Weather | 7/30, 65°, 93° | 7/31, 65°, 85° | 8/1, 65°, 87° | 8/2, 1.31" rain, 69°, 77° | 8/4, mist, 69°, 81° | 8/5, 0.02" rain, 67°, 84° | 8/5, 1.34" rain, 66°, 77° |
- Sunday, 7/30: Making Cherry Wine
- Bill and I made a five-gallon batch of cherry wine. Bill juiced a 1.5 bags of mandarin oranges to put 30 ounces of juice into the brew bucket. I put 22 bags, or 17 pounds, 1.2 ounces of cherries into a mesh bag. Bill grated the zest of two oranges into the bag. He also added pulp from juicing the mandarins. He measured 1 gram of Kmeta into the brew bucket. I added five teaspoons of yeast nutrient, a cup of strong tea (2 teabags), seven pounds of sugar, and 3.5 gallons of water. The specific gravity was 1.076, which depending on the ending specific gravity getting to the 0.992 reading of the last cherry wine batch, would result in about 11 percent alcohol. The pH was 3.0, or highly acidic, just like the last batch we made. We covered the brew bucket and let it rest overnight in the pantry.
- Mary did a little bit of cross stitching.
- We all watered the gardens. While stepping over the near garden fence, I tripped and came down hard. An old watering can took the main brunt of the fall and broke out the bottom.
- I went inside and ordered two more plastic watering cans through Home Depot. When we last ordered them in 2018, they were $8, each. Today, they cost $20, each. Now that's major inflation.
- After evening chores, I hooked up the electric fence to the Esopus apple tree, since I found a partially eaten apple under it today.
- After dark, we played the Sorry! board game and drank a 1.5 liter bottle of apple wine (see photo, below). This wine smells great, but has a distinct metallic taste and quite a bit of fines floating in it. We suspect I used too much Kmeta as a preservative while grinding up the apples. I also think the old-fashioned meat grinder contributed to the taste. Future apple wine preparation will involve lemon juice for a preservative and a food processor for grinding up the apples. We'll just suffer through this poor-tasting wine and make better apple wine in the future.
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| 2022 apple wine looks and smells great, but lacks good taste. |
- Monday, 7/31: Bill Returns
- After building an outside little fire, we cooked up smoked eggs for our midday meal. We also had slightly thawed watermelon, which is like a frozen dessert in the summer. The meal was topped off by the last of Bill's birthday pistachio tort.
- Mary picked bent-over onions, which amounts to about 10 a day. She also picked several zucchinis, and a couple handfuls of tomatoes.
- Bill left for his apartment in St. Charles around 2:30 p.m. Tomorrow he starts working shifts from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. It will be better hours during the intense summer heat. On the way home, he got an appointment at a Hyundai dealer to get better anti-theft ignition installed on his car and get an emissions test, which is required in St. Charles County.
- I added 2.5 teaspoons of pectic enzyme to the cherry wine. I'll work up and pitch the yeast tomorrow.
- I saw a huge kettle of turkey vultures circling to the southwest of our house. There must have been about 20 vultures in it. Mary and I also saw two two bald eagles circling above our house.
- We did the water, water, watering dance through the gardens, a daily event.
- Tonight's full moon rising to the southeast was big and amazing (see photo, below). During our nighttime dog walk, we didn't need a flashlight. It was so bright, you could detect colors. We watched two or three bats flying between us as we stood midway down the lane, looking at the moon.
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| Full moon framed by Empire apples. |
- Tuesday, 8/1: Solved Wine Particulate Issue
- While feeding our furry kids (cats & dogs), the twin deer fawns showed up in the north yard and munched on grass and weeds (see photo, below). Their mother was nearby. These deer are regulars in our yard.
- Suspecting that particulates in wine are due to pectin-laden fruit, I checked original recipes of apple and cherry wines and sure enough, more amounts of pectic enzyme is called for in these wines. Instead of the usual half teaspoon per gallon, cherry wine recipes call for 3/4 teaspoon per gallon of pectic enzyme. So, I added another teaspoon and a quarter to the current cherry wine batch. I worked up a starter batch of Red Star Côte des Blancs wine yeast, adding heated cherry wine must to it throughout the day. Prior to pitching the yeast, I measure the specific gravity. It dropped to 1.073, but I didn't add any additional sugar, since the alcohol level should reach 10 percent, which is fine. The liquid has a nice cherry aroma.
- Mary harvested 20-30 onions and some tomatoes.
- We decided not to water the gardens or fruit trees, since we have a 100 percent chance of rain overnight and it was overcast for most of today.
- We watched two movies, the 2010 film, Secretariat, and the 2004 movie, Elle Enchanted. The first movie was really good. The second one is mindless nonsense, but fun.
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| The fawn twins that we see regularly in our yard. |
- Wednesday, 8/2: A Nice Rain
- We received a steady rain overnight and today. At almost an inch and a third, it was the most rain in one day so far this year.
- A news article from yesterday indicates that the local corn crop is probably shot, even with today's expected rain.
- Since it was wet outside, we declared today a hobby day.
- Mary cross stitched and finished a Halloween ornament called Raven Moon (see photo, below).
- I worked on leather and stamped the border of the checkbook cover.
- I sorted my leather tools, put like tools together and rubber banded each variety. I placed tools into two heavy duty basket containers, so I can easily grab them for future leatherwork. In the process, I tossed a bunch of junk, including several bicycle lights.
- Cherry wine yeast is bubbling nicely (see photo, below). After squeezing the mesh bag and stirring the must, the specific gravity checked out at 1.069. It smells marvelous, like cherry bread.
- We had a bottle of 2021 autumn olive wine. It was very good. This wine's flavor is best at room temperature. Taste vastly improves on wine after it's aged beyond one year from bottling.
- Two apples were under each of the Empire and Esopus trees. We tried the Empire apples. The seeds are dark, which indicates ripeness. They're still green, but getting close to ripe. They tasted good. I bet by mid-month they will be ready to pick.
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Mary's Raven Moon cross stitch ornament.
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Cherry wine with nice yeast action.
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- Friday, 8/4: Another Big Rain
- I drove to Quincy to pick up two watering cans we ordered into Home Depot. There was also a meat sale at HyVee, where I bought pork loin for $1.69 a pound. I got a couple other items and headed back home. While I was gone a light rain went through.
- Mary took the ficus tree to the woods. It outgrew the sunroom, making it hard to even enter through the doorway or between it and the table. Mary has clippings from it growing nicely in a pot. This tree started before I knew Mary as a plant in her Kirksville apartment in 1989 when she was working on her master's degree in English at Truman State (then called Northeast Missouri State University). Mary's been renewing the ficus tree ever since then.
- Mary also picked onions and trimmed branches in the lane that grew to where they were rubbing on the pickup as we drove by them.
- As we went to put the chickens to bed, we spotted the deer twins in the yard next to the woodshed. One stood there and stared at us for several minutes.
- I picked up a couple hands full of apples that fell under the Empire and Esopus trees.
- We watched four episodes of Keeping Up Appearances.
- After turning off the TV, a close crack of thunder made us jump and unplug appliances. We let the dogs out during a lull in rain, then it really poured. We got another dump of over an inch of rain, which is great.
- We saw in local news that a tornado touched down at Baring, MO, which is about 35 miles northwest of us. HERE are photos from a Kirksville TV station.
- Saturday, 8/5: Moving Furniture
- I helped Mary move a tall cabinet that she uses to store cross stitch projects from the west room to the sunroom. The reason for the move is the floor is sinking in the west room and the sunroom has a concrete floor. The heavy cabinet will do better in the new location.
- The cherry wine quit foaming and settled down to a burp every 19 seconds. This is a big difference from yesterday morning, when I changed the blow-off airlock to a regular airlock, because the sound of CO2 blowing through a quart Mason jar of water every second was akin to Chinese water torture.
- Mary froze several tomatillos, tomatoes, and a sliced-up pork loin.
- I picked up apples from under the Empire tree throughout the day. It probably means they are ripe.
- Mary picked more tomatoes in the garden. Cooler temperatures and lots of rain this week put a huge boost to garden plants.
- We saw our daily complement of deer...the twins and their mama, along with a different doe and her her older fawn that were down the lane.
- We watched the 2003 movie, Under the Tuscan Sun.
- The weather service says the tornado in Baring, MO, was an EF-2, with 122 mph winds that touched down for two miles. It went right down the main street of Baring, a population of 124. Fortunately, only two people were injured and nobody was killed.
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