Oct. 29-Nov. 4, 2023

Weather | 10/29, 0.07" rain/sleet, 32°, 37° | 10/30, 23°, 40° | 10/31, 25°, 37° | 11/1, 18°, 45° | 11/2, 28°, 47° | 11/3, 43°, 62° | 11/4, 35°, 56° | 

• Sunday, 10/29: Racking Spiced Apple & Blackberry Wines
  
  • We picked more pecans, gaining an addition 121 nuts.
  • Bill and I racked the spiced apple wine for the third time. The specific gravity was 1.000 and the pH was 3.1. We tried it. This is a very, very good tasting wine. Mary says if all I ever made was spiced apple wine from this fruit, she would be very happy. I used a Jarritos 12-ounce soda pop bottle as one of the containers. It was a gift from our Hispanic neighbors who live south of us, across the gravel road. These bottles have a wide mouth, similar in the size of a wine bottle's opening, which makes it handier for fitting with rubber stoppers.
  • Bill left around 2:30 p.m., for his St. Charles apartment. Sleet started falling right after he left. Bill said he ran into rain in Hannibal and it rained all the way home.
  • I racked the blackberry wine for the third time. It's specific gravity was 0.996 and the pH was 2.9, or very acidic. This stuff is extremely dark (see photo, below). It's very smooth, considering this is a young wine. It possesses a very good flavor, probably the best blackberry wine I've produced. I confirmed a suspicion I've held for quite some time. Not all 5-gallon carboys hold the same amount of liquid. After pulling liquid from one 5-gallon carboy and a 750-ml wine bottle, losing some juice with the fines and a little bit for tasting, I had four ounces left over after filling a 5-gallon carboy and a wine bottle.

  

  After third racking of blackberry wine.

• Monday, 10/30: Mary and I Split and Conquer the Day
  
  • We experienced a killing freeze this morning, with a low temperature at sunrise of 23°.
  • Strong northwest wind gusts forced pecans to drop out of the trees, so we decided that I'd make a solo shopping trip to Quincy while Mary stayed home and picked up nuts.
  • Mary spent all day slowly going over the ground under the pecan trees, picking up nuts and scaring off crows. She picked 289 pecans. In the evening while reading, Mary said every time she closed her eyes, she saw dead leaves and grass going by.
    
  • At one point during a break from picking nuts, Mary removed a bit of the plastic we covered the winter greens with and noticed that they were all in good shape.
  • On another break, Mary grabbed a low-hanging Kieffer pear and ate it. She said it was super cold, crispy, and juicy. It had a good pear taste, but was like eating a good, crunchy apple.
    
  • I shopped all day in Quincy, IL. I found frozen turkeys on sale in Walmart for 98 cents a pound and picked up two over 20 pounds. One of the two pumpkins we raised developed mold on top and was tossed. I found pumpkins on sale at Menards for $1.98, each, and picked up five. Mary plans on cooking them up for pumpkin meat in the freezer.
  • I returned home at 5:30 p.m. Midway up our driveway stood a doe and a buck deer that ran off to the west as I drove up the lane. Mary was where I left her this morning, under the pecan trees.
  • I read online that the Quincy Herald-Whig was dropping back to mailing out only the Wednesday and Saturday editions of the newspaper to rural subscribers. Today, I reread the article and discovered people in zip codes starting with 634 will continue receiving all issues of the paper. That's us, so we'll still get the full newspaper.
    
    
• Tuesday, 10/31: A Pecan Halloween
  
  • Mary and I picked and picked and picked and picked pecans. Northwest wind gusts over 40 mph sent pecans to the ground by the dozens. We picked 421 nuts, a new daily record. All but a half dozen were found on the ground under the trees. Our backs were sore from wandering around all day, hunched over and staring at the ground.
  • Our yard was really loaded with birds of all kinds...robins, jays, cedar waxwings, cardinals, chickadees, juncos, crows, a Cooper's hawk, bluebirds, nuthatches, red-bellied woodpeckers, chipping sparrows, goldfinches, and a yellow-rumped warbler.
  • We covered the tubs of winter greens that already have plastic over them with blankets weighed down with bricks. A quick peak inside revealed all plants are nice and green.
    
  • I carved a face into one of our pumpkins (see video, below). It was supposed to be a startled face, but it kind of turned out as an angry, surprised portrait. The tea candle inside the jack-o'-lantern stayed lit throughout the Hocus Pocus movie we watched.
  This year's jack-o'-lantern.
  

• Wednesday, 11/1: Popping Garlic & Picking Pecans
  
  • Each morning for the past two days, when I open the bedroom curtains after waking up, there are deer standing next to the far garden eating persimmons off the ground. Today, I saw two young deer chewing persimmons and then licking each other's mouths. Ripe persimmons are rather gooey. We've decided not to collect persimmons this year and let animals eat them. A few nights ago, I spotted two sets of eyes high in the persimmon trees...probably young raccoons munching away.
    
  • Mary took down the Halloween tree, which is an old dried up cedar without bark or needles. It's just a trunk with bare branches. We've used the same tree for three years. I helped Mary carry it out to the north woods, where we leave it when we're not using it. Since it's red cedar, it never rots away.
    
  • Mary popped garlic to use for seed stock. Several of the varieties turned rotten while drying in the machine shed. We think high summer heat contributed to the problem. Mary plans on planting more of the varieties that didn't rot, so we have enough for next year.
    
  • Mary cooked up the jack-o'-lantern after removing the part I carved. It amounted to four quarts of pumpkin meat in the freezer.
    
  • I picked 221 pecans in two different sessions. Mary says she's done picking pecans, although she was looking down on the ground while under the pecan trees as we hauled the old cedar tree to the north woods. She says it's a bad habit. I, on the other hand, have gone totally nutty. A third of the nuts picked today came from the pecan tree closer to the house, which produces larger pecans. I discovered that most of the pecans from this tree have softer husks that I can now peel off. I'm guessing that the past few days of freezing and thawing contributed to this situation.
  • I picked winter greens that we enjoyed as a topping on our venison fajitas bowls. Both the fajitas and greens were yummy.
    
  • I cleaned the 8N Ford tractor's spark plugs. They become fouled if they aren't cleaned yearly. I also lubricated the log splitter's throttle cable.
    
    
• Thursday, 11/2: Garden Prep, Nuts & Cleaning a Trail
  
  • I dumped out and cleaned up the glass sediment bowl below the fuel tank of the 8N Ford tractor. Then, I ran the tractor several times between the far garden and where Mary dumps dead garden plants at what we call Dry Pond in order to beat down a path for her to run a wheelbarrow.
  • I sharpened the mower blade for Mary.
  • Mary removed all of the dead garden plants out of the south end of the far garden, where she will plant garlic. She was expecting to find some rotten watermelons and corn, but since I unhooked the electric fence, animals ate all but the frozen peppers. Small ears of dried sweet corn were pulled down and eaten, with cobs thrown all over the garden. Watermelons and muskmelons were mostly eaten. Even an acorn squash was chomped up. Mary said some of the squash vines were 12-14 feet long.
  • I removed the plastic from the winter greens, that all look wonderful.
  • I picked pecans off the ground before our midday meal. Mary and I picked more nuts before sunset, ending with several pulled off the near pecan tree. Mary found pecans under that tree and I used the 10-foot step ladder to pull them off branches. We ended the day with 310 nuts.
  • I used the steel blade on the Stihl trimmer and cleaned grass, weeds, and small oak saplings from the trail to the Bobcat Deer Blind. At the blind, I discovered a large oak, with about a three-foot diameter trunk, fell down and just missed the blind. A couple of its branches, about four inches in diameter, dropped just outside of the blind. I saw deer tracks everywhere.
  • Mary mowed up autumn maple and mulberry leaves and stirred them into the dry grass in the second bin.
  • While walking the lane to get the mail, I saw a flock of about 500 blackbirds. Some attempted to land in the east field, but most kept flying west, northwest. The few that started to land flew right back up and joined the others.
    
    
• Friday, 11/3: Squirrels & Nut Mania
  
  • Our dogs, Plato and Amber, love running north to chase squirrels that are often under the pecan trees. Mary discovered if she whispers to them that there are squirrels outside, it means more to the dogs than talking out loud. They got three opportunities to run after squirrels. Amber is especially good and spotting them in tree branches. She always looks up. I think it's from the terrier in her. Plato gets hung up with the scent on the ground...a true blue hunting dog.
    
  • After making and eating waffles, then doing the dishes, Mary and I turned to our latest hobby...picking pecans. Mary was going to do garlic gardening things, but decided to help me pick nuts just for a little bit. The nut mania is just too hard to resist. We made an entire day of picking pecans. Southwest wind gusts to 35 mph put several nuts on the ground. During our second nut picking session of today, I used the 10-foot ladder and pulled several large pecans off our closest tree. We reached a new daily record of 577 pecans. We dry them in the upstairs south bedroom in cardboard flats that canned beans come in. This morning, Mary poured several dried nuts from those flats into a cardboard box that reams of printer paper come in so we could walk around in that room. This is turning out to be a good pecan year.
    
  • Besides nuts, I looked at the possibility of changing the gas filter on the woodsplitter's engine. I probably need to also replace the gas line between the gas tank and the carburetor, which requires an empty gas tank. I'll wait and buy supplies on a future shopping trip, then run the tank dry to make the change.
    
    
• Saturday, 11/4: Pecan Record, Garlic Prep, & Clearing a Trail
  
  • This morning, Mary whispered to the dogs that squirrels were outside, then let them out the door. They split at the porch. Plato went south after a bunny on the lane. Amber zeroed in on a squirrel on the ground to the north, under a pecan tree. She's our major squirrel dog. Plato is lackluster about squirrels.
  • We've got a black cat on our place. Plato barked at it this morning as it ran to the machine shed. I saw a set of eyes under the boat shining back at me while wearing my hat light during evening chores. As I walked to the boat, it ran to the machine shed. It was the black cat, again.
    
  • On an absolutely calm day, pecans were pouring out of the trees. Mary picked gobs off the ground while I was up a ladder pulling large pecans off the near tree. We set a new daily record with 625 nuts collected.
  • Mary had a junco hop across the roof of a bin and look down to her, not worried that Mary was there, then hopped over to the other grain bin's roof and ate bits of pecan left behind from squirrel chewings.
    
  • Mary mowed the south end of the far garden where she will plant garlic, added grass mulch and then compost. After turning soil, she'll be planting garlic starting tomorrow.
  • I whacked down grass, weeds, and scrub elm saplings on the trail by Dove Pond, the old cow barn and down Black Medick Hill. Black medick is a clover that once grew in abundance on that hill. Now lespedeza, a noxious weed, has taken over. I've got to get serious about eliminating that weed. I used three tanks of gas on the Stihl trimmer. Another gas tank should finish cleaning up that trail. It leads to the Cedar East Woods Deer Blind. Regular deer season starts in a week from today, so I'm trying to get all deer hunting trails and blinds ready.
    

Oct. 22-28, 2023

Weather | 10/22, 37°, 63° | 10/23, 47°, 79° | 10/24, 63°, 79° | 10/25, 0.71" rain, 59°, 73° | 10/26, 1.20" rain, 60°, 67° | 10/27, 0.07" rain, 43°, 60° | 10/28, 0.23" rain, 32°, 39° | 

• Sunday, 10/22: News From Katie
  
  • Katie called. She's at the Prince Sultan Air Base (PSAB), located about 88 miles southeast of Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Katie said it's in the middle of the desert. She is eight hours ahead of us and 11 hours ahead of Alaska time. Katie said she's now over the time lag. There are several maintenance jobs required on the base that they're working on...things like doors ajar that don't open or close. The U.S. Air Force is building up their presence at this base, which was first established in 1951. High temperatures hit 100°. Katie said she visited Don (Mary's brother) and Kristen Orsen a couple times. While in S.C., Katie's group was limited to visits under three hours away and had a limitation of vehicles. Consequently, several people went on any trips. Other personnel who accompanied Katie to the Orsens told her that her relatives are really nice. Katie said her pets are doing good in Anchorage. She set up several people to handle them while she's gone. Anchorage is predicted to get to 12°, soon, Katie said.
    
  • I hunted squirrels for most of the day. I shot a fox squirrel this morning. Blue jays are constantly grabbing pecan nuts and dropping them to the ground.
    
  • Mary and I picked more pecans, with quite a number coming off the ground. Some are falling out of the husks, but most have husks with bird bite marks in them. I used the trailer behind the tractor to put up the step ladder and got several more pecans off branches. We collected 312 pecans, today.
    
  • While picking pecans, I saw an otter run across the yard near the old McIntosh tree. At first I thought I was watching a mink, but it was too large for a mink. It probably ate a bunch of fish from Bass Pond.
    
    
• Monday, 10/23: Cutting Firewood
  
  • Mary and I went northeast, near the Cherry Deer Blind, and sawed up an ash tree for firewood. It blew over last winter. After loading pieces into the wagon, we drove a little further north and sawed up a couple more trees to fill the wagon. We unloaded big pieces next to the woodsplitter in the machine shed and smaller pieces in the woodshed.
    
  • We picked pecan nuts, mainly off the ground. A south wind blew hard, dropping several nuts from the trees. We got 112 nuts, today.
    
  • We've always wanted a taller step ladder. New ones are in the $280 to $400 range. I spotted a used 10-foot ladder on Facebook Marketplace for $90. It's made of fiberglass with aluminum steps and has steps on both sides. It's in St. Charles, a St. Louis suburb. I lined up getting the ladder tomorrow. Since I didn't want to drive back home in the dark, I told Bill I'd be there, but not visiting, and I'd see him when he visits us this weekend.
    
    
• Tuesday, 10/24: A New-to-us Ladder
  
  • The guy I'm buying the ladder from left it on the side of his house with the gate to the back yard left open. He sent me a photo. He said to leave the money under the front door mat. I left home this morning, stopped in Palmyra, MO, at our bank's branch and got cash, put $20 of gas in the pickup, and drove south.
  • I first went to a place called Steampunk Brew Works, a microbrewery that also sells brewing equipment, and bought two universal stoppers that I need. The place smelled marvelous.
  • Then, I went to a nearby Sam's Club and bought two bags of coffee beans that aren't ever in the Quincy, IL, Sam's Club, and two buckets of cat litter that haven't been in the Quincy Sam's Club, recently. I bought gas there, too, for $2.84 a gallon. It must be the cheapest gas price in St. Louis, because cars were lined up behind ever fuel pump.
  • I picked up the ladder. I had to leave the pickup's tailgate down, tie the ladder into place, and tie an old red T-shirt at the ladder's feet, that were just at the end of the tailgate. I left money in an envelope under the door mat and let the seller know what I did, and then left for home.
  • I saw several mashed up deer along the roads to and from St. Louis. That's why I didn't want to drive in the dark.
  • I got home around 5 p.m. Our neighbor east of us was just starting to combine corn. We have a major rain event due to hit us tonight. He always waits until rain is coming before he starts harvest. Most all other farmers are done harvesting, since we've had days and weeks of dry weather. Sure enough, just after dark, it started raining.
    
  • Mary picked nuts off the ground four times today, while I was traveling. A strong south wind kept knocking nuts out of the trees.
  • I got the ladder out and tried it (see photo, below). I can get to nuts I never could reach. The next step is a lift, which costs a lot more than $90. This ladder will really be handy during cherry picking season and for spraying fruit trees. It's heavy and a lot sturdier than a six-foot step ladder set up in an old rickety trailer.
    
  • I helped Mary remove husks off pecans. We got 114 nuts.

  

  Our new-to-us 10-foot ladder gets me higher into pecan tree limbs.

• Wednesday, 10/25: Using Ladder
  
  • I set up the 10-foot ladder again and got into pecan tree branches I couldn't reach without an additional hoist. I found a small leaf rake that I used to grab branches and bring them down where I could pick nuts. We picked 267 nuts. We're starting to see nuts without husks on the ground.
    
  • I hunted squirrels most of the day and shot two of them. Jays, crows, and woodpeckers are all trying to grab pecans, too.
    
    
• Thursday, 10/26: Bigger Pecans
  
  • The pecan trees were messy with squirrels this morning. I shot two squirrels and sent several running away. They kept coming back in the morning, sometimes within a few minutes after firing the .22 rifle.
    
  • We picked 175 pecans, today. I didn't use the ladder, today, due to unstable, squishy ground. The pecan tree closest to us usually is loaded with huge nuts that never develop. We suspect it's not a native pecan tree, but a fancy variety that doesn't quite match our climate. This year our hard freeze is late in arriving, so as of today we got lots of bigger pecan nuts off that tree.
    
  • We received a lot of rain, today. There were times when I was in the east end of the machine shed waiting for squirrels to appear when downpours of water pounded on the metal roof like a drum.
    
    
• Friday-Saturday, 10/26-10/27: Bill Visits
  
  • We watched three bucks and a doe deer meander through our east lawn and driveway this morning. They weren't in rut. They were just hanging out together. One buck had a medium-sized rack. A button buck got the zoomies, running around just like a kitten.
    
  • Bill arrived Friday morning, looking forward to a break. The newly hired inventory manager at Bill's place of employment quit. They perform their inventory assessment next weekend and Bill is now in charge of that, when he will put in 12-hour work days. He took a big afternoon nap.
    
  • I racked the apple cider for the fourth time. The specific gravity was 1.000, the same as it was five weeks ago (I'm a week late with this racking). The pH was 3.1. Mary, Bill, and I tasted it. It has a strong apple flavor and it's quite tangy. There's no metallic taste, so it's much better than last year's attempt. I added 0.6 grams of Kmeta.
    
  • Bill helped us pick pecans. I used the 10-foot ladder to get more large pecans off the tree nearest the house. We got a total of 217 nuts.
    
  • We watched movies that Bill picked out. One was Mystery Science Theater 3000: Santa Conquers the Martians, where these guys from the Twin Cities make snide comments while viewing a really bad movie. It was hilarious, and yes, the movie was really bad. Then, we watched the 1944 movie, Arsenic and Old Lace, starring Cary Grant.
    
  • Through Saturday, we all picked pecans. We got 172 nuts.
    
  • We played six games of Yahtzee Saturday night. Luck was on my side. I had 13 yahtzees, four in the final game, alone.
    

Oct. 15-21, 2023

Weather | 10/15, 49°, 53° | 10/16, 35°, 61° | 10/17, 34°, 67° | 10/18, 0.08" rain, 47°, 71° | 10/19, 50°, 63° | 10/20, 43°, 71° | 10/21, 45°, 67° | 

• Sunday, 10/15: Racking Pear Wine & Perry
  
  • Mary picked tomatoes and said it was the last of them, since the plants were nipped by frost this week. The far garden gets colder than near the house and temperatures in the 30s means freezing out there.
  • She also picked the last five acorn squash, making it a total of 83 harvested this year. Many were small, but it was a good year for growing this squash variety.
    
  • Mary picked a few more pecans from under those trees.
  • I racked the two pear wines. There was an inch and 5/8 of fines in the pear cider and 1.25 inches of fines in the pear wine. Here are the details:
  • Pear wine: Once liquid was removed, I had 5.5 gallons of must. I added a gram of Kmeta. The specific gravity was 1.001 and the pH was 3.1. The must went into a 5-gallon carboy, a half-gallon jug, and half of a 330-ml beer bottle (see photo, below).
  • Perry: The fines were loose and not compacted, so I lost about a gallon of must, ending up with 4.25 gallons of liquid. I added 0.8 grams of Kmeta. The specific gravity was 1.004 and the pH was 3.2. The must went into four one-gallon jugs, a 750-ml wine bottle, and part of a 330-ml beer bottle (see photo, below).
  • Since I had such a large amount of fines, I cleaned the carboys outside with a garden hose. When I sprayed water into the perry carboy, the foam was three inches deep. Upon dumping out this water, the ground hissed and fizzed as it soaked in the yeasty substance.
  • The pantry is really full of several aging wine varieties. Twenty-three different containers hold eight wines or ciders. I've got garlic and parsnip wine yet to make. I'm not making Kieffer pear wine. Parsnip wine depends on whether voles did or didn't eat up the roots of those plants.

Pear wine after 2nd racking.

Perry (pear cider) after 2nd racking.

• Monday, 10/16: Catch Up Day
  • While dumping ashes from the woodstove in the morning, I noticed that squash plants that had green leaves yesterday were all brown and black. But, pepper plants near small persimmon trees were nice and green. So, we had patchy frost in the far garden overnight.
    
  • I did a bunch of odds and ends, like updating the checkbook and putting all of my winemaking stuff away. 
  • I undid electric fence wires to the far garden and the Esopus apple tree, so the only enclosure electrified is the fence around the near garden.
  • We still had about a quarter of an apple box of Bartlett pears wrapped in newspaper. I cleaned out 27 pears that were going bad and kept five good ones. We're kind of tired of pears and can't eat them fast enough.
    
  • Mary and I walked the dogs north on the trail to the Cherry Deer Blind and scared wood ducks off Bass Pond.
    
  • We also picked pecans off the ground and from branches I could reach with an eight-foot step ladder. We gathered just under 30 nuts. Most of the pecans on the tree aren't ready.
    
  • We enjoyed a bottle of 2022 blackberry wine. It's color is a deep purple. This wine is very smooth, with no alcoholic taste and a strong blackberry flavor...really yummy!
  • Bill gave us an Audible book: Patrick Stewart's new autobiography, Making It So. We look forward to hearing Mr. Stewart read it.
    
    
• Tuesday, 10/17: Spraying Old Stuff
  
  • We noticed the signs on some forsythia leaves that a light frost touched a few of them. I noticed a tiny bit of frost here and there on the east yard grass in areas hidden from the sun this morning.
    
  • Mary husked some hazelnuts.
  • I sprayed EM-1 (essential micronutrients) that I made up on April 28 and never did anything with through the summer. Using a steady stream, instead of a fine mist, it went down on the ground inside the dripline of all fruit trees, except pears, the old McIntosh tree, and the two apple trees I plan to cut down (Esopus and Grimes). The hazelnut bushes, the lilac bush, and the Prairie Fire crabapple tree also received a ground soaking, also. I added other components, such as fish fertilizer, into with three tanks of mix that I used. This should give everything a boost going into winter.
    
  • Mary and I picked 30 pecans off tree branches and from the ground. We're noticing blue jays and woodpeckers flying into the pecan trees, attempting to grab nuts. Often, nuts drop to the ground from their efforts and we benefit. 
  • Mary checked in the north woods for hickory nuts...nothing. There aren't even husks under those trees, evidence that they didn't produce nuts this year.
  • The black walnut and tall persimmon trees between our east yard and the far garden are loaded with nuts and fruit.
    
    
• Wednesday, 10/18: Animals & Maintenance
  
  • When I opened the bedroom curtains, I saw a deer in the far garden. Just two days ago, I disconnected the electric fencer to that garden. Deer are quick at discovering these things.
    
  • I chased a squirrel away from the pecan trees. When I hollered and clapped to encourage its flight, a coyote ran away from just north of me in the trees.
  • On a few occasions, we watched turkey vultures drop real low and fly over the yard as they played in the wind. They're masters in the art of flying.
    
  • I changed engine oil, changed the spark plug, and cleaned and re-oiled the foam of the air filter in the woodsplitter.
  • Mary cleaned and mopped the floors. Some guy made a mess in the kitchen with wine drips.
    
  • Mary and I picked 60 pecans off the ground after a strong south wind blew all day.
    
  • We received a little bit of rain as two fronts went through our area.
    
  • Mary and I tried another bottle of persimmon wine. Last time we tried it, the wine tasted bad. This time, it was quite good. It's aged over six months since the wine was bottled. It has a brown sugar taste, with a slight hint of a beer flavor. I might have to make more...maybe a small batch.
    
    
• Thursday, 10/19: AC Removal & Window Cleaning
  
  • I removed all three of the window air conditioners, along with pieces of vinyl siding I used to block sunlight and insects. The ACs are now stored on the machine shed workbench and the sunlight blockers are in labeled bags.
    
  • Mary washed window curtains and the inside of windows. She wanted to get this job finished before the annual autumn Asian ladybug invasion. Curtains drying on the clothesline outside and in the west breeze came out free of wrinkles, requiring no ironing.
    
  • I removed stickum and aluminum tape on the outside of window sills and then washed the window exteriors. Now, house windows are so clear, it's scary.
  • Each time I ventured to the machine shed, I scared a squirrel out of the pecan trees.
    
  • Mary and I picked more pecans. I've developed a way of rubbing the nut on the grass with my boot and getting pecan husks to start peeling off, so Mary collected several nuts off the ground and piled them up for me to work on. We got 117 nuts, this evening.
    
    
• Friday, 10/20: Squirrel Hunting
  
  • I looked out the window right before sunrise and saw squirrels marauding the pecan trees, so I went out with a gun and scared about six of them away. I joined Mary walking the dogs and when I returned, more squirrels were chomping away. I shot one. I ended up hunting squirrels all day. I dropped three out of the trees that immediately ran away. Mary says I need to sight in that gun. She's right. At least I put fear in several squirrels.
  • Mary cleaned and scrubbed the walls and floor of our bedroom. She also washed rugs.
  • Asian ladybugs are on the march starting today. Soon, we'll be vacuuming them up by the hundreds. House window cleaning preceded them by just one day.
    
  • We picked 200 pecans. Several were on the ground, but we also picked a number off a tree branch we reached from the step ladder. A view through binoculars reveals large numbers of nuts on upper branches of the pecan trees.
  • We heard a deer snorting at us from just north of the chicken yard while we picked pecans.
  • Katie bought seashell and sand dollar Christmas ornaments for her mother while she visited relatives in SC a couple weeks ago and Kristen (Mary's sister-in-law) sent them. UPS delivered the package at the end of our lane, today.
    
  • Mary and I enjoyed a bottle of 2022 dandelion wine. "I'm afraid to say that this is very good wine," Mary announced. It means I need to go through several days of plucking dandelion blossom petals. I didn't do it this year, because it comes in the spring when I also need to spray fruit trees. I'll have to do both chores next year.
    
  • On the last dog walk, we heard snow geese traveling through on a starlit night.
    
    
• Saturday, 10/21: A Roll Top Desk Addition
  
  • Last night, I spotted a free roll top desk at Palmyra, which is 30 miles southeast of us. We picked it up, today. I plan on using it as a hobby station, foreseeing it as a great location for fly tying activity. It was made in 1976, according to a card inside a drawer. The construction is press board, covered with wood-appearance plastic. It's not fancy, but alright for being free. 
  • When Mary and I moved the desk up onto the east porch, we realized it is very heavy. Initially, we thought of putting it in the upstairs north bedroom, but the weight would have been a real killer going up our steep stairs.
    
  • Before moving the desk out of the pickup, we moved loads of wine in coolers out of the north bedroom and moved Bill's desk to the other side of the room. But once we made a decision not to go upstairs with the new-to-us desk, we tried figuring out where to put it. After looking at various first floor locations, we decided to put it in the sunroom. The cement floor supports it better there, plus the lighting is great (see photo, below).
  • Mary moved the rolling book cart to in front of a stationary bookcase on the west wall of the sunroom. We can roll it out of the way to access books. She cleaned the desk, inside and out.
    
  • We rearranged the upstairs north room and did some vacuuming and wall cleaning after removing a long table I used to work on in there.
  • Mary and I picked 225 pecans...some from the ground, but several from tree branches. I moved the tractor and put the step ladder in the trailer, giving me an additional three feet of height, which hoisted me higher into the pecan tree branches. At one point, I had a walking stick insect on the bill of my hat. They're kind of creepy. While we were picking nuts, we heard a squirrel monkeying around in trees north of us.
  • On the final dog walk of the night, the puppies roared up to an opossum that was on our lane. It played dead. We coaxed the dogs further down the lane and when we turned around and walked back home, the opossum was gone.

  

  Our new-to-us roll top desk in the sunroom.

  
  
  
  
  
  

Oct. 8-14, 2023

Weather | 10/8, 40°, 68° | 10/9, 37°, 64° | 10/10, 36°, 67° | 10/11, 0.14" rain, 45°, 79° | 10/12, 0.41" rain, 50°, 76° | 10/13, 0.39" rain, 59°, 67° | 10/14, mist, 50°, 53° | 

• Sunday, 10/8: Mowing & Making Bartlett Pear Wine
  
  • Mary mowed the east and north yards. The mower kicked up lots of dust, since we're so dry. She came in looking like Pig Pen and gasping for a drink.
    
  • I started a batch of Bartlett pear wine. First, I cored, quartered, and cut the quarters of 106 pears into pieces. This time, I weighed the results. It equaled 36 pounds, 5.6 ounces of fruit. Three large stainless steel bowls filled with water and lemon juice held all of the pear pieces. Doing all of the pear slicing took six hours. Mary can do it in two hours, so I still have a ways to get to her speed.
  • Mary made a very yummy pork loin dinner, complete with dead-ripe garden tomato slices.
  • After dinner, I sliced up three 15-ounce packages of golden raisins for the pear wine. I juiced out 14 lemons and poured the juice into the brew bucket. Next, I filled two nylon mesh bags with pear fruit pieces and raisins, smashing the pears in the brew bucket as I filled the bags. This produced about two gallons of juice. I added 1.1 grams of Kmeta, six teaspoons of yeast nutrient, two teaspoons of acid blend to gain a pH of 3.3, five pounds of sugar for a specific gravity of 1.073, and two gallons of water for a total liquid content of four gallons. I'll adjust water and sugar levels tomorrow, after everything soaks overnight. I finished putting winemaking stuff away at midnight. It was a very long day. I still want to make perry (pear cider), but not tomorrow. If I lose some pears, so be it...we have plenty.
  • Mary noticed that we have juncos in the yard, today. They've arrived from the Canadian woods to their winter playground.
    
    
• Monday, 10/9: A Slow Day
  
  • We had a quiet day, due the late hours put in yesterday.
  • After working up a starter batch of Red Star Côte Des Blancs yeast throughout the day, I pitched the yeast into the Bartlett pear wine brew bucket around midnight. Just prior to adding the yeast, a hydrometer test showed the same specific gravity of 1.073, so I added a pound of sugar to the must to reach a 1.080 specific gravity. The pH was 3.2. A yeast smell immediately wafted from the brew bucket.
    
  • I put away all lights and extension cords used for butchering the deer on Friday night.
    
  • Today, Mary turned grass with a rake that she mowed, yesterday, in order to ensure it dries thoroughly.
  • She also watered gardens, which involves only parsnips, three apple rootstock saplings, winter greens, and potted herbs.
    
    
• Tuesday, 10/10: Making Perry
  
  • Mary picked up all of the dried cut grass and stored it in the second grain bin.
    
  • I started a batch of perry, or pear cider. First, I cored and chopped up 96 pears. It equaled 39 pounds, 6.5 ounces of fruit. These were big pears and processing them into three large bowls filled with lemon water took all day. I threw away 16 pears that were beyond ripe. I filled two nylon mesh bags with pear chunks, mashing them down with my fists after every five handfuls. That resulted in about two gallons of dark brown juice. I added nine crushed up cinnamon sticks to the two bags. Added to the brew bucket was 0.7 grams of Kmeta, four teaspoons of yeast nutrient, a tablespoon of acid blend to get a pH of 3.3, two pounds of sugar for a 1.048 specific gravity, and a gallon and a quart of water, giving me roughly 3.25 gallons of liquid with the mesh bags lifted out of the must. I left it sit overnight in the pantry. 
  • I cleaned up winemaking stuff after midnight, again. I was going to make a Kieffer pear wine. Now, I don't think so, since I'm so weary after cutting up 202 pears. We still have a bushel fruit box of ripe (or maybe rotten) Bartlett pears. When I asked Mary what we're going to do with these remaining pears, she said, "Pull," as in tossing them in the air for shotgun skeet shooting practice. We might eat a few, though.
    
  • The yeast in the pear wine is moving along, resulting in a specific gravity of 1.068. It smells very nice.
    
  • When we walked the dogs after dark, we smelled a skunk. We kept the dogs close to us, but never saw anything.
    
    
• Wednesday, 10/11: Pitching Perry Yeast
  
  • I worked up a starter batch of Lalvin 71B (Norbonne) yeast, recommended for ciders, and fed it heated portions of must from the pear cider brew bucket throughout the day. I squeezed the two mesh bags in the perry prior to pitching the yeast. This cider is a dark brown, chocolate  color (see photo, below). The specific gravity was 1.046 at the time I dumped in the yeast. I didn't add any sugar.
  • The pear wine is bubbling very well (see photo, below), with a specific gravity of 1.042, and a significant drop from 1.068, yesterday.
    
  • Mary cooked up a huge batch of veggie soup...enough for several day's worth of meals.
    
  • We walked the dogs north to the Cherry Deer Blind. They enjoyed the walk.

Dark brown pear cider.

Bubbling yeast on top of the pear wine.

• Thursday, 10/12: To the Quincy Book Sale
  
  • We drove to Quincy to take in the book sale at the Quincy Library. For $13, we bought 19 books and four movies. There were several history books of U.S. presidents. A book we bought was still wrapped in a new book plastic cover. It's the Guns of August, by Barbara Tuchman. Mary looked it up and it's $32. We paid 75 cents. This is why we go to the sale. While in town, we bought a few other items, including a couple of my medications.
    
  • After returning home, I checked the pear wine and the specific gravity was 1.013, or time to rack it into a carboy. Five hours later, after doing evening chores and eating supper, the pear wine's specific gravity was 1.007. The pH was 3.0. I squeezed both mesh bags. These pears are super juicy, because I gained an extra two gallons of juice, giving me a total of 6 gallons. I racked pear wine into a 6-gallon carboy and instantly installed a blow-off airlock into a jar of water. The CO2 gas release was hot and heavy overnight (see video, below).
  • The perry has robust yeast activity, with a specific gravity of 1.040.
    
  • While returning from dumping the pear wine waste into the compost pile, I saw bright yellow eyes reflecting back at me from the north yard, near the big pie cherry tree. I flipped on the brighter lights on my hat light and it was a very large raccoon, probably weighing about 100 pounds. That big boy could probably take down a small dog.
  Strong CO2 gas release after racking pear wine.
  

• Friday, 10/13: Wine, Wine, Wine
  • The blow-off airlock of the pear wine was significantly reduced in CO2 gas release, so I installed a regular airlock. About an inch of fines are settling on the bottom of the carboy, so I'll have to rack this wine, soon.
  • Specific gravity of the pear cider was 1.011, so I squeezed both mesh bags and gained almost two additional gallons of liquid. The cinnamon sticks added to this brew give it a yummy smell and taste. It reminded us of some kind of a spiced pear cake. The pH was 3.3. I racked the liquid into a five-gallon carboy and a gallon jug, allowing a good amount of head room. I put a blow-off airlock on the carboy, which was wise, since a little bit of foam came out of the tube after installing this system.
  • The cherry wine was due to be racked for the fourth time on Monday, 10/9, but with processing pear wines, it didn't get done, so I did it today. There was a small amount of fines in the bottoms of the containers, but the liquid was clear (see photo, below). Even so, I'm letting it sit another month, because the last cherry wine contains little "floaties" in the bottle that have to be filtered out prior to drinking. The specific gravity was 0.994, similar to the past two rackings, and the pH was 3.0. I was really efficient at leaving the least amount of liquid with the fines, so after adding one gram of Kmeta, the liquid went back into the same sized containers, a 5-gallon carboy and a half-gallon jug. Mary and I tasted a little of it. This batch has a good cherry flavor.
  • I reviewed several of the books we bought from the book sale. Mary started reading The Road to Monticello, by Kevin Hayes. I started reading What Happened, by Hillary Clinton. It has a signature of Allan W. Witte on the inside. I looked him up. He was treasurer of the Adams County Board and Illinois Senator Dick Durban put a piece about him in the Congressional Record, stating he was a consensus builder who consistently was reelected from a Republican electorate, even though he was a Democrat. I spotted an obituary. Buck Witte died last year.

  

  The clear cherry wine.

• Saturday, 10/14: Katie is in Saudi Arabia
  
  • We experienced mist in the afternoon.
    
  • Our activity level was low, today.
  • The pear wine and pear cider has slowed way down on releasing CO2. Both should be racked off fines, but they can wait another day. I need a winemaking break.
  • Mary picked enough pecans off the ground and from the bottom of tree branches to cover the bottom of a basket. Most nuts on the tree are still not ready.
  • She also broke open a few black walnuts that we collected years ago. They sat in milk crates in our porch entry room. Of four nuts, all but one was good. It's amazing how long a black walnut will last. There are several black walnuts falling off trees. We need to crack some of our existing walnuts and collect some more, since this seems to be a good black walnut year.
  • The winter greens are looking good, especially the arugula. I had a total crop failure in the two tubs of spinach. We're guessing temperatures were too hot for germination when I planted the seeds.
    
  • Katie texted that she and her Air Force Reserve unit from Anchorage finally made it to their deployment in Saudi Arabia. It was 8 a.m. Sunday morning, Saudi time, when she texted. The military shipped them all over the place prior to reaching their destination. Katie left Anchorage 17 days ago. She's overseas for six months.
    

Oct. 1-7, 2023

Weather | 10/1, 61°, 87° | 10/2, 53°, 86° | 10/3, 59°, 85° | 10/4, 63°, 82° | 10/5, 60°, 77° | 10/6, 43°, 57° | 10/7, 38°, 59° | 

• Sunday, 10/1: Chicken Coop Hay is Stored
  
  • Mary picked up hay all afternoon. It was from grass I cut on the trail to Bass Pond. First, she used a pitchfork to put it into mounds. Then, she moved it with a wheelbarrow to the second grain bin, where it is stored until we need it in the chicken coop. We have enough for winter and into next summer.
    
  • I used the small chainsaw and sawed up fallen limbs on the Wood Duck Trail. There was a maple limb next to old hog huts on Bramble hill and a large oak tree top that almost took out the Wood Duck Blind, but landed in front of it. I sawed off other limbs growing into the trail, rose bushes in the way, and a small hickory that fell in front of the Cedar East Woods Deer Blind. I took a hike down the dry creek bed to Wood Duck Pond. I spooked up about a dozen wood ducks when I arrived. Where tadpoles swam this spring is high and dry. The sand on that flat is filled with deer tracks.
    
  • I also whacked grass and weeds down on Wood Duck Trail to just 15 feet away from the opening into the east woods. Occasionally, I took out autumn olive and cedar branches encroaching into the trail.
    
  • Mary and I checked the Bartlett pears. They are yellow, but still hard, so they're not ripe, yet.
    
  • After dark, we watched the 2004 movie, Shrek 2.
  • On the last dog walk, we noticed that Jupiter was right next to the moon.
    
    
• Monday, 10/2: Halloween Tree Is Up
  • Mary washed a bunch of winter coats and vacuumed up spiders hiding in the house.
  • She also picked the last of the hot peppers, although there are still some jalapeño peppers to pick in the garden. Mary watered garden plants.
  • I picked up firewood that I cut yesterday on the Wood Duck Trail. I also nipped several cedar branches intruding into the trail and used the Stihl trimmer to clean out weeds on the trails to the two deer blinds in the east timber. I didn't get all of the firewood. I'll have to get that tomorrow and fix any gaps in my blinds.
  • I haven't seen any movement on yeast that I need for pear wine, so I ordered more from a company in WI. If both orders come in, I can use it all up, because it's a wine yeast I use most frequently.
  • We put up the bare cedar tree and hung Halloween decorations on it. Mary made two new cross stitch ornaments for it (see photos, below).
  • We had cheese and crackers with Granny Smith apples from our tree. Those apples are really good...much better than anything from a grocery store and even better than apples from Edgewood Orchard in Quincy. All of the apple tree fussing I do is really worth it when you taste these apples.
  • We also shared a bottle of 2021 cherry wine. It's really very good and orange in color...a good choice for an orange Halloween drink.

A new Halloween decoration called Raven Moon.

This one is called Nine Lives.

The Halloween Tree with the lights out.

This stick-like Halloween Tree seems fitting.

• Tuesday, 10/3: Readying Deer Stands & Harvesting Squash
  
  • After driving the tractor pulling the trailer to the turn-around spot at the bottom of Bramble Hill, I picked up all the rest of the firewood that I cut near my two easternmost deer blinds,  hauled it to the trailer, then drove it home and stacked it in the woodshed. There is now over a foot of firewood stacked in the woodshed.
  • I cleaned up three deer blinds and one deer tree stand, adding cedar branches for concealment, and nipping weeds or twigs that grew inside the stands. They are ready for deer hunting season, which includes a new three day anterless session that starts this Friday.
  • The forest floor is crispy, crunchy dry. We hope the cigarette smokers don't throw a lit butt in the woods, or we're all goners.
    
  • Mary finished cleaning the upstairs south bedroom.
  • She also cleaned house plants and hauled any that were outside through the summer to inside the house. The predicted low temperature for this weekend is 39°, which is too cold for house plants.
    
  • Mary picked all of the acorn squash that were ready to harvest and brought them inside. It totaled 78. Five squash are still in the garden and not ready to pick. She checked pumpkins. They're ready to go inside when she wants them.
    
    
• Wednesday, 10/4: Racking Apple and Jalapeño Wines
  
  • I racked the apple wine for the third time. It had a lot of fines and is still slightly cloudy. The specific gravity is still 0.999, the reading it had a month ago, giving it an 8.9 percent alcohol content. I think this lower alcohol level helps the taste. After trying the wine, Mary and I think it's quite good, with a very strong apple flavoring. It's tart, too. This is vastly better than last year's apple wine attempt. I put a three-gallon carboy and two 750-ml wine bottles of liquid back in the pantry.
    
  • I racked the jalapeño wine for the second time. The fines of this wine resembled the moon's surface, complete with craters. It came out in chunks. The specific gravity is 0.992, giving it an alcohol content of 11.4 percent. I added 0.6 grams of Kmeta. Remaining liquid filled a three-gallon carboy and a 330-ml beer bottle. After tasting it, Mary and I found this batch of jalapeño wine to have a strong pepper flavor. It was hot, but the pepper taste came through, too. It's a good batch.
    
  • Mary watered the garden.
  • We put the chickens in the coop early, due to dark clouds to the northwest, but we never saw a drop of rain. It's going to take a major rain event before we feel dampness.
    
  • As Mary picked tomatoes to eat with our evening dinner, she heard snow geese flying south. The last time we had snow geese flying overhead was March 5th.
    
    
• Thursday, 10/5: Cleaning Out Garden and Chimney
  
  • Most of the garden is harvested. Mary clipped off the two pumpkins, the rest of the jalapeño peppers that she's keeping, and a pitifully small number of sweet potatoes (20). Voles ate most of the sweet potato roots and small bunnies ate the sweet potato greens. Gardening was a struggle in 2023, but some plants, like snow peas and tomatoes, did great. The garden is down to a row of tomatoes, three apple tree rootstocks, and parsnips.
    
  • Mary picked half a bucket of hazelnuts.
  • I drove to Lewistown and bought a tube of stove and gasket cement. Partway to town, I saw four combines running in a field, kicking up an amazing dust cloud. This summer's drought creates a huge dusting every time a farmer harvests a crop.
    
  • I cleaned the chimney and the woodstove pipe. There was less soot in the chimney this year, compared to other years. A chimney swift nest and three desiccated nestlings were on the top of the soot pile. The chimney swift adults left early and now we see why they didn't stick around.
    
  • We watched the 1998 movie, Practical Magic.
    
    
• Friday, 10/6: One Shot, One Button Buck
  
  • Today is the first day of a new anterless three-day deer season that was added to Missouri's hunting calendar. The coolest nighttime low of this weekend is tonight, so we decided that I'll hunt this evening, because tonight will be the best time to process venison meat.
    
  • I sharpened seven knives, and moved lights to the machine shed.
    
  • I whacked down weeds in the south chicken yard. Some were above our heads. Once the weeds were gone, chickens, especially the three young ones, won't hide in weeds and hinder getting them into the coop at night. It needed to be done with me gone hunting, so Mary can get them inside by herself.
    
  • I went hunting at 4 p.m. A strong northwest wind blew, with gusts above 30 mph. I crawled into the cozy Wood Duck Deer Blind. Around 4:45, I saw two does walk east to the south of me. They were probably going to eat corn in the neighbor's field. I didn't have a good shot, so I stayed silent. Just before 6, a deer walked into view in front of me. It was munching on brush, then walked closer to me. For several minutes, it was behind trees. Many times, I had it in view, but it was facing me, which would prove to be a potential gut shot that I will not take. Then it walked up an incline and stood sideways to me. One right-handed shot and it went down instantly. All of those misses at squirrels with the .22 rifle paid off. This shot was right on target. It was a young button buck (see photo, below).
  • Mary and I field dressed the deer after I walked home and returned with the tractor and trailer. It fell in the dry creek bed, so we moved it a few feet to get it off the sand. Once dressed, we hauled it through the woods and put it in the trailer. After driving it home, we washed it thoroughly with the garden hose and hung it in the machine shed.
    
  • I installed lights, we ate supper, then we butchered the deer in the cool of the night. Temps reached 43° when we finished. There exists a genetic deer variety that lives here with long black hair. They always have long bodies. This button buck belonged to that family. They look skinny, but their long muscles add up to quite a bit of meat. We froze 30 packages of venison. Granted, they not big packages of meat, but just perfect for recipes like venison General Tso, or venison stroganoff. We put away the last venison package and cleaned up around 2 a.m.
  • According to Mary's calculations, we only need another like this deer, or bigger, to have enough venison in the freezer for another year.
    
  • I won't be hunting anymore this weekend. You can only take one deer during this early anterless season. Nobody was hunting nearby. The only shots we heard were very distantly to the north.

  

  A button buck deer, or tasty venison meat.

• Saturday, 10/7: Feels Like Fall
  
  • The outside temperatures are significantly cooler, so it feels more like autumn.
  • I moved the deer carcass to the north woods. Just as I suspected, yellow jackets were having a heyday. Butchering deer during daylight hours would have been really tough. I'm glad we did it in the dark, even though we're both very tired, today. I was surprised that nothing was gnawed on after leaving the hide and throw-away meat and fat bits in back of the trailer. Last night, I heard rustling on the other side of the corrugated steel panel of the machine shed's south wall while I was skinning the deer. I walked around the corner, saw yellow eyes gleaming up at me, shining from my hat light, and I said to the opossum, "I thought you were there." It spun around and ran away.
    
  • I pieced the stovepipe back together between the woodstove and the chimney, complete with furnace cement on all of the joints. We lit off a small fire in the stove, opened the windows, and let the smoke dissipate as oil burned off the sections of stovepipe. Then, we enjoyed an evening of wood heat. There's no more thorough warmth than heat coming off a woodstove.
    
  • Mary picked up branches that have fallen under the pecan trees and turned them into kindling. She also brought the firewood rack in from the machine shed, along with the kindling box, and hauled firewood into the house.
  • Katie sent videos and photos of getting out and about while on a visit to Beaufort, SC, to see her Uncle Don Orsen, and his family.