Jan. 22-28, 2023

Weather | 1/22, skiff snow, 0.11" moisture, 29°, 33° | 1/23, 19°, 30° | 1/24, 25°, 41° | 1/25, 2.5" snow or 0.33" moisture, 28°, 34° | 1/26, 13°, 24° | 1/27, 17°, 43° | 1/28, 25°, 39° |

• Sunday, 1/22: Chicken Noodle Soup Day
  
  • We woke to a tiny bit of snow on the ground and on all of the trees. Most of the snow was melted by evening.
  • Mary made a big batch of chicken noodle soup. It seemed like a good choice for the day...comfort food.
    
  • Mary and I walked both dogs around the south loop trail.
    
  • We watched a flock of snow geese collecting themselves as they headed east, overhead.
  • We watched 2 episodes of Ken Burns' The Civil War.
  • The persimmon wine fizzed all day in the pantry. I squeezed the mesh bag before bedtime and the specific gravity is 1.065.
    
    
• Monday, 1/23: Firewood Gathering Day 1
  
  • Mary and I took the tractor/trailer to the woods surrounding Bluegill Pond and cut up several smaller trees for firewood. We hauled home a wagon full of wood. We left the tractor/trailer parked in front of the west end of the machine shed. We'll unload it tomorrow. This wood is standing or laying above ground, so it's mostly dry.
  • The U.S. Weather Service predicts snow and colder weather for us in the future, so that's driving us to get more firewood fuel in the coffers. A CBC article predicts subzero temps for the prairie provinces of Canada. It mentioned that a Siberian town recorded a -80° F temperature this month, the coldest in 20 years, and that system is dropping into mid-Canada this week. It will probably go further south into the U.S.
    
  • After evening chores, we heard and watched several trumpeter swans flying west to the south of our property. We also heard coyotes howling from around Bass Pond, northeast of the house. Finally, as darkness fell, I heard ducks, looked up and saw about 100-200 mallards fly westerly.
    
  • The persimmon wine is fizzing enough to create an inch of foam (see video, below). The specific gravity is 1.054. It's putting a very pleasant aroma into the house.
    
  Fermentation in persimmon wine brew bucket.
  

• Tuesday, 1/24: Firewood Gathering Day 2
  
  • Our day was filled with firewood gathering and stacking. First, Mary looked for and found some dry, above ground trees on the east side of the woods were we cut wood yesterday. Trees laying right on the ground are often wet, but standing trees or wood laying horizontal, yet extending above the ground, is usually dry. She showed me where it was, then we unloaded yesterday's wood. Mary stacked splittable wood next to the wood splitter in the machine shed and tossed smaller pieces in wheelbarrows that I took to the woodshed and stacked. Then we cut up another wagon load of firewood and put it away in the same fashion. We're now set well with wood fuel to heat the home if cold weather arrives in the next couple weeks.
  • While I ran the chainsaw cutting firewood, Mary raked up pecan leaves and put them on top of the compost pile.
  • She also took a wheelbarrow load of hay to the chicken coop.
    
  • Waterfowl filled our skies today. We heard and saw snow geese all day. During evening twilight, we heard and saw snow and Canada geese, trumpeter swans, a big flock of mallards, and one single cackling goose that was flying as hard as it could muster and yelling like crazy, just behind the big batch of mallards.
  • We watched 3 Downton Abbey episodes.
  • A large blob of foam covered the top of the persimmon wine brew bucket (see photo, below). Winemaking initially creates such hideous stuff that later settles out to good tasting, clear material. Specific gravity is 1.044.
    
  • If Dad was alive, today would have been his 89th birthday.

  

  Foam & mesh bag floats at top of brew bucket of persimmon wine.

• Wednesday, 1/25: First Substantial Snow
  
  • We woke to our first major snow. About 2.5 inches covered the ground and all of the trees. Even wires had a nice coating on them. This was real wet snow. School was canceled. Folks up north would laugh at 2.5 inches of snow cancelling school.
    
  • Asian ladybugs keep marching through out walls. We vacuumed several times throughout the day to slow down these little creepy buggers!
    
  • I washed 14 wine bottles while Mary did some cross stitching. We listened to more of the Third Reich audio book.
    
  • A check of the persimmon wine resulted in a specific gravity of 1.034. It will be due for racking into a carboy tomorrow.
    
  • We watched two episodes of The Civil War.
  • Katie texted that she signed up at the University of Alaska-Anchorage (UAA) for the fall semester. We called her. She'll be a part-time student, majoring in construction management. She was sick with the flu for a couple weeks. Katie recently attended military training in Florida for a week. She and several other more northern residents woke to bright sunshine like a bunch of vampires, surprised by the morning sun. When she returned from Florida to Anchorage, news was that several people gave their notices where she works, resulting in more duties for Katie. She did drill this weekend at Elmendorf Airforce Base in Anchorage and a leader is leaving, transferring some duties to her. She just completed three days of training at work for new project management software called Primavera P6. The trainer teaches at UAA. Katie subscribes to Arctic Harvest, where she gets a weekly box of produce, eggs, and meat. It comes from both Alaska and Washington State. Weather in Anchorage is unusually warm right now. She wonders if a cross-country ski class for tomorrow and the next day are still on with the current mushy snow conditions.
    
    
• Thursday, 1/26: Racking Persimmon Wine
  
  • Mary cleaned the house.
  • I looked online for a 5-point wrench to remove the cover of the water meter box. They're ridiculously expensive. I'll keep using an ill-fitting Crescent wrench.
  • At noon the persimmon wine's specific gravity was 1.024. At 6 p.m., it was 1.016, so I racked it into the 5-gallon big mouth carboy and two 750-ml wine bottles after squeezing the nylon mesh bag. I put too much liquid in the carboy. After moving it into the pantry, liquid started surging into the airlock. So, I opened the top and removed enough liquid to fill 2" in the bottom of a wine bottle. There is a 5-gallon mark. I initially drew liquid to the top that line. The liquid level needs to be an eighth of an inch below that line. I didn't add Kmeta and I forgot to check the pH. We tasted a bit of it. This wine has a unique taste all of its own...like drinking a dessert...a yeasty, citrus taste, with brown sugar undertones.
  • Trumpeter swans and snow geese flew over at dusk. A huge flight of several hundred snow geese went over just above the treetops. Then, a smaller V of snow geese flew over that I caught on the below video.
  Snow geese flying west at dusk.
  

• Friday, 1/27: Warmer Temperatures
  
  • I hauled a sack of garbage down to the garbage can at the end of the lane in a plastic toboggan, since there was just enough snow showing to do the job. By afternoon, most all of the snow disappeared with warm temperatures.
    
  • Mary washed two loads of laundry, made 4 loaves of bread, and cross stitched while waiting for bread dough to rise.
  • I split two wheelbarrow loads of firewood and stacked them in the woodshed. I stacked another wheelbarrow load of split wet wood in the machine shed.
  • We had an interesting evening meal of squash, fried eggs, turkey bacon, and fresh bread. It tasted great. It's a very cheap meal, for us...thank goodness for haying hens. Afterwards, we shared a bottle of pumpkin wine, which tastes wonderful on ice.
  • We watched three episodes of Downton Abbey.
  • On the last dog walk, we heard yipping to the northeast, followed by coyote howling. It sounded like they were hunting something.
    
    
• Saturday, 1/28: Bill Visits
  
  • Bill showed up around 11:30 a.m. for a weekend, plus Monday, visit. He gave us four halogen work lights, two per telescoping stand, that were being thrown away while cleaning out a warehouse area at his workplace. He also gave us a super long power strip that was in the toss pile. Bill is tired and happy to be here where he can forget about work stuff.
  • He washed a load of clothes, hung them to dry, then took a nap.
  • Mom texted that she woke Wednesday with blurred vision and was staggering. She called her friend, Patti Schipman, who called an ambulance that took Mom to the emergency room. They found nothing wrong and she was fine after a couple hours. Hank arrived Wednesday afternoon to help out. Mom is due to receive a CT head scan. Everyone thinks it was a mini-stroke. She's been fine since Wednesday. Hank plans to return to his Glasgow, MT apartment tomorrow.
  • Mary and I split the remaining firewood next to the splitter and stacked it. We now have a second ring of firewood that is head high. The wood we split was mainly hickory and cherry. It heats exceptionally well.
  • Bill started three pizzas while Mary and I did chores. Mary finished the pizzas. I also put more leaves on the compost pile, since I could smell persimmon wine residue that I threw into the compost. I put mothball bottles under Bill's car and in his car's engine compartment.
  • Mary, Bill, and I played a board game of Atlas Adventures while we ate pizza and enjoyed a big bottle (1.5 liter) of 2021 pear wine. Bill won the game. The wine tasted divine, with a strong fruity, pear flavor.
  • We also watched two episodes of Young Indiana Jones, Volume 2, a Christmas gift we gave Bill.
  • We heard snow geese and trumpeter swans all day to the east of us. Several flew over at dusk.