Oct. 23-29, 2022

Weather | 10/23, 60°, 79° | 10/24, 67°, 73° | 10/25, 1.24" rain, 41°, 42° | 10/26, 0.17" rain, 33°, 57° | 10/27, 36°, 59° | 10/28, 32°, 61° | 10/29, 33°, 61° |

• Sunday, 10/23: Bill Goes Home & More Deer Blind Construction
  
  • I made waffles for breakfast.
    
  • Bill and I went back to the Cedar East Woods Deer Blind. We attached steel siding on top for a roof and Bill wired corners and the middle of the roof into place. I wired horizontal cedar posts between corner posts to create the bottom of my shooting windows.
    
  • Mary mowed the south and part of the north yards and mulched cherry and apple trees with grass clippings.
    
  • After a midday meal, Bill returned to his apartment in Saint Charles, MO. He takes a full week off and visit us the week of Thanksgiving.
    
  • Mary picked several more persimmons and pecans.
  • I returned to the deer blind, added hog fencing and secured it with wire. This stiffens the structure and gives me something to wire log walls into place. Then, I collected chunks of dead trees that I cut from wood blocking the way to walk up and down the dry creek bed, hauled them up the hill to the deer blind, and started stacking them to build the walls of the blind (see photos, below).

The new deer blind with hog fencing between posts.

The start of log walls on Cedar East Woods Deer Blind.

• Monday, 10/24: More Persimmons & Making Deer Blind Walls
  
  • Rain was predicted for this afternoon, so I decided to get all the rest of the logs I cut along the dry creek bed and haul them to the new deer blind before it became a wet creek bed. I hauled and stacked several large chunks of wood.
    
  • Mary picked more pecans and persimmons. She then removed the persimmon seeds and froze the fruit. We now have 6 lbs., 5 oz. of persimmons.
    
  • Rain started falling around 4 p.m., so we fed the chickens and put them in the coop. One of our newest barred rock pullets was outside of the fence surrounding the chicken run. I had to wade into the cedar branches between the coop and the machine shed to drive her south to the gate into the chicken run. She put me through a real chicken rodeo in the rain while she ran north. We couldn't find her for a couple minutes. At one point, she flew up into the mulberry tree. Finally, I was poking her with a stick while Mary pulled down on a tree bough to get her to jump off and run into the chicken yard and into the coop. I was wearing my heavy rain gear. Mary wasn't, so she got soaked.
    
  • We watched the 1944 movie, Arsenic and Old Lace, starring Cary Grant. It's a fun movie.
    
  • It rained all evening and night, a welcoming event. Conditions in the woods the past several days were pretty dry.
    
    
• Tuesday, 10/25: Racking Blackberry Wine
  
  • Last night's rain continued through most of today. Autumn leaves that stayed in trees during several days of high wind gusts dropped to the ground with this rain.
  • I racked the blackberry wine for the 3rd time. It was due to be racked on Sept. 30th, so I was almost a month late. The specific gravity was 0.993, compared to 0.992 two months ago. The pH is 3.0, which is a bit high on the acidic side. The taste...WOW!!! It is tangy with loads of fruit flavor. I added a gram of potassium metabisulfite to 5.75 gallons of must. This halts oxidation, a detriment in wine. I then moved the wine to a 5-gallon carboy, a half-gallon jug, and a 750-ml wine bottle. In one month, it should be ready for bottling.
  • Mary worked on a cross stitch project while I was racking blackberry wine.
  • Mary picked a plastic grocery sack full of persimmons. Several fell from trees during this rain. I helped her pick up pecans. We found an even dozen.
  • We watched the 2010 movie, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, starring Nicolas Cage.
    
    
• Wednesday, 10/26: Apple Cider, Persimmon Poop, & Indoor Wiener Roast
  
  • I racked the apple cider for the 3rd time. The pH is 3.1. It started at 3.2 nearly 2 months ago. The specific gravity stayed the same at 1.003. That gives it a 4% alcohol content. About 3/4 of an inch of fines were at the bottom of two 1-gallon jugs, with less in the wine and beer bottles. The remaining liquid is relatively clear (see photos, below). I added a teaspoon of pectic enzyme to help clear it further. The SO2 level is 23 ppm, which is adequate, but since the alcohol content is low, I added 0.4 grams of potassium metabisulfite to 2 gallons to boost the SO2 level to 43 ppm. The resulting liquid went into two 1-gallon jugs. Mary and I tasted the apple cider. It's very tart with a slight metallic taste. There's hardly any apple taste. We tried sweetening it with xylitol (wood sugar), sucralose, and stevia. Sweetening removed some of the tart and metalic taste. The best tasting sweetener is sucralose, which is nice, because it's the cheapest.
  • Mary removed seeds for an hour and 20 minutes from a large batch of persimmons. She compares it to playing with baby poop. Plus, she said it's the last persimmon poop work she's doing this year. "If you want more, you're doing this job," she told me. Today's 4 quarts of fruit weighed 7 pounds, 7 ounces, giving us a grand total of 13 pounds, 12 ounces in the freezer. We're just 4 ounces shy of enough for a 4-gallon batch of wine.
  • I took the chainsaw and some wire to the Cedar East Woods Deer Blind. I wired existing logs to the hog fencing on the front, or west side. I cut 3 more lengths of log, adding them to the same side, and wired them into place. That finishes the west side of the blind.
  • On the way up the hill after crossing the creek bed, a young buck deer ran from just east of the blind to the north. He stopped, turned and looked at me through the woods, then headed out of sight. On the way back home, a young deer ran beyond me at Dove Pond. Each time I walked by our pecan trees, squirrels ran off to the north. They're still hitting the nuts.
  • When we walked the dogs just before sunset, 8 wood ducks flew out of Bluegill Pond. That pond is surrounded by tall oak trees. Wood ducks fly almost vertically to leave that pond.
  • We lit the woodstove, let it die down to red coals, then roasted hotdogs by opening the stove door and cooking two at a time on metal skewers over the coals. They tasted great on rye bread with mustard and Mary's homemade pickle relish.
    
  • Mary worked up a shopping list. We're almost out of chicken feed, so we're shopping in Quincy, tomorrow.

Apple cider after 3rd racking.

The fines left behind after racking.

• Thursday, 10/27: Shopping in Quincy
  
  • We shopped in Quincy, IL, today. Highlights: Mary found a good pair of Lee jeans at Salvation Army. I got a nice medium weight jacket and 3 pairs of wool socks and we found a good Christmas present for someone at the same store. We found large Honeysuckle White turkeys for 98 cents a pound at Walmart and bought two of them. Last year, we paid $1.30 a pound for Sam's Club turkeys, so this was a good deal, especially since turkeys are supposed to be hard to get and priced higher this year, due to a summer bird flu involving the death of several young turkeys. We think the size of these turkeys had something to do with their lower price. One is nearly 20 pounds and the other is 23 pounds. Unlike most people, we like them big. We now have 3 in the freezer and we're set for wintertime turkey meat.
    
  • We returned home by 4:30 p.m., unloaded, put chickens to bed, then I picked persimmons while Mary picked pecans.
  • Seven wood ducks flew out of Bluegill Pond when we walked the dogs before sunset.
    
    
• Friday, 10/28: Mowing & Finishing Deer Blind
  
  • I made a batch of waffles for breakfast. This was the first time in months that we didn't have homegrown strawberries on our waffles. Daily frosts make for bad strawberry fruits, even though the plants are still green.
  • We vacuumed dust and dirt from behind our refrigerator.
  • Mary popped 3 kinds of garlic in preparation for planting them
    
  • I took the large nippers and cut down all corn, tomato, and tomatillo plants in the far garden.
  • Mary mowed the area south of the far garden, which includes grass around the compost bins and near where we dump wood ashes. She put grass clippings around the Granny Smith and Empire apple trees.
  • I finished stacking and wiring logs into place on the Cedar East Woods Deer Blind (see photos and video, below). I finished by cutting several cedar boughs from trees I took down when clearing a wider path on the trail to the Wood Duck Deer Blind and stuck them along all edges of the roof of this blind. I think it will be a good location.
    
  • When I first stepped into the forest, deer snorted in the field just south of these woods. I never saw them. You cannot walk in the woods quietly with so many recently fallen and crunchy autumn leaves on the ground. I saw deer tracks in the sand of the dry creek bed.
    
  • Mary picked a dozen more pecan nuts while I found 7 persimmons.
  • After sunset, I watched a buck deer run south to north on the edge of Dove Pond.
  • We watched the 1939 movie, The Wizard of Oz.
     

  

  Inside the new deer blind.

  
  

West or downhill side of the new deer blind.

East or uphill side of the new deer blind.

View from Cedar East Woods Deer Blind starting
north and rotating 360 degrees, counterclockwise.

• Saturday, 10/29: Garden Plant Cleanup & Final Deer Blind Work
  
  • Mom sent some text messages. She's in Glasgow, MT, visiting Hank for the weekend. Her hip is doing better. She notices a marked improvement over the way her hip was prior to her surgery. "I should not have waited as long as I did," she texted.
    
  • I sharpened the mower blade.
    
  • Mary cleaned out corn and tomato plants from the south side of the far garden. "That was an awful job," she said. Mary told me it's the least favorite garden job that she performs yearly.
    
  • I marked the trails to the Cedar East Woods Deer Blind and to Bobcat Deer Blind with reflective tacks.
    
  • I also nipped a few woody shrubs on the path to Bobcat Deer Blind. Then, I wired 3 pieces of hog fencing to better hide my presence in that deer hunting location. It's a proven spot that I've used ever since we moved here in 2009.
    
  • This weekend is the first youth firearms deer hunting season. Hunters must be age 6 to 15. Mary ran into Zelma and Ansel Marquette while getting the mail. They were visiting their grandson, who is hunting on Ansel's land, which is adjacent to our SW property line. Ansel, who is 90, told Mary he doesn't hunt anymore. He owns property south of us, too, and told Mary several pears are under a tree at that location that we could have, if we wanted. Near sundown, we heard one shot from that SW location. It's the only shot we heard all day.
    
  • Mary heard the song of a white-throated sparrow. She said it's known at the Peabody bird, because it says, "Peabody, Peabody." She usually only hears them sing in the early spring, before they head north.
  • Mary and I picked persimmons and pecans. The numbers are dwindling. Squirrels are now hitting bad pecans nuts. We think wild nuts number are really low. It will be a tough winter for squirrels.