Weather | 2/20, 32°, 57° | 2/21, 36°, 58° | 2/22, 0.03" rain, 15°, 42° | 2/23, 4°, 19° | 2/24, freezing mist to snow, 0.02" moisture, 15°, 25° | 2/25, 15°, 27° | 2/26, 9°, 30° |
- Sunday, 2/20: My 65th Birthday
- While dumping ashes in the morning, I heard, then saw, two huge trumpeter swans flying west to east above the north field. They've been hanging around here the past few days.
- We had four red-tailed hawks in west yard at same time. Mary and I went outside and chased them off.
- I talked to Mom on a birthday call. Her health tests came back and she has 50 percent blockage of carotid arteries. She also has a heart valve that's not closing all of the way. Mom is to see a vascular specialist, who is based at St. Vincent Healthcare in Billings, on an appointment in Miles City, MT, on March 2nd. We'll see what comes from that visit, plus she is to see a heart specialist once an appointment is established.
- Katie called. She's busy at work. Her dogs like running with her on Russian Jack trails in Anchorage. Snow, followed by rain, created several avalanches that closed the Seward Highway, the old Glenn Highway, and the road to Hatcher Pass. It means she's staying put in Anchorage, instead of driving to areas outside the city.
- Mary washed sheets and a few clothes.
- Mary also made 2 cherry pies. They're amazingly great. Today is Cherry Pie Day. How appropriate! The filling, coming from cherries picked off our trees, is brown. Canned cherry pie filling sold in stores is filled with red dye, because red is not the color of natural pie cherries, which are frozen, then thawed. Ours tastes better, too.
- Bill and I racked, then bottled the garlic wine. First, I cleaned 27 wine bottles with OxiClean, while Bill sanitized them. Then we racked the wine into a brew bucket. The specific gravity is 0.998, a bit higher than 0.996 from a month ago, probably because I added 11 ounces of spring water last month. That makes alcohol at 13.36%. We used a new ampule test for SO2 and it gave an erroneous 100 ppm test result. This was because wine with ascorbic acid or tannin produces false high test results. Well, garlic contains tannins. We added a crushed Campden tablet, just to be safe. A tartaric acid test gave us 0.85% tartaric. The highest level should be 0.65%, which means it's quite acidic. A check with the wine litmus papers gave a pH of 3.4. A check with the litmus paper I use for making tree spray indicated a 2.9 pH, or high acid. We decided not to alter the wine, since garlic is a cooking wine. Acidity is more of a taste aspect of the wine. Other flavors are mixed with the cooking wine, so high acid content is acceptable. Bill filled 25 wine bottles and one beer bottle. I corked the bottles, using the floor corker that Katie gave me for Christmas (see video, below). It works wonderfully. As Bill said, in 15 minutes I finished what it would take 2 people to do in 45 minutes with a handheld corker. We soaked the corks for an hour in a Campden tablet solution. The corks wanted to rise slightly out of the bottles, once corked. In future corkings, I will dunk corks for a few seconds and let them dry, just to sterilize them. Soaking is unnecessary with the floor corker. Bill drank remaining the garlic wine and liked it.
- We watched a DVD Bill picked out...the 1994 movie, Four Weddings and a Funeral.
The new floor corker is fast and efficient. - Monday, 2/21: First Snow Geese
- Those 2 trumpeter swans were flying south to north over the west side of our property during our morning dog walk. Mary looked up that they are 60 inches long and their wingspan is just under 8 feet. They look like monsters in the sky.
- We saw the first movement of snow geese. Several Vs of geese went over us, today.
- We also heard the first of red-winged blackbirds, today.
- Bill washed a big batch of clothes.
- Mary broke kindling sticks into correct lengths, then she picked up sticks around the yard and moved them into the machine shed to dry for future kindling.
- I fired up the Stihl weedwhacker with a blade on it and took down lespedeza stalks in the south field. It's the best tool we have for this job. A better tool would be a sickle bar on farm tractor, which we don't have. A tank of gas took me about a third of the way down the south field from the house.
- In the evening, Bill, Mary, and I played 3 games of Atlas Adventures. Each of us won a game. We enjoyed pots of tea, while playing the game.
- Those 2 trumpeter swans were flying south to north over the west side of our property during our morning dog walk. Mary looked up that they are 60 inches long and their wingspan is just under 8 feet. They look like monsters in the sky.
- Tuesday, 2/22: Bill Returns to St. Louis
- Around 6 a.m., I woke up with lightning flashing, but I couldn't hear thunder. Even so, Mary went ahead and unplugged appliances. The high of the day was in the early morning. Temperatures dropped throughout the day.
- We enjoyed our last leftover turkey dinner, with the last of cherry pie dessert, before Bill left for his St. Charles, MO, apartment. He said he had to do some grocery shopping, and cook up something that he can heat up for this week's dinners, because he is expecting a lot of extra hours of work to try to catch up at his place of employment.
- Mary and I were kind of slugs in the afternoon and evening. Mary read over 100 pages in her new book about Teddy Roosevelt. I stopped an online newspaper subscription, added a less expensive one, and halted an online ecard subscription. We need to save money in order to pay off the credit card debt for renting a lift to fix the roof last fall.
- A birthday card from Katie to me came in today's mail. She gave me an electronic gift card of $65 for 65 years to The Home Brewery. They're based in Ozark, MO (SW part of the state). I spent time looking through their website for future purchases.
- Shopping was in our plans, but with frozen, hard ground forecast for tomorrow, we decided to get firewood, instead. Frozen ground means easier mobility with the tractor to haul firewood out of the woods.
- Wednesday, 2/23: Firewood
- One big group of snow geese flew over while we did morning chores. They lifted off nearby and were forming Vs as they flew. A strong north wind blew them to the SW.
- Mary and I ate our midday meal early, in the late morning, so we could go out and cut firewood.
- I walked to the woods just west of the house and cut some pieces of small downed trees. A tree wedged between live trees that I spotted a couple days ago turned out to be a honey locust with poison ivy growing along most of it, so I left that tree. I dropped a large dead white oak, sawed it up, then sawed several smaller dead trees. Mary and I collected all of the wood and stacked it in the tractor wagon, producing an overfilled load. We unloaded large pieces next to the wood splitter and smaller firewood into the wood shed. Even though the ground was hard where I drove the tractor, we walked on soft, mushy places in the woods. It felt good to be back doing physical work, again.
- When I got the mail, three trumpeter swans flew by just above my head and headed into the setting sun. These huge white birds are amazing.
- The Russian military invaded Ukraine, today. Will humans ever quit killing one another over land?
- One big group of snow geese flew over while we did morning chores. They lifted off nearby and were forming Vs as they flew. A strong north wind blew them to the SW.
- Thursday, 2/24: Freezing Mist
- We experienced freezing mist all day until after dark, when it snowed just a little...about 1/2 inch. According to news sources, vehicles went sliding all over the place. Most area schools shut down by late morning. In northern regions we've lived, this would have been an average day, without mishap. Here, the conditions result in shutting down schools and hiding inside. When you witness how they drive, you can understand this.
- I chased the neighbor's dog away, a big lab, as it trotted down the path next to the near garden. It really took off when I yelled for it to go home. Every neighbor who ever shows up in the house across the road doesn't possess enough sense to keep dogs home. Maybe it's time to invest in a paintball gun.
- Mary made venison General Tso using up the beer bottle full of garlic wine. It was exceptionally yummy.
- I looked at several online drafting programs. Nothing is as good as floorplanner.com, which I already use.
- As I walked home from getting mail, I heard several turkey calls to the east. Mary and I both listened as we heard them to the NE, east and slightly SE. The birds were moving around all over the place, eastward, and talking to one another.
- We enjoyed 2 pots of tea, each, and watched the last 2 episodes of Downton Abbey's 3rd season, plus the extras.
- We experienced freezing mist all day until after dark, when it snowed just a little...about 1/2 inch. According to news sources, vehicles went sliding all over the place. Most area schools shut down by late morning. In northern regions we've lived, this would have been an average day, without mishap. Here, the conditions result in shutting down schools and hiding inside. When you witness how they drive, you can understand this.
- Friday, 2/25: House Considerations & Cinnamon Rolls
- Mary made fridge dough, followed by cinnamon rolls, which we ate in the evening.
- I looked at the size and distance between posts in the machine shed, in consideration of making a pole barn house. Herman, Mary's uncle, used 4x6 posts, except for 6x6 posts on the 4 corners. I determined the bookshelf girt size (horizontal framing) of 2x6s. I determined the outside wall depth from the outside cladding to the inside drywall to be 7". I figured out the house section sizes need to be divisible by 3 feet, to match 3-foot sheet metal widths, so the pantry/bedroom/mudroom section will be 18' wide, instead of 16' wide. I restarted the house plan draft with these alterations in mind.
- When Mary let the dogs out for a walk during evening chores, there was the neighbor's black lab. Plato roared out the door barking and started chasing it. Mary hollered. Plato stopped. The lab tore off for home.
- I saw a deer run across the north field, from west to east, as we did evening chores.
- Katie texted that one of the employees where she works is from Ukraine and shows everyone in the office videos and tells stories.
- We watched 3 episodes of Downton Abbey's 4th season while enjoying cinnamon rolls and pots of tea.
- Mary made fridge dough, followed by cinnamon rolls, which we ate in the evening.
- Saturday, 2/26: House Drafting Plans & Wine Stuff
- Mary did house cleaning.
- I worked on drafting plans for a new house, finishing the 36'x18' west end that is the pantry, bedroom, safe room, and mud room of the building.
- Labels went on 23 bottles of garlic wine, then I stored them on their sides in 2 of the plastic coolers I have in the upstairs north bedroom. I did an inventory of existing wine varieties to discover I have 2 more 2020 pear wine bottles and 2 fewer 2020 autumn olive bottles compared to numbers recorded on my inventory list.
- Two weeks ago I accidentally shot parsnip wine back into the 330-ml beer bottle while trying to move clear liquid out through a large plastic tube, all of which made the wine cloudy, again. Today, I successfully racked the clear wine off the fines of the beer bottle (see photo, below). This is the 3rd racking of the wine in the beer bottle. In 6 weeks, I should be able to rack all of the parsnip wine for the final time, then bottle it.
- We enjoyed a second batch of cinnamon rolls, pots of tea (this time China Keemun), while watching 4 episodes of Downton Abbey's 4th season.
Parsnip wine fines (left) & clear liquid (right).
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