Dec. 25-31, 2022

Weather | 12/25, -1°, 21° | 12/26, 1/2" snow, 0.02" moisture, 21°, 23° in early A.M. | 12/27, 0°, 29° | 12/28, 30°, 52° | 12/29, 45°, 64° | 12/30, 33°, 39° | 12/31, 23°, 45° |

• Sunday, 12/25: Christmas
  
  • Temperatures were finally warmer and by late afternoon, the wind was calm for the first time in several days.
    
  • I made waffles for breakfast.
  • Mary, Bill and I opened Christmas presents.
  • I called mom. We talked for an hour. Hank was going to drive her up to Glasgow, MT, but an unexpected pipe leak in an apartment neighboring his bedroom meant a fan was on 24/7 to air out the wall in his spare bedroom, requiring him to stay home. Mom had Christmas dinner with her former boss, Patti Schipman. Drifts were forming on the road while going to the Schipmans, so after dinner, Patti ran Mom back to Circle in order to avoid driving through deep drifts.
    
  • We called Katie. She hosted a Christmastime ham dinner and games that went well into morning hours. Today, she went hiking with a friend at Hatcher Pass and then Eklutna Lake. She used her new snowshoes and liked them, a lot. Her roommate had several toys as Christmas presents for Katie's dogs and cats. She thinks her procedure in Seattle relieved the itchiness of her burn scares. HERE is an article describing her laser procedure. 
  • We watched the 2022 movie, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. It's a good movie and very original.
    
    
• Monday, 12/26: A Quiet Winter Day
  
  • While walking dogs on their morning outing, tiny, wet snow pellets fell. Soon after, big snowflakes drifted down. We maybe got a half-inch of snow.
  • Mary fixed a breakfast of omelets stuffed with veggies.
    
  • After we ate BBQ pork loin, potatoes, and corn-on-the-cob, Bill left for his apartment in St. Charles.
  • We really didn't do much for the rest of the day, other than read.
  • On the last dog walk, coyotes howled to the west and northeast. Their howls echoed off the woods.
    
    
• Tuesday, 12/27: Apple Trees Ordered
  
  • Even though we had a cold start this morning, temperatures are predicted to warm up for the next several days.
  • As the result of warmer temps outside, I vacuumed Asian lady bugs and flies from all windows, twice.
  • We took down the Christmas tree. It ate up a chunk of time. All hard decorations are dusted off with a broad brush, then packed away. Mary vacuums cross stitch decorations at a later date. The living room is back to normal...not as crowded.
    
  • I saw a bald eagle fly quickly from south to north over our property. Mary and I watched a red-tailed hawk circling and getting blown from south to north. We had a downy woodpecker follow us down the lane as we walked the dogs prior to sunset.
    
  • Mary and I did a bunch of online research on various apple trees. We decided we want new varieties that work well in all three categories of eating, cooking, and making hard cider. We want tart flavor, no summer apples, and long storage capability. I used up a Fedco gift certificate that Katie gave me for Christmas and ordered three apple trees. They are Calville Blanc d'Hiver, Goldrush, and Roxbury Russet apple trees. We also bought a Herbert blueberry plant.
  • During the apple tree investigation, we discovered that two of our apple trees, Esopus Spitzenburg and Grimes Golden, have poor disease resistance qualities. I was going to get new trees of these two varieties, but decided against it. Esopus is especially susceptible to almost every apple disease.
    
    
• Wednesday, 12/28: Seven Swans a Flying
  
  • Outdoor temperatures are much warmer today. Most all of the snow is almost melted.
  • Mary and I both vacuumed Asian ladybugs and flies out of windows.
  • One of the three Christmas gifts that we ordered through Amazon for our son showed up today. Two more are outstanding. Nov. 27th wasn't early enough to order from Amazon and have the item arrive by Christmas, probably because we aren't Amazon Prime customers. I'm not paying $14.99 a month just to have something arrive quickly. Instead, I'm going out of my way to shop anywhere but with Amazon in the future.
  • I opened both ends of the plastic covering the winter greens. Several days of below zero temperatures pretty much wiped out the greenery. Time will tell if anything recovers.
    
  • I split 2 wheelbarrow loads of firewood. One load went into the house and the other was stacked to dry. Most of this wood is honey locust. I continue to find thorns buried inside of the wood, which is revealed after splitting the firewood (see photo, below).
    
  • I saw seven swans a flyin', not swimming. They have a very distinctive call and they're so big and beautiful. Mary read that more swans are migrating through our area.
    
  • We watched the first two episodes of the 2013 documentary, The Roosevelts, that Bill gave to his mother. It's quite good. These first sessions mainly cover Teddy Roosevelt.
    
  • Mary went through past garden seeds and figured out seeds that we need to buy for the 2023 growing season.

  

  A honey locust thorn in split firewood.

• Thursday, 12/29: 32nd Anniversary
  
  • As of today, Mary and I have been married for 32 years. At 64° for a high, it was 93° warmer here in Missouri than the high of -29° in Red Lake Falls, MN, when we were married 32 years ago. Plus, I live in a state I swore I would never live in when we married. Marriage changes you. You learn to adjust and enjoy the positive aspects of where you are at that moment. I used to love the cold and snow. Now I like the warmth and sun. It's all good in its own way.
  • I discovered that the Missouri Department of Conservation is holding fly tying classes, so I signed up for one in Kirksville, MO, that is on Jan. 14th.
  • I looked into buying 2 apple rootstocks in order to graft a couple of Grimes Golden apple branches and restart that variety. We have never seen fruit off that tree, because it has a dwarf rootstock under it that hates clay soil. Our soil is mainly clay. Rootstocks cost $4-$5, each, but they require special shipping that runs $20-$30. I want Antonovka, a hardy apple rootstock originating from Russia that develops into a standard 25- to 35-foot tree, which is adaptable to any soil type. I found 20 seeds on Ebay for $3.25 and bought them. I'll grow my own rootstocks and graft once they're ready.
    
  • I scrubbed up two coolers that we once purchased from the Salvation Army in Quincy and have since sat in the machine shed collecting dust. They work great for storing bottles of wine.
    
  • Mary repotted and started the two amaryllis bulbs. They're both quite healthy.
    
  • We vacuumed bugs over and over and over, again. Mary and I each performed 3 rounds of bug-sucking sessions. Warmth outside gave flies and Asian beetles marching orders to invade our house. It was warm enough to open windows and let fresh air inside.
    
  • The remainder of Christmas presents from Amazon arrived today. Due to its speed in shipping items, I have a new name for Amazon. It's Tortoise. Mary's name is Slow-A-Zon.
    
  • Mary saw a big flight of mallard ducks fly over our house, twice. I missed them, with my head down while scrubbing a cooler.
  • We enjoyed a bottle of 2021 pear wine (see photo, below). It's really good, with a strong, tart, pear flavor. You just can't buy wine that tastes this good.
  • We also watched two Downton Abbey episodes. It's winter and we're back hooked on that soap opera.

  

  Homemade pear wine to celebrate 32 years of marriage.

• Friday, 12/30: Changing Oil & Lots of Waterfowl
  
  • The wind was calm, which is the first time we've experienced no wind in many days.
    
  • Since it was calm, I changed oil and the oil filter in the pickup's engine. Wind blasts dripping engine oil all over the place. As it was, I miscalculated where the oil would hit and the moment I removed the oil drain plug, a big black glob of oil shot into my arm, soaking the cuffs of a flannel shirt, coveralls, and an ancient and tattered Carhartt coat. While topping fluids, I discovered a leaking windshield washing fluid tank, or a leaking hose coming from it. The battery and battery tray blocks my view. I need to fix it in the future.
    
  • We heard a pileated woodpecker calling in morning. I heard a mallard in the evening. We saw our group of 7 swans, then a larger group of about 20 swans. We also saw several geese. All of the waterfowl seem to eat grain spilled in fields to the east, then fly west to settle in ponds. This has become their wintering grounds, at least for now.
    
  • We watched 2 episodes of The Roosevelts. I never realized Teddy Roosevelt was only 60 when he died. When you're a teenager studying U.S. history in high school, 60 seems old. Now, it involves someone younger than I am, today. Another interesting piece is that both Theodore and Franklin followed the same path to the presidency, which was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, New York Governor, candidate for U.S. Vice President (Teddy became vice president, but FDR didn't), then the U.S. Presidency.
    
    
• Saturday, 12/31: New Year's Eve
  • I labeled and put away the 33 bottles of jalapeño wine.
  • Mary worked on cross stitch projects.
  • We're experiencing a trumpeter swan invasion. In the evening, Mary and I stood in the front yard and watched V after V of swans flying just over the treetops and go right over our heads while heading west. They spent the day in the fields east of us and flew west at dusk. They were so low, we could hear the wind in their feathers. We guessed their speed was 20 mph. Their call is very unique. HERE is a sample. Mary read that they are the largest waterfowl in North America. It's a treat to see so many in just a few minutes and they were so close...quite a show.
  • Mary and I enjoyed an indoor wienie roast, cooking hotdogs over the fire in the woodstove.
    
  • We tried a small glass of 2020 dandelion wine. It's not very good, with too strong of an alcoholic taste that hasn't mellowed out with aging. My newer dandelion wines are better. We opened a bottle of 2021 blackberry wine, which was vastly tastier.
  • We ended the year and started the new year by watching 5 episodes of Downton Abbey.
    

Dec. 18-24, 2022

Weather | 12/18, 8°, 29° | 12/19, 17°, 34° | 12/20, 21°, 23° | 12/21, 12°, 29° | 12/22, 1" snow, 0.09" moisture, -11°, 27° in early A.M. | 12/23, -12°, 1° | 12/24, 0°, 17° |

• Sunday, 12/18: Firewood Splitting
  
  • I finished covering strawberry plants in the machine shed, this time with pieces of chicken wire. Little pieces were cut to fit over top of leaf-covered bucket tops that surrounded a 4x4 post holding up the work bench. I finished by weighing it all down with bricks.
  • The wheelbarrow tire I fixed last week leaks slowly. It needs replacing. I inflated the tire to get through the day.
  • Mary and I split 6 wheelbarrow loads of firewood. Five loads were stacked in the woodshed and one went to the house. We split several pieces of honey locust, which are very hard and heavy. As we were splitting these pieces, we discovered old thorns that were buried inside the locust wood. We also have a developing pile of wet firewood that needs to be stacked in the machine shed to dry.
  • Robust fermentation of the garlic wine fills the house with such a strong garlic odor that we can now smell it outside of the house. The specific gravity was 1.091. I squeezed the nylon mesh bag and stirred the brew bucket prior to taking a reading. The brew bucket was behind the woodstove again today.
  • We watched the 1989 movie, When Harry Met Sally.
    
    
• Monday, 12/19: Building Up the Firewood Stack
  
  • Mary and I split more firewood. A pile of wet wood continues to grow. We stacked five wheelbarrow loads into the woodshed. We're nearing the top of our second ring of firewood. Mary put one wheelbarrow load into the house. The honey locust wood is hard to start, but once it's burning, locust firewood gives off wonderful heat.
    
  • Mary made dark chocolate peanut clusters...YUM!
    
  • Mary saw six mallards heading west. We both watched a big flock of Canada geese fly south. They looked like they were seeking a place to settle in for the night. The east side of their V started to head down, stalling the entire V into a bunched up flight pattern as some geese hollered for others to get back in line.
    
  • I kept the garlic wine in the pantry. Fermentation is bubbling along very nicely. The specific gravity is 1.067.
    
  • I washed 5 wine bottles.
  • Our weather prediction by the U.S. Weather Service is for 3-5 inches of snow, wind gusts to 50 mph and temperatures down to -8 on Friday. Bill shows up on Saturday. I'm hoping snow accumulation and wind is lower than predicted, or driving on the gravel road might be difficult.
  • We are receiving daily small eggs from our four Barred Rock pullets. One of our eldest hens, our only remaining Golden Comet, I've named Luna Tick, or Ms. Tick. She's kind of a mental case. I always have to round her up and herd her into the coop every evening while Mary is feeding chickens inside the coop.
    
    
• Tuesday, 12/20: More Firewood Duties
  
  • Mary and I split more firewood. Most of it was wet. One wheelbarrow load of dry wood went into the woodshed and Mary took one to the house. I built 2 criss-cross stacks of nearly dry wood and one really wet stack on the north inside wall of the machine shed, as Mary moved wheelbarrow loads to me. Darkness fell before we could finish.
  • Mary made more dark chocolate peanut clusters. Testing a couple was in order.
  • This morning, the garlic wine smell in the pantry resembled bad body odor. By evening, yeast took over and the aroma was similar to fruit. The moral of the story, if you've got bad B.O. in the morning, wait until evening and you'll smell like fruit. Or...add yeast to your stinky armpits and they'll smell like fruit by evening.
  • The garlic wine's fermentation is robust (see video, below). The specific gravity is 1.044. I'll probably need to rack it tomorrow.
  • I cleaned 5 more wine bottles. I now have enough cleaned bottles for Thursday, when I rack and bottle 3 wine varieties.
  • I'm heading for Quincy, IL in the morning to mainly pickup 2 more bags of hen feed. We don't want to run out if road conditions get bad.
  • Predictions are for airline flight cancellations and delays across the country with a large winter storm approaching tomorrow and Friday. I texted to Katie that I was glad she wasn't trying to visit us this year because of the weather. She replied that she thought the same thing, today.
  Yeast in garlic wine with robust fermentation.
  

• Wednesday, 12/21: Cookies, Shopping, & Firewood
  
  • Mary baked a triple batch of oatmeal butterscotch chip cookies.
  • She then put extra hay in the chicken coop, due to below zero temperatures predicted in the next few days.
    
  • Mary sorted piles of split firewood and moved them to new piles...2 in front of criss-cross stacks and one of damp and wet short pieces.
  • Meanwhile, I drove the pickup to Quincy to buy chicken food and some human food. It seemed as if nobody was at home or at work. Instead, the entire population of Quincy was at a store. I've never seen so many people out and about in Quincy. I only had 6 stops, but it took me 5 hours.
  • Probably all of the news pieces headlining an approaching bomb cyclone has everyone scurrying around like frightened rats, stuffing grocery stores with people pushing carts. I sound like an old fart, but 50 years ago our winter weather predictions were simply about upcoming snow. Heck, in Alaska, we drove to work and school in this stuff. On the way home, I noticed patterns of moisture on the pavement. It was from salt tossed on the road a good 18 hours prior to any snowfall. Now, that's just wasteful and dumb!
    
  • After returning home, I stacked firewood that Mary sorted. Now, all split firewood is put away. There is more to split, but it's an amount that we can easily do in one day.
  • Right at sundown, a big flock a Canada geese flew west over our property. A few minutes later, a flock of snow geese flew west.
    
  • I racked the garlic wine into a 5-gallon carboy, a 750-ml wine bottle, and halfway up a 330-ml beer bottle. The specific gravity is 1.028. Strong fermentation continued after racking, with the airlock on the carboy burping twice a second. Fortunately, garlic wine foams less than blackberry wine.
    
    
• Thursday, 12/22: Bottling Jalapeño Wine
  
  • The outside temperature was 6° with a skiff of snow on the ground when we woke. It started snowing harder soon thereafter. We only received about an inch of snow, but we experienced west, northwest wind gusts to 40 mph through the day and overnight. It was -11° when we went to bed.
    
  • Katie called and said a UPS package she was tracking was delivered to our front door. It wasn't there, so I put on winter gear and walked to the end of the lane. I saw dual tire tracks going to the neighbor's mobile home across the gravel road, so I checked with them. Juan opened the door, saw me, and said, "I have a package for you that they delivered." He was on lunch break from the dairy and saw the package on his front porch.
  • Amazon really stinks. We ordered 4 items from them on Nov. 27. I got an email today that one of those items has shipped.
  • I racked and bottled the jalapeño wine. It went into 33 bottles (see photo, below). One was a 375-ml bottle. The specific gravity is 0.991, making for a 12% alcohol content. Sanitizing 33 bottles took the most time, although filling 33 bottles also ate up time. I wanted to bottle apple wine and cider, but didn't have time for that. We tasted the jalapeño wine. It was warm, without being excruciatingly hot. It's perfect for a cold winter's night. Chocolate peanut clusters complement the wine, nicely.
  • Mary did a bit of cleaning, kept the chickens in warm water with water changes every 2 hours, did most of the chores, and some crocheting.
  • We received texts from Katie and Bill throughout the day. Bill went to work early, at 7:30, so he left work early. He said conditions weren't too bad in St. Louis, but that the wind was brutal. He learned from delivery drivers that a lot of businesses were closed. Katie said she wound up as the only employee in the office by mid-afternoon. She won a Holiday Pup photo entry at Skinny Raven Sports in Anchorage (see photo, below) with a picture of her dog, Prancer. She received a gift card from Skinny Raven.
    
    

33 bottles of freshly corked jalapeño wine.

Katie won a holiday photo contest
with this shot of her puppy, Prancer.

• Friday, 12/23: Damn Cold Day
  • I woke right after 5 a.m. and restarted the fire in the woodstove, then crawled back in bed. Later, when we got up, the living room was nice and toasty. All pets huddled around the stove at all hours, soaking in the good heat.
    
  • Outside temperatures were below zero for most of the day. West, northwest wind gusts blew harder today.
  • I bundled up and looking like an astronaut on the moon, I walked the quarter mile trek to the mailbox. Big deer tracks in the snow indicated deer crossed the lane in 4 places. There was even a well worn path of mice tracks in the snow.
    
  • Mary and I both did some housecleaning.
  • Mary made cherry and black raspberry bars.
  • She also took water out to the chickens once an hour. In one hour, water was half-frozen in the waterers. Chickens weren't moving much from one hour to the next.
  • We wrapped Christmas presents in the evening.
    
  • Katie sent her mother several photos of Katie's decorated Christmas tree.
  • We watched 2 Christmastime movies. They were Love Actually and The Polar Express.
    
    
• Saturday, 12/24: Christmas Eve
  
  • Mom texted that it snowed and blew for a big winter blast in the past few days. It was -27 in Circle, MT, yesterday. Drifts are up to 4 feet deep in her yard. Temperatures rose to above zero for the first time all week, this morning.
  • Bill showed up around 11:30 A.M.
  • I drilled holes in 4 new plastic bottles and put mothballs in them to give to Bill as new mouse-deterrents in his car's engine compartment.
    
  • Mary baked a pistachio tort, Bill's favorite treat.
    
  • Mary cut up cheese and summer sausage, along with several types of veggies and made Ranch dip for our smorgasbord.
  • We ate while playing Night Sky Monopoly. Bill won and broke the bank with the only monopoly on the board, involving the light blue properties. He ended the game with over $14,000. Mary was second and I was third. It was fun.
    
  • We watched A Christmas Carol, starring Patrick Stewart.
    

Dec. 11-17, 2022

Weather | 12/11, 30°, 36° | 12/12, 29°, 37° | 12/13, 1.08" rain, 32°, 48° | 12/14, 0.14" rain, 43°, 46° | 12/15, snow flurries, 29°, 31° | 12/16, 23°, 29° | 12/17, 16°, 24° |

• Sunday, 12/11: Wheelbarrow Repair
  
  • I fixed a wheelbarrow tire. It's a new tire and rim that I left in the woodshed for years. Sun shined on one side, eventually rotting the rubber valve stem. I cut the old stem off. After putting dish soap on a new stem, I used the cap off the cut-off stem as a sacrificial instrument, grabbed it with a stout pair of pliers and pulled the new rubber valve stem into place in the rim. The tire wouldn't inflate, due to leaks between the tire and the rim, so I used a 1" wide nylon strap from a long-dead boat tarp and tightened it around the outside of the tire's tread so the tire's sidewalls expanded outward, then successfully inflated the tire. Now we're back to 2 good wheelbarrows.
    
  • Mary fixed a marvelous midday dinner of baked home-raised chicken, homegrown sweet potatoes and a green bean casserole. The green beans grew in our garden. It's a cheap meal.
    
  • We watched 2 movies. The first was the 2018 movie, Green Book. The second was the 2006 movie, Miss Potter.
    
  • Partway through the second movie, Katie called. We talked to her for about an hour. She arrived back in Anchorage early this morning and slept most of today. Another big dump of snow hit Anchorage today. Katie's surgery to ease itching from her burn scheduled for this Friday in Seattle may have to be canceled due to the lack of having a person to help watch over her for 24 hours after the surgery.
    
    
• Monday, 12/12: Blaze Orange is Retired
  
  • Last night at sundown was the end of the anterless firearms deer season. It means we can walk outside without wearing blaze orange vests and hats in case some trespassing hunter is nearby. YAHOO!!!
  • Mary and I took the tractor/wagon to the north side of the woods just north of the house, cut firewood, and drove a filled wagon back home. We unloaded most of it in the machine shed next to the splitter. We now have four loads of firewood waiting to be split into usable pieces. Small, dry firewood went into two wheelbarrows, which we transferred into the house.
  • I asked Katie in a text if she stayed home from work today, since Anchorage is getting another big dump of snow. She texted back that UIC, her employer, had everyone work remotely from home, today. She added that main roads are alright, but side streets and parking lots are terrible.
  • In the evening, Katie texted her mother that one of her running friends volunteered to travel with her to Seattle, so Katie can do her surgery.
    
    
• Tuesday, 12/13: Full Day of Rain
  
  • Rain fell against the east window upon our waking and rain fell all day, even after it grew dark.
  • Mary worked on a cross stitch ornament.
  • I racked the Kieffer pear wine for the 3rd time. It still has specific gravity of 1.000. There was only a tiny bit of fines. It will probably be ready to bottle in a month. We tasted it. This pear wine is the smoothest. Mary says it has a tangy flavor, when compared to Bartlett pear wine. We even drank all of the dregs, because the leftover wine with fines in it tasted great, too. The remaining must filled a gallon jug, a half-gallon jug, and a 750-ml wine bottle. I topped up the wine bottle with a couple ounces of distilled water.
  • While working on the wine and while Mary cross stitched, we listened to an audiobook of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, because nothing says Christmas more than a book about Nazis! Actually, it's very interesting.
  • We enjoyed a bottle of 2021 autumn olive wine. It tastes good, but an entire bottle split between two people is a bit much on the tipsy level.
    
  • Katie texted, "Driving in Anchorage right now is kind of like those 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books. It's like Whose Line Is It Anyway?...the roads are made up and the lines don't matter."
  • I asked Katie when she will be going to Seattle. She answered that she should be flying there on Thursday and flying back Saturday, but she's still waiting on airline tickets and hotel room bookings, due to resent changes.

  

  Katie & her dog, Prancer,
  at a holiday party a couple weekends ago.

• Wednesday, 12/14: Garlic Winemaking
  
  • We had another cloudy day. The sky has been gray for several days.
  • Mary did 2 loads of laundry.
  • She cross stitched in the kitchen, listening to The Rise and Fall of the Third Riech while I worked on winemaking.
  • I started a 5-gallon batch of garlic wine. I popped Music Pink, German Extra Hardy, and Samarkand garlic varieties to get 465 cloves. I peeled skins off the cloves. After about an hour, Mary looked at my slow progress, looked at the clock, grabbed a knife and started helping while saying, "I don't want to be up until 4 in the morning." She peeled 3 garlic cloves to my one. Mary attributes it to years of practice. Five cloves were bad. I ran 460 garlic cloves through the food processor and put them into a nylon mesh bag. I added three 96-ounce bottles of white grape juice for a total of 2.25 gallons. This juice contains potassium metabisulfite (Kmeta). All experts say not to use juice containing this, since it kills off yeast. But this warning makes no sense, since every batch of wine starts with a 24-hour soak of Kmeta to kill wild yeast. Since all I could find was juice containing Kmeta, I decided to give it a try. I added 2.25 gallons of tap water treated with Kmeta to remove chlorine. I stirred in 8 pounds of sugar, resulting in a specific gravity of 1.104. This juice contains a higher sugar content than last year's juice. I added a quart of water to drop the specific gravity to 1.100. The pH is 3.5, so I didn't add acid blend. Since my total Kmeta additions to tap water equaled 1 gram, the amount needed to add to 5 gallons of must, I didn't add more. I let it sit overnight in a brew bucket covered with a towel.
  • The garlic smell makes the entire house smell like a pizza joint. We decided to make pizza tomorrow.
    
    
• Thursday, 12/15: Alaska & Montana Snow Battles
  
  • We had small snow flurries throughout the day. Actually, it was more like tiny ice balls. Nothing ever accumulated.
  • Such was not the case elsewhere. Katie sent a photo (see below) of Northern Lights Blvd. in Anchorage. It's normally a multi-lane street, but 3 big snowstorms in a row dumping a total 41.1" in December resulted in snowplow berms restricting the street to one-lane traffic.
  • Mom texted the following, "There's been a blizzard going all day today. I have a drift in my driveway that is waist high. I parked my car in the street out front before this started. It must be pretty bad out in the country. I saw a big jackrabbit hopping down the street in front of a pickup."
  • After adding 2.5 teaspoons of pectic enzyme and 5 teaspoons of yeast nutrient to the garlic wine, I worked up a starter of Lalvin EC-1118 yeast. I added heated must to it all day and pitched the yeast into the brew bucket in the late evening. The pH was 3.8, so I added 2 teaspoons of acid blend to get a pH of 3.5. Last year, I had to add 5 teaspoons of acid blend, so this year's white grape juice contains more acidic acid. The specific gravity was still 1.100. The garlic smell is very strong throughout our house.
  • Mary made 2 pizzas and cooked one for our midday meal.
  • I moved all 35 four-gallon buckets and 4 tubs containing strawberry plants and soil into the machine shed under the wooden work bench. Each plant got trimmed. They still need mulch and something to cover them so rabbits and mice don't eat strawberry crowns.
  • Katie and her friend flew from Anchorage to Seattle. Her plane was delayed in arriving into Anchorage, but she made it to a Seattle hotel and ordered some food. Her procedure is scheduled for 11:45, tomorrow.
  • We watched the 1989 movie, Christmas Vacation.

  

  Anchorage's Northern Lights Boulevard.

• Friday, 12/16: Katie's Procedure is Complete
  
  • Katie went through the procedure at the Harborview Burn Center in Seattle to relieve the itching on scar tissue from the burn she had 2 years ago. Katie tried to get this done in January, but elevated COVID numbers required the burn center to cancel her appointment at the last minute. She and her friend accompanying her leave on a flight back to Anchorage at noon tomorrow.
    
  • Mom texted 2 photos (see below) of snow drifts at her home due to a blizzard that's hit eastern Montana for the past few days.
    
  • After adding yeast to the garlic wine must last night, there is no fermentation today. The Kmeta levels are too high, I suspect. I added 2.5 teaspoons of yeast energizer, which is used to fix stuck fermentation. It contains diammonium phosphate, yeast hulls, magnesium sulphate, and vitamin B complex. I also moved the brew bucket to behind the woodstove to heat up the liquid. By bedtime, there was a minuscule layer of foam on top with the tiniest of bubbles appearing on the surface.
    
  • While Mary did the evening chores, I raked up four wheelbarrow loads of dried oak leaves and put then on the strawberry plants in the machine shed.
    
  • Mary finished an cross stitch ornament.
  • We listened to the end of the first section of the audio book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
    
  • I dug out all of the wine bottles in the west room closet, sorted them, labeled boxes of bottles, counted clean bottles, determined the number needed for upcoming wines due to be bottled and decided that I need to clean 15 more bottles. Apple wine, apple cider, and jalapeño wine are all due for bottling on Thursday, 12/22.

Mom's back yard. A driveway is under there.

Snow on south side of Mom's house.

• Saturday, 12/17: Mallards Leave as Ponds Freeze
  
  • We saw several Vs of mallard ducks flying west to east above the house as we walked the dogs in the morning. I'm guessing there were more than a hundred...quite impressive. We think they're heading to the Mississippi River, where there's still open water.
    
  • The garlic wine brew bucket sat behind the woodstove for a second day. I put it away in the pantry each night. An additional tiny bit of bubbles appeared on the top in the morning. By 10:30 p.m., considerably more foam showed and we heard fizzing. The specific gravity dropped 1 thousandth from 1.100 to 1.099, proving yeast started to burn off sugar.
  • I walked the dogs to the east woods, collected 2 buckets that I used to sit on in my deer blinds, and took the dogs and buckets home. Lots of deer tracks show on all trails. A bald eagle flew across Wood Duck Pond as the puppies and I stood on its south shore. Most water was filled with ice on all ponds. A stiff west wind stung my face as we walked home. Amber, who sports short hair, beat us all home. She was eager to lay next to the warm woodstove.
    
  • Katie sent me a text asking me if I was following the Minnesota Vikings/Indianapolis Colts game. Then Bill sent images of the Vikings game scoring with a "this is bananas" text. With Bill's help on where to find an online link, I listened to the last moments of the game. Down 33-0 at halftime and 36-7 after three quarters, Minnesota scored the biggest comeback in NFL history on a field goal in overtime to win 39-36.
  • Katie was watching the game at the Seattle airport, because her plane arrived late. Then Delta had pilot issues, delaying the flight even further. She finally left Seattle around 7 p.m., on a flight that was originally scheduled to leave around noon. Fog painted thick frost on trees and snow berms still filled Anchorage streets when Katie arrived back home (see photos, below).
  • I added a 3'x5' piece of quarter-inch hardware cloth on top of some of the strawberry buckets in the machine shed. After digging bricks out of leaves from behind the machine shed, I used them to weigh down the wire hardware cloth.
  • I washed 5 wine bottles before going to bed.

Anchorage street with frosty trees.

A snow-covered car in Anchorage.

Dec. 4-10, 2022

Weather | 12/4, 18°, 43° | 12/5, 23°, 53° | 12/6, 28, 43° | 12/7, 31°, 49° | 12/8, 34°, 43° | 12/9, 0.38" rain, 36°, 42° | 12/10, 35°, 41° |

• Sunday, 12/4: Firewood Cutting & Mallards Quacking
  
  • Mom texted that yesterday was Santa Day and the senior center folks (including Mom) set up Santa Shop in the CCM (Circle Country Market, or grocery store) building. She said it involved additional work hauling items to that building, but it worked out nicely. They also had a soup contest, a vendor show, and photos with Santa.
    
  • I sharpened one of the chains to the large chainsaw.
  • Mary and I cut firewood near the middle of the dry creek bed in the east woods. It was a mixture of dry and wet wood. We filled the trailer.
    
  • On the return home with the firewood load, we left the tractor/trailer behind and walked to the northeast corner of Rose Butt Field. There are several dead trees still there for future potential firewood cutting purposes. 
    
  • While standing there, we heard and then saw a large collection of mallard ducks paddling around in Wood Duck Pond. They didn't like our presence and were telling us about it with loud quacking.
    
  • We also heard one rifle shot way off to the east while standing in that area. It's the first shot we've heard during the current anterless deer season. A recent email from the Missouri Dept. of Conservation revealed that there will be an additional anterless deer hunting season next year for 3 days during the first week in October. The reason is statewide deer numbers are increasing, resulting in a need for the additional season.
    
  • After dark, I worked more on the wine diary and caught up to Nov. 1st.
    
    
• Monday, 12/5: A Tame Doe
  
  • While we were getting ready to walk the dogs in the morning, we saw a doe in north yard munching on grass. Eventually, it walked up to the McIntosh apple tree to start to munch on a branch. I stepped outside and onto the porch. She saw me and didn't move. I went back inside. She went back to take a nip off the apple tree, so I stepped back outside and clapped my hands. Her tail went up and the doe left, heading west. The deer on our property are rather tame.
    
  • Mary did some housecleaning, did 2 loads of laundry, and made venison General Tso for our main meal.
    
  • I dug up wood and bark bits from under the wood splitter and spread 5 wheelbarrow loads around the 2 new apple trees and the 2 Bartlett pear trees.
  • I moved a few of the firewood chunks from the trailer to near the wood splitter. I also stacked newly split green blackjack oak firewood at the inside north wall of the machine shed to dry, along with part of the wet cherry firewood.
  • While moving a big firewood log, I slammed a piece to the ground and hit my right big toe. I recently threw away my only pair of steel toe boots. They were old and falling apart. I was wearing a pair of leather boots at the time of my toe smash. As I walked off the pain, the top of the right boot was dented inward. It slowly went back into shape, but my big toe is currently red. Luckily, I didn't break anything. I decided that the next time I'm in Quincy I will buy a new pair of steel-toed boots. Meanwhile, more care is needed around big firewood logs.
    
  • I finished catching up on my wine diary.
    
    
• Tuesday, 12/6: Katie is in Hawaii
  
  • Mary moved the remaining firewood from the trailer to various locations in the machine shed and the woodshed. Most of this firewood is next to the splitter.
    
  • I re-sharpened the chainsaw chain, because I didn't sharpen it enough yesterday. It took 17 strokes of a file on each tooth to get it in better shape. As a test, I cut up some elm branches between the machine shed and the chicken coop that were about to drop on the electrical line to the coop. The saw tore right through the dry wood.
    
  • We drove the tractor/trailer to the northeast corner of Rose Butt Field and cut up a large honey locust tree that I girdled several years ago. It's been down on the ground for a number of years. When it fell, it smashed a barbed wire fence right to the ground. The wood is extremely hard and burns hot for a very long time. The problem is it grows thorns up to 6" long. If you kill the tree and let it be until it falls, all of the thorns rot away. The trunk of this tree is very wet, but split and left to dry, it ought to be good to burn by February. The bottom 4 chunks of the tree I cut in half, because they were too heavy to lift as full pieces. We drove the tractor back home and unloaded the wood.
    
  • As we sawed up the locust tree, mallards swimming in Wood Duck Pond were telling us we weren't welcome. Later, while at home, Mary and I saw flocks of mallard ducks flying overhead.
    
  • Katie texted in the morning that she's in Hawaii. I texted a couple questions and she called. She's there on military business. A building project that she will supervise involving updating a Girl Scout camp on the big island is holding a planning meeting. She sent photos of Nene Geese (see photos, below) that she snapped while running, today. Nenes are the rarest geese in the world, with a population of only 2500, and she saw two of them. Katie said she was running in warm temperatures while Anchorage had about a foot of snowfall, today. The reconstruction surgery of her burn wound that she was planning on having this month in Seattle might be postponed, again, because her friend who was going to accompany her had his father die of a heart attack while they were vacationing in Mexico. She has a couple military training trips early next year. One is to Florida and the other is to Gulfport, MS. She recently bought some cross-country skis and a pair of snowshoes. The recent big snow dump in south central Alaska provides better conditions for using them. She hopes to visit Mauna Loa's eruption before leaving Hawaii. Her flight back to Anchorage is over the upcoming weekend.

Two Nene Geese on Hawaii's Big Island.

A Hawaii Green Sea Turtle.

• Wednesday, 12/7: More Firewood Collecting
  
  • I made a quick trip into Lewistown and bought 2 gallons of 91 octane gas for chainsaws and 5 gallons of 87 octane gas for the tractor and the woodsplitter engine.
    
  • While I got gas, Mary gave the chickens more hay on the floor of the coop, emptied a bag of oil sunflowers into buckets in the coop, and raked some pecan leaves up and put them on the compost pile.
    
  • Mary and I went back to the northeast corner of Rose Butt Field and cut up firewood. This time it was mainly downed oak branches. We hauled another trailer load of firewood back home and put it away in appropriate locations.
    
  • We watched the 2012 movie, The Big Year.
  • I saw that between 1 and 2 feet of snow fell in Anchorage. Katie was happy she was in Hawaii and not trying to drive in Anchorage right now.
    
    
• Thursday, 12/8: Rest for Firewood Collectors
  
  • We kind of laid low today, after two days in a row of firewood collection. Our bodies needed rest.
  • Mary made venison gravy on biscuits for our midday meal.
  • She also created a monthly menu and a shopping list.
  • Mary finished a cross stitch Christmas ornament.
  • She saw 7 trumpeter swans flying over our property.
    
  • I took the tire off the red wheelbarrow to fix it. The inner tube's stem is cracked at the base and impossible to fix, plus the tire has deep cracks in it. I need a new tire and tube. A new wheelbarrow tire I bought years ago is too large for this wheelbarrow. I tried placing it on a green Radio Flyer wheelbarrow that we got at an auction in Circle, MT, but it's hub won't fit. So, I swapped entire wheels between the green one and the oldest cement encrusted wheelbarrow and it worked. When I inflated the tire on the green on, I discovered that stem is rotten and leaking. So, through all of this work, I started with one wheelbarrow and ended up with only one working wheelbarrow. I need tire parts to get the other two working.
    
    
• Friday, 12/9: Shopping in Quincy, IL
  
  • Mary and I left at 10:30 a.m. in the pickup to shop in Quincy. We visited 8 stores.
  • I got flu and pneumonia vaccines at Sam's Club, while Mary shopped at Walmart. Both vaccines are covered by Medicare and Humana's Plan D coverage. They tried to sell me on getting a shingles vaccine, but it costs $70 a shot for 2 shots, so I passed on the shingles shots. It took a lot of time getting the shots, resulting in Mary wandering around Walmart forever, wondering where I was. She texted, twice, but I didn't answer. Needless to say, she was breathing fire like a dragon when I found her stumbling around the Walmart aisles. I left my phone in the pickup and never bothered to look at it.
    
  • We got home about 4:15 p.m., with darkness starting to set in. Mary took care of chickens, spreading sunflower seeds on the floor and shining a flashlight while 8 younger chickens got off the roost to peck seeds. I walked dogs and unloaded the pickup.
  • With shots in both arms, I experienced aching shoulders through the evening.
  • We watched the 1994 movie, The Santa Clause.
  • For some reason, all pets really missed us being gone, today. This evening, Mary had 3 cats on her and Gandalf snuggled next to me. Both dogs were extra schmoozy, too.
    
    
• Saturday, 12/10: Inside Day
  
  • Vaccination shots seem to last quite some time in my arms. Sore shoulders were the highlight of my day, so I didn't go outside and handle chainsaws or heavy hunks of firewood, today.
    
  • Instead, I stayed inside and balanced the checkbook.
  • Mary cleaned the refrigerator.
  • While Mary was letting the dogs out around 1 p.m., she saw a young deer walking toward the house on the trail next to the near garden. As soon as she opened the door, it spun around and ran back east on the trail.
    
  • Mary enjoyed Christmas music, did some cross stitch, and finished a Christmas ornament, while I read newspapers.
    

Nov. 27-Dec. 3, 2022

Weather | 11/27, 0.93" rain, 37°, 43° | 11/28, 27°, 49° | 11/29, 35° in AM, 25° in PM, 63° | 11/30, 18°, 32° | 12/1, 13°, 43° | 12/2, 37°, 58° | 12/3, 15°, 31° |

• Sunday, 11/27: Bill Returns to St. Charles
  
  • We received nearly an inch of early morning rain that ended right before we got up.
  • Mary made chimichangas for our midday meal. I picked leaves off the winter greens that we enjoyed on top of the chimis. The greens tasted wonderful.
    
  • Bill left for his apartment in St. Charles in the early afternoon. The company he works for is doing an inventory this weekend, so he will be working through the weekend.
  • Right before Bill left, I stepped out the door and told the neighbor's black Labrador retriever to go home. He was scratching his ears with his hind legs as he ran home. Last night, we heard coyotes howling and one of our neighbor's dogs giving off a high-pitched series of yelps. That dog was frightened. Damn neighbors! Bring your dogs in at night, you fools! These are the same people who have 2 dead deer hanging from a tree, untouched, except for field dressing, since the opening day of season, which was Nov. 12th. That venison meat is surely inedible. They did the same thing last year. What a waste!!! Those kind of hunters don't belong owning a hunting rifle or any hunting license.
    
  • We worked up Christmas lists and ordered Christmas presents. This activity went into the early morning hour. I have a couple leather craft 3-dimensional project instructions I got a few years back. I went through both projects lists and ordered 5 additional leather working tools that I don't have. Grandad Robison's Craftool leather tools that I inherited are old enough to have different identification numbers on them then what is used today. Modern numbers start with a letter, such as a "B" for bevelers, or a "P" for pear shaped shaders. The old tools were identified only with numbers. It took me a long time to match what I have to what I need for these 2 projects. One of our happy discoveries was a 4K Ultra Downton Abbey: A New Era DVD for only $10.
    
    
• Monday, 11/28: A Slow Day
  
  • We laid low for the day.
  • I cleaned electronic devices. They all show very bright screens, now.
  • We got another egg from our chickens. If we did things correctly, we'd knock off the unproductive hens. But, we don't do things right, so geriatric hens live to see another day.
    
  • Mary and I took a hike to Wood Duck Pond. It's a pretty location. Various trails are filled with deer tracks. Raccoon and deer tracks were in the sand on the pond's shore. A big rotten oak with a 2-foot trunk near the dry creek bed fell over. It isn't far from my old deer stand. We saw a flock of wild turkeys fly away as we climbed Black Medic Hill.
  • We watched the 2001 movie, Bridget Jones Diary.
  • I ordered vitamins from Swanson Vitamins in Fargo, ND.
    
    
• Tuesday, 11/29: Temperature Drop
  
  • We saw a high in the 60s around 3 p.m. At 3:30, the temperature was 51°. Forty-five minutes later, it was 39°. By bedtime, it was 25°.
  • In the morning, while taking wood ashes to the pile near our compost bins, I watched a dozen wood ducks fly overhead. 
    
  • We had another quiet day. I went down several internet rabbit holes. I looked for pH paper for winemaking purposes and found some at a good price on Etsy. I'm waiting until after Christmas to order anything related to making wine. In the evening, I looked for automotive solutions for firewall and under-the-hood insulation. Mice and squirrels have eaten a lot of that material on the Buick and the GMC pickup. I found several. Most are expensive. I found a reasonably-priced solution called Fatmat from Ohio.
  • I took Amber and Plato on the same walk that Mary and I did yesterday. They really liked all of the smells along the way.
  • We watched the 1994 movie, Little Women.
    
    
• Wednesday, 11/30: Long Dog Memory
  
  • I took the dogs on a walk on the east loop trail. During the summer of 2021, Amber got nipped by the electric fence around the near garden. She still remembers it. When I tried to start by walking by the near garden, I called and called and called Amber. Instead of coming to me, she ran to the porch and sat down. So, instead of starting on the south leg of the east trail, I took the north leg and she came running along. At the end of the walk, she trotted right by the electric fence, which is now off. So, Amber has no problem walking by it at the end of the walk, but don't force her to walk by that dreadful ass-zapping fence to start the walk!
  • Karen said they received 3 inches of rain from the storm that went through, yesterday.
    
  • I split firewood currently sitting by the splitter that Bill and I gathered up last week and hauled 5 wheelbarrow loads to the woodshed and stacked them. Two pieces from the base of oak trees filled two wheelbarrows once they were split. One wheelbarrow load of firewood went into house.
  • I worked on updating my wine diary based on entries I wrote on these pages. I was way behind. I only got to the first week of May, with several winemaking adventures yet to record.
    
    
• Thursday, 12/1: Splitting Wood & Online Stuff
  
  • We spotted a bald eagle circling high above our property. A strong south wind gradually blew the large bird northerly.
  • I walked the dogs to my Bobcat Deer Blind in the north woods and back home. Both dogs got very alert as we neared the blind. There's obviously a lot of wild animal smells at that point, deep in the north timber.
    
  • I finished splitting the wood next to the splitter and put 2 wheelbarrow loads into the woodshed and 1 load into the house. A stack of green wood and another stack of wet cherry needs to be restacked inside the north machine shed wall, where it can dry.
  • I identified a unique oak tree we see on our property. It has course bark that resembles alligator skin and a leaf without pronounced lobes. It's called Blackjack oak. HERE is a link showing its leaf and bark. One of the oak trees Bill and I cut down for firewood last week was a blackjack.
    
  • We removed blankets from the winter greens, but left the plastic on them through today and overnight.
  • I spent several hours in the evening investigating how to get the Feedly RSS reader to work on our Amazon Kindle tablets. Amazon only allows their apps on Kindles, but geeks come up with ways to bypass Amazon's dictatorial stipulations. After a failed attempt, I finally got Feedly to work on my Kindle. My next task is to get it running on Mary's newest Kindle.
    
    
• Friday, 12/2: High Winds
  
  • I got the migraine flashing eye thing while emptying woodstove ashes first thing in the morning, but these days, the headache side of migraines is much less than it was in my younger years. With two acetaminophen pills, I'm good to go.
  • Wind gusts to 40 mph kept me inside. Cutting up firewood while in the timber during windy conditions isn't the best idea. Dead trees get blown down during wind events and it's best to avoid the woods.
  • Mary saw a red-tailed hawk land in a short elm tree along the lane. She went out to chase it away, but it already left once she was out the door.
  • I wrote on 29 labels for the recently bottled blackberry wine.
  • I collected a bowl of leaves from the winter greens. We added them on top of chimichangas that Mary made for our main meal.
  • We watched the 1995 movie, While You Were Sleeping.
  • I added more to my wine diary, catching up to mid-August.
    
    
• Saturday, 12/3: Anterless Deer Season
  • Today is the first day of anterless deer hunting season. Fortunately, we have all of the venison we need this year, so I stay warm and inside. Everyone else must have the same idea. We didn't hear a single gun shot all day.
    
  • A strong northwest wind blew early in the day, but slowly died off into the afternoon.
  • Mary made a big batch of chicken noodle soup.
  • Just after the sun set, we watched a great horned owl hooting while it was sitting on top of a power pole south of us and next to Bluegill Pond. Mary said it was a male, which has a higher pitched voice. A lower-pitched great horned owl, that Mary said was a female, answered his call. We couldn't see her, but based on the sound, she was just west of him in the woods. We looked at him through binoculars. Every time he hooted, he bent forward in a courting display.
    
  • I labeled and stored 29 bottles of 2022 blackberry wine in a couple coolers.
    
  • I looked up the ingredients to making garlic wine and discovered that I need white grape juice that I currently don't have in supply. That delays making garlic wine.
  • We watched two movies. One was the 2017 movie, The Man Who Invented Christmas. Dan Stevens plays Charles Dickens and Christopher Plummer is a perfect Scrooge. Then, we watched another 2017 Dan Stevens movie, Beauty and the Beast.
  • Between the two movies, we shared a bottle of 2021/2022 blackberry wine. When we pick the berries one year and I make the wine the next year, I include both years on the name. This wine possesses a deep red color that works well with Christmas decorations (see photo, below). It's very smooth and fruity and a very nice tasting wine.

  

  Blackberry wine has a festive color.
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

Nov. 20-26, 2022

Weather | 11/20, 13°, 43° | 11/21, 27°, 49° | 11/22, 21°, 55° | 11/23, 35°, 58° | 11/24, 0.01" rain, 41°, 54° | 11/25, 27°, 55° | 11/26, 25°, 54° |

• Sunday, 11/20: Bill Arrives, Bringing Warmth With Him
  
  • We woke to a cold morning, but temperatures rose to above freezing. By noon, we removed blankets from the winter greens and Mary opened each end of the plastic over the greens to air them out. The arugula and spinach look tough, but all other greens are thriving. 
    
  • Bill drove in at around 10:30 a.m. He is visiting for a week. Bill is looking forward to not making a decision about anything, since making decisions is what he does all day at work.
  • We unloaded parts to three 2'x3'x5' metal and wood shelving from his car and stacked the parts in the freezer and laundry rooms. They will be nice additions to get better organized.
  • I thumbed through all of the rest of the American Heritage magazines that we got for free from the Quincy (IL) Library bookstore. The magazine became smaller and not as good in the 1990s, after Forbes bought it. I looked it up and Forbes sold the magazine in 2007 to Edwin Grosvenor, whose great-grandfather started National Geographic. The printed version of American Heritage was suspended in 2013. It restarted in electronic form in 2017.
  • After chores, Mary fixed 3 pizzas that we ate while playing Yahtzee. We enjoyed one beer that Bill brought with him and split it 3 ways. It was a Samuel Smith's (made in England) nut brown ale. We also enjoyed the last bottle of 2021 blackberry wine, which was really good. Aging vastly helps the taste of blackberry wine, which is also very good without aging. We had a great time.
    
    
• Monday, 11/21: A Slow Day of Visiting
  
  • Mary and I talked quite a bit with Bill, making for a lull in outdoor activity.
  • I did some quick Messenger texts with my cousin, Marjorie. She was getting ready to pack to catch a flight from Jerusalem. She spent 11 days at UAE and then 8 days in Israel. Her former husband, Steve, works in the UAE as a VP at American University in Ras Al Khaimah.
  • Mary made flour tortillas, then chimichangas, for our midday meal.
    
  • Bill and I racked the Kieffer pear wine for the second time. The specific gravity was 1.000, which gives it an alcohol content of 10.2%. We added 0.4 grams of potassium metabisulfite after racking it to a brew bucket. About a half inch of fines were in the bottom of each gallon jug. We put the liquid into a gallon jug and two 1.5-liter bottles. Mary, Bill, and I tasted it. The wine had a strong pear flavor. Bill says it tastes like autumn olive. There was also a strong yeast taste, because I didn't rack the wine early enough and let the must sit on top of excessive fines for too long. Hopefully, aging will remove the yeast taste.
    
  • We watched the 1987 movie, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, starring Steve Martin and John Candy. Bill owns the DVD. We need to get a copy of it. We ate cheese and crackers that Bill brought with him.
    
    
• Tuesday, 11/22: Quincy Shopping for Fresh Veggies
  
  • Bill and I went to Quincy in the pickup to get a few things. I picked up a Sam's Club shipment of 3 large bags of powdered milk, which should last about 10 months. We got fresh veggies for Thanksgiving dinner and some cat litter at Sam's Club. All stores were packed with people.
  • On the drive home, Bill and I saw several swans in the disked-up corn fields on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River. Their all white bodies were easy to spot on the dark earth fields.
    
  • Mary fixed venison stroganoff, which was ready when Bill and I returned home.
  • Today is the last day of the regular firearms deer hunting season in Missouri. We have not heard rifles shots for the past several days. Next is a youth (age 15 and under) season on Nov. 25-27, then the anterless firearms deer hunting season, when antlered bucks cannot be hunted, is on Dec. 3-11. Finally, there's an alternative deer hunting season on Dec. 24-Jan. 3, when blackpowder guns, center-fired pistols, airguns, longbows, crossbows, and atlatls are allowed. Apparently, Missouri's deer herd is thriving resulting in longer hunting seasons. We have enough venison, so I'm done hunting.
  • On a dog walk prior to sunset, a large flock of red-winged blackbirds flew north to south over us. While walking back after delivering the garbage can to the end of our lane, I saw a V of snow geese heading southwest. Mary says we have an Eastern bluebird hanging around the yard.
  • We watched the 2021 movie, The Kingsman, that I picked up at Walmart, today. Then, we watched the 2010 movie, Leap Year, which was Bill's selection.
  • Mom texted that Hank surprised her on Sunday with a visit. He gave her a BB gun as a birthday present, so she can sting mule deer in the butt. They've eaten her flowers and strawberry plants. She's driving to Glasgow tomorrow (11/23) to visit Hank for Thanksgiving, which means she doesn't need to cook a turkey. Today, she helped serve 68 people a Thanksgiving dinner at the Circle Senior Center.
    
    
• Wednesday, 11/23: Wood Gathering & Pie Making
  
  • Mary made two pumpkin pies and cranberry sauce for tomorrow's Thanksgiving dinner.
    
  • Bill and I loaded all of the weeping willow logs into the trailer behind the 8N Ford tractor. These logs were once at the bottom of a pile and consequently wet, rotten, and in some cases, growing roots and twigs. We took them to the ravine down the hill and east of the house and threw them in. Then, we drove further east, cut down 2 oak trees and cut them up into firewood. Bill loaded most of the firewood into the trailer. I helped after I finished cutting up the dead trees. One branch was green. We drove home and unloaded the firewood in appropriate locations.
    
  • Mary raked leaves from under the pecan trees and filled the compost bin.
    
  • I built a fire and we had a wienie roast. Once finished, the sun set to the west (see photo, below, that Bill took). We heard trumpeter swans and snow geese, but couldn't locate them in the sky.
    
  • Mary and I read in the evening. Bill had fun with his hockey video game.

  

  Sunset with Kieffer pear tree in foreground.

• Thursday, 11/24: Thanksgiving
  
  • Mary made a Thanksgiving meal, baking a 20.3-pound turkey. She also made dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, our homegrown sweet potatoes, a bean casserole using green beans from our garden, Ranch dressing dip and a bunch of veggies. After 2 helpings, we were stuffed.
  • Mary carved the rest of the meat off the turkey. A gallon bag of breast meat went into the fridge and 4 quart bags of dark meat went into the freezer for future turkey pot pies. Mary and I hauled the turkey carcass to the north woods, where all that was left of the second deer carcass was part of the hide.
  • I called Mom. She's enjoying Thanksgiving Day at Hank's house in Glasgow, MT. We talked for a little while. Then, Bill talked to his grandmother.
  • We watched two movies, eating a large piece of pumpkin pie between the movies. They were the 1998 movie, You've Got Mail, and the 2003 movie, Johnny English.
  • While walking dogs after the movies, we heard coyotes howling from north, northeast, and east.
    
    
• Friday, 11/25: Winemaking
  • I spotted six trumpeter swans out of our south living room window as they lifted off from our neighbor's pond and turned in flight to the west.
  • Mary ironed two sets of curtains that we used in our house in Circle, MT. She hemmed one panel that she plans to give to Bill for windows in his St. Charles, MO, apartment.
  • Bill and I worked on three different wines through the day.
  • First, we racked the blackberry wine for the fourth time, then bottled it. The specific gravity is 0.992, resulting in 12.3% alcohol. The pH is 3.3. Once we racked all containers into a brew bucket, we had 5.75 gallons of wine. We added 1 gram of potassium metabisulfite, then bottled and corked 29 bottles of wine. We tasted it. This wine was very fruity, a great blackberry flavor, with a bit of a tang. Somehow, brewing this variety, starting in the summer, produces a better tasting wine.
  • Next, we looked at the apple cider. Bill noticed that it was mostly clear, except for about an inch in the bottom of both gallon jugs, which was slightly cloudy. We decided to let it sit another month. The pectic enzyme I added a month ago gave the cider a clearer appearance than the apple wine, in which I didn't add pectic enzyme.
  • Next we racked the apple wine and added 1.25 teaspoons of pectic enzyme. It has a tiny bit of fines. We tasted the apple wine. It tastes good. Mary says the apple flavor is subtle, but will probably come forward with aging. Bill said it has a strong apple flavor, but not as strong as when eating an apple. The specific gravity is 0.998, increasing slightly from the 0.996 reading on 11/1.
  • Finally, we racked the jalapeño wine for the third time. It had a minimal amount of fines, but as it swirled into the carboy, a fine bit of mist moved across the top of the container, so there's some material still in that wine. The specific gravity is still at 0.990. We tasted it. Bill says it's milder and more fruity than last year's batch. We didn't add anything to this wine.
    
  • Mary, Bill, and I played a long game of Michigan Rummy. It was my lucky day. We quit around 1 a.m. I won. Mary was a close second and Bill took a close third. It was fun.
  • Katie texted her mother that she won't be visiting us during Christmas.
    
    
• Saturday, 11/26: Up Goes the Christmas Tree
  
  • Mary laundered sheets and some shirts.
  • She also finished hemming a large set of curtains for Bill.
    
  • I talked with Bill a bunch.
    
  • I vacuumed Asian ladybugs that are always creeping into the house through our immaculately tight windows.
  • We got 2 eggs from our chickens, which were the first eggs in about 6 weeks. I guess they're finished with molting.
    
  • Mary, Bill, and I put up and decorated the Christmas tree. We also put up Christmas decorations around the house.
    
  • After decorating, we ate the last of the pumpkin pie and shared a bottle of parsnip wine (see photo, below). It's beautiful when poured into a glass. Bill and I started making it a year ago. It doesn't taste anything like cooked parsnips, which is good. Mary said it has a citrus/earth taste. Bill said you can taste lemon, and at the back of the tongue, a carrot flavor. I think it gives your mouth a full feel and it's quite good. It's supposed to be the best after 2 years of aging. If so, parsnip wine ought to be really great in another year, because it tastes very good after one year of aging. Our main purpose for tasting it was to determine if we're planting parsnips next spring, because Mary is drawing up a seed purchase list, soon. Parsnip seeds are on the agenda.

  

  Good tasting parsnip wine, with a gold color.
  

  
  
  
   
  
  
  
  

Nov. 13-19, 2022

Weather | 11/13, 26°, 37° | 11/14, 19°, 43° | 11/15, 2" snow or 0.21" moisture, 30°, 37° | 11/16, flurries, 20°, 29° | 11/17, 17°, 37° | 11/18, 15°, 27° | 11/19, snow flurries, 16°, 29° |

• Sunday, 11/13: Processing Venison
  
  • Last night, on a final check of the deer hanging in the machine shed, I heard something scratching up the trunk of the maple tree at the northeast corner of the machine shed. It moved as I moved around the tree. I saw something small leap to a branch. I think it was a flying squirrel, since regular squirrels aren't out after dark, but flying squirrels are nocturnal.
    
  • We got a late start in the morning, since we were tired from previous days of firewood splitting and yesterday evening's deer field dressing activity.
  • I sharpened 5 knives. Mary taped plastic down on the kitchen table.
  • I skinned the button buck deer hanging in the machine shed. For the first time, ever, I didn't use the Herter's knife with WGM engraved in its handle. The initials stand for Willis G. Melvin. My grandfather put his initials on the knife years ago. Instead of that knife, I used a skinning knife made by Old Timer. It has a curved blade and is excellent when used for removing the pelt. My only problem involved cold fingers while working with a hide cooled to 26°. I had to go inside 3 times to warm my hands over the woodstove.
  • After eating lunch, we processed the deer. Mary cleans fat off the outside of animal portions. I separate muscle groups and give meat chunks back to Mary. She removes silver skin, which is thick heavy skin across the meat. If not removed, silver skin contracts and makes the meat very tough. She then cuts the meat into half-pound pieces. Once we're done with a section, such as the hind quarters, Mary rinses the meat off with tap water, wraps the meat in plastic wrap. Two wrapped pieces go into a zippered freezer bag. Each bag is marked with my name, the date I shot the deer, the Missouri Dept. of Conservation deer tag confirmation number, our address, and what kind of meat is in the package, such as roast, stew, or loin. We got 31 pieces of venison out of this deer, which is surprising, since the bullet wrecked both shoulders. It was a deer with a long body, and as such, it produced more meat.
  • Mary cleaned up inside as I did outside. We finished evening chores partway through the last of our butchering. I finished the last bit of chores as darkness fell.
  • We watched 4 episodes of Keeping Up Appearances. It was fun.
    
    
• Monday, 11/14: A Missed Shot
  
  • A cool 19° with a steady southeast wind blowing made me glad I didn't venture out deer hunting this morning. I'm sure my cohort at field dressing a deer, Mary, would have told me to go right back out there and do it myself if I'd have asked her for help after shooting a deer this morning. So, I stayed in bed at 4 a.m., instead.
  • Mary washed furniture covers, a set of curtains, and some clothes.
  • After taking blankets off this morning, which were covering the winter greens, we covered the winter greens this afternoon with a sheet of plastic and weighed it down with bricks. The plastic is more appropriate with 2-4 inches of snow predicted overnight.
  • I went deer hunting at the first deer blind I created this fall, the Cherry Deer Blind. I sat down inside the blind at 2:52 p.m. An east southeast wind blew into my face. 
  • At 4:12 p.m., a coyote, about the size of a large dog, walked up the line of cedar trees to my right. It stopped about 8 feet away and stared at the bottom of the blind for several seconds. It looked up at me, but I don't think it really saw me. I'm wearing a dark gray knitted face mask to cover most of my face. It helps to disguise me. So far, deer, turkeys, and a coyote look my way, but don't run once they look at me. The coyote walked by the front of the blind, then turned and headed northwest through a cut in the line of cedar trees. Once the coyote was downwind of me, he caught my scent and bolted out across the field on a dead run.
  • Just before 5 p.m., I saw the hind leg of a deer to the north of me. All of a sudden it ran back where it came from and looked in my direction. I'm sure it caught my scent. I tried a right-handed shot through cedar branches. Immediately after shooting, I saw cedar branches close to me waving around. Obviously the bullet hit them and they diverted the shot, because the deer trotted off, casually, to the northeast. I waited 10 minutes, then walked north, in case I wounded the deer. I didn't. I just missed with my shot. The lesson I learned today was that even though .30-30 bullets are known to be brush cutters, it's a better idea to wait for an open shot, free from cedar branches, before pulling the trigger. Mary was very happy that I missed, so instead of holding deer legs while I gutted a deer, we stayed inside a warm house and ate vegetable soup tonight.
  • While I was hunting, Mary raked maple leaves in the north yard and filled the compost bin to give the bin some organic matter.
    
    
• Tuesday, 11/15: Mom's 88th Birthday
  
  • We woke to 2" of wet snow on the ground and on all tree branches. Snow-covered cedar trees made us want to sing Christmas carols. Most of the snow was melted by afternoon.
  • I updated the checkbook and balanced it.
    
  • I made waffles for our midday meal.
    
  • I hunted in the afternoon from the Bobcat Deer Blind. Around 4:20 p.m., I heard footsteps, but couldn't determine the animal's location. I stood up to look north, down a gully, and promptly heard a snort from behind me. A deer was walking down my trail to that deer blind, saw me move, and ran southwest to near the west field, where it snorted at me for about 10-15 minutes. It finally ran west. I didn't hear shots from the west, which means nobody is in that tree stand just beyond our property line. I only saw 2 squirrels. In past years that location was messy with squirrels. I decided I'm not wearing the woven face mask in wide open locations, such as Bobcat, where I need uncovered ears to determine footstep locations.
    
  • While I was out hunting, Mary rearranged and dusted books in the living room. She's finding lots of Asian ladybugs nesting on book edges. They end up in the shop vacuum. She's also putting books of similar subjects together and eliminating some so we don't have books stacked ahead of other books on the shelves.
    
  • I called Mom to wish her a happy 88th birthday. She had a good day. Mom's been calling bingo at the Circle Senior Center's weekly lunch events. Today, someone else insisted that Mom play, instead of calling the game. She won 2 games and then won the end-of-the-day pot of money. Her hip is much better. Mom hasn't used a cane for 2-3 weeks. Hank couldn't make it down from Glasgow, MT, due to poor road conditions. Winter set in with a vengeance, giving eastern MT about a foot of snow that is settling. Mom said she had a nice visit with Katie last month.
    
  • I made 2 big bowls of popcorn after Mary finished the living room library work.
  • We stayed up and watched the launch of Artemis I to the moon on NASA TV. Bill and Mary texted a few times after the rockets lifted off. I bet it was loud where Karen and Lynn once lived in Titusville, FL.
    
    
• Wednesday, 11/16: Quiet Day
  
  • Cool temperatures with northwest gusty winds means I stayed indoors instead of hunting today.
  • Mary made flour tortillas and then chimichangas for our midday meal.
  • Mary created a month-long meal menu, then a shopping list.
  • I stuck used corks into washed wine bottles that dried over the past several days. The corks keep dust out of the bottles. I moved several bottles that need cleaning out of the west room closet and replaced them with these clean bottles.
  • I refrained from racking the Kieffer pear wine for the second time, since all airlocks I own are in use. I'll wait until an order I placed a couple days ago arrives with 3 more airlocks. It shipped today from Ozark, MO, which is on the other side of the state.
  • Mary and I put blankets over the winter greens that are already covered with plastic. Predicted low temperatures are in the teens for the next four nights.
    
    
• Thursday, 11/17: Shopping & Second Deer
  
  • While walking dogs in the morning, we heard a trumpeter swan and saw 5 big ducks. In the morning light, details were hard to see, but we're quite sure they were mallards.
    
  • We went shopping in Quincy, IL, today and so did the entire population. All stores were packed with people. Mary found 70 American Heritage hardcover magazines at the Quincy Library bookstore for free. We dropped off books and got a planter, jeans, and a purse for Mary at the Salvation Army. Then, we bought food supplies.
  • We returned home at 2:30 p.m. I helped unload the pickup, then dressed and went deer hunting at the Wood Duck Deer Blind. With cold temperatures predicted the next several days, I wanted to give it a go this afternoon, since it was a few degrees above freezing.
    
  • I got to the blind at 3:36 p.m. A west-northwest wind, gusts to 22 mph, was blowing onto my left cheek as I sat there. These blinds block a lot of the wind, making them much warmer than a deer stand, where you're out in the open, up a tree. 
  • Soon after sitting down, I saw several turkeys walk to the edge of Wood Duck Pond. Then, I saw just a glimpse of a buck west of me. Next, I noticed a deer walk to the edge of the pond. I kept watching and that deer headed north to south, opposite the dry creek bed from me. I followed it while looking through the gun's scope. I saw no antlers, so when it got directly opposite of me, I shot. It instantly went down. It's another button buck, another yearling deer (see photo, below). I never heard shots from any other hunters, so I guess I was the only one hunting within this area.
    
  • Mary, who was hauling in the last load of kindling, heard the shot, waited for a text from me, and got it while she was feeding pets. She walked to the deer while I fueled then drove the tractor to the bottom of Bramble Hill. We field dressed the deer, then hauled it to the tractor. This button buck (named this, because yearling bucks only grow a small button of an antler, instead of a full set of antlers) is heavier than the last deer I shot. We hauled it home in the tractor, washed it out thoroughly, then hung it in the machine shed. Temperatures are cool for perfect conditions for hanging venison outdoors. We'll butcher it tomorrow.
  • We watched the 2015 movie, The Intern, which we really like.

  

  Another button buck, our 2nd deer of the season.

• Friday, 11/18: Our Venison Supply Is Full, As Is Our Freezer
  
  • We processed the second deer today and put 32 packages of venison in the freezer. It was pretty good, considering both shoulders were damaged from the bullet. This deer ate well and had quite a bit of fat. It was also quite hairy, with long black hair on its chest and back. There is a strain of white-tailed deer around here with black winter hair. The immense hair blocked the visibility of entry and exit wounds until I skinned the button buck. My shot hit the base of the left neck and exited the point of the right shoulder. The meat was very cold, due to sub-freezing temperatures. We finished butchering after sunset and I drove the remains to the middle of the north woods, where the remains of the deer we butchered on Sunday, 11/13 were completely gone. All that was left behind was coyote scat and the white excrement from an owl or a hawk. We now have 73 venison packages in the freezer, so we're set for the year. I won't be sitting in a blind with a rifle until next fall. I used 6 bullets this deer season...3 to sight in the rifle, 2 to harvest 2 deer, and only 1 missed shot.
    
  • Strong west winds blew all day. We kept the chickens inside the coop. Fortunately, the machine shed protected me from the gusts, even though I went inside a few times to warm up my hands.
    
  • We texted with Bill, who is bringing us metal shelving that was destined for the dump from his place of work. He also has plywood, but cannot fit it into his car. I'll make a trip in the pickup in the near future to get it.
  • We watched the 1958 movie, Auntie Mame.
  • We also went through several issues of American Heritage magazines.
    
    
• Saturday, 11/19: A Cleaning Day
  
  • It was another cold day with temperatures never getting above freezing.
  • At noon while Mary was giving new water to chickens in the coop, she heard a scream, looked up, and saw a red-tailed hawk chasing a Cooper's hawk. The Cooper's hawk performed a sharp turn to the east while the red-tailed hawk took a rest in the McIntosh apple tree.
  • Mary and I both did several house cleaning chores. Mary swept the whole house, then mopped our bedroom floor. New throw rugs we've slowly picked up over the past several months went down in the bedroom. They're really nice. She dusted all DVDs and put away books that were off shelves. I vacuumed bugs, rugs, and cleaned sinks, then did some Christmas present wrapping.
    
  • We did some reading in the evening.
    

Nov. 6-12, 2022

Weather | 11/6, 41°, 62° | 11/7, 33°, 53° | 11/8, 33°, 59° | 11/9, 50°, 77° | 11/10, 60°, 75° | 11/11, 0.30" rain, 25°, 33° | 11/12, 24°, 29° |

• Sunday, 11/6: Fixing Up Another Deer Hunting Location...You Can't Have Too Many
  
  • When Mary opened the living room curtains this morning, a ruby-crowned kinglet flew up just outside the window. It's passing through on its way south. Mary says they usually fly through late winter, or early spring, when they're heading north.
    
  • I gave Mary a haircut.
  • I made waffles for breakfast and Mary made venison General Tso for our main meal.
  • Mary found 39 books to donate.
    
  • Together, Mary and I checked out potential deer stand locations and decided the cedar and the American elm tree location on the Bass Pond Trail that I originally picked out is best.
    
  • I took down 4 strands of barbed wire fence between 3 fence posts and coiled up the wire. This will allow deer to walk right by the cedar/elm trees. Then I moved the aluminum ladder deer stand from the cow barn to the cedar/elm location. I sawed 3 limbs off the north side of the cedar tree and put the stand in place. I cinched up 1 ratchet strap around 2 limbs and the trunk of the tree and through slots in the 2x4 platform of the stand. I ran out of time. Plans are to add a second ratchet strap to make it good and secure.
    
  • In the evening, a flock of 5 wood ducks flew right over top of me. They're very pretty.
    
  • After letting the dogs out right at sunset, I spotted a squirrel in the pecan tree closest to the house and said to the dogs, "There's a squirrel." Plato briefly ran south, the complete opposite direction from that tree. Amber slowly walked to the tree, looked up, and spotted the squirrel. It ran to the ground, then due north. Amber tore after it, followed by Plato. They had their fun for the evening.
  • I washed 10 bottles from the recent collection I bought.
    
    
• Monday, 11/7: House Cleaning & Finishing Tree Stand
  • We watched a large female red-tailed hawk sit in the Keiffer pear tree while we drank our coffee this morning. It searched the ground below it for something to eat.
    
  • Mary was mainly inside, washing bedding and some clothes, replacing 35 gallons of water stored in 1-gallon containers in case the running water stops flowing, dusting books and sorting them, and sweeping.
  • I finished putting a second ratchet strap on the aluminum ladder tree stand. I also nipped several small branches out of the way. I wired up a semi-circle of hog fencing in front of the deer stand platform and wove cedar branches through the fencing as a small blind to hide me from deer eyeballs (see photos and videos, below). In the process of cutting off a cedar branch, I broke a wooden handle off the long-handled nippers that we bought years ago in Montana.
  • At noon, I harvested a bowl of winter greens that we enjoyed on top of taco noodles.
  • I looked up a sample ballot, then online information to determine how we want to vote tomorrow.
    
  • I washed 10 more wine bottles.

Aluminum Ladder Tree Stand viewed from NE.

The same deer stand viewed from SW.

View from the Aluminum Ladder Deer Stand.
Turn on your audio to hear me describe the view.

View inside the blind build around the tree stand.

• Tuesday, 11/8: Mulching Garlic & Sighting In the Gun
  
  • After getting up and opening the curtains on the west living room window, we noticed the bottom third of the moon was blocked in what was the end of the lunar eclipse.
  • When we walked to the chicken coop to let the chickens out for the day, 6 squirrels scurried out of the pecan tree nearest to the house. It is a domestic pecan tree, compared to the wild pecan trees that we get a few nuts from. This domestic pecan tree never seems to have a long enough growing season to develop mature nuts, so the husks stay on, harden, and never open, therefore the inside nut never develops. Squirrels are grabbing them and crunching them open, but there's nothing inside. That doesn't stop them from swarming the tree. This evening I let the dogs chase squirrels. As they ran into the north woods, Amber stood at the edge of the timber and woof, woof, woofed at them.
    
  • We drove to Lewistown this morning and voted. There was a line with lots of people waiting to vote. Okay, it wasn't a whole lot of people, but normally Mary and I are the only ones in the place. Today, there were 3 people ahead of us in line and a couple others behind us when we got to the poll workers.
    
  • This afternoon, Mary put a layer of compost on the three rows of garlic. Then, she mowed a section of the west lawn, bagged the grass, and used those lawn clippings to mulch the garlic. The garlic planting project is done for this year.
    
  • I cleaned the Marlin long-barreled .30-30 rifle (I own a second Marlin .30-30 rifle with a shorter barrel) and the Marlin .22 rifle that I recently used to hunt squirrels.
    
  • I sighted in the .30-30 rifle. After two shots at the target, I only moved the scope one notch to the left and one notch down. I hit the bullseye on the third shot. It's ready for deer hunting season, which starts this Saturday, Nov. 12th.
    
  • Bill called after sending us his Christmas wish list. He is training South Carolina employees at his St. Louis location. The company manager asked that Bill inventory stock that was ordered, but not needed. It amounted to $1.5 million worth of inventory. Bill will be visiting us for over a week starting Nov. 20th.
    
    
• Wednesday, 11/9: Plant Cleaning & AC Removal
  • Mom texted that it was 10° this morning in Circle, MT, with a couple inches of snow on the ground. There's a blizzard warning in ND and SD, and eastern MT is on the edge of that weather.
    
  • Mary moved the last three big house plants outside, washed them with a watering can and warm water out of the sink, then let them dry. Once dry, the ficus tree attracted several wasps. I helped her haul the huge ficus tree outside. When going back inside, she got tired of me telling her that pushing a hand truck up a set of stair wouldn't work, grabbed the trunk and hoisted it into the sunroom by herself.
  • Mary mowed the west yard and put mulch on fruit trees and blueberry plants.
  • She also washed rugs.
  • We enjoyed a chicken pot pie for our evening meal.
    
  • I removed our 4 air conditioners. Mary helped with the big ones. Each had squadrons of Asian ladybugs hidden in cracks. We vacuumed a lot of bugs, today.
    
  • I started moving willow logs into the machine shed, next to the splitter. Small logs went into the woodshed. We figure by the time we get to them at the bottom of the pile, they can be used for quick fires in the spring. I also took the chainsaw to longer willow branches in the outdoor stack of willow logs and in the machine shed. Once cut up, they went into the woodshed.
    
  • I marked 14 wine bottles that I previously washed up with a white grease pencil dot, stuck corks partially in them to keep out dust, and put them in the west room closet.
  • We enjoyed a wonderful bottle of 2021 blackberry wine. It's one of our favorites.
    
    
• Thursday, 11/10: Baking Bread & Splitting Willow Firewood
  
  • We saw a small flock of red-winged blackbirds flying south while we walked the dogs this morning.
    
  • Mary baked 4 loaves of bread. We had a Sound of Music evening meal of Red Rose tea with jam, jam and bread (freshly baked, that is!).
    
  • Mary also put a wheelbarrow load of hay in the chicken coop.
    
  • I spent all day splitting weeping willow logs into firewood. The heat content of willow is poor, but it's great for a quick fire in the fall or spring. I'm stacking it in the back of the woodshed, so it will be ready for us in the spring. I filled up a ring's worth of wood with the willow I split today (see photo, below). I'd move logs off the pile that's been stacked on the lawn between the machine shed and the chicken coop, stack them in front of the splitter, split that stack, then move the split firewood to the woodshed with a wheelbarrow, and stack it in there.
  • Mary started helping me once she was done with baking bread. Together, she and I moved all the rest of the good weeping willow logs into the machine shed. Then, we split and stacked more firewood in three sessions running the splitter. Logs that were on the bottom of the stack on the lawn are too wet, with roots on the bottom and sprouts on the top. Yes, weeping willow is really a weed. I plan on tossing those logs into a ravine that's down the hill and quite a ways east of the house.
  • Rain was predicted for 2 p.m., then at 5 p.m. By the time of this writing at 9:50 p.m., it still is west of us. They're predicting a skiff of snow in the morning. I'm hoping to finish splitting weeping willow tomorrow, then split the hardwood that I already have stacked near the splitter. I also must get the east end of the machine shed ready for butchering in case I harvest a deer Saturday morning. The prediction is for a low of 25° early Saturday morning. We're always colder, so it'll be around 22°, with northwest wind gusts up to 22 mph. It's going to be nice and toasty!

  

  One ring of willow firewood in our Quonset-shaped woodshed.

• Friday, 11/11: More Split Firewood
  
  • We enjoyed waffles that I made for breakfast.
  • Mary and I started splitting firewood first thing after breakfast. We finished splitting all of the weeping willow logs, split a few elm logs, then split all of the oak, hickory, and cherry logs that we collected a couple weeks ago from the east woods. We finished around 4 p.m. with about half of the second ring finished in the woodshed (see photo, below). This is the best collection of firewood stacked in the woodshed prior to deer hunting season going back several years.
  • Squirrels are swarming the pecan tree that's north of the house and east of the woodshed. Mary watched a woodpecker fly away from that tree with a pecan.
    
  • The weather prediction calls for northwest gusts to 22 mph starting at 1 a.m. and continuing until sunset. I've decided to forego getting up at 4 a.m. to freeze may ass off in the wind while waiting for a deer to march by. I'll wait for an afternoon hunt.
  • Mary and Bill traded song links on texts to one another into the night.
  • I washed 10 more wine bottles. I also stuck corks in 12 dry, clean bottles and stored them in the west room's closet.

  

  Half a ring added to firewood stack in the woodshed.
  Freshly cut hardwood is brighter than year-old willow.

• Saturday, 11/12: Opening Day of Hunting Season...One Shot, One Deer
  
  • We woke to a cloudy and cold day. I stayed in bed until just after 7. Squirrels stayed in bed, too. I only saw one on the pecan tree today.
  • Mary made a big batch of vegetable soup.
  • I strung up five lights in the machine shed in order to butcher deer.
  • Mary cleaned and sorted books into new locations. She's finding Asian ladybugs hidden behind books. If these bugs aren't removed, they stain the edges of a book's pages orange.
  • I hunted in the Cedar East Woods Deer Blind. A northwest wind blew up the hill and into my face. The blind is cozy and blocks wind quite well. 
  • I started hunting at 2:50 p.m. Thirty minutes later, a 10-point buck walked by the blind just north of me. He had a nice rack, but looked haggard. There was no rump on it. The buck literally ran its butt off chasing does. The meat in that deer probably tasted only slightly better than a piece of cast iron. Since I'm more interested in quality food over a nice set of antlers, I let that deer walk on by. It walked up the hill so close to my blind that I could have hit it just by throwing a piece of wood. Eventually the deer was downwind of me. He stood for about 5 minutes sniffing the air. At one point, he looked right at me. I didn't even blink, so the buck turned, then trotted northeast and jumped the fence to the east. About 15-20 minutes later I saw it walking west just a little further north of me. The buck turned north at the dry creek and I saw it later under the distant trees northwest of me.
  • About a half hour later, 12 huge turkeys walked across the forest floor just down the hill from me. They were fun to watch. As a couple pecked and scratched at the ground, in the same fashion our chickens do, another would play sentinel and watch for danger. Then, the guard would scratch and another would take on the lookout role. Eventually, they were down at Wood Duck Pond making all kinds of turkey calls. Before nightfall, I heard them flying up to roost in treetops.
  • The end of legal shooting today was 5:23 p.m. At 5:15 p.m., I started getting ready to leave. Then a deer walked by, south to north, just in front of the blind. As I slid the gun from left to right across the top of the horizontal cedar log used as a ledge to the blind's window, the gun's sling caught on quarter-inch high branch nubbins, making it impossible to see through the scope. The deer stopped to eat some brush. I saw it didn't have antlers, so I executed a right-handed shot. Shooting a .30-30 rifle under roofing tin is really loud! It dropped and died immediately. One shot...one deer...that's the way I like to hunt, using the least amount of bullets, possible. It's a young button buck (see photo, below). Them's good eatin's!!! As I walked to the deer to make sure it was dead, several deer snorted at me from the north and east. As I turned the bend into the north yard while walking home, more deer snorted at me.
    
  • I texted Mary that I got a deer after I electronically notched the deer tag. With it getting dark, Mary figured we were free on working on deer, tonight. When she got the text, she said, "Damn it!" She walked behind me as I drove the tractor. We field dressed the deer, then hauled it down the hill, across the dry creek bed, and into the wagon behind the tractor. The whole time we handled the deer, snowflakes filtered down through the timber. Once we got home, we rinsed out the body cavity real well with the garden hose. Then, we hung it in the machine shed for the night. Temperatures are perfect overnight for hanging venison. It's predicted to hit 19°. We'll process the venison meat tomorrow.

  

  I harvested this yearling button buck this afternoon.