April 24-30, 2022

Weather | 4/24, 0.12" rain, 53°, 65° | 4/25, 41°, 51° | 4/26, 29°, 59° | 4/27, 37°, 71° | 4/28, 1.17" rain, 49°, 53° | 4/29, 0.73" rain, 49°, 59° | 4/30, 0.03" rain, 57°, 69° |

• Sunday, 4/24: Blooming Trees
  
  • Rain was falling when we woke. It abruptly ended at 9 a.m., and the sun came out.
  • We watched 2 deer browse on twigs at the far edge of the west lawn while we were eating breakfast.
    
  • Pear petals are falling like snow. The McIntosh apple tree is in full bloom (see photos, below).
  • On our tour of fruit trees, Mary looked at a pie cherry tree we thought died last year and found a live twig that grew off the main dead shoot. She cleaned the dead grass from around it and moved a cow panel wired into a circle around that tiny tree. That gives us 6 pie cherry trees. If they all live, we'll be swimming in pie cherries in a few years.
  • We found a cucumber beetle munching on new leaves in the small Bartlett pear tree. I nailed it with Dawn soap spray. We also see signs of something eating Esopus apple blossoms, but haven't seen the culprit, yet.
    
  • Mary and I visited the north woods. A redbud tree is in full bloom (see photos, below).
  • Mary baked a blackberry pie.
  • We watched 4 indigo buntings picking weed seeds off the ground in the near garden. They are beautiful.
    
  • I picked more dandelion petals, adding 30 grams, for a grand total of 74.5 grams.
  • I tied more chicken wire to persimmon posts in the near garden. I added a stretch of new chicken wire and wrapped it around the remaining posts, so I could uncover strawberry plants to let them get sunlight without the fear of rabbits chewing them to the ground.
  • Mary harvested more asparagus shoots, which we ate prior to our supper.
    
  • We enjoyed pots of tea, deviled eggs, toast, and blackberry pie while watching the movie, Miss Potter.

The McIntosh apple tree in full bloom.

McIntosh apple blossoms, taken by Mary.

Redbud tree blossoms, taken by Mary.

A redbud tree in full bloom.

• Monday, 4/25: Near Garden Fully Planted
  
  • Mary did a load of laundry, which dried within minutes in the ever-blasting winds that seem to blow day and night.
  • I picked 28 grams of dandelion petals. The grand total is 102.4 grams in the freezer. I'm 38% of the way to 270 grams for a gallon batch of wine.
    
  • Mary planted the rest of the near garden, which included onions, shallots, lettuce, spinach, and radishes.
  • I wired new chicken wire onto old, extending the wire to the end, then finished tying the wire to persimmon posts in the near garden. I then made a chicken wire gate, cut hold-down stakes for between the posts and drove them into the ground. I'll need about a dozen more. The old chicken wire bends all over the place and needs to held down with many stakes.
  • At one point, we heard crows raising a racket in the west woods, so I walked west to chase them away. Crows continually calling often means they're harassing an owl on a nest. A few steps beyond the west yard and they disappeared. On the way back, I saw an eastern towhee. They have a white belly, a black body, with a burnt orange band on their sides, which make them quite striking.
    
  • We covered the strawberry plants with plastic and the radishes in 3 tubs with blankets for frost that is forecast for overnight.
    
  • Mary baked a chicken, complete with sweet potatoes, and potatoes with turkey gravy for an excellent supper. We also had asparagus shoots for an hors d'oeuvre and blackberry pie for dessert.
  • A text from Katie indicated that the vet thinks that nothing is abnormal with her dog, Prancer. They took a fecal sample to be tested and prescribed probiotics.
    
  • Here are a couple more photos taken by Mary from yesterday's walk in the woods.

Keys on the red maple tree and a rare
gray-hooded ding-dong.

Newly emerging mayapple plants.

• Tuesday, 4/26: Dead Hen & Midnight Spraying
  
  • When we opened the chicken coop door in the morning, there was a dead chicken. It was a 4-year old golden comet hen. She died of natural causes. We now have 8 hens and a rooster.
  • A quick check of fruit trees revealed hundreds of honey bees in the McIntosh apple and Sargent crabapple trees. They both have a loud buzz.
    
  • We have probably a couple dozen hops plants growing next to the NW corner of our house. They are all volunteer plants.
    
  • I plucked 23 grams of dandelion petals, with a total of 125.3 grams in the freezer.
    
  • Mary made minestroni soup and did 2 loads of laundry.
  • I cut 21 hold-down stakes and added them to spots along the chicken wire fence in the near garden. Then, I added stiffeners between each post.
  • Mary fertilized the garlic and strawberries, along with adding some iron to the strawberry plants. She watered seeds a couple times.
  • Winds were finally low, today, but I had to wait until sundown for bees to go to sleep before I could spray the fruit trees. I started spraying at 8 p.m. and ended at 1 a.m., with a half hour break to eat. Streptomycin went on the 2 Bartlett pear trees and the Sargent crabapple, since all suffered fire blight last year. Immonox, or the fungicide, myclobutanel, went on all apple and cherry trees and sulfur was applied to all apple trees.
  • A whip-poor-will sounded off in the west woods right after sundown. Barred owls occasionally told me to knock it off as I sprayed.
  • Below are a couple more photos by Mary of our walk in the woods a couple days ago.

Rue anemone flowers.

Spring beauties.

• Wednesday, 4/27: Bees & Return of Chimney Swifts
  
  • Mary did 2 loads of laundry that dried quickly in the strong south wind.
    
  • I sprayed the night before so as not to kill bees. No problem. A check of the fruit trees revealed thousands of bees swarming the blossoms. Here are bee videos that I put on Facebook. 
  • Mary mowed the quarter-mile lane.
  • I picked 36 grams of dandelion petals. Now, there's 161 grams in the freezer, with only 109 grams to go.
  • While doing evening chores, we heard the arrival of the chimney swifts. Two birds did a couple quick laps around the house, twittering as they flew, then they zinged down the chimney for a couple days of rest after their long journey from the Amazon rain forest. There will be no more woodstove fires for us until October.
    
  • Bill called. His employer is unable to hire new employees, so he gets as many overtime hours as he can stand. He and his friend, Mike Push, will bottle a new batch of beer this weekend. Bill's boss took him out to lunch today, just to be nice.
    
    
• Thursday, 4/28: We All Live In a Yellow Submarine (Or we ought to!)
  
  • Thunderstorms resulted in copious amounts of rain. Mary saw one lightning strike while looking NW through the living room west window. She saw the bolt of lightning come down and then she saw a big blue-white ball at the end of the lightning bolt. Some tree to the NW of the house took the lightning hit. Ponds and lakes of water sit all over our land. We are officially a wetland.
    
  • Mary made tortillas, chimichangas, and did some cross stitching.
  • We toured the fruit trees. Pears are done blossoming. The big pie cherry tree has over half of the buds breaking into blossoms. About 80% of the prairie fire crabapple is blossoming, as is about 95% of the Esopus apple tree. Today's rain knocked about 40% of the McIntosh apple tree's blossoms to the ground.
  • Cedar apple rust emerged on all cedar trees and on several trees, it's the most prevalent I've ever seen. Some branches have the orange jelly substance all over them. I feel fortunate that I sprayed all fruit trees Tuesday night. We'll see if that works.
  • I racked the blackberry wine for the 3rd time. Specific gravity was the same as a month ago, at 0.994. The pH dropped to 3.1, becoming more acidic. I added a crushed Campden tablet after moving all must into the large brew bucket. It then went into a 5-gallon carboy, a half-gallon jug and two 750 ml wine bottles. We drank leftovers. It's extraordinarily smooth for a green wine and tastes strongly of blackberry flavor. The wine possesses a deep purple color.
  • Tick season is here. I received tick bites on both armpits and on my right foot, mostly from tiny seed ticks. The smallest ticks are the worst at leaving one with extreme itchiness.
  • Below are photos Mary took on Sunday of violets in our yard. A decade ago, there were only a few violets, but all of our yards are filled every spring with thousands of these violets, now. Scientists say the white violets evolved, with landing strips on their lower petals, to attract pollinators. Then, pollinators smell solid-colored violets, and bounce onto all of them.
    

Dark blue violet in our yard.

Nearly white Confederate violet.

• Friday, 4/29: Weather for Ducks, Not Dogs
  
  • Today is the second day of heavy rain. Amber hates rain. When it's raining hard, she always looks like she's being scolded. Mary tells her hundreds of times that she has to poo before she can go inside. She reluctantly does her duty, then roars to the door. We think her days stationed outside at the rescue shelter in Fort Madison, Iowa, influenced her hatred of rain. Plato, on the other hand, is a true water dog and doesn't mind rain a bit.
  • By afternoon, rain quit falling and in late evening hours, bees were back in fruit tree blossoms, especially with the Sargent crabapple tree, which is a huge white snowball (see photo, below). Ground under the McIntosh apple tree is littered with petals (see photo, below).
  • I plucked 25.7 grams of dandelion petals in what must be THE most tedious task on earth. I'm just over 2/3 of the way to my goal of 270 grams, with 186.8 grams in the freezer.
  • An evening check of the garden showed snow pea germination, so we covered the new sprouts with old nylon netting curtains. It keeps birds from plucking pea shoots from the ground.
  • Mary baked 4 loaves of bread and did some cross stitching.

The Sargent crabapple tree in full bloom.

Petals under the McIntosh apple tree.

• Saturday, 4/30: Tour of Our Property's East Side
  
  • Mary made a venison General Tso dish for our main meal.
  • Prior to mealtime, I did more dandelion petal plucking.
    
  • Mary and I took a hike to the east side of our property, looking at places near existing deer stands where I might build deer blinds. We wanted to take a look before trees and brush leafed out...more like what it's like during hunting season, in the fall. I'm tired of climbing into trees to hunt deer. I'd rather stay with 2 feet on the ground. So, in prime deer hunting locations I want to build blinds, made mostly from natural material (branches and tree limbs), where I can sit comfortably, yet stay hidden from view by deer. We found good spots near 2 existing and productive tree stands that ought to work. Another site or two further south may fit the bill, if I get to them. Deer tracks are everywhere, especially on our own trails. I want to build these blinds soon, so deer get used to them by the time hunting starts in November.
    
  • Mary took a photo of a brightly-colored mushroom called scarlet cup (see photo, below). It's one of the few mushrooms that can grow in below freezing conditions. It's wide spread, but scarce, found on fallen twigs and branches in damp, shady places. Mary found this on the ground just below the swim pond dam.
  • There was less rain, today, but the wind is relentless. Pollinators have a rough time getting to any flowers. Pears are done blossoming, as is most of the McIntosh apple tree. Cherry blossoms are coming on strong, along with both crabapple trees, the largest Liberty apple tree, and Esopus. Our mystery apple tree has identical blossoms as the large Liberty, so we assume it's a Liberty apple tree, too. Both of these trees came from Arbor Day and were supposed to be free Sargent crabapple trees, but someone goofed and sent us more expensive disease-free apple trees. We're fine with that mistake.
  • In the evening, we read while enjoying orange marmalade on fresh bread and pots of tea. Mary went through a historical photo book on Russia. An interesting fact is that Ukraine predates Russia. I viewed online images of deer blinds made from natural materials.

  

  Scarlet cup mushrooms.
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

April 17-23, 2022

Weather | 4/17, 0.12" rain, 31°, 40° | 4/18, 29°, 48° | 4/19, 23°, 53° | 4/20, 0.73" rain, 40°, 51° | 4/21, 0.07" rain, 47°, 67° | 4/22, 59°, 81° | 4/23, 61°, 81° |

• Sunday, 4/17: Easter
  • A gray day brought a few drops of rain, sleet, and occasional snow flurries.
  • While Mary was bringing in some firewood, mid-afternoon, the chickens were in a big fuss and Mary heard a hawk in the north woods. She ushered the chickens into the coop and closed the door, where they were protected. We don't need to lose more chickens to hawks.
    
  • We wanted to move weeping willow branches before ground became mushy, so Mary finished gleaning kindling wood from the brush pile. I moved larger branches into the machine shed, so they'll stay dry, then moved 3 trailer loads of small branches and leaves to the ravine east of the house. It feels good to have that large pile of willow branches removed from the yard, even though it delayed dinner to late evening.
  • While waiting for Mary to finish the kindling chore, I pounded 2 steel fence posts for a gate and 4 wooden posts into the ground in the near garden. About 25 more posts are needed prior to putting up the chicken wire fence.
  • We had a wonderful chicken dinner, complete with red potatoes, turkey gravy, and a bean casserole, topped off with a bottle of 2020 pear wine.
  • We watched the 1985 movie, The Goonies. It's stupid. We'll donate this DVD back to the Salvation Army.
    
    
• Monday, 4/18: Wind & Wine
  
  • A strong NW wind, with gusts to 40 mph, was good at keeping all wildlife and people under cover. It probably was tough on hunters. Today is the opening day of spring turkey hunting season.
    
  • Mary dusted books in the north bedroom.
  • She made a venison stew with biscuits for our main meal.
    
  • I cleaned 3 coolers I bought months ago with bleach. Then, I labeled 37 pumpkin wine and 5 parsnip wine bottles and stored them on their sides in my newly cleaned coolers.
    
  • We covered the strawberry plants in 36 4-gallon buckets and 4 plastic tubs with a large sheet of plastic ahead of predicted frost. We also covered the 3 tubs of radishes with blankets.
  • I got up-to-date on the wine diary and fruit tree spraying records.
  • Katie sent photos of her flight north (see photo, below), related to her work.

  

  Katie flying over sea ice in northern Alaska.
  

• Tuesday, 4/19: Spraying, Fertilizing, Mowing, Raking
  
  • There was only a slight breeze, so I sprayed fruit trees. I put Immunox (fungicide) on all of the apple trees, except for the 2 newest ones. I also sprayed it on all of the cherry trees. Sulfur went on the Sargent and prairie fire crabapple trees and the Esopus and McIntosh apple trees. Mac is showing a few opening blossoms. I was planning on spraying Fertilome (streptomycin) on the pear trees, but I spotted honey bees in the blossoms, so I held off.
    
  • Mary put fish fertilizer on the garlic, strawberries, some herbs, and the daylilies. The garlic plants were looking pale, probably due to several subfreezing mornings.
    
  • Mary mowed the north yard. I helped her rake that area. We put several wheelbarrow loads of grass/leaves into the compost bin.
  • We heard our first northern bobwhite quail, today.
  • I ordered kaolin clay, which is sprayed on fruit trees to protect the fruit from insect damage, and dissolvable wine bottle labels.
    
    
• Wednesday, 4/20: Rain & Autumn Olive Wine
  
  • It was a rainy, windy, and cold day, so we stayed inside. The ground is back with a standing water everywhere.
    
  • Mary made flour tortillas, chimichangas for our main meal, and developed a shopping list.
  • I racked autumn olive wine for the 2nd time. The specific gravity was the lowest I've ever seen, at 0.990. The pH was 3.2 with my favorite litmus paper and 3.6 on the crummy wine litmus paper. I added one crushed Campden tablet after draining the must off about 3/4" of lees in the 3-gallon carboy and about 1/3" in the half-gallon jug. The cleaner wine must went back into a sanitized 3-gallon carboy and a 330 ml beer bottle. We tasted leftovers. This has a stronger autumn olive taste. It's amazingly smooth, considering it's yet a green, raw wine. This is a very tasty batch.
  • In the evening, we noticed that buds are swelling on our 2 new apple trees.
    
    
• Thursday, 4/21: Shopping
  • It was a nice, sunny day.
    
  • We heard our first Henslow's sparrow of the season, this morning.
    
  • Even though it was sunny, we had to go shopping in Quincy, because we ran out of cat food. Everyone else had the same idea of shopping today. Traffic was high and stores were full of people. At one point, I had enough of pokey people and blasted down the Walmart aisle with a shopping cart. Mary was struggling to keep up and a woman said to Mary, "He's leaving you behind," to which Mary replied, "I know! Have you got a lasso?" The woman laughed for the longest time. Mary calls that my road rage incident. I bought another cooler for wine storage at the Salvation Army store. We found parsnip seeds at the Burpee Seed display in Menards. Gas was $3.69 a gallon, 20 cents less than the high last month. Spotting our pickup in a parking lot is easy, since the topper sits higher than most. We just look for the maroon color on top of a rusty green truck and "voilà," there it you have it.
    
  • We watched a movie we bought for $3 at Salvation Army, today. It's the 2011 movie, The Big Year, starring Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson. It's about 3 guys trying to see the most birds in North America in one year. It's unique, funny, and quite good. Critics didn't like it and it bombed at theaters. We like it.
    
    
• Friday, 4/22: Weeding, Dandelion Picking, & Garden Stake Pounding
  
  • The winds are howling yet another day, preventing me from spraying fruit trees.
  • Higher temperatures brought out more Asian ladybugs that Mary vacuumed several times.
  • Mary weeded the asparagus and garlic beds.
  • Mary saw the first giant swallowtail butterfly of the season.
    
  • We checked fruit trees. Sixty percent of Big Bart is blossoming. Hundreds of native bees are in pear blossoms of that tree and the Kieffer pear tree. Our honeybee numbers are low. Mary and I each saw one bumblebee, so those numbers are down, too. Pink buds are on several trees that were in the silver bud stage for weeks. About 5-10% of the Mac blossoms are open. There is nice bud swell on our 2 new apple trees.
  • I picked dandelion blossoms for an hour and froze 9.6 grams of dandy petals. I had to pick a dozen flowers at a time, then go inside to strip petals from the flowers, due to the wind. I need 270 grams at 90 grams a quart, for the 3 quarts to make a 1-gallon batch of dandelion wine, so there's lots of picking in my future.
  • I pounded all of the 4' persimmon posts into the ground in the near garden. Next is installing the chicken wire fence.
    
  • Mary and I looked up parsnip growing information...Mary's source was an old Rodale book on gardening and my sources were online.
    
    
• Saturday, 4/23: Planting Snow Peas
  
  • A healthy deer crossed the lane and ran west as we went with the dogs on their morning walk.
  • Southerly winds gusted to 50 mph, today.
  • Mom texted that while I talk of blossoms and bees, she and folks in eastern Montana have blizzard warnings, snow drifts, and temperatures barely above freezing.
  • Wind blew pear blossom petals away, today. Blossoms are on a couple cherry trees, Sarge, Esopus, and the McIntosh apple tree is really filled with blossoms. Tiny native bees are all over the Mac blossoms.
    
  • Mary made flour tortillas and fajitas for our main meal.
  • I picked about 9 dozen dandelion flowers and plucked 34.9 grams of blossoms for a total of 44.5 grams in the freezer. I have only 225 grams to go to make a gallon of dandy wine.
  • I mowed the near garden, again, setting the mower low. The blade edge sucked into a mound of wet soil and bent it down. It's a replacement blade made from cheap Chinese steel...good riddance! I took down the old blade hanging on the machine shed wall, which is made of better steel, worked the edge on the grinder, sharpened it further with a file, then finished mowing the garden.
  • I unwrapped the chicken wire fence around most of the posts in the near garden, then started tying the chicken wire to the posts with sisal twine. I'm 3 posts away from the halfway point of going around that garden.
  • Mary weeded all of the near garden, using a hoe in some places to take out tiny weeds.
  • She then planted 2 rows of snow peas in the near garden. She was going to plant spinach, but  threatening storm clouds ended garden work. These clouds just looked nasty and fell apart by the time they got to us.
  • Mary picked about two dozen asparagus shoots that we ate as an appetizer for supper. She sauteed them in garlic wine with garlic slices. The clear wine changes to a pink color and tastes different...quite delicious. We need to create more and larger asparagus beds!
    
  • Katie called. Prancer, her German shorthaired pointer, is sick with stomach issues. Prancer is scheduled for a vet visit on Monday. Next week, Katie flies north, again, in prep of work on village water tank repairs. She's getting ready for being away most of the summer, which starts May 9th.
    

April 10-16, 2022

Weather | 4/10, 37°, 79° | 4/11, 47°, 65° | 4/12, 41°, 77° | 4/13, 0.77" rain, 35°, 57° | 4/14, 31°, 55° | 4/15, 34°, 55° | 4/16, 30°, 51° |

• Sunday, 4/10: Hottest Temp So Far This Year
  
  • The outside temperature soared to 79° and it brought out bugs. Mary said it was lovely. I said it was too hot. Ticks liked the warmth. I found 4 ticks on me and one bit me...time to start bathing in bug dope.
  • Mom texted that a winter storm is predicted in eastern Montana for Tuesday and Wednesday. She sees a cardiologist in Miles City, MT, tomorrow.
    
  • We sucked Asian ladybugs for hours. We vacuumed in shifts. I bet the shop vac contains thousands of the stinking bugs.
  • Mary transplanted a Patriot blueberry bush that we bought in 2019 from Stark Brothers and planted in a plastic tub. It's now in the ground just west of the chicken yard. I helped her get it out of the tub, which wasn't hard, since all we had to do was to tear the rotten sides off the tub and move the soil clump, complete with roots, into the hole she dug.
    
  • I cut small persimmon trees that I took down 3 days ago near the west forsythia bushes into 4-foot lengths to use as chickenwire posts for the gardens. I now have 38 posts. I hauled 4 bunches of small tree top limbs away to the brush pile SW of the house.
  • Mary worked on the weeping willow limb brush pile.
  • I cut up larger weeping willow branches into firewood and stacked them in the woodshed. Weeping willow firewood has the heat content of water, but it's great at starting a fast fire.
  • We saw 2 snakes. One was a 6' black rat snake next to the SE side of the house. It recently ate something. The other was a tiny, but adult, northern red-bellied snake that was crossing the lane while we walked the dogs.
  • The autumn olive wine's specific gravity is 1.019.
  • The following fruit trees are showing expanding flower buds: Big Bart (the large Bartlett pear tree), Sarge (the Sargent crabapple), and Mac (the McIntosh apple tree). I took a tour around the base of the old Kieffer pear tree and noticed it's very close to blossoming.
    
    
• Monday, 4/11: Winemaking & Outdoor Tasks
  
  • I woke to the sound of a bird making a ping-pong call and said as much to Mary. She rolled over and said it was an eastern towhee.
    
  • Mary fertilized the blueberry bushes with aluminum sulfate. After picking blueberries at a blueberry operation near Kirksville last summer, I asked what they put on their plants and she said aluminum sulfate. So, we're going with it this year.
  • Mary also put fish fertilizer on the garlic plants. She said they greened up immediately.
  • She also removed weeds out of the north row of the near garden.
  • The autumn olive wine's specific gravity was 1.004, so I moved the must into a 3-gallon carboy and a half-gallon jug. The yeast is actively fizzing. The pH is 3.5 on one litmus paper and 3.0 on another. After reading that adding calcium carbonate to wine to reduce acidity levels takes hours for fizzing to subside, I decided against worrying about it. I'll work on reducing acid levels, if I need to, prior to bottling.
  • Mary gleaned more kindling out of the willow brush pile.
  • I added newspaper above the grass within the cow panel around the new Liberty apple tree sapling, then added tree limbs sawed into 3- to 5-inch sticks. They rot and help nourish the soil as the tree grows. I added larger willow logs to hold everything down until I can add grass mulch, later.
    
  • A check of fruit trees revealed that the Sarge and Mac apple trees are in the pink bud stage. Since winds were calm, I sprayed those 2 trees with sulfur. Each tree took about a gallon. Sulfur helps battle cedar apple rust. The sun set while I sprayed Sarge. I used my hat light while spraying Mac.
    
  • A male turkey gobbled to the east as I sprayed. Three different critters crashed through the nearby north woods as I sprayed Mac. They were probably startled by my hat light. Two were probably a coyote or a raccoon. The third one was definitely a deer. Their steps are loud on dry leaves.
    
  • I finished the 5-book teenage fantasy series, The Dark is Rising, written by Susan Cooper. They are very good books and I think the writing is better than the Harry Potter series.
    
    
• Tuesday, 4/12: High Wind/Fire Danger
  
  • A southerly wind blasted through the day, but intensified to 55 mph gusts after dark. We smelled smoke from a grass fire. At dusk, I heard a siren of a vehicle running south on State Highway J, then west on Highway 156. Online I learned that several area fire departments went to a grass fire on the Lewis/Marion County line. That's just 5 miles south of us. By midnight, the smoke smell was gone, so the fire was doused.
    
  • Mom texted that the cardiologist during her Miles City visit can't figure out her two fainting episodes and put her on another heart monitor for a couple weeks. Next, she goes to Billings, MT, after her heart monitor is finished to take a nuclear medicine cardiac stress test, where blood flow is assessed via a small amount of radioactive tracer. She said a blizzard was blowing through, yet they served 65 people at the Circle (MT) Senior Center. A blizzard in eastern Montana is no joke, but they always turn out for free food.
    
  • Mary made flour tortillas.
  • She also worked for several hours and knocked down most of the weeping willow branch pile. It was hard, today, with the wind slapping dead branches in her face.
    
  • I took down the chicken wire fence in the near garden, including all of the persimmon fence posts and stakes. I rolled up the chicken wire, over 200 feet long, and set it outside the electric fence.
    
  • I used the small chainsaw and cut large branches coming out of the weeping willow branch pile. I stacked several wheelbarrow loads into the woodshed.
    
  • In this evening's high wind, several American woodcocks were going nuts, flying about and sounding off. In the morning, we heard tom turkeys.
    
  • We sent Katie an electronic birthday card right after midnight, our time. She turns 30 on 4/13/22. She said we were the second people to wish her happy birthday, right after her brother did the same thing.
    
    
• Wednesday, 4/13: Rain, Cold, & Parsnip Wine
  
  • Rain fell through most of today. We're back marching through puddles. Our high was in the morning and the temperature kept dropping until the steps were frozen by nighttime. Eastern Montana Facebook friends are all talking about a blizzard.
    
  • I racked, then bottled the parsnip wine (see photos, below). The specific gravity was 0.998, yielding an alcohol content of 10.6%. Acidity is 0.65%, which is perfect. After racking the wine into a 1-gallon jug, I determined it to be clear and ready for bottling. I added a crushed Campden tablet and filled 5 wine bottles. After dipping solid wine corks (not made from cork pieces) into a sanitizing Campden table solution, I corked the bottles with the floor corker Katie gave me. It works effortlessly, doing an excellent job. Mary and I tasted the wine. It's wonderful. Mary says it tastes like spiked lemonade with an earthy flavor. The aftertaste reminded her of carrots, after they've been baked with a pot roast in the oven. "It sounds like a mess, but the wine tastes divine." This ought to be really amazing after aging.
    
  • Mary made 2 pizzas. We ate one for a midday meal and the other in the evening.
    
  • She also cross stitched.
  • A quick text to Katie and she said she was going out with friends to celebrate her birthday. We'll call her tomorrow.
    
  • We watched the first episode of the TV show Genius: Einstein.

2021/22 parsnip wine. It tastes great!

Floor corker plunges corks nicely into bottles.

• Thursday, 4/14: Bottling Pumpkin Wine & Hawk Kills Chicken
  
  • We experienced strong west winds, with 50 mph gusts, so outside activities were difficult.
    
  • I bottled pumpkin wine. First, I moved the wine from 4 containers into the large brew bucket to fill it over the 7.5-gallon mark. I sieved the lees from what was leftover to give us a quart for sipping. It tastes great. The pumpkin and cinnamon tastes shine through and it isn't as sour as in past taste tests. The specific gravity is 0.999, resulting in alcohol content of 11.92%. Acidity is toned down. The pH is 3.2, from 2.2 on March 12th. The tartaric acid reading is 0.7%. It should be between 0.6 to 0.7%, so it's fine. I added 4 crushed Campden tablets to the must. After cleaning and sanitizing 37 bottles, which took 2 hours, I bottled and corked all 37 bottles with pumpkin wine. It was well into nighttime when I finished.
    
  • Katie called when I was in the middle of bottling wine. She told Mary that she is officially with the Alaska Air National Guard, now. 
    
  • Mary made a General Tso venison dish for our midday meal.
    
  • She also weeded the garlic and asparagus beds.
  • We lost a Rhode Island red hen, called Reddy (she wore a red plastic leg band) to a hawk attack. We now have 9 hens and 1 rooster. As Mary says, "This is why we get extra pullets with each chick order."
    
    
• Friday, 4/15: Near Garden Clean Up
  
  • A calm morning gave me a chance to spray streptomycin on the 2 Bartlett pear trees. This is a bactericidal antibiotic effective against fire blight. Big Bart, the large Bartlett pear tree, was stricken last year with several cases of fire blight.
    
  • Mary washed 2 loads of laundry.
    
  • Together, Mary and I finished cleaning dead weeds and high dead grass out of the near garden. We are the worst at end-of-the-year garden cleaning. Our gardens turn to massive weed patches after crop harvest. Birds love the huge grass seed heads that they eat through the winter in our gardens. First, Mary grubbed out the garden strips, so we could find them. Then, I used the Stihl grass trimmer, with a steel blade attached, and cut down tall weeds and grass where we walk. We both carted off several wheelbarrow loads of grass/weeds to the dry pond east of the gardens. The near garden looks more like a real garden, now.
  • Mary worked on the willow brush pile.
  • Mary got several grass cuts on her hands from yanking weeds and grass from the near garden. Then, at the brush pile, a willow stick she was trying to break resisted and twanged her in the left elbow. She said, "The garden beat me up, and the brush pile finished me off!"
  • Most all of the radish seeds I planted in 3 plastic tubs are popping through the soil.
    
  • We're seeing several pear blossoms on the Kieffer and the big Bartlett pear trees.
    
  • Hyacinths north of the machine shed are blooming, as are some between what we call the Four Brothers, which are trees in the north yard. Tiny keys are showing on the red maple in the north yard.
    
    
• Saturday, 4/16: More Near Garden Prep
  
  • A check of all fruit trees revealed honey bees working over the emerging pear blossoms. The McIntosh apple tree is close to breaking bud.
    
  • I serviced the working lawnmower by replacing the air cleaner, spark plug, and oil, plus sharpening the blade.
    
  • I mowed the near garden, turning what remained of tall grass and weeds into grass dust.
    
  • I cleaned dead leaves out of all of the buckets of strawberry plants, then moved tubs of strawberries to the end of the line of strawberry buckets. Last year, the buckets were in the near garden and the tubs were in the far garden. They'll be all together, this year. I covered the buckets with 4' long persimmon sticks as a rabbit deterrent with the absence of the chicken wire fence.
    
  • Mary cleaned all of the floors in the house and washed a load of towels.
  • I lit a small outdoor fire and we enjoyed smoked scrambled eggs and garlic toast.
    
  • Katie called. She's getting ready for an overnight North Slope Borough trip in preparation for her summer supervisor job of repairing a village water tank. She starts that job in May. An ex-girlfriend of a job supervisor at work will be house and pet sitting her apartment this summer while she's working in the bush, which will save Katie significantly on not needing to farm her pets out through the summer. She goes to Hawaii at the end of August with the Air National Guard to help build a Special Olympics building on the island of Oahu.
    

April 3-9, 2022

Weather | 4/3, 32°, 64° | 4/4, 0.02" rain, 37°, 57° | 4/5, 35°, 67° | 4/6, 0.24" rain, 43°, 52° | 4/7, 0.03" rain, 37°, 45° | 4/8, snow showers, 29°, 39° | 4/9, 27°, 55° |

• Sunday, 4/3: Removing Tree Refuse
  
  • Mary made barbecued pork loin for our main meal. She also made a zucchini chocolate cake.
  • Mary vacuumed gobs of Asian ladybugs.
    
  • Bill and Mary tore into the pile of weeping willow branches, breaking up small branches for kindling, throwing tiny branches into another pile, and putting large branches to be sawed up behind the woodshed.
  • I picked up sawed-up stuff from small trees I took down yesterday and stacked them behind the woodshed. I also moved branches that I didn't saw up to piles either SW of the house, or down the hill at the gully where I've thrown other branches away.
  • Bill found 2 fleas on Plato's head. We removed Plato's collar and did a thorough search of his body. Mary also used a flea comb. We found 10 fleas on him. His collar and his blanket went outside to be cleaned at a later date. We never saw more, so we think we got them all. He must have stuck his head in a flea nest today, while sniffing around.
    
    
• Monday, 4/4: Bug Sucking, Car Work, Winemaking, & Triopoly
  
  • Mary made a big batch of chicken noodle soup.
  • She also dedicated her life to vacuuming bugs.
  • I drove to Quincy and picked up the 2 apple trees sent to us by Fedco in Maine. I also got a couple grocery items.
  • Bill said a motor oil shortage meant he couldn't buy oil in St. Louis. I looked in Quincy and found his oil, so I bought a 5-quart bottle and an appropriate oil filter.
  • Bill vacuumed and cleaned the interior of his car, including the seats.
  • I told Bill he ought to change his car's oil and filter, since it was a nice, sunny day. He agreed, and did that instead of helping me right away on winemaking.
    
  • I started a 3-gallon batch of autumn olive wine. This used up all of the autumn olives in the freezer, which involved 14 quart packages equaling almost 15 pounds. This usually would make 3.7 gallons, so this batch will be extra tasty with a little more berry juice. All packages were squished, then dumped into a nylon mesh bag. These berries picked last year were very ripe and large. Bill started helping me. We added 1.2 gallons of boiling water, 5 pounds, 4 ounces of sugar to get specific gravity to 1.084, 3 crushed Campden tablets, and 3.75 teaspoons of yeast nutrient. The pH was 4.4, according to 2 different litmus papers, so I added a tablespoon of acid blend, even though I haven't added it in the past. Then, the pH was 3.8 on the wine litmus paper that I don't trust and 3.4 on the better litmus paper. We covered the brew bucket and let it sit overnight in the pantry.
  • We played Triopoly. All of one side of the 3 boards became double skyscrapers. Mary won. Her ending cash was about $9100. She won the lottery many times. I was second. A monopoly on New York properties helped me. Bill was third, due to horrible luck on huge gambling debts, but even he had double skyscrapers on Washington, D.C. properties. The game was fun.
    
    
• Tuesday, 4/5: Pepper & Radish Seed Planting
  
  • After a midday meal of homemade chicken soup, Bill left for his St. Charles apartment at 2:30 p.m.
  • Mary planted pepper seeds.
  • Bugs are really thick. Mary vacuumed thousands of bugs. I even got in on sucking them up, getting a few more thousand.
  • Mary weeded most of the garlic beds. She would have finished, but thunder forced her to go inside.
  • I planted radishes in 3 tubs of soil that once held winter greens.
  • After adding 1.5 teaspoons of pectic enzyme to the autumn olive wine in the morning, I worked up a starter batch of Lalvin RC 212 yeast and pitched it into the must 12 hours later. It smells very yeasty, yummy, and good.
  • I was going to plant the 2 new apple trees, but predicted thunderstorms delayed that job. I took pliers to the 6-foot long tree box, removing 11 huge copper staples in a very well packaged cardboard box. The trees are in wonderful shape. Fedco's trees are the cheapest and in the best shape. You really get your money's worth on the $22 of shipping that you pay for with this company. Stark Brothers, who is south of us in Louisiana, Missouri, sends you rootless, scrawny sticks that die.
    
    
• Wednesday, 4/6: West Winds & Forsythia Clean Out
  
  • West wind gusts to 40 mph blew throughout the day, so planting new apple trees wasn't in the works.
  • We relaxed inside and caught up on journals and this blog.
    
  • Years ago, Mary planted forsythia twigs east of the Kieffer pear tree. Persimmon trees grew up since then and blocked them from the sun, but they persevered. Today, I cleaned up small persimmon trees withing 10 feet of the forsythias, using the small chainsaw. Then, I took the large fencing pliers and cut away the tomato cages surrounding these two forsythia bushes. This was tough going, because the cages were homemade from concrete wire mesh. I kept nearby persimmons with hop vines running up their trunks and I moved a wild grape vine to neighboring persimmon trees. The flowering forsythias are more visible (see photo, below).
    
  • Mary finished weeding the garlic in the far garden. 
  • She also weeded the asparagus bed and found one shoot emerging.
    
  • Mary continued splitting up more weeping willow kindling.
  • We had a big flock of pelicans glide over top of us, floating into the west wind. They're really huge birds.
    
  • I caught up on my wine dairy.
  • The autumn olive wine's specific gravity is 1.080, down 4 thousandths from its starting point. Yeast aroma fills the pantry.

  

  Two forsythia bushes with Kieffer pear in the background, right,
  and small persimmon trees on the ground.
  

• Thursday, 4/7: New Apple Trees Planted
  
  • Mary made flour tortillas and venison fajitas for our main meal.
  • I set an appointment for our second COVID booster shot for tomorrow afternoon in Quincy.
  • Karen messaged me nice photos of flowers at her place in Georgia (see photos, below).
    
  • We planted the 2 apple trees in the west yard, between the clothesline and the chicken yard. Mary cut turf off with a shovel and put the sod in the rut I made with the lift last fall next to the lane. I put the trees in a bucket of water, dug holes, then mixed in amendments in these holes in prep for the trees. We put trees in the ground and tamped down the soil as clouds dumped rain on us. We added rebar stakes, plastic trunk guards (to keep rabbits from chewing trunks), tied trees to stakes, then placed cow panels wired into circle cages (to keep deer from chewing limbs) around each tree. Finally, we watered them. We still need to add mulch. They look good (see photos, below), and hopefully they'll grow and thrive.
  • A check of the autumn olive wine shows a specific gravity of 1.074, with about 1/2" of foam at the top of the brew bucket.

An azalea flower from Karen's house.

Karen's pretty flowers.

Our new Liberty apple tree (weeping willow limbs, top, left).

Our new Porter's Perfection cider apple tree.

• Friday, 4/8: 2nd COVID Booster
  
  • We drove to Quincy and got our second booster, or our fourth COVID shots. Mary felt hers while we were in Walmart. Then, symptoms slowed for her. I didn't feel my shot until I got home, then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I wish we could be done with these shots, but until this stuff goes away, or mellows out, we'll keep getting the vaccinations.
  • Snow fell, but nothing stayed on the ground. The drive to and from Quincy was extremely windy. Trees shelter us at home somewhat from the wind.
  • We enjoyed a Roald Dahl movie-watching event. First, we watched the 1971 movie, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, then we watched the 1996 movie, Matilda. It was fun. We once had the first movie in tape format, but purchased it today in DVD form while in Quincy.
    
    
• Saturday, 4/9: Vaccination Blues
  
  • Mary and I feel rotten, today...the result of our vaccination booster shots.
  • Mary heard a brown thrasher...first of the season.
    
  • A crop dusting airplane roared over our house at low altitudes, starting at 8 a.m., and ending just before sunset. With the dairy to the west of us possessing a runway, it puts that loud plane right over us when he's going to fields NE of our property.
    
  • Mary washed a mixed load of laundry.
  • Winds were slight to calm, so I sprayed Immunox on trees that are about to bud out with flowers, which included the Sargent and prairie fire crabapple trees, and the Esopus and Mac apple trees. Today was a perfect day for spraying, so I took advantage of it, even though I felt crummy. Going outside and doing things keeps your mind off your own miseries.
  • Mary and I toured all of the trees and plants. A lone asparagus shoot popped through the ground. The flowers in the woods have barely started to show.
  • The specific gravity of the autumn olive wine is 1.040, a significant drop from 1.074 just 2 days ago. I'll be moving it into a carboy, soon.