menards. They never closed, even when the temperature was 13 last Friday. I bought new foundation vents at Lowe's. They cost $2 more per vent, but if they work, they're worth it. I got 5 bottles of white grape juice for future garlic winemaking, some hen feed, and bought the 8 bottles from the Kate, the crafting woman, for $5. I bought gas on the way home. It was $2.99 a gallon.
  • I also called a woman who runs a custom event planning business in Quincy. Kate suggested her as someone who has lots of empty wine bottles. This new person is Sandy Blickhan, who runs Something Borrowed. She said she's been working on a big project, involving lots of empty wine bottles, that she's abandoning, so she has a need to get rid of several bottles. She's going into surgery next week, but will gather up all of her bottles that once were corked and give me a call to work out arrangements for me to pick them up. She will let them go for $5 a dozen. That's a great price. New bottles run $15 to $35 a dozen. 
    
  • Mary fixed up turkey meat, potatoes with Ranch dressing, and acorn squash for a nice meal. For dessert, we each ate a quart of thawing muskmelon. I cracked open a bottle of homemade blackberry wine. What a feast!
  • Below is a photo of Mary's Christmas cactus in full bloom.

  

  Mary's Christmas cactus (tree in background).
  

• Wednesday, 12/1: We're Bulging with Salsa
  
  • Mary made her last batch of salsa for the year...2021 batch number 4. It's also the last canning episode for 2021. She canned 13 quarts of salsa, today. The total on the shelves is 46 quarts. We're in the salsa now!
  • I worked on an interesting Christmas project. Hope it works out. That's all I'm going say about that!
  • In the evening, a big flock of Canada geese flew over the house. They were lifting up as they flew over us and you could hear the wind rushing over their wing feathers. One goose squeaked with each wing beat, sounding as though it had a rusty joint.
  • We watched the 1994 movie, Little Women.
    
    
• Thursday, 12/2: Katie Starts New Job Tomorrow
  
  • A text from Katie informed us that she's in Atlanta. Her plane was experiencing mechanical difficulties, so she switched flights, putting her into Anchorage 3 hours late. She got her new job and begins her new work in the UIC Anchorage headquarters tomorrow morning.
  • Mary did a couple loads of laundry, some cross stitch, and vacuumed flies out of  windows. She also did the evening chores.
  • I worked on my Christmas project.
  • I also worked up a new 5-gallon batch of garlic wine. It was a long haul. I started at 2:30 p.m. and ended at 2:30 a.m. I popped 100 bulbs of German extra hardy and Music pink garlic. That produced 465 cloves, which I peeled. I had 5 bad cloves. The good cloves were sliced in half (see photos, below). Then, I ground the 460 good cloves in the food processor instead of slicing them by hand. The ground garlic was placed in a nylon mesh bag. Next, 2.5 gallons of white grape juice and 2 gallons of spring water was added to the brew bucket. The pH was 3.2, so I didn't add acid blend. Five ground Campden tablets went in, along with 5 teaspoons of yeast nutrient. I added 8 pounds, instead of 6 pounds, 10 ounces of sugar called for in the recipe. This gave me a specific gravity of at 1.100, instead of 1.105 to 1.110 prescribed by the recipe. I figured that 14.4% alcohol at a 1.100 specific gravity is fine. The alcohol is 15.1% with a 1.105 specific gravity, or 15.7% at a 1.110 specific gravity. More alcohol does not make the wine better. The brew bucket has a very garlic smell, giving the house a strong odor.
    

460 garlic cloves.

Slicing garlic cloves in warm, silly MU booties.

• Friday, 12/3: Buck, Garlic Wine Yeast, Seed & Tree Ordering
  
  • We saw a limping buck in the west field as we opened the coop to let the chickens out in the morning. He ought to be safe. Tomorrow is the opening day of the firearms anterless deer season.
    
  • Mary washed 2 loads of clothes. She also figured out garden seed requirements for next year.
  • I checked the garlic wine must's pH. It was too basic at a 4.4 reading, so I added 5 teaspoons of acid blend and brought it down to 3.5, which is perfect. I added pectic enzyme, then worked up a yeast starter with Lalvin EC-1118 wine yeast, a champagne yeast. I fed the yeast starter 2 ounces of garlic wine must heated to 95° to 97° throughout the day. The wine's specific gravity was still at 1.100 when I pitched the yeast into the brew bucket 11 hours after adding the pectic enzyme.
  • I worked on my Christmas project for 30 minutes.
    
  • I did online research and decided on getting a Liberty apple tree and a Porter's Perfection crab apple tree. We then ordered garden seeds and apple trees from Fedco. They were out of 2 onion seed varieties and acorn squash seed, so we ordered onion seeds from Territorial Seeds and Table Queen acorn squash seed from Victory Seeds.
  • I also ordered a Missouri Conservation 2022 Natural Events Calendar. 
  • Katie texted that all went well on her first day at the new job in Anchorage. Her first project involves new elementary school construction at Bethel, AK. She said Friday is a good first day for a job, because she can hit the ground running on Monday.
  • Mary and I reviewed online design ideas for building a conservatory, or sunroom/greenhouse into a home.
    
    
• Saturday, 12/4: Doe Deer Season Begins
  
  • Today is the start of firearms anterless deer season. This morning, some dingbat was plinking away with a shot every minute. He was shooting just east of our property line. Such an action makes no sense, when ammunition is nonexistent in area sporting good stores.
    
  • Mary paid bills and worked out adding monies to various savings funds. She washed sheets, made flour tortillas, then chimichangas covered in winter greens for our main meal.
  • I went to the cow barn deer stand to go hunting. It's a cow barn in the tiniest sense. This is a small metal building with a partial concrete floor. Some of the tin covering the building is deteriorating. I lean a deer stand built with a metal ladder on the building's front. The seat of the deer stand lays perfectly on the metal building's roof. Sitting on it, I face east. Wind was blowing from the east, making it a perfect location. I didn't see any deer. Instead, I saw lots of squirrels and a black opossum. They're usually white or tan, not black. I heard splashing in Dove Pond, located just west of the cow barn through cedar trees. At sunset, a flock of ducks blasted off the pond. I think they were teal ducks.