Oct. 2-8, 2022

Weather | 10/2, 43°, 73° | 10/3, 45°, 71° | 10/4, 39°, 72° | 10/5, 43°, 73° | 10/6, 0.04" rain overnight, 47°, 77° | 10/7, 40°, 57° | 10/8, first major frost, 29°, 59° |

• Sunday, 10/2: Final Sweet Potatoes & Replacing Woodstove Firebricks
  
  • Mary uncovered 6 more hills of sweet potatoes and evacuated several more tubers. Digging sweet potatoes out of clay-based soil is similar to an archeology dig, since soil is carefully removed with a small hand trowel, so the long tubers don't break off. She dried all of the potatoes in the grass for a couple hours (see photo, below). After sorting to size, she stored 4.5 milk crates of sweet potatoes in the back porch closet. Formally, our best sweet potato harvest involved 3 milk crates.
    
  • I shot 2 squirrels in the morning hours.
    
  • I watched a video from U.S. Stove on how to replace firebricks in our woodstove, then removed the metal cabinet on the stove and replaced the firebricks. Two pieces of angle iron screwed into the front and back of the stove secure the firebricks. I tightened several bolts and nuts on the stove. Mary and I moved cabinet out to the machine shed, where I'll wire brush rusty areas and apply new black paint.
  • Katie texted that she's in the Bozeman area waiting for lost luggage. She originally was going to drive to Circle on Tuesday, but her travel plans are now on hold while she waits for her luggage to show up.
    
  • We watched the first Harry Potter movie.

  

  Sweet potatoes laid out to dry.

• Monday, 10/3: Stove Cabinet is Painted
  
  • Mary has a very sore right arm in her bicep, near her shoulder, so she spent the day inside, and away from any heavy lifting.
  • Mary paid the bills. She also worked up a food chart of all items in the freezers, and a few other things, like acorn squash, slumgullion, and wine. When items are taken, they're checked off the chart. It's a way of keeping track of food items.
  • Mary created a shopping list.
  • I removed years of lint and rust from the inside of the woodstove cabinet with first a vacuum, then a hand wire brush and a wire wheel on an electric hand grinder. Then I painted the cabinet with flat black Rust Oleum spray paint. Once dry, I installed it on the stove.
    
  • I shot 3 squirrels in the evening. After dark I looked it up and we have 2 main types of squirrels, the bad ones and the worse ones, otherwise known as the Eastern gray squirrels, and fox squirrels. The latter has orange tinges on its paws and belly. They're bigger than the gray squirrels.
    
    
• Tuesday, 10/4: Shopping Trip
  
  • Mary and I drove the pickup to Quincy, IL, to shop. We bought a $45 bookcase at Salvation Army. It's nice to just load it up into the pickup bed. We got several food items.
  • We're concerned about Katie. She's not answering texts or phone calls. On a phone conversation several weeks ago, she mentioned a fellow worker who bought Montana property that she might visit. We can't remember details. We hope she's there and not in dire need of help. In our last conversation with her, Katie said she'll wait around the Bozeman area until her lost luggage shows up, beyond today. Katie needs to contact someone as soon as she reads this entry.
  • We watched the 2nd Harry Potter movie.
  • Bill called. He's got an inventory to take during the first week of December. His workplace now forbids personal electronic devices in the warehouse. He babysat is friends' dog, Lilly, who had the runs. Bill spent an entire night awake, letting Lilly out every 2 hours. Then, he caught the Vikings/Saints football game from London the next morning and his team (the Vikings) won.
    
    
• Wednesday, 10/5: Katie is Camping
  
  • Katie resurfaced with texts to us and her grandmother. She's been camping in the Ruby Valley of Montana, and still waiting on lost luggage.
    
  • Mary made flour tortillas.
  • She cleaned the chicken coop and put fresh hay onto the floor. She said the area under the chick's roost was a foot deep with pooh. It's all in Gomer, as in Gomer Pile, our name for the compost bin. Mary said Leo, our rooster, was very polite and happy with the new hay.
    
  • I removed, cleaned, and installed the stove pipes. There was only 1 dead chimney swift nestling on the top of the soot pile in the bottom of the chimney. So, a nest didn't fall and wipe out the chimney swift family. The amount of soot was less this year, which means we burned dryer wood last wood burning season. The stove pipe cement I used last year, and again this year, is far superior to the pellet stove silicone I used to use between the stove pipe sections. It was still in place and harder to remove the sections. I wired brushed the insides and connecting areas thoroughly. We are now ready to use the woodstove after a 24-hour drying period for the stove pipe cement.
    
    
• Thursday, 10/6: Squirrel Hunting & Floor Cleaning
  
  • I started the day by shooting 2 squirrels, then hunted them all day. I ended up getting 2 more squirrels. They're crazy about pilfering the pecan trees for nuts. In the evening, I saw 4 more squirrels in the trees. A strong NW wind made it too hard to aim while looking through a rifle scope. We must have hundreds of them in the surrounding woods.
    
  • Mary and I moved the new bookshelf upstairs and into the north bedroom. Mary filled it with books.
  • Mary also cleaned all floors and moped them.
    
  • Mom texted that she finished a physical therapy session. The therapist told Mom that one exercise that he had her do is something that a 60-year old he's working with cannot accomplish. She walked a quarter mile on the treadmill at a pretty fast pace.
  • Mary washed towels and furniture covers.
  • The first Asian ladybugs showed up for their annual autumn house invasion.
  • Leaves are starting to turn color. Some of the brightest reds are on poison ivy leaves. Hickory trees are turning yellow and several ash trees show a deep burgundy color.
    
    
• Friday, 10/7: Frost Readiness
  
  • Mary washed, ironed, and hung curtains.
  • I installed hoops in the winter greens tubs, then put tulle over the hoops and secured it with clothes pins. This keeps out sulfur butterflies.
  • I bought gas and filled three 5-gallon cans for mowing, running the 8N Ford tractor, and the log splitter.
  • In the afternoon, I was involved in a secret mission.
  • With a frost predicted tonight, Mary picked through the gardens and collected up tomatoes, hot peppers, and 3 more acorn squash. She said there was new growth on tomato plants and squash vines.
  • Mary brought the wood rack and a couple loads of wood into the house.
  • I shot 2 squirrels at sunset.
  • We covered the winter greens and the strawberries with blankets and sheets.
    
  • We watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban movie.
  • When we went to bed, the outside temperature was 36° and we saw patchy frost while walking the dogs. It's toasty inside, because I lit the first fire in the woodstove for the season.
    
    
• Saturday, 10/8: Autumn Colors & Deer Blind
  
  • Right after we got up and while looking out our bedroom's east-facing windows, we watched as 5 deer walked by northeast of the house onto the trail from Bass Pond. There were no antlers, so they were does.
    
  • Mary and I took a walk into the north woods and Mary took several photos of autumn colors and huge mushrooms (see below).
  • Mary did some cross stitch work.
    
  • I checked the green apples on the skinny apple tree south of the house. They're still not ready. We're thinking it might be a Granny Smith apple tree.
    
  • I trimmed about a third of the branches that grew over summer off the weeping willow tree stump that I never cut down from last fall. It's a weed. I loaded those branches into the trailer behind the 8N Ford tractor, and added some hog fencing and tools.
    
  • After driving the tractor to the cherry tree stand near the northeast part of our property, I built a deer blind, so I can hunt deer with both feet solidly on the ground. I cut branches from under a cedar tree and stacked them on the west side. After removing an old steel fence post, I pounded it into the ground to provide me with a corner, then wired pieces of hog fence to it. Then, I wove weeping willow branches through the panels in the hog fence. I got most of the front panel covered with willow branches. I still need to work on the side panel, then cut down weeds and brush so I can see better from what I'm calling the Cherry Deer Blind.
  • We enjoyed a bottle of cherry wine. The first glass, we tried chilled. This wine is better at room temperature. When chilled, the cherry taste is hidden. It's a very good wine. Unfortunately, we didn't pick enough cherries this year to make a batch of wine.

Ash tree autumn colors.

Poison ivy vines on a pecan tree trunk.

Deep burgundy of staghorn sumac.

Huge mushroom at base of oak tree.