March 13-19, 2022

Weather | 3/13, 20°, 54° | 3/14, 37°, 63° | 3/15, 45°, 64° | 3/16, 38°, 69° | 3/17, 43°, 72° | 3/18, 1.04" rain, 41°, 43° | 3/19, 34°, 54° |

• Sunday, 3/13: Winemaking & Woodcocks
  
  • All of our snow melted with much warmer temperatures. Every step now comes with a solid wet gushy sound.
    
  • The blackberry wine is getting very red (see photo, below). Bill viewed the photo of the cylinder of wine and said, "That's some radioactive Kool Aid!" The specific gravity is 1.085, so the yeast is barely moving.
  • Mary did some house cleaning, baked a chicken dinner, did some cross stitch work, and vacuumed bugs twice.
    
  • I measuring handles on the back lift gate of the pickup topper, since I need to get new lockable handles due to rust. I figure I need to call a company in Ohio, in order to get the correct replacements. I checked the pickup's serpentine belt, because I thought it was shot after hearing squeaking under the hood last summer. The belt looks good, with no cracks.
  • Mary heard at least 6 American woodcocks after sunset. They continue to multiply from year to year. She heard 2 squabble with one another.
  • Mary worked up a shopping list.
    
  • I put labels on the 25 bottles of cherry wine and stored them on their sides in a couple coolers. There is a little bit of residue in the bottoms of the bottles, so I probably should have racked the wine a 5th time, instead of bottling it on the 4th racking. Oh well. We aren't entering the wine in a contest and a little stuff at the bottom of the bottle won't hurt us a bit.

  

  Brightly red blackberry wine in the making.
  

• Monday, 3/14: Shopping Trip
  
  • A strong south wind blew all day. In the evening, it switched to the NW and died down.
    
  • Mary and I took the pickup to Quincy, IL, and shopped. We're stocking up on food reserves, such as flour and sugar. We picked up a package from Home Depot that I ordered of Immunox, which contains the fungicide, myclobutanil, a killer of apple scab that is prevalent on the large McIntosh tree and a couple other apple trees.
  • While going back home and crossing the Mississippi River, Mary spotted about 40 American white pelicans circling above the river to gain altitude. She also spotted a couple of bald eagles and a horned grebe.
  • Gas was still $3.79 a gallon at Fastlane in Taylor, MO. I'm keeping the tank full, so I don't have to buy a huge amount at once.
  • I didn't get to do a hydrometer test on the blackberry wine, but the yeast is fizzing and gurgling along, nicely.
    
    
• Tuesday, 3/15: Fruit Trees & Garlic
  
  • Mary made flour tortillas.
  • Garlic shoots are appearing, so Mary fertilized them.
  • Dastardly bugs fill the inside of our windows, so Mary vacuumed them three times throughout the day.
  • I gave all fruit trees a dose of dormant oil spray. I filled the 2-gallon sprayer five times. The larger trees each took one tank of spray. This spray smothers and kills bug eggs and larvae on and in the tree bark. The job took all afternoon. There were times when I climbed a step ladder to spray higher branches when the ladder's feet would sink, tilting me to one side. The ground is super soft these days.
    
  • While cleaning up from spraying, three Vs of snow geese flew over us very high in the sky. A squadron of blackbirds filled the trees east of the house. It sounded like every blackbird that spends the summer in Iowa and Minnesota were nearby. We heard several woodcocks after dark.
    
  • Mary put away oil sunflower seeds and potting soil that we bought yesterday.
  • Brent Sass won the Iditarod, arriving in Nome at 5:38 a.m. My high school classmate, Alison, is happy. She always roots for him. Brent was born in MN and went to UAF as a cross-country skier.
  • We watched 2 episodes of Downton Abbey's 5th year.
  • The blackberry wine's specific gravity was 1.076, today. It's still chugging along.
    
    
• Wednesday, 3/16: Wind, Firewood, & Spring Birds
  
  • A strong south wind blew today, which is why I knew I needed to finish my dormant oil fruit tree spraying yesterday, while winds were calm.
    
  • Mary made 2 quiche pies and coleslaw.
  • We took turns vacuuming flies and Asian ladybugs as the armies of bugs march through our impeccably sealed home. Air exchange is not an issue in our humble abode.
  • The blackberry wine rumbles along, with the specific gravity at 1.064.
  • I split firewood logs left next to the woodsplitter. Most of them were wet.
  • Bill texted that he's asked to take April 4th off, so he can visit for an extended weekend.
  • We watched a group of cackling geese fly overhead.
  • I watched a male meadowlark with a bright yellow breast literally dance on a tree branch while singing its song to a nearby female meadowlark.
    
    
• Thursday, 3/17: Firewood Harvesting
  • As usual, a massive bug collection continued to amass in our Shop Vac.
  • Mary made a pumpkin cake. The New England long pie pumpkins make a very good cake. We'll have to plant more of them.
    
  • The blackberry wine's specific gravity is 1.046, making the pantry smell amazing.
    
  • I moved "winter" greens out of the machine shed. I put them there prior to Bill and I going north to see the NHL Winter Classic in Minneapolis on Jan. 1st, since I failed to construct a greenhouse. The 2 tubs of kale and the tub of spinach survived. The tubs of winter lettuce, Fun Jen, and arugula all died. Before darkness fell, we covered the live plants with a mesh cloth, to keep out bugs, and anchored it down with bricks.
  • I also moved the 4 tubs of strawberries out of the machine shed and pulled the layer of grass clippings off the top of the tubs. These were munched down by deer last fall. Several plants are showing green.
  • Mary and I uncovered grass clippings from atop the buckets of strawberry plants in the near garden. They all look marvelous, with several green leaves showing.
    
  • Mary put wood ashes on the sugar maple in the north yard.
    
  • We heard and saw the first eastern phoebe for the season.
    
  • We also saw this spring's first butterflies. The are called commas or hop merchants. Apparently, they love hop plants. They were in the north woods.
    
  • With rain predicted, we were in the north woods cutting and collecting dead and dry firewood. The ground is too mushy for driving a tractor, so we selected the north woods, because we can move firewood from the edge of the north yard to the woodshed very easily with wheelbarrows. I used 2 tanks of gas in the small Stihl chainsaw. Mary and I moved 10 wheelbarrow loads of firewood to the machine shed.
    
  • Bill texted that he is taking Monday and Tuesday, April 4-5, off for his upcoming visit.
    
    
• Friday, 3/18: First Racking of Blackberry Wine
  
  • We experienced a very wet day. Rain fell until noon, followed by a heavy mist that existed all afternoon and into the dark. Standing water lies everywhere.
  • The specific gravity of the blackberry wine is at 1.029, so I racked it. Roughly 5.75 gallons went into a 6.5-gallon carboy and I put about 3/4 gallon in a gallon jug, which allowed for foam expansion. I squeezed a once-stuffed nylon mesh bag of blackberries down to about a quarter bag of pulp. These berries gave me an additional 1.5 gallons of juice. The CO2 off-gassing continues. A glup, glup, glup sound of this off-gassing, with rain coming down, made us jump up more than once to look for a new non-existent leak in the roof. The must is very dark red. It ought to be a good wine.
  • Mary made venison General Tso for our main meal.
    
  • When I got the mail, I spotted 5 deer on a knoll west of our driveway's end, near where the neighboring dairy has a feed bunker that once fed steers. One of the deer spotted me, spooked, and ran off to the woods north of where it was eating grass. That made all of them wander off to the north.
  • We watched 3 episodes of Downton Abbey's 6th season.
    
    
• Saturday, 3/19: Fruit Tree Stuff; Katie Takes 5th Place
  
  • A sunny day dictated outside activities for me. I serviced the Stihl trimmer by changing the spark plug, cleaning the air filter, and cleaning the exhaust screen. It ran significantly better after the changes.
  • I knocked down weeds and tiny persimmon sprouts, using the trimmer with the saw blade attached, under and around the prairie fire crabapple, the Esopus Spitzenburg apple, and the Grimes golden apple trees. I also knocked down a trail in the tall grass to the Grimes tree, and between it and the Spitzenburg tree. I started under our mystery apple tree south of the house, but ran out of gas and quit.
    
  • Mary cleaned kitchen appliances and scrubbed the living room ceiling.
  • She also made venison in gravy on biscuits for our main meal.
  • Katie called. She placed fifth in her 18-29 age group in a 5K Shamrock Shuffle race in Anchorage. Check out her race results and photos HERE. There are a couple village water tank projects that Katie will head up this spring/summer. One involves an emergency repair of a collapsed water tank and the other is a water tank demolition. They are at Point Lay and Point Hope, both in the North Slope Borough on the NW coast of AK.
  • In the evening, I figured out the start of a fruit tree spraying schedule.
  • The blackberry wine keeps bubbling along.