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.