Sept. 24-30, 2023

Weather | 9/24, 61°, 79° | 9/25, 53°, 81° | 9/26, 55°, 80° | 9/27, 53°, 75° | 9/28, 52°, 78° | 9/29, 59°, 89° | 9/30, 61°, 91° | 

• Sunday, 9/24: Racking Spiced Apple Wine
  
  • I ordered some winemaking items that I need, such as yeast for pear wine, carboy carriers, airlocks, universal stoppers, and wine bottle corks from Hobby Homebrew in Carbondale, IL. They had it packaged and a shipping label ready by the end of the day.
    
  • I looked up past years' temperatures for Oct. 6-8, which are the dates for a new anterless deer hunting season this year. Last year, our first frost was on Oct. 6th, but other than that, most years the temperatures are too hot for butchering deer. Time will tell, but I'm not hunting when temperatures are in the 70s through 80s. Butchering large animals is better in near-freezing to 40s temperatures.
    
  • I racked the spicy apple wine for the third time. There were quite a few fines for a third racking. Liquid pulled off the fines equaled a three-gallon carboy and two 750-ml wine bottles (see photo, below). The specific gravity was 1.000, the same as a month ago, giving it 8.25 percent alcohol content. Mary and I tasted the wine. It's very yummy, with a full mouth feel that revealed the distinct flavors of apple, cinnamon, and cloves. It's warming, so this wine will be a great winter drink. It might even be good heated up. This is a big winner. It's still cloudy, so it definitely needs five rackings, or more to clear it up. After labeling the containers, I realized if you take the period away from S. Apple, you get Sapple, a new name for this wine.
    
  • I hunted squirrels at noon and again around 4:30 p.m. Squirrels are living a long life this year with me shooting at them. I shot at two with the sights dead center on them. Something's amiss. Dead-eye, I'm not!!! These squirrels are getting used to noise. I shot at one squirrel, then heard chewing in a tree above me. There was one brazen nut-chewer sprinkling shells to the ground. A twig floated down from my shot and that squirrel scrambled down the trunk and zipped across the lawn in front of me, hollering, "Thank you for being such a terrible shooter."
    
  • Mary cross stitched in the afternoon, getting a long way on her Native Raven pattern.

  

  Spiced apple wine after 3rd racking.

• Monday, 9/25: Deer & Squirrels
  
  • I watched four deer, the two does and two fawns, before sunrise, as they walked on the lane in front of the house and into the east yard. They looked north, with their tails up and stomped on the grass. I think they heard squirrels dropping pecan nut shells on the grain bin metal roofs.
    
  • Later, when I walked the dogs down the lane, I heard a deer snort and then watched a turkey fly off to the southwest near Bluegill Pond.
  • I took mold spots out of two S-shaped airlocks by swishing full-strength bleach around in them. It took over two hours to clean these up. I made the mistake of leaving them on top of the woodstove and letting air conditioned air blow on them. They never dried inside and instead, grew black mold. Next time I see mold, I'm tossing them. Most of my airlocks involve three pieces that when taken apart, are easy to clean.
  • I also put away winemaking items that were all over the kitchen table and the west room.
    
  • My squirrel hunting in the Elmer Fudd mode continues. I shot at a squirrel. It fell out of the tree and I heard it flopping around on the ground. There was another squirrel further away, so I waited. The second squirrel ran away after a couple minutes. I went investigating. The moment I saw the first squirrel on the ground, it zoomed off running to the northwest. I followed. I heard it rustling leaves as it zipped further into the woods. My guess is that it was knocked out after hitting the ground, came to as I approached, and then ran away. My near misses are having an effect. I notice fewer squirrels mobbing the pecan trees closest to the house.
    
    
• Tuesday, 9/26: Haircut, Purple Paint, & Trail Clearing
  • Mary received a haircut. For some reason, she didn't want to venture off our property looking like a shaggy wild woman from the woods. Her hair stylist is cheap. All he wants is food. She says that the best hairdressers are the bald ones.
    
  • Mary purple painted fence posts and tree trunks along our south property border, which is most important, because it borders the gravel road. Missouri allows property owners to signify no trespassing by using purple paint.
    
  • She found an unknown bush near the southwest corner of our property with blue berries hanging from it (see photos, below). We have yet to identify it.
    
  • I used up three tanks of gas in the Stihl trimmer fitted with a steel blade to clear trails to deer blinds situated to the east and northeast of our home. I ended the day on the trail to the Cherry Deer Blind just west of Bass Pond. Mary scooped out cut grass left on the edges of the trails with a hay fork and spread it out to dry. We'll store this hay in a grain bin to use on the floor of the chicken coop throughout the upcoming year.
  • I didn't see a single squirrel in pecan trees, today.
    
  • Bill called. He lost the responsibility of overseeing one warehouse department and gained the supervision of about four other departments. He also lost his lone employee in the receiving department, so he, alone, is the receiving section of the warehouse.
    
  • We heard snorty deer, both east and west of the lane, when we walked dogs for their last outing of the night. Deer are extremely plentiful this year.

The leaf of our unknown bush.

Fruit of unknown bush is 1/4" wide.

• Wednesday, 9/27: All Apples Harvested
  
  • A package arrived in yesterday's mail from Hobby Homebrew in Carbondale, IL, with the wrong wine yeast. I called them up. They're going to let me keep the yeast they sent (I use it for jalapeño wine) and send the yeast I ordered. It will ship on Friday.
  • Mary checked the Bartlett pears and they're yellowing, so they should be ready this weekend, or Monday.
    
  • I whacked down more weeds and grass on the trail to the Cherry Deer Blind. I took down tall weeds in the field I look out upon while sitting at that blind. Then, I started on whacking down weeds in the trail to Wood Duck Blind. I used up over three tanks of gas in the trimmer.
  • Mary picked a bunch more hazelnuts. 
  • She froze two more gallons of tomatoes. We now have enough tomatoes to get through the next year.
    
  • Mary froze 18 quarts of watermelons.
  • Mary and I picked all of the Granny Smith apples (see photo, below). An intruding woodpecker that I chased off the Granny Smith tree made me check them and they were ready to pick. Mary immediately stored them in the refrigerator. That's the last of this year's apples.
    
  • Katie called and we talked for awhile.

  

  Freshly picked Granny Smith apples.
  

   
• Thursday, 9/28: Shopping in Quincy
  • We awoke to a thick fog. It was gone by around 9 a.m.
    
  • We shopped in Quincy, IL. I bought three khaki pants at Salvation Army, along with a pair of sweats and another cooler for storing wine. I'm skinnier now, dropping from a 36 waist to a 34 waist. It's the difference between sitting at a desk and eating potato chips and doing things like cutting firewood or whacking down weeds and eating healthier foods.
    
  • We watched the 2001 movie, Shrek. We used to have it as a VHS tape, but lost it when we tossed all VHS movies. We found a DVD version of it in Walmart's $5 bin, today.
    
    
• Friday, 9/29: Buying Yogi Bear Picnic Baskets
  • Three old fashion rattan picnic baskets that Mary likes for storing things in were on sale in Facebook Marketplace for $5, each, so we drove to north of Canton and bought them. It turns out this was the same couple I bought some asphalt shingles from two years ago. Two years ago, they had a lot of junk. Today, they have even more junk. They're back yard is filled with semi trailers full of stuff.
  • On the way home, we bought gas for $3.54 a gallon in Lewistown.
  • Mary looked up one of the picnic baskets that has an Indiana manufacturer's name on it. Similar baskets sell for as much as $250 on Etsy. One of her picnic baskets includes a pie shelf, which is like a false bottom, where you store your pie, with other food items put above the pie shelf. Mary cleaned them all up, inside and out. They are destined to store embroidery floss and sewing threads.
    
  • I used up a tank of gas in the trimmer and took down more tall weeds and grass on the trail to the Wood Duck Deer Blind. I'm now near where we pick blackberries on Bramble Hill.
    
  • Mary watered what few plants we're keeping alive in the gardens.
  • On the way back from picking up mail, a four-wheeler drove by and then up our driveway. It was David Marquette. Mary says it's like getting a visit from a marmot...not exactly something you want to see in your yard! He was shirtless, wearing bib overalls, which is interesting, since David is especially skinny. He's full of fables and half-truths. He claims his great-grandfather brewed moonshine in the basement of our house. It took me about an hour to detach myself from his constant yammering. Mary said she walked down the lane a little ways to check to see why it took me so long to get the mail. When she heard David's voice, she went back home and did the dishes.
    
    
• Saturday, 9/30: Cleaning Room of Requirement
  • Mary cleaned most of the upstairs south bedroom. Because it's so full of stuff, we call it the Room of Requirement. Part of the cleanup involves eliminating some belongings.
    
  • I heard the telltale sign of squirrels in the pecan trees...nut husks dropping on the roof tin of the grain bins under these trees. I took a shot at a squirrel this morning and sent it scampering to the north.
    
  • Due to heat in the 90s, I attended to indoor chores. WGEM says Quincy saw a record high of 94°. We were lower, at 91°. My little indoor chores included putting away winemaking stuff from a recent shipment, updating the checkbook, researching pear cider recipes, and scrubbing sooty blotch and flyspeck off the Grimes Golden apples.
  • I ate one of the Grimes apples. It's mealy and tasteless. That tree will be taken out this winter. It doesn't grew well, anyway.
  • While Mary watered the garden, I watered small cherry trees and the three newest apple trees. We are very, very dry. It's good for farmers, though. Our east neighbor is combining corn.
    

Sept. 17-23, 2023

Weather | 9/17, 50°, 75° | 9/18, 47°, 78° | 9/19, 54°, 87° | 9/20, 60°, 74° | 9/21, 57°, 81° | 9/22, 60°, 81° | 9/23, 0.18" rain, 61°, 80° | 

• Sunday, 9/17: First Night of Butchering Chickens
  
  • Mary watered the gardens. She decided to stop watering muskmelons, because all that's left are tiny fruit that won't be ready in time for the first frost.
  • Mary then picked up grass that I recently cut with the trimmer and filled the middle compost bin to give it a thick vegetative cushion.
    
  • I installed the two steel panels on the middle compost bin, along with a half panel to shore up a rusted panel between two bins.
    
  • After surveying the chicken killing cone, all I had to add were two quick pieces of aluminum tape to the inside of the cone.
  • I set up lights and buckets in the machine shed. Two halogen shop lights that Bill gave us look great. The bulbs aren't good. One blinked out while showing it to Mary. Another went black before I was through setting up, leaving me with just one working light. Bulbs are needed prior to deer season.
    
  • I sharpened five knives.
  • A little bit of squirrel hunting took place just after 6 p.m. I just shot at squirrels, never hitting anything.
    
  • We butchered nine chickens, starting at 8:15 p.m. This year's chickens are loud. Every single cockerel that Mary grabbed let out a raucous cry. Through the night, we watched Jupiter rise, followed by the constellations Taurus and Orion. We heard lots of barred owls. Coyotes howled occasionally, sometimes real close from the north timber. After finishing the first six chickens, we took a coffee/cookie break. The last of my halogen lights blinked out when I turned lights back on to butcher the last three birds of the night. After dealing with chicken guts all night, I noticed that my hands were nice and supple. How's that for a beauty tip? We went to bed at 4 a.m. There are two more nights of this before we're finished with chicken butchering.
    
    
• Monday, 9/18: Chicken Butchering Night Number 2
  • I cleaned up last night's chicken butchering buckets. When I tossed chicken feet on a north woods game trail, a deer ran away to the west.
    
  • Mary and I took a two-hour nap.
    
  • Mary watered gardens while I sharpened the butchering knives.
    
  • I hunted squirrels a little after 6 p.m. I shot at one squirrel that was high in a pecan tree. It scampered down the trunk, opposite of me, then ran across the yard in front of me, blowing a Bronx cheer at me as it bounded off into the woods.
    
  • We butchered nine more young cockerels, starting at 8:30 p.m. It was windy and warmer. After turning off lights for our coffee/cookie break and returning to the machine shed, there was a young opossum at the chicken feet. It stole three sets of chicken feet while we were away. Mary accidentally dunked a praying mantis in water. It was on the top edge of a bucket full of water that she poured into a bowl. She set it off on a tree branch and it shook itself. I heard normal nightly sounds of barred owls and howling coyotes, followed by barking neighbor dogs. We were in bed by 4 a.m. There are only seven more chickens to butcher. YAY!!!
    
    
• Tuesday, 9/19: Whew! Chicken Butchering Is Done!!!
  • This was a repeat of yesterday. After breakfast, I cleaned up chicken butchering buckets.
  • Mary picked more muskmelons, processed all muskmelons in the house, and froze them.
  • We had a very tasty pork loin dinner, then we took a much-needed afternoon nap.
  • Mary watered gardens while I sharpened knives.
  • A strong south wind meant no squirrels were in the pecan trees. I sat for a bit at the east end of the machine shed with a gun in my hands, but all I did was watch the tree branches blow about.
  • During evening chores, I saw tons of dragonflies flitting about in the north yard. We think they're migrating through.
    
  • We started butchering chickens late, around 9 p.m., because approaching thunderstorm clouds showed on the weather radar. We saw some lightening as we started, but thunder sounded several seconds after the lightening, giving us knowledge that the storm was 15-20 miles northwest of us. Temperatures were much warmer, around 74°, so we only worked on two birds at a time until the last three, which we did as a final group. Bugs were thick. I used cookie spray (vanilla extract mixed in water) to keep tiny bugs from trying to enter my ears. A dragonfly regularly clanged into the aluminum light fixture over my head. Coyotes sang early in the night, then barred owls took over. Initial cloud cover gave way to stars showing directly over our heads with clouds on the horizons. We got to bed at 4 a.m., again. We're glad this chore is finished.
    
    
• Wednesday, 9/20: Chickens Mingle
  • We opened up the gate between the north and south chicken yards and let the big hens and Leo, the rooster, mingle with the three young pullets. We watched for several minutes. Everyone seems to get along just fine. Although, the white rock pullet, who is almost as big as our rooster, took a swipe at Leo. She might become boss of the flock someday. We now have 15 females and one very happy rooster.
    
  • I did a final cleaning of all buckets used for chicken butchering and the killing cone. I took down and put away lights and extension cords, then parked the tractor back in the machine shed.
    
  • Mary picked almost a full bucket of hazelnuts, several hot peppers, and a bunch of tomatoes.
  • Mary froze two gallons of tomatoes.
    
  • I squirrel hunted earlier, starting at 5:30 p.m. I scared two away and shot one squirrel.
  • We went to bed at a normal hour, the first time in several days.
    
    
• Thursday, 9/21: Garlic Stored & Coop Cleaned
  • I hunted squirrels first thing in the morning and shot one. They're constantly sneaking in a few minutes after a rifle fires. I heard shotguns going off north of our property. Someone was probably hunting doves.
  • Mary took down all of the garlic hanging from the rafters of the machine shed, cut off the stalks, sorted out the larger bulbs for planting this fall, and stored the rest away in deep net bags that once held 18 pounds of grapefruit. She has them separated according to garlic varieties, but together the total is equivalent to three full bags, or about 54 pounds. Obviously, we like garlic!
    
  • I cleaned the chicken coop and took down the wall separating chicks from hens. Five large wheelbarrow loads of manure, feathers, and wasted hay went into the compost bin. This is an extremely dusty job, so I wear a respirator. Listening to my breathing through that mask makes me sound like Darth Vader. After I swept out the coop, Mary added new hay to the floor. Chickens were very happy with their cleaned coop and new hay. I stored the lumber of the dividing wall in the machine shed rafters.
  • Mary watered the garden. She's cutting out half of the tomato plants, since we're close to getting all the tomatoes we need.
    
  • I hunted a little as the sun set. A squirrel went high into the pecan trees, but I never could get a solid glimpse of it long enough to squeeze off a shot.
    
    
• Friday, 9/22: Gladstone Burns Down in Circle, MT
  • Mom sent a photo of what remains of the Gladstone Hotel, in Circle, MT, that burned to the ground overnight (see photo, below). This morning it was still smoldering from the basement of the old hotel. Mom said some guy was cutting flooring out of the building and a spark from the saw started the fire. HERE is a link explaining the Gladstone Hotel.
    
  • This morning, the dogs and I chased away four squirrels from the pecan trees. Through the morning, I chased several more squirrels away with firecrackers. In the early afternoon, I hunted, but saw nothing. The earlier chasing was too good.
  • Mary worked on her cross stitch pattern called Native Raven.
    
  • I racked the apple cider for the second time. The carboy and gallon jug were both filled with deep fines. After pulling liquid off the fines, I was left with 3.33 gallons. I added 0.6 grams of Kmeta. Mary and I tasted the cider. It had a good apple flavor and was tart on the tongue. This cider possesses full apple taste. It's a keeper. The specific gravity was 1.000, giving it an alcohol content of 6.55 percent, just about perfect for a cider.
    
  • I hunted squirrels from 5 p.m. until sunset by sitting next to the burn barrel. I shot one fox squirrel and blasted at several others with poor shots. I think I'm pulling the muzzle up by yanking at the trigger, instead of easing the shot off with steady pressure on the trigger. All of my shooting did keep squirrels from entering our pecan trees this evening.
  • Mary checked the Bartlett pears wrapped in newspaper. She says they're at least a week out from being ready. With that news, I looked up wine yeast pricing for varieties I need to order. The cost is almost double what it was from a year ago.
  • A beautiful first quarter moon was setting in the southwest when we walked the dogs for the night. The orange slice in the sky was in a strong pumpkin color.

  

  A smoldering basement left of Circle's Gladstone Hotel.

• Saturday, 9/23: Very Dark Blackberry Wine
  
  • I hunted a couple times, but only shot at a fleeing squirrel. It's a waste of time shooting at something that's on the run.
  • Mary cross stitched.
  • She also picked tomatoes, hot peppers, and hung several hot peppers up to dry.
    
  • I racked the blackberry wine for the second time. Loads of mauve-colored cottage cheese was on the bottom of both carboys. This wine lives up to its name, because it's so purple that it's almost black (see photo, below). After racking, there was 5.25 gallons of liquid. The specific gravity was 0.995, giving it an alcohol content of 10.87 percent. Mary and I tasted the wine. It has a strong blackberry flavor. There was a hint of vinegar...I hope aging takes that flavor away.
    
  • We had a thunderstorm and rain that lasted for several hours. Starting about 2:30 p.m., we heard thunder rumbles and then it rained from 6:30 to about 10 p.m. On the last dog walk, moonlight lit up the fog hovering over the south field.

    

    Very dark blackberry wine after 2nd racking.
    

    
    

Sept. 10-16, 2023

Weather | 9/10, 53°, 83° | 9/11, 0.02" rain, 61°, 67° | 9/12, 54°, 75° | 9/13, 51°, 79° | 9/14, 52°, 79° | 9/15, 52°, 80° | 9/16, 0.14" rain, 60°, 79° | 

• Sunday, 9/10: Bill Leaves for St. Charles, MO
  
  • Katie ran one leg of a relay race between Skagway and Whitehorse. Her leg ended or started (I can't tell which) in Carcross, Yukon.
  • I added two tablespoons of pectic enzyme to the apple cider brew bucket and squeezed the mesh bags.
  • I also squeezed mesh bags in the blackberry wine brew bucket. The wine yeast is starting to win out over wild yeast and developing fizz and foam. The specific gravity before bed was 1.060, so the good yeast is moving along.
    
  • Bill left at 3 p.m. (see photo, below), after we enjoyed a smoked scrambled eggs meal garnished with fresh tomato slices.
    
  • I fixed a hose garden hose. It broke at a plastic fitting yesterday and soaked my shirt and pants.
    
  • Mary moved the Halloween tree, a dried up cedar tree that was stashed in the north woods, to the machine shed to keep it dry. She said it's in good shape.
  • Mary dug up potatoes from nine hills in the gardens. The results were paltry, but we don't care. We get a few free potatoes this way. They came from supermarket russet potatoes that were sprouting, anyway.
    
  • When we started watering gardens, we heard a raccoon growl from near the compost bins. We were probably 20 feet away. They sound like a small bear. A raccoon growl will make the hair raise on the back of your head.
    
  • I picked 56 Esopus apples, cleaning all of the good apples off that tree. Woodpeckers nailed a couple apples in upper branches of the tree. That's why I decided to strip the tree of good apples. It makes 90 apples picked from Esopus in the past couple days.
    
  • Mary used the blacklight flashlight after dusk and pulled 25 worms out of the garden...23 on tomatoes and three in the pepper plants.

  

  Bill waves goodbye from his car while leaving for his St. Charles apartment.

• Monday, 9/11: Triple Winemaking Day
  
  • After squeezing two nylon mesh bags full of applesauce in the apple cider brew bucket, the specific gravity reading was 1.040, a drop from 1.043 two days ago. I added a half pound of sugar to bring it up to 1.050. It makes for total sugar used in this cider of one pound, six ounces. I worked up a starter batch of Lalvin R2 yeast. Late at night, I pitched the yeast into the apple cider brew bucket. The specific gravity at that point was 1.048. I didn't add anymore sugar. The pH was 2.9...very acidic.
    
  • I racked the cherry wine for the third time. After adding one gram of Kmeta, a specific gravity check revealed 0.995, a minor change from a month ago of 0.994. The pH was 3.0. This wine has a nice, red/orange color. Mary and I tasted it. The cherry flavor is strong in it...quite good for a green wine. The must went into a 5-gallon carboy and a half-gallon jug.
  • The blackberry wine has the deepest purple/red color. The specific gravity is 1.053, so the yeast is slowly eating up the sugar content. Get near it and the brew bucket sounds like it's groaning, as CO2 gas is released through the purple cottage cheese that covers the top of the liquid.
    
  • Mary finished two Halloween cross stitch ornaments.
  • She also picked six worms and two worm eggs off the tomato plants.
  • Katie texted that her leg of the Klondike Road Relay was from the British Columbia/Yukon border to Carcross, Yukon. One of Katie's friends put an explanation with photos on Facebook. HERE is a link.
  • A motorized paraglider flew over our property right at dusk. His engine cut out and we think he landed in a pasture southwest of us. It was getting too dark.
    
  • We enjoyed a wonderful chicken dinner with our own garden potatoes and slices of garden tomatoes.
  • For dessert, we each ate two Esopus apples. They are extremely tasty. Too bad the tree is so susceptible to every disease known to apples, including fire blight, which is killing it.
    
    
• Tuesday, 9/12: Winter Greens Planted
  • Thick fog lifted in the morning for a full day of sunshine.
  • At sunrise, Mary watched four deer in the south lawn consisting of two does and two fawns. One doe was gray. They were eating and loving chicory stalks.
  • Mary made up a quart and a pint of refrigerator jalapeño pickles.
  • A midday check of the apple cider showed specific gravity of 1.043. It was 1.040 on a late night check. The must is fizzing a great deal.
    
  • The specific gravity of the blackberry wine was 1.039 at noon, and 1.034 at night.
    
  • I ordered a pound each of pectic enzyme and yeast nutrient from a home brew company that's going out of business, so prices were reduced by 35 percent. I also ordered vitamins.
  • I scrubbed sooty blotch and fly speck off about half of the Esopus apples I recently picked. These apple fungi are harmless. They just make the apple skin look ugly. Running warm water, a scrub brush, and vigorous scrubbing make the apples look great in a couple minutes.
    
  • I removed old lettuce stalks and grass from the six winter greens tubs. While loosening up the soil, I discovered that maple tree roots entered holes in the bottoms of five tubs and filled the potting soil within the tubs with feeder roots. After breaking off tree roots under the tubs, I cut up old chicken feed bags and laid them down under all of the tubs. Then I planted winter greens. They included:
  • Four radish types: Pink Lady Slipper, Gloriette, French Breakfast, and Zlata
  • Winter Bloomsdale spinach
  • Astro arugula
  • Red Tinged Winter lettuce
  • Winterbor kale
    
  • Mary watered the gardens, then while picking five worms off the tomato plants, she heard four separate deer snorts. We really have a lot of deer.
    
    
• Wednesday, 9/13: Blackberry Wine & Apple Cider First Racking
  • A noon check of wines in the brew buckets revealed that they were ready to move into carboys, with specific gravity of apple cider at 1.025 and the blackberry wine at 1.022. I tried to get a volume of five gallons of blackberry wine, but underestimated the amount of liquid in these berries. After squeezing the nylon mesh bags, I got 5.75 gallons, instead of five gallons.  I racked the wine for the first time into two five-gallon carboys (see photo, below), allowing for huge head spaces, since blackberry wine foams a lot when it first goes into a carboy. Blackberry wine develops what look like purple cottage cheese, while in the brew bucket. After racking, I had a lot of "curd turds" left behind.
    
  • After cleaning up, I racked the apple cider. Again, I underestimated the juice amount. Instead of three gallons I was aiming for, I got just under four gallons, with the cider going into a three-gallon carboy and a one-gallon jug (see photo, below). The specific gravity was 1.018 at racking time. Mary and I tasted the cider and it's a good drink. "I'd just like to sit here and drink the whole bucket right now," said Mary.
    
  • Mary picked a bunch of tomatoes, hot peppers (see photo, below), hazelnuts, and melons. She decided to end watering watermelon plants, because the tiny melons that are left are too small to develop to maturity.
    
  • We watered gardens, of course! NOAA's Climate Prediction Center told us last winter that spring and summer would be wet. They were very wrong. We've watered gardens almost every day of this summer.
  • While cleaning up chicken waterers on the porch, a fawn saw me from near the winter green tubs and then walked toward me. It ran north in a playful prance, then played with an older fawn. I stepped around the corner and saw a doe run off. Then, a gray doe walked in sight and ran off. Finally, the fawns ran away. This is the same foursome that Mary saw yesterday morning.

  

  Peppers: Hot Portugal (red) & Ho Chi Minh (yellow).
  

Blackberry wine after the first racking.

Apple cider after first racking.

• Thursday, 9/14: We Butcher Chickens Soon
  
  • Our young chickens are between 13-14 weeks old. We usually butcher at 14 weeks, so we decided to get ready to butcher in a couple days. It might start Saturday night, although rain is forecast for then. We'll still get ready.
  • Mary defrosted and took ice off the inside walls of both chest freezers, an annual chore in preparation of freezing chickens. She tossed two one-gallon bags of 2021 tomatoes, ten 2019 and 2020 old bags of sliced apples, and two bags of very, very old dried beans.
  • I drove to Quincy, IL, to get a medication and a couple other items.
  • Once returning home, I helped Mary water gardens.
  • The CO2 release from blackberry wine and apple cider is reducing as yeast burns up existing sugar.
    
    
• Friday, 9/15: Bartlett Pear Harvest & Chicken Butcher Prep
  • Three flights of Canada geese went over the house this morning.
    
  • Mary picked Bartlett pears. The job lasted most of the day. A total of 289 went inside to be wrapped in newspaper. An entire chest of drawers, with three drawers, is filled with newspaper-covered pears, as is an old cardboard apple box. She threw away a bucket full of fallen or misshapen fruits, which is roughly 30 pears. There are several pears still left on the tree, most of which are on high branches. We'll try to get them down to take weight of the branches that are bending down.
  • Mary also picked tomatoes and muskmelons. She froze two gallons of tomatoes and three quarts of melons. 
  • I scrubbed sooty blotch and flyspeck off the remaining 45 Esopus apples. I also picked the last three Grimes Golden apples.
    
  • We fixed up and ate white oyster and lion's mane mushrooms (see photos, below). Mary needs to get house plants inside and they go into the room these mushrooms kits are in, so we're calling it quits on trying to grow more "shromes". It's been a fun experiment. Thanks, Katie.
    
  • I hunted squirrels while sitting at the east end of the machine shed. I spotted something twitching in the brush to my left, brought up the rifle and spotted the ears of a fawn through the scope. For the next 10-15 minutes, I watched two fawns munch on anything and everything that was either green or a twig. They're amazing eating machines. These two little guys never saw me.
    
  • I whacked down grass and weeds with the Stihl trimmer fitted with the steel blade on the trail from the machine shed to the chicken killing cone. Then I knocked down tall foxtail grass around the compost bins. I also used loppers to cut tall, thick grass growing on top of old compost in two bins. Finally, I removed a couple of rusted out 5-foot wide steel panels on these bins. I'll replace these panels tomorrow and get the middle bin ready to receive chicken butchering residue.
    
  • I hunted squirrels, again, at 6 p.m., and shot a fox squirrel. At the same time, I scared two squirrels away from the pecan trees. They're high in these trees, chewing pecans like there's no tomorrow.
    
  • After evening chores, I helped Mary wrap pears with newspaper. If half of them go bad, we'll still have too many for pear wine.

White oyster mushrooms. These taste best of all varieties.

Lion's Mane mushrooms.

• Saturday, 9/16: Much Needed Rain
  
  • We had 0.03 inch of rain fall before we woke this morning. Any moisture is welcomed.
    
  • Mary made a batch of chocolate chip/oatmeal cookies to help sustain us during nighttime chicken butchering in the near future.
    
  • I moved old compost from the middle bin to the east bin after reinstalled some steel panels around the east bin. I have five half panels from when I made the walls of the bins extra high. Using old green treated boards from the south porch, I made two more panels by screwing two half panels to the 1x4-inch boards. I had to stop my work, due to an approaching thunderstorm.
    
  • The thunderstorm gave us an additional 0.11 inch of rain, which meant no watering of gardens required for tonight.
    
  • I hunted squirrels at the bewitching hour of 6 p.m. and shot one. They're tearing into all of our nut trees. We heard squirrels chomping away in the black walnut trees in our east yard, today. They really like pecans, though.
  • The blackberry wine and apple cider has stopped releasing CO2 gas.
  • Radishes and arugula is sprouting in my winter greens tubs.
  • We saw our normal squadrons of deer. One fawn was looking at me through the open north window. It was standing next to the weeping willow tree, which is right next to our house.
    

Sept. 3-9, 2023

Weather | 9/3, 61°, 89° | 9/4, 69°, 93° | 9/5, 0.08" rain, 67°, 88° | 9/6, 59°, 71° | 9/7, 50°, 73° | 9/8, 52°, 77° | 9/9, 51°, 77° | 

• Sunday, 9/3: Racking Apple Wine
  
  • We saw a black-crowned night-heron fly over our property while walking the dogs this morning.
  • I lined up purchasing 3-gallon carboys tomorrow.
    
  • Mary froze more tomatoes and hot peppers. 
  • She checked the hazelnuts. They aren't ready. Those she thought were ready burned up in the recent heat and were brown...they're normally a lemon-yellow green right now. Mary also propped up melons.
  • Mary cut down some hay from tall grass surrounding the compost bins.
  • I racked the apple wine for the second time, due to excessive fines at the bottom of the carboy and other containers. Fines were three inches deep in the beer bottle. The specific gravity was 0.999 and the pH was 3.0. A sulfite (SO2) test kit indicated 11 parts per million (ppm) in this wine. It needs to be about 60 ppm, so I added 0.5 grams of Kmeta, instead of the normal 0.63 grams for the 3.5 gallons of liquid I got after pulling the wine off the fines. Sulfur gas emitted from Kmeta (potassium metabisulfite) preserves wine. We tasted a bit of this wine. Unlike last year's apple wine, this batch has no metallic taste. It will be good.
  • Using a flashlight and getting down on the floor, I noticed that the cherry and spiced apple wines do not have deep fines in the bottoms of the containers like I thought they did. There's only a thin line of fines, but a slight residue settling up the sides to give an illusion of thick fines. That's good news, because I don't need to rack them until later.
    
  • We watched the 2004 movie, The Librarian: Quest for the Spear. Bob Newhart is in it and he's hilarious, especially when he's kicking butt in a fight scene. It's silly fun.
    
    
• Monday, 9/4: Picking Up Carboys & Racking Jalapeño Wine
  • I drove west about 38 miles and bought two 3-gallon glass carboys from a woman whose husband bought them years ago. He used some of them only a couple times, then died in 2016 and the carboys are taking up room in her basement. They are made in Mexico and in good shape.
    
  • A check of the pears and apples on fruit trees indicated that they aren't ready to be picked.
    
  • I redid the winemaking schedule, since I didn't rack two wines yesterday. The new one is in pencil, making changes possible.
    
  • Mary canned 14 quarts of salsa. She's raving about a tomato variety grown this year. It's called Jet Star. This tomato grows large and it's meaty, greatly adding to the salsa quantity. Mary had leftover tomatoes that she couldn't put in the pot, because it was so full. All of the jars of salsa sealed.
    
  • Mary turned hay that she dropped yesterday.
  • A check of the jalapeño wine at 3 p.m. registered a specific gravity of 1.023. Yeast in this batch is extremely active (see video, below), producing heat to give it a temperature of 81°. Mary was filling canning jars, so I waited to rack it until after our evening meal. Specific gravity was 1.001 at 9 p.m. The pH was 3.1. It went into one of my new 3-gallon carboys and a 750-ml wine bottle.
  • We ate our first muskmelon from the garden. It was divine!
  Robust CO2 release from jalapeño wine after racking it.
  

• Tuesday, 9/5: Some Rain!
  
  • We received a little rain in morning from a thunderstorm, which was nice.
    
  • Mary strung hot peppers on thread loops, then hung them upstairs in the south bedroom to dry.
    
  • Mary thought her hay was ruined by this morning's rain, but it wasn't. With a strong wind blowing, Mary turned the hay, then picked it up before evening dew set in. It's a start of hay storage for winter usage in the chicken coop.
    
  • Mary and I watered the gardens, a chore that takes less time as we finish various crops.
  • Our water supplier installed a new remote-read water meter. A blue plastic lid contains an antenna that relays readings to their office in Knox City, about 15 miles west of us. Hopefully, it works better than the last meter, which was to relay readings to a vehicle on the gravel road. They still had to drive our quarter-mile lane to get in front of our house to read it. The past year, they just estimated amounts, which were excessively high, so I called in our meter's amounts each month.
    
    
• Wednesday, 9/6: Dusty Mowing
  • Our day started with a clear morning, but clouds filled in soon after sunrise, and it was cloudy all day. Clouds cleared at sunset.
  • I mowed the lane. It was really dusty. I looked like Pigpen from the Peanuts cartoon after finishing mowing, so I took a quick bath.
    
  • I drove to Quincy. I seem to run out of some medication every single week! Looking north and south while driving across the Mississippi River, I could really detect our mucky air. Occasionally, you could catch whiffs of smoke, probably from Canada.
    
  • Mary froze 17 packages of green beans, which means we're done with our garden beans.
  • While returning home, I saw a deer bedded down along the edge of our neighbor's pond. We watched two deer grazing in the west field when we put the chickens to bed.
  • We enjoyed a bottle of cherry wine from fruit picked in 2021. It's really good. Mary says it resembles the taste of the cherry in chocolate-covered cherry candy.
    
    
• Thursday, 9/7: Start of Blackberry Wine
  
  • I started a 5-gallon batch of blackberry wine. Past blackberry wine creations started with 5 gallons and ended up with 6.5 gallons, so this time I made less to ultimately get 5 gallons. I thawed 16 quart bags on the sunny porch, crushed the fruit in each bag, then dumped the berries into two nylon mesh bags. Added to the 20 pounds, 5.5 ounces of blackberries was 3.5 gallons of water, 4.5 teaspoons of yeast nutrient, 0.8 grams of Kmeta, and seven pounds of sugar. The liquid level was 4.35 gallons, or 16.5 liters. Specific gravity was 1.078 and the pH was 3.3. It now sits overnight in the pantry.
    
  • Mary says she bowed to the inevitable and rearranged the pantry floor to accommodate my growing batches of wine. I now have five different wines in the making and taking up space on the pantry floor (see photo, below).
    
  • We watered the gardens and while doing so, Mary picked two muskmelons.
    
  • While checking fruit trees, we picked four Esopus apples, one Grimes Golden apple, and two Bartlett pears. Granny Smith apples aren't ready and several Esopus apples are green. Bartlett pears are due for picking anytime, now.
    
  • We discovered that the Grimes apples are not as good as described. They're too sweet for our liking. We prefer a tart taste. Esopus has that taste, but that tree is susceptible to every apple disease imaginable.
  • Katie texted me a photo of Haines Junction, Yukon Territory, Canada. She's on her way to Skagway where she will run in the Klondike Road Relay, between Skagway and Whitehorse, Yukon.

  

  Five wines on the pantry floor. In November,
  there will be eight!
  

• Friday, 9/8: Bill Arrives
  
  • Bill showed up around 11:30 a.m. for a three-day visit.
    
  • Mary made three pizzas, using garden produce. Bill, Mary and I ate all of them...take no prisoners!
    
  • I picked 34 apples off the Esopus tree. There are several more to collect.
    
  • Bill picked several worms off the tomato plants while Mary and I watered the gardens.
    
  • We watched the first two Fantastic Beasts movies, which involve the 2016 movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and the 2018 film, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. We each ate huge, 6-quart containers of popcorn that I popped up.
    
    
• Saturday, 9/9: Starting a Batch of Apple Cider
  • Something is suspect with the blackberry wine must. It's already showing signs of fermentation. I think some wild yeast that was on the blackberries survived the Kmeta I added and started developing. I worked up a starter batch of Lalvin RC 212 yeast and pitched it into the the brew bucket late at night. The specific gravity dropped from 1.078 to 1.070, so wild yeast indeed was eating up the sugar in the must. The pH dropped from 3.3 to 3.0.
    
  • Bill and I started a 3-gallon batch of apple cider. After thawing out four one-gallon bags of Empire applesauce, we put 25 pounds, 4.6 ounces into two nylon mesh bags. Added to the brew bucket was a gallon of water, 0.4 grams of Kmeta, two teaspoons of yeast nutrient, and 14 ounces of sugar to get a specific gravity of 1.043. I want to start with specific gravity of 1.050, which will put the alcohol level between 6-7 percent. More sugar should release from the apples over the next couple days. The pH was 3.2. No acid blend is necessary.
    
  • Mary picked a half a bucket of hot peppers, 8 watermelons, 2 muskmelon, an ice cream pail of cherry tomatoes, a bucket of big tomatoes, and a third of a bucket of hazelnuts.
  • Mary and I watered gardens while Bill picked worms off the tomato plants.
    
  • We watched the third Fantastic Beasts movie, which is the 2022 film, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.
    
  • When Mary and I walked the dogs, a nighthawk that was in the lane flew away as Plato approached it. The bird was parked right on the gravel.