August 27-Sept. 2, 2023

Weather | 8/27, 58°, 77° | 8/28, 59°, 80° | 8/29, 60°, 83° | 8/30, 57°, 79° | 8/31, 49°, 78° | 9/1, 49°, 80° | 9/2, 54°, 85° | 

• Sunday, 8/27: Processing Zucs & Corn
  
  • Mary processed and then froze 23 packages of sliced zucchinis. That means we're done with zucs and the zucchini plants now get removed.
    
  • Mary picked, processed, and froze 35 ears of sweet corn.
  • I used the Stihl trimmer and whacked grass and weeds grown into the electric fence surrounding the far garden. The growth was phenomenal. It took five tanks of gas to finish the job. The last weed fell at the northeast corner of the fence after sunset.
    
  • By evening, the spiced apple wine's fermentation slowed to a crawl and there's 3/4  of an inch of fines at bottom of the carboy. I'll need to rack this wine, again, tomorrow, to get the liquid off the fines.
    
  • Mary watched an eastern wood-peewee adult feed a fledgling while they both sat on a cow panel in south orchard. At first, Mary thought she was watching two adult birds, because they were the same size. But when the second bird opened what was obviously a gaping mouth belonging to a chick, Mary knew she was looking at a fledgling.
    
  • After whacking weeds in the far garden and upon plugging in the electric fencer, I found it wasn't energizing to its fullest. Since I found nothing after surveying both gardens, Mary and I both checked all wires. I found a slack support wire of a corner post touching several hot wires. I fixed the problem. Mary also found two wires crossed in two different places. Once remedied, the fencer gave out a full charge.
    
  • After dark, Mary took the blacklight flashlight and checked for worms on tomato plants. She found one big army worm. Surprisingly, there were no hornworms. We wonder if recent hot days killed off the hornworms.
    
  • We heard a screech owl while we were in the gardens after dark. We then heard a barred owl.
    
    
• Monday, 8/28: Tomatoes By the Buckets, Apple Wines
  
  • The twin fawns were in our east yard munching on tree branches around noon. One got close to apple trees, so I stepped out to scare it off. It only went a few feet, so I put on my rubber boots and walked to the apple trees in the east yard. They ran off, but I suspected they only went a few feet, so I continued to the far garden and walked north on the west side of that garden. Sure enough, as I got close to the north end of the garden, my two culprits ran to the McIntosh tree and beyond. We suspect these two young deer have spent the whole summer watching us walk through the yard and just aren't too concerned about us.
    
  • I found two Esopus apples under that tree, so I brought them inside. We ate them prior to our evening meal. They were green, but their seeds are brown, which indicates they're getting close to ripe. They were very good.
    
  • Mary picked nearly two buckets of tomatoes, a plastic grocery sack full of green beans, and a few tomatillos.
    
  • I started a batch of plain apple wine. I thawed five one-gallon bags of Empire applesauce in the sun on the porch. Together they weighed 27 pounds, 8.3 ounces. This went into two nylon mesh bags. Added to the brew bucket was 2 quarts and 2 cups of water, 1.5 pounds of sugar, 2 teaspoons of yeast nutrient, 0.4 grams of Kmeta, and a cup of strong tea. The specific gravity was 1.059 and the pH was 3.3...perfect! Now it sits in the pantry until tomorrow.
    
  • I racked the spiced apple wine, because all container bottoms were filled with fines. I added 0.6 grams of Kmeta, then moved it back into the 3-gallon carboy, the half-gallon jug, and half of a beer bottle. The specific gravity was 1.000, which gives it an 8.25 percent alcohol level at this point. We tasted it. The cloves shined through the flavor. It's one of the few absolutely green wines that didn't have a strong yeast taste. It's going to be a good wine. This went back into the pantry to age for a month.
  • The pantry is filling with wines in the making (see photo, below). I've got to keep kicking out the wines in order to eliminate frozen bags of fruit to give Mary freezer room for incoming garden veggies. I might run out of wine bottles for all the wines currently brewing and others on the agenda. Future wines include blackberry, jalapeño, pear, garlic, parsnip, and maybe autumn olive. I need someone to drink up existing wine so I have more wine bottles...Bill?
    
  • Our hens and rooster are molting, so Mary keeps picking up good feathers for my future fly tying hobby. You can spend a fortune on fly tying feathers, but I don't have to spend a dime with our own flock of chickens spewing feathers all over the ground.

  

  Wines in pantry: (l to r) spiced apple, cherry, and apple.

• Tuesday, 8/29: Wine Bottle Considerations
  
  • Two tablespoons of pectic enzyme went into the apple wine brew bucket today. This helps break down the fruit and release liquid. I also squeezed the mesh bags.
    
  • I pulled all empty wine bottles out of the west room closet to determine if I have enough. There are 157 empty bottles. Then, I added up estimated bottle needs for current and future wines for 2023. I need 185 bottles for the three wines in production (spiced apple, cherry, and apple) and seven future wines (jalapeño, apple cider, garlic, blackberry, Kieffer pear, Bartlett pear, and parsnip). The last wine scheduled for this year, garlic, won't be ready to bottle until February 2024, so I'm pretty sure we can make up the difference by drinking enough bottles of wine in the next six months. Oh, woe are we!
    
  • Mary started watering the gardens while I put away bottles. When I was done, I helped her with watering. She showed off the pumpkins. Two are large and one of them is just starting to turn orange. There are a ton of hot peppers. Several jalapeño peppers are red. These will require immediate picking prior to hot temperatures predicted to start this weekend, or we'll lose them. It means jalapeño wine is next on my winemaking agenda.
    
  • Mary picked the last of the corn and froze 13 ears. That makes 48 ears of corn for this year. We have 90 ears from past years, so we're good on corn. That's one less row of garden plants to water.
    
  • I hunted squirrels from the east end of the machine shed. No squirrels were to be found.
  • For the Orsens (Mary's relatives) in Beaufort, SC, please stay safe. We keep watching hurricane reports.
    
    
• Wednesday, 8/30: Alison is Gone
  
  • I worked up a starter batch of Red Star Cote des Blancs yeast for the apple wine and pitched it into the brew bucket before bedtime. The specific gravity went down to 1.050, so I added a pound of sugar, bringing it up to 1.067. So, a total of 2.5 pounds of sugar went into this batch. The pH was still 3.3, so no acid adjustment is necessary. Immediately after pitching the yeast, a fruity yeast smell filled the pantry.
    
  • Mary cut up and froze four gallons of tomatoes.
  • I was shocked when Karen informed me about Alison Rabich Boyce. She attended Homer High School and UAF with Karen and me. Her husband, Dennis, who I remember from UAF, said she entered the hospital in Fairbanks on Thursday, 8/24, with pancreatitis. They moved her to ICU on Friday, 8/25, with multiple organ failure. She died. Alison was a very honest soul. She will be missed.
    
  • Mary made a shopping list.
  • For several minutes, we viewed the super moon and Saturn, which was near the moon. We even saw a lightning bug. It's the latest we've ever seen one of those. While moon gazing, we heard a whip-poor-will. Again, it's late in the year to hear one of those birds.
    
    
• Thursday, 8/31: Shopping Trip
  
  • Mary and I drove to Quincy on a shopping trip.
  • We spent time moseying through the new Target store. Mary picked up a hardcover journal and I bought headphones, to replace the old ones that put black foam bits on my ears. Mary noticed that the colors of all interior decorating items were boring...black, white, charcoal, and taupe.
  • We couldn't find a sponge mop at Home Depot, or raisins at Sam's Club. More and more, you need to go online to find what you want. Quincy stores continue to stop stocking things.
    
  • The worst corn in several counties belongs to our neighbor bordering east of us. It's shriveled, gray, with tiny ears. Corn on the Missouri side of the Mississippi river bottom looks wonderful...better soil and better farmers.
  • I counted six dogs in the yard in front of the house southeast of our property. David Marquette, who lives south of there, says they have eight dogs...it's just too many.
  • The apple wine's specific gravity was 1.044, taken 24 hours after pitching the yeast. It means the yeast is moving fast and I'll need to rack it soon.
  • We heard coyotes howling southwest of us while walking the puppies tonight. They were close.
    
    
• Friday, 9/1: Apple & Jalapeño Wines
  
  • The specific gravity of the apple wine was 1.020, so I racked it into a 3-gallon carboy, a half-gallon jug, a 750-ml wine bottle, and half of a beer bottle. The pH was still 3.3. Unlike the spiced apple wine, this regular apple wine foamed into the airlock. It might be that the oil from cinnamon in the spiced version held back the foam. I installed a blow-off airlock and it bubbled the rest of the day into a Mason jar half filled with water.
  • With 22 red jalapeño peppers Mary picked from the garden, I figured out how many more peppers I needed to make a 3-gallon batch of jalapeño wine, based on last year's recipe. I guessed 35, but after weighing them, I only added 29 green jalapeño peppers, for a total of 51 peppers. It amounted to 2.5 pounds of peppers that I cut up, then chopped up in the food processor. I chopped up a pound, 12 ounces of black raisins. These two ingredients went into a nylon mesh bag. Added to the brew bucket was 2.5 gallons, 23 ounces of water, 3 teaspoons yeast nutrient, 4.5 teaspoons of acid blend to yield a 3.5 pH, 0.5 grams of Kmeta, and 4 pounds of sugar to produce a specific gravity of 1.066. I put a towel over the brew bucket and left it sit in the pantry overnight. I finished winemaking activities at 9:15 p.m.
    
  • Mary picked the last of the green beans, some hot peppers, tomatoes, jalapeños for me, and the last of the tomatillos. She also froze the tomatillos.
    
  • Mary watered all of the gardens and did most of the evening chores while I worked on wines.
    
    
• Saturday, 9/2: Yeast Starter for Jalapeño Wine
  • I worked up a starter batch of Red Star Premier Blanc yeast. By evening, when I pitched it into the jalapeño wine's brew bucket, it looked like a butterscotch milkshake with foam on top (see photo, below). The specific gravity of the must when I poured in the yeast (see photo, below) was 1.079. The pH was 3.7, which is too basic, so I added a 1/2 teaspoon of acid blend to correct the pH to 3.4. I tasted the must. It's spicy hot, but yummy. After pitching the yeast, the pantry smelled like pizza.
  • I worked up a four-month timeline involving the 10 wine varieties I'm making this fall. In September and October, I need three 3-gallon carboys. I own two. In December, I need four 5-gallon carboys. I own five, so I'm good on that account.
  • I looked online and found a three-gallon carboy for sale for $20 in Brashear, MO, 38 miles west of us. I left a text message.
  • Mary and I watered gardens. It's easier with fewer rows of plants to water. In the near garden, all that's left are three small apple rootstock trees and parsnips.
  • Mary encountered a juvenile western fox snake, that was a foot long, at the gate to the far garden. It curled itself up into a tight S-shape and kept leaping at her, a phenomenon that's not normal for most snakes we encounter. It's actions helped identify it. They aren't poisonous, but they're aggressive. They are endangered in Missouri.
  • There was a doe and a fawn on the lane at Bluegill Pond when I got the mail. Prior to walking onto the gravel road at the end of our lane, I heard a vehicle coming, so I stopped. It was a neighbor in the house that's southeast of us on a golf cart. Of course, it has no lights, and it was starting to get dark. He was driving along, looking down at his cell phone, instead of paying attention to where he was driving...not very safe!!!

Jalapeño wine yeast starter prior to pitching it.

Pitching the yeast into the brew bucket.

August 20-26, 2023

Weather | 8/20, 71°, 93° | 8/21, 77°, 91° | 8/22, 73°, 97° | 8/23, 76°, 93° | 8/24, 77°, 99° | 8/25, 73°, 97° | 8/26, 0.56" rain, 71°, 77° | 

• Sunday, 8/20: Bottling Pumpkin Wine
  
  • A quick check of the pumpkin wine found that it still had a strong sulfur smell. I rigged up a plastic pipe stuffed with a copper scratch pad. Then I filtered just under eight gallons of wine through this contraption to successfully eliminate the sulfur smell and taste. I added 1.4 grams of Kmeta. The specific gravity is 0.994, giving the wine an alcohol content of 12.84 percent. The pH is 3.4. A taste test indicated the sulfur was gone, but it has a strong alcohol taste. The pumpkin and cinnamon flavors are there, too. We decided to bottle it. After bottling and corking, I ended up with 39 bottles of new pumpkin wine.
  • We harvested the second batch of pink mushrooms. This batch was even bigger than the first bunch we harvested from this kit. They were delicious.
  • Mary watered the gardens while I bottled wine. Extremely high humidity meant she was dripping wet after finishing that chore.
    
    
• Monday, 8/21: Too Many Photos
  
  • My laptop computer was extremely slow at showing characters I entered from the keyboard. After a bunch of online checks, I suspected large photo files were bogging it down, so I eliminated them by throwing out several and storing some on a zip drive. Now, the laptop works like a champ. There were too many stupid winemaking photos and videos.
    
  • Mary cleaned house.
    
  • Mary and I both watered gardens. My help at filling watering cans and marching them partway to her vastly reduces the time it takes to finish this chore.
  • Mary walked to the chicken coop to start to put the chickens to bed and there were six deer at the edge of the west yard...three does and three fawns. They looked at her for quite some time, stomped their feet, then ran off to the west. We also saw twin fawns in the north yard this morning. That's a total of eight deer seen today.
    
  • We're experiencing hot weather. It's summer. That's what happens in the summer. While local news folks rant about goofy "feel's like" temperatures from high humidity, we noticed an opposite benefit. High humidity and early morning fog created clouds that kept the sun away through large parts of the day and kept temperatures lower than predicted. We hope that continues. Meanwhile, we'll savor air conditioners indoors and head outside only when needed.
    
    
• Tuesday, 8/22: Spiced Apple Wine
  • I discovered in Jack Keller's Home Winemaking book that apples contain more sulfur, so too much Kmeta added to the wine harms apple wine flavor. I used too much as preservative last year, hence the off-flavor of that wine. Apples are also high in malic acid, so tartaric acid, not acid blend that contains additional malic acid, should be used to increase acid content. I worked up a spiced wine recipe from Keller's website, decreasing the clove amount, but increasing cinnamon and ginger amounts, to adhere to our tastes.
    
  • I made a two-gallon batch of spiced apple wine. Leaving frozen gallon bags of applesauce on the sun-drenched porch with outside temperatures in the high 90s made for quick thawing. A total of 25 pounds, 14 ounces of apples went into this batch. I chopped up two pounds of raisins, crushed six cinnamon sticks, and chopped up 8 ounces of ginger root. I included 0.55-ounces of cloves (see photos, below). This all went into two nylon mesh bags in the brew bucket, along with 0.4 grams of Kmeta, two teaspoons of yeast nutrient, a gallon of water, and 1.5 pounds of sugar. The specific gravity was 1.054. It should rise with additional sugar released from apples and raisins and if not, I'll add more sugar, later. I covered the brew bucket with a towel and let it sit overnight in the pantry.
    
  • Mary picked tomatoes and froze several. While in the garden, she found two more small rabbits. She thinks they were born in there. This year, the bunnies are damn Houdini experts.
  • We heard a wood thrush in the north woods while releasing chicks from the coop this morning. We saw two male wood ducks fly by the far garden. Mary had a hummingbird buzz over her head while watering gardens.
  • Mary watered most of the far garden before I finished winemaking and helped her. High humidity and heat means you're soaking wet with any outside work. I notice that temperatures are in the 40s, 50s, and 60s in south central Alaska these days...oh, the joy!
  • A quick check of the wine prior to bedtime revealed a wonderful spiced apple aroma and an reddish-gold liquid. This will be nice wine!
    

Thawed gallon bags of Empire applesauce.

Ingredients (l to r): cinnamon, cloves, ginger, raisins.

• Wednesday, 8/23: Jumpy Chicks, Heat, & Nighttime Cicadas
  
  • We were watching the chicks after letting them out of the coop this morning when a blue jay called and I coughed. The combination made all birds jump and run into the tall weeds at the east side of the chicken run. They have a natural sense to dodge perceived trouble. At over 10 weeks old, these chicks are almost the size of our fully-grown hens. We switched them to an all-flock variety of feed earlier than past years and it seems they grow faster on that food.
    
  • I added two tablespoons of pectic enzyme to the spiced apple wine. The usual amount is one teaspoon, but some of Jack Keller's apple wine recipes call for this huge amount in order to better push liquid out of the apple fruit. The pH is 3.5. It needs to be 3.3. I'll wait until I pitch the yeast and adjust the pH at that point, since the pH might change by then. The brew bucket went back into the pantry to sit for another day.
  • I labeled half of the recently-corked pumpkin wine bottles, with plans to finish them tomorrow.
    
  • We watered all gardens, our daily chore. Mary found little bunny trails under our chicken wire fence. I might have to bury the fencing in the future.
    
  • The heat got to me a little, today. After hauling the garbage can and mail back home, then helping Mary with filling watering cans, I had to take an early break.
    
  • We heard a cicada calling at 11 p.m. They aren't a normal nighttime sound, but Mary looked it up and they can sound off with high nighttime heat or light. It was 81° at that time.
    
    
• Thursday, 8/24: Moon/Star Gazing
  
  • I squeezed the two nylon mesh bags in the spiced apple wine must and more dark brown juice emerged. The pH is 3.5 and the specific gravity is 1.063. The sugar content rose from yesterday. With this sugar content, the alcohol level would be nine percent. I decided to wait until I pitch the yeast for any adjustments, if needed. Mary and I tasted the must...WOW! It is very good...like spiced applesauce.
    
  • I worked up a starter batch of Red Star Côte Des Blancs wine yeast throughout the day. It started quickly, but seemed to slow significantly by nightfall. I pitched the yeast into the brew bucket late at night and it instantly put a nice aroma into the pantry. Prior to adding yeast, a pH check showed 3.3 to 3.4, so I didn't add tartaric acid. The specific gravity was still 1.063, so I also didn't add sugar.
    
  • I labeled the rest of the pumpkin wine, then made an assessment of all wines and updated my numbers on the food chart in the pantry. I have 248 bottles of wine in storage. Yes, my winemaking hobby has taken over!
    
  • We watered all gardens in the heat. West winds made the high heat tolerable.
    
  • This evening, I saw five deer...a buck in the west yard and two sets of two deer eating tender shoots from the lane. Mary saw a half-inch long tree frog and a young prairie king snake, the first snake we've seen this summer.
  • From the website space.com, we learned that when the star, Anteres, which is in the constellation, Scorpius, goes behind the moon, it suddenly blinks out, instead of slowly fading away. This is because of a lack of an atmosphere on earth's moon. We watched through binoculars and used the electric power pole as a way to block the bright side of the moon in order to view this phenomenon. High clouds edged in and over the moon, enabling us to see a moon dog, or a type of rainbow created by the moonlight. Then, sure enough, at 9:15 p.m., Anteres blinked out of sight. That was really cool!!!
  • Katie texted that she participated in her first triathlon and she placed 14th, overall. HERE is a link to an article about it.
    
    
• Friday, 8/25: Harvesting in Buckets
  
  • When we first start harvesting tomatoes, they arrive inside the house in a small bowl. We are now to the bucket stage. Mary picked a four-gallon bucket full of tomatoes and a few tomatillos. She also picked two plastic grocery sacks stuffed with green beans. Garden picking took all afternoon, with several breaks, due to the heat. The fridge is now stuffed.
    
  • I drove to Quincy and picked up meds for me, along with chicken feed. I saw a temperature of 101° on a bank thermometer sign. On the way back home, I heard on the radio that St. Louis set a record high temperature of 104°. I texted Bill, asking if he did okay today in the non-air conditioned warehouse he works in. He responded with an animated file of the Bee Gees singing "Stayin' Alive," and texted "I made it through the day."
  • A wonderful wine yeast aroma emanates from the spicy apple wine in the pantry. A nighttime check of the specific gravity registered 1.053, 10 points down from yesterday's reading of 1.063, so the yeast is moving along, nicely.
    
    
• Saturday, 8/26: Racking Spiced Apple Wine
  
  • A steady rain persisted for most of the day. After several days of high heat, it was very welcome.
    
  • Mary froze several bags of tomatoes, some tomatillos, and a huge batch of green beans. The job took a chunk of the day to finish.
    
  • We have a vegetable-loving dog. Plato just adores green beans picked from the garden. While Mary cuts them up, this crazy dog sits next to her with his ears perked up, watching her every move. Occasionally, she'll throw a piece of bean on the floor and Plato quickly gobbles it up. His other favorites are celery, broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots.
    
  • I checked the spiced apple wine mid-afternoon and the specific gravity was already at 1.022. That's very fast working yeast to be ready in just two days. The pH was still 3.4, within the acceptable range of 3.1 to 3.55, so I didn't alter acid content. I squeezed the two mesh bags to yield just 10 ounces shy of four gallons of wine must. So, fermenting these apples almost doubled the amount of liquid I initially added to the brew bucket. I racked the must into a three-gallon carboy, a half-gallon jug, a 750-ml wine bottle, and a 330-ml beer bottle. It now sits in the pantry until fermentation stops and I see over a half-inch of fines in the bottom of the containers.
    
  • We saw a fawn with fading spots in the east yard. I chased it away before it tried eating apples. We watched a nighthawk fly over the house this evening.
    
  • Mary and I shared a bottle of 2022 dandelion wine. It was bottled a year ago and this wine is very good. It glows with a beautiful golden color. You can taste the dandelion flavor, but there's also a citrus component. Extra ginger root enhanced the flavor of this wine. Unfortunately, picking dandy petals takes forever, so I didn't do it this spring. I need to try to get back to it next year.
    

August 13-19, 2023

Weather | 8/13, 0.19" rain, 64°, 71° | 8/14, 0.02" rain, 63°, 75° | 8/15, 61°, 76° | 8/16, 55°, 80° | 8/17, 63°, 79° | 8/18, 54°, 81° | 8/19, 61°, 88° | 

• Sunday, 8/13: Heard of Apple Dumplings...We're in the Apple Dumps!
  
  • We designated today as hobby day. With all of the rain outside, it was a good time to stay indoors.
    
  • Mary did cross stitching on a Halloween "Nine Lives" ornament.
  • I finished tooling on the checkbook cover and looked online at various leatherwork websites. One that's interesting is called Elktracks Studio, started by Jim Linnell, who grew up on a ranch 50 miles from Miles City, MT. He started leatherwork in 1967 as a seventh grader, and now lives in Texas. He was heavily involved with Tandy Leather. Several instructional videos are on this website.
  • We saw five deer in our yard in the morning, including a buck that got too close to the Grimes Golden apple tree (see photos, below). Mary stepped outside and sent him away. When we put the chickens to bed, we watched the twins running around in the west field in playful moods. Mary says they're our wild cows.
    
  • After a tasty chicken dinner, Mary baked eight apples. They were adequate, but Empire apples aren't the best baked apples.

A fawn and a doe deer in the north yard.

A buck deer looking into the near garden.

• Monday, 8/14: Racking Cherry Wine
  
  • Mary picked more garden produce, then froze tomatillos, tomatoes, and hot peppers. She's happy to report no signs of tomato hornworms, or bunnies inside the gardens.
    
  • I racked the cherry wine for the second time. A good half to three-quarter inch of lees were at the bottom of the carboy. I added a gram of Kmeta. It has a strong yeasty/alcohol taste, but there's a faint hint of cherry flavor. Aging will help. The specific gravity was 0.994, which gives it an alcohol level of 10.3 percent, a lower amount that might improve the wine's overall taste. The pH was 3.2, an improvement from 3.0 when I started brewing. The must went into a 5-gallon carboy, a half-gallon jug, and a 330-ml beer bottle. I added distilled water to the bottle to top it up. I cleaned the 6.5-gallon carboy that stored this wine for the past 11 days outside. Subsiding foam dried inside the top of the carboy into an orange/red mess. A garden hose, a bent bottle brush, and Dawn soap cleaned it up nicely.
    
  • We saw the normal amount of deer cattle in our yard.
    
  • Mary cut up four apples and made eight sandwiches for tomorrow's lunch. We went to bed early, because we're going to the Illinois State Fair in Springfield tomorrow.
    
    
• Tuesday, 8/15: Illinois State Fair
  
  • The alarm rang at 5 a.m. and we walked the dogs in faint morning light. After breakfast, letting out chickens, and packing up, we left just after 8:30 a.m., gassed up in Lewistown, then drove to Springfield, IL. Visiting a state fair is something we wanted to do since 2020, but a pandemic got in the way. The Illinois State Fair is closer, at 142 miles. The Missouri State Fair, in Sedalia, is 174 miles away, and the Iowa State Fair, in Des Moines, is 187 miles away.
    
  • We showed up at the fairgrounds around 11:45 a.m. Reduced prices meant we entered two adults and got a parking ticket, all for only $9. They parked us on the half-mile horse racing track. We wandered for a little bit through an edge of the fair until we found a fairgrounds map, then went back to the pickup and ate half our lunch. Then, we ventured through the entire fairgrounds. 
  • We saw the dairy building, with a butter carving of a cow being milked (see photos, below). 
  • Next were miles of horse barns. The fairground buildings are brick structures built in the late 1800s and there are several. Signs in the horse barns indicated they were recently refurbished. Immense, fine-looking Belgium draft horses filled several stalls. They are extremely impressive. There were also Percherons, Clydedales, and Morgan horses. In some stalls were very fancy wagons pulled by these horses. Most of these draft horses came from outside of Illinois...a couple from MO, some from IN, and most were from OH.
    
  • We marched through more miles of dairy cattle barns. There were several Jersey cattle. We heard a group of people enter one barn and say, "Yup, more cows!"
    
  • We took in the show ring in the hog barn. It was interesting to note that the judge was built similar to the animals he was judging.
  • In the sheep barn, another show ring was in action.
  • We looked for 4-H work, but nothing was there. 4-Hers must have exhibited earlier in the fair. The home economics building is abandoned, needing refurbishing. 
  • We walked to the conservation area. A huge aquarium showcased game fish.
  • While walking back, we spotted a hummingbird in blue salvia flowers. There were mobs of people walking through, but nobody else noticed this little bird. It's amazing the blindness of the human race.
  • The coliseum on the fairgrounds is in the middle of reconstruction. Built in 1901, it's beautiful.
  • Mary laughed when we heard a mother tell her kids, "Your father is standing around talking, because that's just what he does."
  • After returning back to the pickup, we sat on the tailgate and ate apples.
  • The drive to and from Springfield is nice, on a pretty smooth I-72 interstate.
  • We picked up a couple items in Quincy.
    
  • We arrived back home with the sun still in the western sky, but close to setting. After chores, we sat down to big drinks of tea.
    
  • There are lot's of people to dodge at a state fair. It was nice to get back to the peace and quiet of our place. To paraphrase Ron Weasely in Harry Potter, "It isn't much, but it's home."

A dairy cow carved out of butter.

There's even a person milking the cow.

The fine details of the cow's tail, in butter.

A separate butter carving of a child with a calf.

This Belgian horse dwarfs its stall.

Glistening Belgians inside a horse barn.

Beautiful horse-drawn wagon.

A junior showman with overall reserve champion hog.

Two sheep in the sheep barn.

This 1901 building is being refurbished.

• Wednesday, 8/16: Mowing & Tomatoes
  
  • I sharpened the lawn mower blade. It's a cheap Chinese knock-off from Home Depot that looks like shredded tin foil after mowing just grass. We need to spend more money and get an authentic one from a Husqvarna dealer.
  • I mowed the north lawn. Tall chicory stalks and hidden mounds of mole dirt made for tough work. Damp soil and wet weeds combined to build up a thick layer of green cement under the mower deck. I cleaned that off with a putty knife and collected a partial wheelbarrow load for the compost pile.
    
  • Mary picked tomatoes. They're starting to pour into the house. She also watered plants. It looks like we're getting one, maybe two, pumpkins after all.
    
  • Mary found the first tomato hornworm of the season. It was a monster at three inches long. Stalks remain on one tomato plant where the beast was munching.
    
    
• Thursday, 8/17: More Mushrooms
  • About a week ago, we started seeing white oyster mushroom buds on the box of three boxes involving a mushroom kit Katie gave me for Father's Day. It was the last variety to show any signs of life. They grew quickly. We harvested them today, cooked them, and ate them (see photos, below). They were really good, especially with sliced garlic and garlic wine. A second batch of pink oyster mushrooms are now growing. The lion's mane mushrooms are brown and don't look edible.
    
  • Mary and I handed off the mower and mowed the north reaches of the north yard. We filled the gas tank three times and accomplished a bunch of mowing.
    
  • Mary picked more tomatoes and froze them. Just over two gallons are in the freezer.
  • She also raked some of yesterday's mowed grass and put mulch on the Porter's Perfection apple tree.
  • While doing chores, I saw a woodpecker in the top of the Esopus tree, probably pecking apples. I don't care. That tree is history come this fall or winter, due to fire blight in the trunk.

White oyster mushrooms ready for harvest.

Cutting up mushrooms. Garlic is in the foreground.

• Friday, 8/18: Peppers Picked
  
  • Mary mowed grass north of the near garden to give her a spot to stretch out the hose for watering gardens. Mary and I mowed the lane, handing the mower off to give each other a break. We wanted to get the lane mowed while outside temperatures were relatively tame. Later in the afternoon, I mowed the west yard.
  • Hot temperatures into the 100-degree range are predicted next week, so Mary picked all large peppers, or those on tops of plants that will suffer sun scald if left in intense heat. It amounted to a full four-gallon bucket of peppers.
    
  • Mary watered all gardens. I helped her after I finished mowing the west yard.
  • Karen and I texted back and forth. I wanted to know how she liked the Subaru Outbacks she once leased.
    
    
• Saturday, 8/19: Freezing Sweet Peppers
  
  • Mary washed and sliced up a bunch of sweet peppers (see photo, below) and froze 19 packages. She needs 20 packages. There are several more peppers in the garden.
    
  • Mary also picked a number of tomatoes.
  • I mowed the east yard immediately next to the house. I cleaned tall grass and sedges from around two of the three small apple trees we planted this spring and put a deep thickness of grass mulch around them.
    
  • Bill called in the evening. He ordered a sweatshirt from Warroad for a statewide Minnesota hockey event that will be held there in January. They sent it to his billing address, which is us, instead of to his mailing address. We'll save it here for him to pick up on his next visit. He took in an art festival, today.

  

  Large sweet peppers from the garden.
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

August 6-12, 2023

Weather | 8/6, 0.13" rain, 65°, 83° | 8/7, 0.11" rain, 63°, 81° | 8/8, 61°, 83° | 8/9, 0.83" rain, 63°, 73° | 8/10, 61°, 85° | 8/11, 0.01" rain, 68°, 89° | 8/12, 0.52" rain, 64°, 83° | 

• Sunday, 8/6: Apple Harvest Starts
  
  • Since Empire apples are falling from the tree, I started processing them (see photo, below). I took the 25 Empire apples I've collected from under the tree so far, washed them, cored them, cut them up, ran them through the food processor I bought last year, and froze them. Once chopped up with the food processor, all 25 fit into a gallon freezer bag. The food processor is a huge improvement over the hand-cranked grinder I used last year. Using lemon juice and water in a large bowl as a way to keep the apple slices from browning is also better than the Kmeta I sprinkled on the apples last year. I used too much then and I think it harmed the taste of the wine. I also have much better quality apples this year. All 25 apples were good, without imperfections. Last year was a completely different story. It all equals faster processing. I expended only two hours on 25 apples. Plans are to pick 25 at a time to process each day until I have enough for winemaking, then freeze the rest for our own use.
    
  • I found five apples under the Esopus apple tree that were chewed on. I thought squirrels worked them over, so I did a little squirrel hunting next to that tree. I also spent 30 minutes at the east end of the machine shed with a .22 rifle. I didn't see a thing. The chewed apples were probably from small bunnies.
  • Mary worked on a Halloween ornament cross stitch project.
  • Bill texted that he saw the Oppenheimer movie. He wrote, "Oppenheimer is incredible! Just a master class in storytelling."
  • We were under a tornado watch in the afternoon. Storms developed to the east of us after a front went through. Nothing came of it for us. We got a little rain after dark and in the morning.
    

  

  Empire apple pieces (left), in food processor (center), and ground up (right).

• Monday, 8/7: Harvest Time With Several Items
  
  • I processed another 25 apples from the Empire tree. I now have two one-gallon bags holding over 10 pounds of course applesauce in the freezer. Last year, 23 pounds made 2.25 gallons of apple wine, so I need several more apples. The tree still looks full, despite recent pluckings.
    
  • Mary harvested several cucumbers, tomatoes, tomatillos, hot peppers, and onions. She also put pieces of wood under 11 muskmelons and watermelons to keep them from rotting while they develop.
  • Mary mowed the west lawn and between the woodshed and the machine shed.
    
  • I removed fire blight from the big Bartlett pear tree where I could reach from the ground. Black branches filled two old laundry baskets. I also took a long branch off the small Bartlett tree infected by fire blight. All pear trees were horribly infected by this disease this year. I still have a great deal of ladder work to get all of the fire blight in the large Bartlett tree.
    
  • I saw five deer while walking the lane to get today's mail. The doe and her two fawns, along with the young buck, were part of this deer party.
    
  • The mushroom kits that Katie gave me for Father's Day are growing (see photos, below). Some will be ready for harvest, soon.

Pink oyster mushrooms.

Lion's mane mushrooms.

• Tuesday, 8/8: No New Taxes!
  
  • I processed another batch of 25 Empire apples and put a third five-pound bag of coarsely-ground apple sauce into the freezer. I'm now about an ounce shy of 16 pounds ready for apple winemaking. I picked another 26 apples for processing tomorrow.
    
  • Mary made minestrone soup. It was yummy.
  • We drove to Lewistown and voted. The local school superintendent tried sneaking through a tax increase on an off-year special election vote. We voted against it. The last time taxes went up after a successful vote for the school district, the high school installed a huge LED billboard that is on 24-7. Publicity by the school in support of the measure this year was minuscule. Mary discovered the school was trying to raise taxes during a mention at the bottom of another story last week on WGEM. She dug online and finally found an article in the Hannibal newspaper describing it. Today's election had 12 percent voting yes and 88 percent voting no. Asking for a tax increase didn't work this time.
    
  • I cut more fire blight branches out of the big Bartlett pear.
    
  • Mary picked several onions and tomatoes.
  • Mary raked dried grass from the west yard and mulched the blueberry bushes and the Porter's Perfection apple tree.
    
  • After evening chores, I let the pups out and watched a bat fly over Plato's head into the the light from the kitchen window.
    
  • A orange-red crescent moon rose to the northeast as we walked the dogs for their final outing. We stood and watched two bright Perseid meteors light up the sky above us after the dog walk.
    
    
• Wednesday, 8/9: Apple Munching For All!
  
  • Wildlings are enjoying too many apples off the Empire tree. Low-hanging fruit on the west side of the tree were stripped off and I found seven chewed apples under the tree, along with several green leaves. I also found two more Esopus apples under that tree with tiny teeth marks. I suspect deer, bunnies, and squirrels.
    
  • Apple processing continued. I did a total of 54 apples, freezing two more gallon bags of course applesauce. I now have 27 pounds, 6.6 ounces in the freezer, which is probably enough for a five-gallon batch of apple wine.
    
  • The pink oyster mushrooms, part of the mushroom growing kits that Katie gave me, were ready for harvest, so I removed them (see photos, below). Mary cleaned them up and cooked them in olive oil and homemade garlic wine. They were divine! Now I need to work on growing more of them and the other varieties.
    
  • Mary dusted living room books.
  • We got another big bunch of rain. We haven't watered gardens since Bill left after a visit on Monday, July 31st.
  • I picked 78 apples off the Empire tree that are destined for processing into frozen apples to be used in apple pies and apple crisps. In the process, I chased a woodpecker away. I guess it's time for those dastardly bastards to start wrecking apples. What I need is force fields, like shown in space movies, to keep wild things away from our fruit trees.
  • A revealing quote in WGEM news by the local school board president indicates the school's thinking in yesterday's special election. He said, “There was a lot more voter turnout than I thought there would be.” They were trying to sneak this tax increase through with as few voters as possible. It didn't work.

Harvested pink oyster mushrooms.

Sliced mushrooms ready for cooking.

• Thursday, 8/10: Freezing Apples
  • Mary and I washed, peeled, and sliced up 77 apples. Mary then blanced them in hot water and froze 16 quarts, the minimum she wants on hand until the next apple season. It means we don't need to buy apples to freeze from Edgewood Orchards in Quincy.
    
  • I'm starting to find apples under the Empire apple tree with holes drilled in them from woodpeckers. There were seven apples like this under the tree this morning.
    
  • Mary picked tomatoes, tomatillos, hot peppers, cucumbers, and a big bunch of onions. Today's onions filled a four-gallon bucket. We now have 2.5 milk crates full of onions. Some are very large.
    
  • There will be no pumpkins this year. The plants only have male flowers and it's too late for any pumpkins to develop and ripen prior to frost. A baby bunny that we think was born in the garden is eating sweet potato leaves. But, the good news is we have lots of squash developing. Mary propped up more melons.
  • I cut more fire blight branches out of the big Bartlett pear tree. I'm over halfway done with when I can reach from an eight-foot step ladder. 
  • I took breaks from cutting out fire blight by lighting off fire crackers any time I heard woodpeckers nearby. They scatter after I bang a couple of fire crackers that echo off the timber.
  • We saw the normal amount of resident cattle...I mean deer. I saw several while walking down the lane to get the mail. I saw a young owl near the mailbox.
    
    
• Friday, 8/11: Empire Apples Picked
  
  • With about eight chewed apples under the Empire tree and predicted temperatures to 90, we decided to pick all apples off that tree. I picked 377 apples that filled four milk crates. The grand total of apples picked off that tree is 589 and that doesn't include about 25, or more, chomped up by bunnies and deer. It did really well this year.
  • Mary picked garden produce, including all the rest of the onions. It's the most onions we've ever raised, with a little over three milk crates full.
  • Mary made a batch of pickles. One jar broke just as it went into the water bath, so she stopped it at just four jars. We have an abundance of pickles from previous years and she has a strong hankering for cucumber salads, so that's where the rest of the cucs are destined.
  • I drove to Quincy to pick up meds and other food items. The new Target store in Quincy is open. I popped in for a fast look. It's a vast improvement over the Kmart store it replaced. I had a hard time finding whole cloves that I want for a spiced apple wine recipe I want to try. I finally found some at Niemanns, formerly called County Market. That store is remodeled and looks great. Most all grocery stores in Quincy rebuilt and look better, due to the new Target store that came to town.
  • When I got home, the air was so humid that condensation was forming on vehicle windows where the AC blasted air onto the glass. The setting sun turned the sky a vivid orange color.
  • David Marquette, Ansel Marquette's son, visited us, along with his shaggy Australian shepherd dog. He just fixed up his father's old three-wheeler and was driving it. With a dirty bandana around his head and tennis shoes without laces, held together with duct tape, he looked the part of a Missouri hillbilly. He's fixing up a 1960's mobile home on Ansel's land south of us as he lives in it. After Ansel dies, he inherits the property. David checked bringing water to the property and the local water district wants $12,000 to trench in a water line. He's decided to rebuild an old cistern and haul pond water into it. Ansel said to David that Ansel and his father fixed that cistern, so it should be fine. David responded with, "Grandpa died in 1973!" He commented on all of the junk he hauled out of the place, like hundreds of empty plastic motor oil bottles. "Why keep all those oil cans?" he asked his father. Ansel told him he might need one someday. David told his dad when he needs one, dig it out of the trash, because he's throwing them out. He talked forever. It was almost dark when David left.
  • By bedtime, a very strong thunderstorm with a ton of lightning, dumped more rain on us. The U.S. Weather Service has us under a severe drought. It was that way a couple weeks ago, but not so, now, thank goodness.
    
    
• Saturday, 8/12: 12 Hours of Apple Processing
  
  • Mary and I decided to put a massive effort into processing all apples in one day. Mary is faster at coring and chopping up the apples, so she did a bulk of that chore. I did some of that, but also ran the food processor and packaged course applesauce into gallon bags for the freezer. Mary also kept out 70 apples that went into the fridge to eat and make into baked apples. Empire apples don't keep long, so we need to eat lots of apples over the next couple weeks. Mary also cored, sliced, and blanched 32 apples into eight more quarts for the freezer destined for future pies and apple crisps. Twelve hours after we started, we packed our smaller freezer with 14 one-gallon bags full of future apple winemaking sauce. I now have a grand total of 78 pounds, 10.7 ounces of course-ground, frozen applesauce.
  • The used food processor I bought last year did fine at chopping up all those apples, but I'll have to progress to a different method if and when we get more apples. Mary says if I don't, she's officially on strike! We need an apple grinder that handles whole apples in a hurry, which eliminates steps and saves time in processing large numbers of apples into juice.
  • Mary picked more tomatoes and found another small bunny in the north end of the far garden. I helped her find and capture the little guy. We hauled it down the lane and released it. Mary watched a large brown rabbit in the south end of the near garden bounce off the four-foot high fence I created on the north end, then easily jumped over the two-foot high fence on the east side. I guess I need to put four-foot high chicken wire around all gardens, since adult bunnies have learned to clear two-foot high fences. DAMN!!!
  • Katie texted me a photo of her with an award (see photo, below). She won first overall out of seven racers in the Mineshaft Grinder, her first-ever half-marathon at Hope, AK. It included a 1,783-foot elevation gain for the first five miles with rainy and muddy conditions. Katie said most people rode the race on bikes.
  • Mary and I watched the Perseid Meteor Shower and saw several. Some meteors left smoking trails as they streaked across the sky. Night sky conditions were perfect.
  • We enjoyed a bottle of blackberry wine in celebration of finishing chopping up apples to make even more wine. It's really good.

  

  Katie, the Mineshaft Grinder Half-Marathon winner!