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.