Dec. 30, 2024 - Jan. 5, 2025

Weather | 12/30, cloudy, 35°, 45° | 12/31, 0.66" rain, cloudy, 31°, 35° |1/1, cloudy, 25°, 38° | 1/2, p. cloudy to cloudy, 23°, 42° | 1/3, p. cloudy, 17°, 27° | 1/4, cloudy, 14°, 25° | 1/5, 6" snow, 15°, 17° |

• Monday, 12/30: Taking Down the Christmas Tree
  
  • I intended to start a batch of garlic wine, but by the time I got around to thinking about it, the day was too far gone, so I helped Mary, instead. I need to start early in the day in order to handle the 466 cloves that go into a five gallon batch of garlic wine.
    
  • We took the Christmas tree down, along with all of the Christmas decorations. This is not a fast job, since all decorations need to be dusted off prior to getting packed in plastic totes. When you heat with wood, there is always dust in the air and over a month, dust settles on all decorations. Mary started it by slowly removing each item off the tree and dusting it with a soft brush. I joined her after she had a bulk of the ornaments removed.
  • Little spurts of rain fell at times in the afternoon. After dark, the rain really started falling in earnest.
  • As we wrapped up evening chores, a large flock of snow geese flew overhead. Their V turned into a serpentine rope as they spotted places to settle down for the night and several geese started to descend.
    
  • We watched the Ken Burns' Thomas Jefferson documentary (1997), then some extras about Burns' feelings about making documentaries. I like his work.
    

• Tuesday, 12/31: New Year's Eve 2024
  • I started a batch of garlic wine. I spent all day removing skins off garlic cloves. I started around 11 a.m. and twelve hours later I had 350 cloves with skins off. Mary took pity on me and jumped in to help. She's super fast and in just a few minutes, the 466-clove total was achieved. I ground them in a food processor and put the ground up garlic in a nylon mesh bag in the brew bucket. Added to the bucket was three 96-ounce bottles of Walmart white grape juice, 2.25 gallons of water, 7 pounds of sugar, and 0.8 grams of K-meta. The specific gravity was 1.095 and the pH was 3.5. After covering the brew bucket with a flour sack towel, I set the bucket in the pantry for an overnight soak. We got to bed very late.
    
  • Mary repotted our two amaryllis bulbs.
    
  • Mary figured out material for cross stitch projects and then worked on a Halloween ornament. "Because nothing says New Year's Eve like Halloween," Mary said.
    
  • Mary and I listened to an audio book of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer. We restarted this audio book that we listened to last winter. We used Mary's iPhone connected to a new Anker bluetooth speaker that Bill gave me as a Christmas present. This tiny speaker has wonderful sound and it works flawlessly.
  • I watched two trumpeter swans fly over the house while I did evening chores. I think they rose out of Wood Duck Pond. Swans are so large, white, and beautiful.
    

• Wednesday, 1/1: A Winemaking New Year
  • Mary mended clothes. She reports that she likes the wooden darning egg that she got from Katie as a Christmas present.
    
  • Mary also worked on a cross stitch project, while we both listened to Shirer's Third Reich audio book.
    
  • I worked up a Lalvin EC-1118 yeast starter through the day for the garlic wine. Added to the brew bucket was 2.5 teaspoons of pectic enzyme, and 3.8 grams of diammonium phosphate (DAP), which is the highest amount if DAP recommended for five gallons of wine must. I added 2.5 teaspoons of yeast energizer, which boosts yeast production. Historically, garlic wine gives yeast a sluggish start, so I'm trying to help it, initially. The pH was 3.8, which is too high, so I added four teaspoons of acid blend to drop the pH down to 3.3. Prior to pitching the yeast at night, I added 12 ounces of sugar to boost the specific gravity to 1.102.
    
  • I also racked spice apple wine, batch II, for the second time, yielding a healthy amount of fines. The specific gravity was 1.000. I filled a three-gallon carboy and a 375-ml bottle. Mary and I tasted the tiny bit left over. It has an excellent flavor. It has a good, tart, apple cider taste with a nice spicy clove aftertaste.
    
  • This was the first day since Dec. 22nd when we noticed solid patches of sun. On our nighttime dog walk, a clear sky showed off brilliant stars and planets.
    

• Thursday, 1/2: Winterizing Activities
  
  • I winterized the chicken coop, which is something I'm late in accomplishing. Thank goodness we've had a relatively warm fall and early winter. I found sponge foam, cut two pieces to fit the two north windows, and stuffed them into these windows that are about 6 inches high by 24 inches wide. Sections of a feed bag went on the inside and outside of the foam to waterproof it. The inside feed bag was cut longer and wider than the window so it sealed the crack when I shut the window's wooden door and turned the two latches shut on each window. Insulation from an old dog bed went just inside the north chicken door, followed by a piece of eighth-inch thick lauan plywood screwed into the surrounding studs. I started to fill cracks around the south windows with rags, but rain started falling, so I quit that chore. I hung the heater in the center of the coop with Mary's help.
  • Mary did a load of laundry and raked leaves to move five wheelbarrow loads of leaves on top of the compost bin.
  • I fluffed up the tall grass covering the strawberry buckets and tubs. Recent rains smashed it all down pretty flat.
    
  • I saw a bald eagle fly over the house this morning. Mary heard four sets of trumpeter swans fly over the north woods in the late afternoon. She never saw them but their calls were haunting as the sound echoed off the timber. She also heard, then saw a belted kingfisher near Bluegill Pond. HERE is that bird's distinct call.
    
  • Before darkness fell, we had light rain sprinkles, then sleet, snain (snow and rain), and finally some snow. None of this was measurable, but the snow was pretty as it fell.
  • Mary put the snow shovels by the porch. The prediction is for 10-14 inches of snow two days from today. If we get that much, it's a major dumping of snow for northeast Missouri.
  • The garlic wine shows no yeast fermentation, so I moved the brew bucket to behind the woodstove this evening in hopes of kick starting the wine.
    

• Friday, 1/3: More Firewood
  
  • The heavy snow and strong winds predicted for Sunday might prevent me from getting through on the gravel road, so I changed my semi-annual checkup appointment with the doctor to a week from Monday. I also got the clinic to okay refills on two of my prescriptions that are running out. By the end of the day I received a text from Sam's Club that they are ready for pick up. I'll get them tomorrow.
    
  • Mary searched the trees south of Bluegill Pond and found a couple silver trees without bark on them that looked like good firewood. While doing so, she spotted a six-inch diameter cedar tree where a large buck deer rubbed its antlers.
    
  • I greased the clutch bearing on the large chainsaw with white lithium grease.
    
  • We cut firewood from four trees Mary found. One was ash and the other three were white oak trees. When we unloaded the trailer, most of the wood lengths were stacked near the splitter in the machine shed and a few went into the woodshed or in the house for immediate firewood. The white oak gives off excellent heat, as our puppy, Amber, demonstrates (see below).
    
  • When I cleaned up the chainsaw, I noticed that the e-clip on the outside of the clutch was missing. I'll try get a new one tomorrow in Quincy.
    
  • The garlic wine's fermentation is very slow. There's a slight bit of bubbles showing around the nylon mesh bag, but it's very weak.

  

  Amber roasting her tummy with heat from the woodstove.
  

• Saturday, 1/4: Snow is Coming! Get Some TP!!
  
  • I drove to Quincy to pick up two prescriptions. Crazies with frowns on their faces filled the streets and stores. Larger crowds were out buying bread, water, milk, and toilet paper, than were out shopping before Christmas, due to the dumping of snow predicted for tomorrow. More than snow will be dumping in the upcoming hours. I saw cart after cart of toilet paper. The laxative effect of heavy snow predictions is huge. And why not? The first thing I think of when I see snow falling is that I need to run to the bathroom...not really. People are silly!
  • A Stihl clutch drum e-clip that I saw for $4 ($10 with shipping) online is $2 at Farm & Home in Quincy. They were out of them, but the power tools clerk, a nice young man, went into the back and took one off a thrown-out chainsaw and gave it to me, free of charge.
  • On the drive back from Quincy and after I crossed the Mississippi River and was driving across the flat river bottom in Missouri, a huge flock of snow geese flew alongside the highway and then crossed it. I was traveling at 65 mph and those geese were flying at a speed that was just a bit slower. My guess is that they were at 55 mph. They're amazing.
  • We're hearing very loud shots fired from a long distance away on several different days while doing evening chores. It's evident that more deer hunters are getting into using black powder guns during the alternative hunting season that is on until Jan. 7th.
  • At dusk, a flock of robins dropped into the cedar trees south of Bluegill Pond, near where we last cut firewood. They were smart and heading for shelter. Wild animals have a sense for incoming winter storms.
    

• Sunday, 1/5: Significant Snow
  • Snow fell throughout the day (see video, below). It was quite heavy at times. Wind gusts moved it around, so snow depth is hard to determine. In some places it's only 2-3 inches deep and in other places, the snow depth is around 10 inches. The snow is really beautiful as it comes down in huge flakes.
  • What do you do on a snow day? We had a wienie roast indoors using our wood stove (see photo, below). The hotdogs taste good and the open woodstove door adds heat to the home.
  • We did indoor stuff, like update the checkbook, pay the credit card bill online, and remove the hundred icons of photos on my laptop's desktop that I've sent out on this blog over the past year.
  • The garlic wine's fermentation is finally bubbling after several days of sluggish behavior. The specific gravity is 0.097, so in four days it's only dropped five thousands. The garlic odor is strong. Mary says it's as if someone ate four garlic toasts and then breathes down your neck two hours later.
  • We watched a full grown doe deer walk across the north lawn. Then it chased a young deer into the north woods. Around noon, we watched a squirrel run from the woodshed to in front of the house and to the east cedar trees. Lots of rabbit tracks are in the chicken yard and coming from under the chicken coop.
    
  • We watched the first three episodes of the 2008 miniseries, John Adams.
  • Mary and I enjoyed three pots, each, of Tippy Yunan from Harney & Sons while watching TV. It was the best loose leaf tea we've ever tasted. Goodbye Stash Tea Company.
    
  Today's snow falling as seen out the west living room window.
   

  

  Roasting wieners in the woodstove fire.
  

  
  
  
   
  

Dec. 23-29, 2024

Weather | 12/23, cloudy, 40°, 51° | 12/24, cloudy, 28°, 36° |12/25, fog/mist, 31°, 38° | 12/26, fog, 38°, 48° | 12/27, 0.42" rain/mist, 41°, 48° | 12/28, 0.04" rain, fog, 39°, 51° | 12/29, fog, 39°, 45° |

• Monday, 12/23: Shopping & Baking Goodies
  
  • I drove to Quincy and shopped for a few grocery items. The town was really packed with shoppers and intense traffic. Quincy, IL started as a river and railroad town, so its streets are narrow. Christmas reveals just how confining streets are to heavy traffic in this town. Stop lights went through two or three cycles before I could get through them. I was real happy to get out of town and go back home.
    
  • Bill arrived while I was shopping. He's here until the weekend. He's been busy sending in job applications.
    
  • Mary baked some oatmeal butterscotch chip cookies and made some chocolate peanut clusters.
  • We watched the 2003 film Love Actually, and the 1999 piece starring Patrick Stewart in the  Christmas Carol, both picked out by Bill.
    

• Tuesday, 12/24: Christmas Eve 2024
  
  • When Bill opened the curtain in the upstairs north bedroom, he saw a large raccoon in the top of weeping willow tree stump. It promptly crawled down and rumbled off to the north and disappeared under cedar trees between the chicken coop and the machine shed. We kept the chickens inside for an extra hour to ensure the raccoon was long gone.
  • The specific gravity of the spiced apple wine in the brew bucket was 1.060 and the yeast was quiet, so I put the brew bucket behind the wood stove to heat up the wine must.
    
  • I split and stacked three wheelbarrow loads of mainly maple firewood.
    
  • At one point when I turned the motor off that runs the wood splitter, I heard the sound of a huge flock of birds. It was from hundreds of starlings in the black walnut trees. When they saw me, they flew east to trees surrounding the dry pond. I grabbed two firecrackers and lit them to scare the birds away. Later, while Mary was moving firewood into the house, the starlings returned. She scared them away by whistling and clapping her hands.
    
  • Mary finished making Christmas desserts, which included cherry crisp and pistachio tort.
    
  • We enjoyed a smorgasbord of cheese, crackers, summer sausage, veggies, dip, plus two bottles of wine...pear and apple. The 2023 apple wine tasted perfect with all of the varieties of cheese. The 2021 pear wine was bottled exactly three years ago, to the day.
    
  • We played the board game, Azul, while listening to Christmas music on the record player. All of the records I cleaned a few days ago sounded new, without pops through the speakers.
    

• Wednesday, 12/25: Christmas Day 2024
  
  • This morning, I saw five deer south of the house, heading for our apple trees. I marched outside with just house shoes and a coat to chase them away.
    
  • We unwrapped presents after eating breakfast. They were all really nice gifts.
    
  • We received a call from Katie. She thanked us for one gift we didn't give her...some vacuum-wrap plastic to store food in the freezer. Mary, Bill, and I looked dumbfounded and told her that wasn't from us. She didn't receive some other gifts that we all ordered...books and a bicycle tire pump. I looked up the shipment and she received those items. She texted the coworker who wrapped her presents, who is on vacation in Mexico right now. Katie mentioned to her coworker about the vacuum-wrap boxes and Katie was told to open them. The missing gift mystery was solved. There were more wrapped gifts. Her coworker put them in the vacuum-wrap boxes and taped the boxes shut so nice and neatly that they looked like boxes originally shipped from the factory. When I asked Katie about skiing, she said the snow has melted in Anchorage, so skiing is not possible right now.
    
  • Bill and I talked to my mother on a phone call to her. Hank brought most of the food and they enjoyed a nice Christmas dinner that she fixed up. Eastern Montana had freezing rain, which is now thawing.
    
  • Bill picked out two comedies that we watched. They were Mr. Beans Holiday (2007), and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993).
    

• Thursday, 12/26: Mist, Splitting Wood, Yahtzee, and Dandelion Wine
  
  • We saw fog throughout the day. All surfaces in buildings with open ends, such as the machine shed and the woodshed, are moist.
    
  • A morning check of the spiced apple wine revealed a specific gravity of 1.030. It has a pleasant apple and clove smell and the yeast is fizzing nicely.
  • I split three wheelbarrow loads of firewood and stacked them in the woodshed to finish splitting up all of the wood that we cut up last Wednesday (12/18). The stack in the woodshed goes up and down. As I put more wood on the stack, Mary pulls it off and takes it in the house.
  • Mary worked on a cross stitch project called Moonlight, featuring wolves howling in front of a full moon.
  • Bill, Mary, and I played a seven-game session of Yahtzee. I won. Bill took second. Mary was in third place. It's all about luck.
  • We enjoyed a bunch of crackers, veggies, and cheese (10 varieties). We also shared a bottle of 2021 dandelion wine. It has a very orange color (see photo, below). This wine tasted excellent. It's hard describe the flavor. The wine tastes like dandelion, but in a good way.

  

  2021 Dandelion Wine.
  

• Friday, 12/27: Racking 2 Spiced Apple Wines
  
  • All day long we experienced fog, rain, and mist. On our last dog walk at night, we looked up and there was Jupiter shining through a crack in the clouds.
  • While eating breakfast, I saw a cardinal in the sweet cherry tree while looking out the west living room window. It was super bright red in the wet mist.
    
  • Mary reviewed all the seeds that we have, cross-referenced them to a book she uses to determine the longevity of various seed types, and then made an list of garden seeds that we need for the upcoming growing season. It will be $93, which initially seems like a lot until we realize how much food we put away each year from the garden. It's worth a lot more than close to $100 if we bought it all from a grocery store.
    
  • Bill and I racked two spice apple wines. It was the third racking of batch one. The wine is still cloudy, but we got a healthy amount of fines off this racking. The specific gravity was 0.999 and the pH was 3.1. We tasted a little bit of the wine. The flavor was wonderful...a distinct apple and clove taste. I lost about 375 ml of liquid in the racking. The remaining liquid fit exactly into a 3-gallon carboy. The specific gravity of batch 2 was 1.019 at 3 p.m. By 6 p.m., it was 1.015, so I racked it out of the brew bucket and into a 3-gallon carboy and a half gallon jug. The pH was 3.0. With Bill helping, we racked the two wines and washed all dishes in very quick order.
    
  • We watched a film picked out by Bill. It was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).
    

• Saturday, 12/28: Bill Leaves For His Apartment
  
  • We've now experienced several days of misty, foggy weather. It's getting old!
  • We said goodbye to Bill. He left after we ate a midday omelet stuffed with veggies with Ranch dip on top.
    
  • Mary read a bunch while I looked at a ton of YouTube videos about chainsaws.
    
  • Mary and I both vacuumed up flies and Asian ladybugs several times throughout the day.
    

• Sunday, 12/29: 34th Anniversary
  • Mary and I celebrated our 34th year of marriage, today. On Dec. 29, 1990, we were married in Red Lake Falls, MN, in a private ceremony in our rented house at the time. Several Red Lake Falls residents warmed up the small two-story home, while outside the thermometer rose to -29°. The next day, exhausted, we binge watched and taped the entire version of Ken Burns' The Civil War. We waited until summer to took a honeymoon trip to the Quetico Provincial Park, which is north of Minnesota's Voyageurs National Park.
  • Mary fixed up a shrimp dinner for our anniversary. The shrimps were baked in garlic wine with sliced garlic on top. Dipped in shrimp cocktail sauce, they were delicious.
  • I did several small jobs today, such as moving the Stihl trimmer from the woodshed to in the laundry room, moving the wooden orchard ladder from the woodshed to the machine shed, taking remaining switchel jugs down from apple trees, and storing away blankets we use for covering up plants.
  • Plato was outside with me. I followed him into the machine shed as his nose led him to a rubber garbage can in the east end of the building. Inside was an opossum. I put Plato in the house, then moved the garbage can to behind the machine shed, tipped it on its side and let the poor guy meander off into the north woods. Back inside the machine shed, I put a piece of hardware cloth over the top of the garbage can and weighed it down with bricks, preventing future critters from falling into the container.
  • I heard and saw snow geese fly over the north part of our property. I also heard trumpeter swans.
  • For three days in a row, we've received eggs from our hens. We went several weeks without eggs from them, so we had to buy eggs for the first time in years to get us through the Holidays.
  • Mary and I enjoyed a bottle of 2023 cherry wine. It's good wine, but I suspect this year's cherry wine is tastier.
  • Former President Jimmy Carter died today. He was 100.
    

Dec. 16-22, 2024

Weather | 12/16, sunny, 38°, 51° | 12/17, sunny to cloudy, 27°, 47° |12/18, cloudy, 30°, 37° | 12/19, p. cloudy, 21°, 45° | 12/20, cloudy, 20°, 27° | 12/21, sunny, 15°, 33° | 12/22, sunny, 19°, 45° |

• Monday, 12/16: Bugs & Flies, Flies & Bugs
  
  • With warmer temperatures, today was a big bug day inside the house. So, I vacuumed Asian ladybugs and flies several times throughout the day. There must be millions of the demons in the walls of this sieve house.
    
  • I finished covering strawberries by hauling three more wheelbarrow loads of tall grass to the enclosure inside the near garden. I also fluffed up grass that was matted down by recent rain.
    
  • This evening I heard, but never saw, trumpeter swans. They were out there flying by, somewhere.
    
  • We watched 2017 movie, The Man Who Invented Christmas.
  • The bright moon blazed a strong light onto the kitchen floor tonight. It's amazing.
  • I watched the online recap of a Minnesota Vikings 30-12 win over the Chicago Bears. Go Vikings!
    

• Tuesday, 12/17: Saw Sharpening & Baking Rolls
  
  • I worked on the big Stihl chainsaw by sharpening its two chains. The chain I most recently used only needed six strokes of the file per cutter tooth to get it sharp. Tips on cutter teeth of the other chain were severely worn off, so it took 12 strokes per cutter tooth to sharpen. I removed the clutch and greased the clutch bearing. I didn't have time to work on the small chainsaw.
    
  • Mary made rolls we will enjoy on hot venison sandwiches on Christmas day. With additional dough, she made a batch of cinnamon rolls that we ate in the evening.
    
  • While waiting for dough to rise, or rolls to cool, Mary worked on the new tree skirt.
  • Instead of seven swans a swimming, I saw seven trumpeter swans a flying over the north woods. They sure are big.
    
  • Mary had a rat snake suddenly appear on the kitchen floor. She hollered for me to come help. She couldn't leave, due to guarding cooling rolls from cats. I moved the snake on a dustpan to the basement where it's warmer and it has mice to eat.
  • We ate yummy cinnamon rolls, enjoyed a bottle of 2022 blackberry wine, and watched the 2013 film, The Book Thief.
    

• Wednesday, 12/18: Sawing Up Tree Trunks
  
  • When I opened our bedroom curtains after waking up, I saw two large does in the east lawn walking north. They're obviously milling about the lawn, because Mary spotted a new deer track on the trail to the chicken coop. I also saw new tracks through our firewood ash pile near the far garden.
    
  • Mary and I finished cutting up trunks of two dead trees we've been recently sawing for firewood. Before I started, I worked on the large Stihl chainsaw in the field. I ran it for a few seconds to check the oil output to the chain. Stihl manuals instruct to test how well the chain is getting oiled by running the saw at a high speed just in front of bare wood. Oil should spray onto the wood. I saw no oil, so I dismantled things down to the clutch. I noticed the Stihl grease I put on the clutch bearing was already gone. I need to get better grease, such as white lithium grease. I aligned the notch in the clutch drum to the wire under the clutch connected to the worm gear that runs the oil pump, then assembled everything. I made sure the chain oil setting screw was on maximum...it was. Afterwards, plenty of oil spewed off the chain at maximum throttle speed.
  • The saw with a freshly-sharpened chain, cut thick trunks into firewood lengths like it was butter. We hauled two half wagon loads of large trunk logs to the machine shed from the base of the ash and maple trees. Once split, this will make for a nice amount of firewood.
    
  • While I worked on the chainsaw several birds were seen or heard. We watched a bald eagle fly over the east woods. We saw two red-tailed hawks circling above. We heard a red-shouldered hawk, Canada geese, and snow geese. During evening chores, I saw two trumpeter swans.
  • After sunset, I labeled the 15 bottles of jalapeño wine and stored them away in a cooler.
    
  • We watched a Christmas show and shared a bottle of last year's apple cider. It is very tangy with a good apple taste. The apple flavor is stronger when enjoyed at room temperature.
  • Two days ago, my cousin, Marjorie, shared a photo (see below) taken in 1977 of Grandad Melvin picking up leaves with his invention of a leaf collector he built on his lawn tractor. He always engineered things to make life easier, or as he always said, "use your head for something other than a hat rack." Today, you can buy a Cyclone Rake leaf attachment for a riding mower for $1600. I'm sure Willis Melvin didn't spend much of anything to devise his homemade invention.

  

  The engineer, Willis Melvin, collecting leaves with his invention.
  

• Thursday, 12/19: Cleaning, Thawing, & Splitting
  
  • Mary vacuumed the back and around the working parts of the refrigerator. It always sounds much better after the fridge's motor area is cleaned out. She cleaned the inside of the refrigerator. Mary also cleaned the seat cushions used on the kitchen chairs.
  • I discovered an entity on Ebay that sells official Stihl chainsaw parts at some fairly good prices. I plan on comparing their prices, plus shipping, against what I'd pay at Farm & Home in Quincy.
    
  • We had a chicken midday dinner, served with homegrown sweet potatoes. The chicken was one we raised last year and it tasted wonderful. Over a year in the freezer didn't change a thing.
    
  • I put 21 pounds, 7.5 ounces of apple sauce in a big bowl behind the woodstove to thaw. By bedtime, some of the three overstuffed gallon bags thawed, but big chunks of ice still dominated the centers of each bag. I put it all in the fridge for overnight storage.
    
  • I split four wheelbarrow loads of firewood and stacked them in the woodshed. The ash firewood is really hard and splintered when split into smaller pieces.
  • We heard trumpeter swans again this evening.
  • I watched a PWHL game online. The Minnesota Frost beat the Ottawa Charge, 5-2, to take first place in the league.
    

• Friday, 12/20: Firewood, Record Cleaning & Christmas Music
  
  • A north wind blew all day, making it feel cold outside.
  • Mary did a bunch of house cleaning and I split firewood, then stacked six wheelbarrow loads of wood into the woodshed.
    
  • Mary finished hemming up the new tree skirt.
  • I cleaned Christmas records that we own, using some small microfiber towels that we picked up on our last trip to Quincy. On some of the vinyl recordings that contained heavy fingerprints, I used Qtips and a bowl of distilled water containing a drop of Dawn dish soap, followed by drying the records with a microfiber towel. They all cleaned up very nicely. 
  • While Mary sewed and I cleaned records, we listened to a five-record Reader's Digest Christmas set, and a couple other records, including one entitled Christmas in Germany, a 1957 recording, which is very good. 
  • We especially liked a weird little song called I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas, by Yogi Yorgesson. I looked it up online. That record, with Yingle Bells on the flip side, made it to number five on the charts in 1949. The singer's real name was Harry Stewart, born in Tacoma, WA, and of Norwegian ancestry. This music sung in a Scandinavian accent is especially funny after living in Minnesota, the land of millions of Swedes, Norwegians, and Finns.
  • An odd event happened just five miles as the crow flies northwest of us in LaBelle. A shootout occurred between a parole violator and a SWAT team after over six hours of a standoff. He was killed and his wife is missing. HERE is a story about it in the local news. In the 15 years we've lived here, this is the first time we've noticed anything like this so close to us.
    

• Saturday, 12/21: Spiced Apple Wine Number 2
  
  • I attempted to get the record player to broadcast onto the sound bar under the TV, when I realized that the blue tooth device built into the player only involves inputting sound and not outputting sound. I looked online and I need a blue tooth transmitter plugged into the headphone jack to send the signal to the sound bar.
    
  • The second batch of spiced apple wine is in the brew bucket. I chopped up a 1 pound, 14 ounce bag of black raisins...what a sticky mess it becomes. After peeling two pieces of ginger and cubing them (last time I grated the ginger, which turns to a stringy mess, so I cube it, now), I realized I only had 4.75 ounces and I need 8 ounces. We have ground ginger. Figuring the conversion, I put in four teaspoons of ground ginger to equal the 3.25 ounces I was missing. I crunched up six cinnamon sticks in the large mortar and pestle, which is much easier than breaking them by hand. I measured out 0.55 ounces of cloves. There was just a tiny bit of ice in the three bags of the 21 pounds, 7.5 ounces of course apple sauce that was thawing in the fridge. All of these ingredients went into two nylon mesh bags, along with a gallon of water, 1.5 pounds of sugar, and 0.5 grams of Kmeta. The specific gravity was 1.059 and the pH was 3.2. The brew bucket sits overnight in the pantry, waiting for tomorrow's additions.
    
  • We watched the 1994 movie, Santa Clause.
    

• Sunday, 12/22: Firewood & Wine
  
  • I split more firewood and stacked four wheelbarrow loads into the woodshed. Wood that we set in front of the splitter, because it received rain before we cut the firewood from the trunks of trees, was mostly dry.
    
  • I added 2 tablespoons of pectic enzyme to the spiced apple wine II in the brew bucket and worked up a starter of Red Star Côte des Blancs yeast that I pitched into the brew bucket prior to going to bed. At that point the specific gravity was 1.064, a five point bump boosted by sugars from the soaking apples and raisins. The pH was still 3.2.
    
  • We watched the 2002 film, Santa Clause 2.
    

Dec. 9-15, 2024

Weather | 12/9, cloudy, 35°, 54° | 12/10, sunny, 27°, 39° |12/11, sunny, 27°, 30° | 12/12, cloudy, 15°, 17° | 12/13, p. cloudy, 7°, 31° | 12/14, 1.48" rain, 27°, 43° | 12/15, cloudy, 33°, 43° |

• Monday, 12/9: Making Kindling & Winterizing Strawberry Plants
  
  • Once Plato stepped outside this morning, he immediately barked at a pair of full-sized doe deer that were probably eating on the branches of the apple trees just south of the house. Plato gets all defensive and barks while bouncing up and down on stiffened legs when he sees any deer. I usually get on him to try to discourage him from barking at wildlife, but chasing deer away that were eating on our fruit trees is A-OK in my book.
    
  • We had a sunny beginning, with patchy ground fog, but it turned cloudy for the day starting around 9:30 a.m.
    
  • We vacuumed our normal squadrons of bugs inside the house.
    
  • Mary made kindling by breaking up tree branches that were dried inside the machine shed for several months. They make excellent kindling for starting fires in the woodstove.
    
  • I winterized the strawberry plants by first cutting all of the leaves off the plants. Even though we had temperatures in the single digits just four days ago, most strawberry plants had new leaf sprouts in the centers of the crowns. I then bunched all of the strawberry buckets and tubs into a diamond shape and circled them all with 30-inch high fencing. Finally, I used a pitchfork and raked up three wheelbarrow loads of tall grass that I cut when I cleared the trail to the ponds and put the grass into the tops of the buckets and tubs for insulation. Tomorrow, I'll deepen the grass level to the height of the fence, completely covering all strawberry containers.
    
  • This morning, a female bluebird that was above us in a tree along the lane was singing to us as we walked by with the dogs. Later in the day, we heard a pileated woodpecker banging on an ash tree in the north woods.
    

• Tuesday, 12/10: More Grass Insulation & Kindling Branch Collecting
  
  • I raked more tall grass from trails I cut last month and added it between the strawberry containers and the 30-inch fence circling the containers. It took eight wheelbarrow loads to fill that space. I've got about eight inches from the existing height of the grass to fill to the top of the fence (see photo, below). I think it will provide excellent insulation for the strawberry crowns. Areas where I removed the grass along the edges of the trails showed green grass, whereas out in the open, all of the grass is now brown. I'm keeping the strawberry containers outside in the near garden, because I think they will survive better with moisture from rainfall and snow melt. Plus, with better insulation from the grass, we might see better survival.
    
  • Mary picked up branches that have fallen out of trees in the yard and moved them to inside the machine shed to dry. She left behind green branches that still had dead leaves on them. After about a month of drying, she breaks them up into kindling.
    
  • Mary saw a buck rub on a persimmon sapling in the east yard that is very close to the far garden (see photo, below). She thinks a buck deer put it there within the past 15 days, since it still looks pretty fresh.
  • We watched the 2006 movie, The Holiday. It really is a delightful film.
  • We enjoyed a bottle of 2024 cherry wine. It was bottled on 9/22, so this wine is very young. It tastes marvelous, which is rare for a wine this young. Mary says she likes how the cherry flavor comes out as the wine rolls over your tongue. "It's not an instant flavor, but more of a developing flavor," she said. It has a very red/orange color that is quite attractive. We think this cherry wine is our new favorite.

Strawberry containers are under grass in this enclosure.

Buck rub on a sapling. Far garden is in the background.

• Wednesday, 12/11: Collecting Firewood
  
  • We had strong northwest winds today.
  • Mary put together a shopping list for tomorrow.
    
  • Mary and I took the tractor and wagon east of the far garden and found another dead and standing maple tree that I sawed down. I sawed up several branches into firewood logs. Mary filled the wagon with them. There's more of that tree that I want to saw up tomorrow, if we have time after our shopping trip. We unloaded big pieces into the machine shed and smaller pieces not requiring splitting into the woodshed.
    
  • A big flock of snow geese flew over the house right when we were heading down east for firewood. They were all blues. Some snow geese are white and others are blue.
    

• Thursday, 12/12: Shopping
  
  • The tires on the pickup looked low. I checked and they were all around 22 psi, so I used my mini air compressor and aired them all up to 35 psi, which is the air pressure listed on the driver's side door sticker.
    
  • We shopped in Quincy. It was great. Cool temperatures kept shoppers home and we had wide open aisles almost everywhere. I picked up two more coolers at the Salvation Army to store wine. The upstairs north bedroom is getting so full of wine-storage coolers that pretty soon Bill will have to sleep in the hallway when he visits...just kidding!
  • When we drove over the Memorial Bridge to enter Quincy, Mary saw a flock of bufflehead ducks near the Missouri shoreline of the Mississippi River.
    
  • While we were quietly shopping, some nitwit stole a large FedEx delivery van in Quincy and drove it almost to Palmyra, MO, before getting apprehended. Katie sent us a link via Facebook to an image of this occurrence. HERE is a link to a news story about it.
  • We watched two movies. They were Sleepless in Seattle and While You Were Sleeping. Maybe we were tired and unconsciously selected these titles.
    

• Friday, 12/13: Moving Hay & Firewood
  
  • In the early morning hours, while checking the thermometer, I heard a barred owl somewhere just outside our door, hooting away. Mary had a pair of red-shouldered hawks circle above her as she did a firewood search. We also spotted a bald eagle circling high above our property.
    
  • I moved four more wheelbarrow loads of hay to the strawberry plants. The fence enclosure needs even more, but I had to quit so we could get another load of firewood. Rain is predicted for tomorrow, so firewood collection is of utmost importance, today.
    
  • Mary moved a little more hay to chicken coop.
    
  • Then, she looked for a silver tree. A silver tree is a standing dead tree in which the bark falls off and the remaining wood turns to a gray/silver color. It usually signifies dry wood. She found such a tree, an ash that toppled onto several cedar trees and branches, keeping most of the wood above ground.
    
  • Mary and I drove the tractor and wagon to that dead ash tree, located east of the old cow barn, and cut most of it up into firewood. It is extremely hard wood that dulled the chains on both of my Stihl chainsaws. I didn't quite finish cutting up the trunk. We came away with a full trailer load of firewood.
    
  • Mary and I stacked big firewood chunks into the machine shed. Mary progressed into evening chores while I emptied the trailer and stacked smaller firewood pieces into the woodshed.
    
  • It was too cold and windy outside, so I cleaned the chainsaws inside after we had our nighttime meal.
    
  • I noticed an issue with the small chainsaw where some of the guides of the chain won't go into the slide along the edge of the bar. I looked it up online. It's due to burrs that develop on the guides that make the chainsaw flip the chain off the bar, which occurred today. I just need to file the burrs off these guides.
  • The new ash firewood was super nice in tonight's woodstove. It burns very hot and the fire lasts for a much longer time, compared to maple firewood.
    

• Saturday, 12/14: A Quiet Rainy Day
  
  • Mary woke around 6:30 and looked out the north window to see rain falling and ice on a Virginia creeper vine. At that point it was 27° and we had freezing rain, so she went right back to bed. We didn't get up until 9 a.m. and by then there was no more freezing rain. 
  • Throughout the day we saw rain. Freezing rain was just one county north of us and into Iowa. We're lucky. By nighttime, we had nearly 1.5 inches of rain.
  • After several days of outside work, we hibernated inside today next to the nice heat of the woodstove.
  • I now know why ash wood gets its name. After burning ash firewood, you're left with an abundance of ashes.
    
  • Mary wrapped all of the Christmas gifts, while I vacuumed up bugs. One of the detriments of warm outside temperatures is an increase in bugs crawling on windows inside our house.

• Sunday, 12/15: Racking & Bottling Jalapeño Wine
  • A couple of the guns we inherited from Mary's Uncle Herman have very dirty bores through the inside of their barrels, due to a lack of proper cleaning. I looked online and found some advice on ways to clean such a dirty bore. I found a website of a Columbia, MO company that sells gun supplies around the country that I can order from, which is relatively close to us. After the holiday season, I'll order a few things.
  • I walked our dogs on the trail to the ponds. At a point in the middle of the north field, Plato stopped dead in his tracks and wouldn't go any further. I suspect he smelled a coyote. I respected his nose, so we turned around and headed home.
  • Mary made a venison General Tso dish and used a new-to-us Krupp steamer to cook the rice. We bought it used (essentially brand new) from the Salvation Army store in Quincy, IL. Mary says it has some quirks. The timer zooms through some of its settings, then slows down in other parts. Plus, you have to watch to add water several times during the steaming process to a plastic inlet when it runs low. On the plus side, it perfectly cooked rice in 45 minutes, whereas the old Black & Decker steamer took 72 minutes to cook brown rice, which is what we eat. The heating element on the old steamer was failing, so recently cooked rice was rather crunchy. The venison in today's meal came from this year's doe. The meat was tender and quite good.
  • I racked the jalapeño wine for the fifth time and bottled it. A tiny bit of fines was hardly detectable in the bottom of the 3-gallon carboy, but once I poured the liquid into a measuring cup, the remaining wine was cloudy. The ending specific gravity was 0.992, giving it an 11.27 percent alcohol content. The pH was 3.2. I corked 15 wine bottles and we drank the remaining 300 ml of leftover wine. It contains a dark amber color and is mild in the heat department. It has a good summer pepper taste.
    
  • While I did my winemaking chores, Mary handstitched binding around the edge of a Christmas tree skirt, made from a tablecloth.
  • By today's dusk, Missouri comes to the end of all regular rifle hunting seasons, so we can quit wearing blaze orange clothing while outside. Yahoo!!! We wear blaze orange during rifle seasons, even in our yard, in case some trespassing hunter ventures onto our land.
    

Dec. 2-8, 2024

Weather | 12/2, cloudy, snow, 19°, 27° | 12/3, cloudy to sunny, 15°, 31° |12/4, sunny, 15°, 47° | 12/5, sunny, 7°, 21° | 12/6, sunny, 15°, 36° | 12/7, sunny, 25°, 53° | 12/8, sunny, 40°, 63° |

• Monday, 12/2: First Snowfall
  
  • We started the day with a gentle light snow, the first full snowfall of the season for us. There wasn't enough to even measure, but without a wind, the snowflakes slowly settled to the ground in slow motion. When you don't have to go anywhere, falling snow is beautiful.
  • We don't have to wear hunter orange when we go outside. Yesterday was the last day of a five-day CWD (chronic wasting disease) hunting season. Saturday (12/7) is the start of the anterless deer hunting season, which lasts until 12/15. There's no one hunting on our 160 acres. Our freezer is full.
  • We didn't do anything outside, except walk puppies. It was kind of a slow day.
  • Mary and I watched the 2003 film, Under the Tuscan Sun.
    

• Tuesday, 12/3: Sucking Bugs & Splitting Firewood
  
  • Since Asian ladybugs continue to roam through the house, Mary postulated that there might be several hiding behind books in the sunroom, so she vacuumed bugs while dusting books in on those shelves. She estimates that she sucked up about 125 bugs and seven spiders.
    
  • I changed oil in the woodsplitter's engine and split several wheelbarrow loads of firewood. Most of the firewood went into the woodshed, but about a quarter of what I split was wet or green wood that I'll stack in the machine shed to dry. We have a lot of ash trees that are dying, due to being attacked by the emerald ash borer. They look dead, but they actually still are partially alive, hence the green firewood that we now have to dry out. It will be ready to use next fall.
    
  • I heard a helicopter and when I stepped outside to look, a bald eagle flew by just north of our house. We get regular flyovers by the emergency helicopter from Blessing Hospital in Quincy, IL.
  • At sunset, I heard and then saw a flock of red-winged blackbirds. They sound off with what I call popcorn popping calls as they fly about. We also notice new robins in the trees. We think snowfall north of us is sending these birds into our area. These robins are darker than those we see in the summer.
    
  • Our microwave doesn't cook as well as it used to, so I looked up pricing of a new one. Next, I checked fixing a microwave. They normally go bad due to a faulty magnetron, which converts electrical and magnetic currents into heat via microwave frequencies. A new magnetron for our microwave costs about $130, which is better than close to $300 for a new microwave oven.
    
  • A sliver of the moon was in the southwest sky near Venus just after sunset...very pretty.
    

• Wednesday, 12/4: Winter Arrives
  
  • While we were walking the dogs this morning, we first heard then saw trumpeter swans flying east to west to the south of us. They have a very distinct call that is loud and rings out over the land. Then, on our last dog walk, we heard Canada geese that were flying in the very turbulent night air.
    
  • I took apart the aluminum ladder deer stand. I first built it in 2009 and have used it in multiple locations throughout our property in the past 15 years. Yesterday, Dave Parmeter (a high school classmate) said his motorcycle trip around the country was cut short last spring when "I crashed my bike in Texas and my son had to drive us home so I could be put back together." He had several broken ribs and had surgery to repair his collarbone. I replied that four solid wheels are a better idea and that I use the same thinking about deer stands vs. deer blinds. I prefer to have my feet on solid ground.
    
  • I started to tear apart a bed frame Mary's Uncle Herman built to store his guns in. It's been in the machine shed propped up against his lawn tractor. When we got rid of the tractor this summer, I moved it to where we stack wet firewood. We need to stack more firewood in that location, so I decided to take the frame apart. I mistakenly thought it was a quick disassemble job. He built it with 1x8s, 1x3s, lauan, finish nails, hundreds of drywall screws, and glue. The lauan plywood is off and most of the screws are out, but I'm still not done knocking that mess apart!
    
  • Katie sent two photos (see below). She made Christmas ornaments to decorate the Sitka spruce tree that was sent from southeast Alaska to become the 2024 U.S. Capitol Christmas tree. One of her ornaments is now on that tree in Washington D.C.
    
  • I watched a PWHL game between the Minnesota Frost and the Boston Fleet on youtube.com. Minnesota won 2-1.
    
  • Tonight we had 50 mph gusts out of the northwest. After walking pups, we removed waterers from the chicken coop so they wouldn't freeze and discovered that the wind blew the plastic off our winter greens. The temperature was 21° and dropping (next morning's temperature was 7°). We pulled the plastic back onto the greens and put down additional bricks thoroughly weighing all edges of the plastic. Winter has arrived.

The circled ornament is on the tree in D.C.

The Forest Service sign asking for ornaments.

• Thursday, 12/5: Chicken Noodle Soup on a Cold Day
  
  • Northern air arrived overnight and we saw single digits on the thermometer this morning.
    
  • When Mary walked to the mailbox, she turned around and there was a flock of tufted titmice, cedar waxwings, and a family of four eastern bluebirds. They all followed her down the lane to the gravel road.
  • Due to the cold temperatures, we were inside most of the day. The woodstove heat is penetrating and nice.
  • Mary made a huge pot of chicken noodle soup. This isn't Campbell's chicken noodle soup where a chicken briefly walks through the water to give off faint flavor. Mary used the meat of an entire chicken from last year in this soup. It's a perfect meal on a cold day.
    
  • Our live chickens were inside their coop, today. Sun beaming through the south windows of that coop warm the inside up nicely. When Mary put the chickens to bed, it was 33° inside the coop.
  • We watched the 1994 movie, Little Women and enjoyed a heaping helping of popcorn with our hot tea.
    

• Friday, 12/6: Red-Shouldered Hawk
  
  • I drove the pickup into Lewistown to drop off and mail some bills and then fill up the truck's gas tank. We figured with colder temperatures we better keep gas topped up in the pickup to avoid gas line freeze-ups.
  • A red-shouldered hawk sat on one of the corner fence posts of the far garden while we watched it through binoculars. It flew off the second Mary opened the door to let dogs out for a midday walk. They live here throughout the year. Mary found an online file of their call. We've been hearing that call almost daily since spring.
    
  • I wrestled with Uncle Herman's bed frame and broke it down into pieces. I'm glad that job is over! There were screws and nails driven in from all angles. Next, I put the wood pieces to the inside chicken coop wall in the machine shed rafters and moved other pieces of lumber to totally clear our wet firewood stacking area.
  • When we walked pups for the last time of the day, the stars were shining very brightly.
    

• Saturday, 12/7: Leaves, Bugs, Firewood, and Movies
  
  • Mary racked up three wheelbarrow loads of leaves and put them in the compost bin.
    
  • She also vacuumed bugs throughout the day. Warm days push flies and Asian ladybugs through the walls and onto the inside of windows in our house. It's so nice to live in this sieve of a house!
  • While Mary vacuumed the upstairs north bedroom window, a white-breasted nuthatch was busy grabbing flies from the crack between the outside house wall and the roof over the north addition. It didn't care about the noise from the shop vac.
    
  • I split the remaining firewood. Most of it was nice maple wood. It's dry and is easy to split.
    
  • I moved all wet and green firewood to the inside north wall of the machine shed and stacked it in two different criss-cross stacks.
  • When I came back from the mailbox this evening, I heard footsteps near Bluegill Pond. Just beyond the pond, I heard footsteps behind me and looked. A doe deer was tip-toeing its way to three cedar trees in the southeast field.
  • I heard a couple rifle shots from deer hunters to the south of our property right at dusk. Today was the second day of the anterless deer season, which lasts until Dec. 15th.
  • We watched two movies after dark...Olympus Has Fallen and The Big Year.
  • Mary and I drank a bottle of 2023 peary. "It's a quiet drink," Mary said. "Sort of like drinking flavored water." Pear wine is better tasting than peary made from Bartlett pears.
    

• Sunday, 12/8: Bugs & Fixing Doors
  
  • Mary watched a red-headed woodpecker fly by the west living room window this morning. Those birds have usually flown south by this time of the year.
    
  • The amounts of bugs and flies in this house are the worst they've ever been. There were times today when the vacuum was running at least once every half hour. Mary and I traded off on the sucking bugs chore. It lasted until well after dark. The problem is that we live between a large dairy a mile west of us and a confined hog operation a couple miles southeast of us. Both are probably large fly creators. Then, with woods all around us, the Asian ladybugs are close to our house. Finally, temperatures into the 60s make them all very active. We need a long cold spell and a new house that bugs can't walk right through!
    
  • I changed the doorknob to our main entry door. The locking mechanism on the old doorknob has been hard to turn for a year. I changed the location of the doorknob's strike plate by first plugging the screw holes with wooden match sticks and wood glue, then chopping out a larger latch bolt hole with a wood chisel. Mary's Uncle Herman filled the hole with wood filler and made a small hole, too small for the entire latch bolt to fit. The new doorknob works much better.
  • I also tightened the gap at the bottom of the exterior door in the sunroom, which has been a main source of cold air entering that room during a strong south wind.
    
  • While we're warm, Mom in Circle, MT is expecting a blizzard warning overnight. She recently helped with Santa Day at the Circle Senior Citizens Center.
    

Nov. 25-Dec.1, 2024

Weather | 11/25, cloudy, 33°, 51° | 11/26, p. cloudy, 17°, 43° |11/27, cloudy, 33°, 43° | 11/28, cloudy, 21°, 35° | 11/29, sunny, 15°, 31° | 11/30, cloudy to p. cloudy, 19°, 29° | 12/1, sunny, 20°, 31° |

• Monday, 11/25: Cutting Firewood
  
  • Our high for the day was recorded just after midnight. The thermometer dropped as the day progressed and our recorded low temperature was at 10 p.m.
    
  • We cut firewood in the north woods, next to the north yard. I sawed up small trees and branches dropped out of trees while Mary loaded firewood pieces into the trailer behind the 8N Ford tractor. We took a snack break and Bill joined us after that break. We hauled a full trailer load of firewood to the machine shed, where we stacked big logs. Bill and I stacked firewood small enough to forego the splitter into the woodshed. Mary hauled firewood into the house directly from that load.
    
  • We showed Bill the giant puffball mushrooms sitting near a cedar tree at the north edge of the north woods, where I parked the tractor and wagon. He took a photo of one of the mushrooms (see below).
    
  • Mary cooked up an excellent barbecued pork loin meal with a huge winter greens salad.
  • With an expected overnight low temperature in the teens, we covered the winter greens with plastic.
    
  • We watched three more episodes of the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
  • The stars were exceptionally bright when we walked the dogs on their last outing of the night.

  

  A giant puffball with Bill's size 11 boot as a reference.
  

• Tuesday, 11/26: Trip to Town
  
  • I drove to Quincy to buy fresh vegetables for dipping during our Thanksgiving dinner. It felt like the only two people who weren't on the the road and on the streets of Quincy were Mary and Bill. That's what I told them when I got back home. I also filled some plastic jugs with gasoline for firewood sawing and moving purposes. Gas was $2.59 a gallon in Lewistown.
  • I saw several occasions of farmers running no-till planters directly over corn or soybean stubble. It must mean winter wheat is a hot commodity right now.
  • A buck deer is hanging in the tree next to one of our neighbor's house. It will be there for months. Those jerks never handle deer meat correctly. They should have their hunting privileges revoked.
    
  • Meanwhile, Mary moved hay to the floor of the chicken coop. Cooler temperatures are in our forecast, so we add hay to give the floor of the coop some insulation value.
    
  • Mary also racked up leaves and put them in the top of the compost bin.
  • Bill reviewed a bunch of the data programming lessons that he's been using to teach himself the process for the last half of this year.
  • Mary made a delicious meal of hot venison sandwiches for our midday meal. Along with it were big salads. Some of the winter greens are showing a little wilt, due to cold temperatures.
    
  • We watched the rest of the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
    

• Wednesday, 11/27: Second Raking of Spiced Apple Wine
  
  • During our morning dog walk, we heard and saw snow geese. That often foretells the arrival of falling snow in a few days.
  • Mary saw an eastern bluebird gobbling up wild rose hips next to the lilac bush in the west yard.
    
  • Mary baked two pumpkin pies and made up some cranberry sauce out of fresh cranberries.
  • Bill continued studying data programming lessons.
    
  • Bill and I racked the spiced apple wine for the second time. There was an abundance of fines. Since the last of the brew bucket went into a half-gallon jug, about 80 percent of it looked like applesauce baby food. We moved the liquid off the top through a hose, then pumped what we could out of the jug with an auto-siphon and dumped it into a screened strainer. Then, we dumped the strained liquid through a fine nylon mesh bag. The process took out a bulk of the residue from the jug. We got two cups of liquid out of an eight-cup jug. With the liquid from the three-gallon carboy, we got 375 milliliters over three gallons. The specific gravity was 0.999. We added 0.5 grams of Kmeta to the wine. We tasted a little bit that was leftover. It was very acidic and spicy. It was quite good.
    
  • Bill picked out a movie that we watched, which was the 1995 film, Sense and Sensibility.
    

• Thursday, 11/28: Thanksgiving 2024
  
  • Mary started preparing a Thanksgiving meal at 10:30 a.m. She baked a 22-pound turkey with stuffing inside. Other dishes included homegrown sweet potatoes, a green bean/French fried onion casserole (our garden beans), mashed potatoes (professionally mashed by Bill), turkey gravy, French dip for dipping veggies, and sliced, raw radishes, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, green onions, and celery. We also had her yummy cranberry sauce that she made yesterday. We shared a bottle of last year's spiced apple wine. The meal was amazing. We needed wheelbarrows to move our stomachs around the house after eating.
  • While Mary fixed dinner, I split firewood in the machine shed. I ran the splitter's engine until the gas ran out in the small gas tank for that engine. It sits all summer, which isn't the best with gasoline from Missouri that contains corn ethanol, that deteriorates with time. My efforts gave me about five wheelbarrow loads of mainly maple firewood. Two loads went into the house and three were stacked in the woodshed. Some oak and ash firewood is wet and will need to dry in the machine shed.
  • After eating, Mary removed meat off the turkey carcass that we either refrigerated or froze. Then, Bill and I took the carcass and dumped it near the ladder deer stand in the north woods. Coyotes will make it disappear overnight.
  • I called Mom and we talked for awhile. Temperatures are getting down near zero in the morning in Circle, MT. They have a skiff of snow, but Glasgow got three inches, so Hank and Mom agreed it best if they stayed at their prospective homes for Thanksgiving. Mom baked a Cornish game hen, with Thanksgiving trimmings, for her meal, today.
    
  • Mary, Bill, and I played Rummy. Mary won. Bill took second. I was last with half the score of Mary and Bill. It was fun.
  • Some of our Christmas cactus plants (Mary calls them Thanksgiving cactus) are blooming (see photos, below).

White blossoms of Thanksgiving cactus plants.

A closeup. Mary took these photos.

• Friday, 11/29: Christmas Decorating
  
  • We saw our coldest morning this autumn of 15°. It makes the heat from the woodstove even more appreciated.
  • Two very large red-tailed hawks flew by the west side of the yard in the morning that Mary spotted. At first she thought they were eagles, because they were so big.
  • I saw an invitation by my graduating high school class for a class reunion in July. The cost of all the events they plan is over $100. No thanks! I don't need to spend $100 to see a bunch of people I don't care about.
    
  • We got evening chores done early in order to take a Thanksgiving call from Katie. She cut a white spruce Christmas tree through a program on the Anchorage military bases that cleans up small trees for conservation purposes of preventing fires. The permit is only $10. She is very happy with the tree. She is doing well with her job and her military duties.
  • Bill, Mary, and I put up the Christmas tree. We decorated it and places around the house (see photos, below). We listened to Christmas music and enjoyed a bottle of parsnip wine, along with turkey sandwiches and pumpkin pie.

This year's Christmas tree is decorated.

Christmas figurines on the record & CD cabinet.

Some of Mary's Christmas ornaments created since 1997.

Bill hanging decorations on the Christmas tree.

• Saturday, 11/30: Fourth Racking of Jalapeño Wine
  • We're experiencing colder temperatures. We saw a couple of snowflakes, but that was all. Mary kept the chickens in the coop until late morning.
  • Bill and I racked the jalapeño wine for the fourth time. There was just a tiny bit of fines. The liquid has a deep brown color. The specific gravity was 0.993, a change of a tiny bit from 0.992 about six weeks ago. We didn't lose much liquid in the racking. After filling a three-gallon carboy, about 200 ml was left. We drank the leftover liquid. It has a strong pepper taste, yet fruity. There is a bit of warmth, but not overwhelming. It's very good. I probably will bottle it in 2-3 weeks.
    
  • Mary made three pizzas. We ate all but two pieces while playing a game of Triopoly. Mary won. Bill took second. I brought up the rear. It was fun.
    

• Saturday, 12/1: Bill Leaves
  
  • Bill helped me with some deer blind/stand items. First, we walked down to the Wood Duck Deer Blind, removed the lauan plywood roof on the blind, and stored it in the machine shed. Then, we took down the Four Trunk Deer Stand and hauled it back home. I plan on dismantling this last deer stand. I feel safer with two feet planted on the ground while hunting deer, rather than hoisting my butt in the air on a stand that's waving back and forth to the rhythm of wind-blown tree trunks. Besides, deer blinds are warmer.
    
  • Mary and I loaded Bill up with a couple acorn squash, the last two pieces of pizza, a small bit of popcorn, and whatnot, before he left to return to his St. Charles apartment. He's returning here in a couple weeks for a Christmas visit.
    
  • I messaged Bill on how the Minnesota Vikings won by one point, then he sent me a link to a Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) game, which I watched. The New York Sirens beat the Minnesota Frost just 19 seconds into overtime, by the score of 4-3. It was fun to watch. I also watched some NFL football game recaps.
    
  • We read books and enjoyed cups of tea in front of the woodstove's nice wood heat into the evening.
  • On the last dog walk, Mary heard the lone yip, yip, yip of a coyote not too far north. It was probably near where I left the two deer carcasses in the north woods.
    

Nov. 18-24, 2024

Weather | 11/18, 0.29" rain, 54°, 64° | 11/19, 0.25" rain, sunny, 49°, 59° |11/20, sunny, 35°, 47° | 11/21, cloudy, 31°, 41° | 11/22, cloudy, 35°, 39° | 11/23, fog to sunny, 23°, 45° | 11/24, sunny to cloudy, 38°, 65° |

• Monday, 11/18: Rain, Minestrone Soup & Knife Sharpening
  
  • I woke at 5 a.m. to see if deer hunting was an option today. It was pouring rain outside, so I said the heck with it and went back to bed.
    
  • Rain fell for a good part of the day.
  • Mary made a big batch of minestrone soup. I picked eight kale leaves that she put into the soup. She uses a gallon bag of frozen homegrown tomatoes and can of tomato paste. It tastes much better than the three cans of store-bought tomato juice that we once bought to put in the soup.
    
  • Mary put together a shopping list that we'll use tomorrow.
    
  • We both vacuumed flies and Asian ladybugs. 'Tis the season.
    
  • Around 12:30 p.m., I sat for five minutes in the Boys' Fort blind just north of the machine shed and saw three deer run through the woods just north of me. I wasn't hunting. I was just looking at the compass and what would be a good wind direction for that hunting location. Since deer could approach from all directions in the north woods, there is no good or bad wind direction.
    
  • I sharpened knives for the rest of the day. I've had problems sharpening three curved Victorinox boning knives that Mary prefers using. The problem is that the three stones in the knife sharpener are concave on the surface, due to wear over time. So, I unscrewed the hold-down pieces and turned the stones over, giving me completely flat surfaces. From that point forward, knives sharpened very nicely. 
  • I did a bunch of cleanup while turning the stones over in this Norton Abrasives Multi-Oilstone. There was probably a quarter inch of fine metal particles in the bottom of the oil reservoir. Mary says the sharpener came with the grocery store in Lewistown that her grandfather bought and operated from the mid-1950s to the 1960s. Herman, Mary's uncle, had the sharpener when he ran that same store from 1964 to 1978. I found it out in the machine shed. So, we're the third owner of that knife sharpener. Mary looked it up online and it has a long history of use in America's meat industry. It does an excellent job.
    
  • We enjoyed a bottle of last year's cherry wine. It sure is good.
    

• Tuesday, 11/19: Shopping & Deer Hunting
  
  • There was an additional quarter inch of water in the rain gauge from rainfall overnight.
  • We went shopping in Quincy, IL, today. The entire town was packed with tottering old duffs, as if all of the senior homes let out for a grand day of shopping. Thanks to our son, Bill, who says we shop like we're on a mission to take out Osama bin Laden, we chuckled to ourselves as we marched through the stores. Mary was thrilled to find two more big frozen turkeys for 88 cents a pound at Walmart. We now have four in the freezer.
    
  • After getting home and emptying the pickup, I went hunting. I got to the Four Trunk Deer Stand at 2:45 p.m. A steady wind switched from the southwest to the west. I didn't dress warm enough and froze my ass off. Every year I initially seem to forget how cold the wind feels while sitting up in the air in a deer stand. I heard one shot in the valley on property west of our land around 3:30 and then I heard a goonball shooting an AK-15 style rifle in rapid-fire fashion to the distant west. A hunter like that isn't really hunting. I never saw a deer. I did hear something moving north to south a ways west of my location, but beyond my vision. It might have been a deer, or maybe a coyote.
    
  • Right before legal shooting ended, I heard an American woodcock. That's odd. Woodcocks aren't usually heard around here in November. I also watched a red-bellied woodpecker drink rainwater out of a hollowed out part of a hickory tree where a branch once broke off. That was a cool sight to witness.
    
  • While I went hunting, Mary vacuumed flies and Asian ladybugs. Flies by the hundreds were on the windows and the ceiling of our bedroom. They're all smashed into a shop vac, now. 
  • Mary also did the evening chores. She picked two large strawberries...amazing for late autumn.
    

• Wednesday, 11/20: Plenty of Deer, But None Harvested
  
  • Strong west northwest winds blew throughout the day.
  • Mary vacuumed bugs. There were fewer, because a strong wind and cooler temperatures kept them at bay.
    
  • Mary replaced the rain gauge cylinder. She threw the old one out, because it had a crack in it. We bought a new cylinder this summer.
    
  • I went deer hunting in the Boys' Fort Deer Blind in the morning and the Black Medic Deer Blind in the evening. 
  • When I first got to the Boy's Fort around 6 a.m., I heard a deer walking west of me. It wasn't snorting, but it was breathing loudly to try to catch my scent. Luckily it was upwind from me. But, it walked on and wasn't around by the time I could see when daylight arrived. Later, I saw a flash of a deer running by the other side of the cedar trees north of me.
  • I got to the Black Medic Deer Blind by 3 p.m. At 3:30, two young deer blasted by my blind just 10 feet away. They came and went so fast uphill from the blind, I barely was able to see them. About two minutes later, a deer stepped into view northwest of me, again uphill from the blind, and looked northeast, where the first two deer came from. I think it was a young buck. By the time I cocked my rifle, it was gone. A few minutes before I left, a deer southeast of me, again uphill from the blind, snorted at me. Maybe going there during an east wind would be best while I looked for deer uphill of the blind.
    

• Thursday, 11/21: Venison in the Freezer
  • A very strong west northwest wind was blowing when I got up at 5 a.m. It blew all day.
  • I hunted in the Boys' Fort Deer Blind. I arrived at 5:55 a.m. At about 7:40, a deer ran from the west field into the north woods west of me. It paused a couple times while walking north through the timber. It paused with most of its body behind a big oak tree trunk, but I focused my rifle on the neck and made a left-handed shot, hitting my target perfectly. It bucked up into the air and ran toward me, then fell down next to a gully. It was a spiked buck with three points.
  • I walked back home. Mary was feeding chickens. We went back to the deer and field dressed it, then hauled it up the hill to the north edge of the woods behind the machine shed. It was extremely heavy. I drove the tractor to that area. We loaded the deer and drove it to the hydrant and cleaned the body cavity out with a hose. Then, we took it to the machine shed and hung it from the middle rafter.
  • It was 10 a.m. when we got back inside the house, so instead of breakfast, we ate lunch, which was four bowls of minestrone soup, each.
  • We spent the rest of the day butchering the deer. It was a deer with a long body and massive muscles. I called it an Arnold Schwarzenegger deer. We're guessing it was a two-year old. We froze 51 meals of venison meat. It feels good to have a bunch of venison in the freezer, again.
  • Today the stupid idiot crop duster was flying in and out of the airport at the dairy that is west of us. We had 35-40 mph gusts, which is no condition for spraying herbicides from an airplane. Besides, what the heck is green that needs killing at this time of the year?
    
  • Mary spotted a bald eagle in a tree near Bluegill Pond while she was walking the dogs. It flew off. Later, we think we saw that same bald eagle, along with three big ducks or small geese that were flying just beyond it.
    

• Friday, 11/22: Another Deer
  
  • Since yesterday's butchering lasted until after dark, I didn't get up early for morning hunting. Instead, we enjoyed a breakfast of waffles.
    
  • I went to the new Wood Duck Deer Blind and was in place by 3 p.m. 
  • Around 4, I caught a glimpse of a deer walking through trees southwest of me. Shortly after, a flock of wild turkeys walked along the Wood Duck Pond shoreline north of me. I counted 14 turkeys. They came closer to about 20-25 feet away (see videos, below). Turn on the sound of the videos and you can hear them scratching in the leaves. They walked directly in front of the blind just 10 feet away. At that point, I didn't dare move for fear of spooking them. At one point I had birds to the north (my left), in front of me, and scattered to the south (my right), all at the same time. Eventually, every single turkey flew up into the trees above me to roost for the night. They were walking around me for 45 minutes before they roosted.
    
  • Once all of the turkeys were perched up in the trees, I heard louder footsteps. Then I saw deer walking from the woods, southwest of me, and onto the flat stretch near the dry creek bed. It was 5 p.m. One deer came into clear view. I raised up the short-barreled 30-30 and slid it through a slot in the hog fence and made an accidental crunching noise as the barrel settled on a couple willow sticks woven in the fence. The deer looked my way and snorted. I took a left-handed shot and it went down immediately. As I emerged from the blind, a buck bellowed from the hill in front of me, a young deer ran in front of me to the pond, several deer snorted from the woods behind me, and turkeys flew out of the trees above me. I walked to the deer. It was attempting to move its head to get up, so I dispatched it with a second shot. I texted Mary, walked home, and collected flashlights, field dressing knives and a field bone saw. Mary walked as I drove the tractor back to Wood Duck Pond.
    
  • I ran out of gas in the tractor and walked back home to retrieve a can of gas. While I was gone, Mary heard coyotes singing near the Bass Pond dam, which is close, so she walked down to the downed deer and waited for me. Besides the coyotes, she heard the turkeys in the trees above her quietly clucking.
  • It took extra time to field dress the deer, which was a mature doe, because she was a little bit tougher. The meat will still be good, since doe meat is always great. With Mary leading the way and holding the rear feet and me hauling the front feet of the deer, we transported her up the hill to the tractor, loaded her, and drove back home. We cleaned the body cavity with a garden hose and hung her in the machine shed overnight. Soon after, the predicted overnight low of 29° showed on the thermometer. It's a perfect temperature for chilling venison meat. We'll butcher first thing in the morning. There will be plenty of venison in the freezer when we're done with this deer, so my hunting season is now over. The two deer I harvested came from sitting in my two newest deer blinds.
    
  • We both heard flying squirrels in the pecan trees just outside of the machine shed tonight as we were hanging up the deer. Their squeaking noise is very identifiable, once you know that sound.
  Wild turkeys with Wood Duck Pond to the right in this video.
   
More turkey video...Happy Thanksgiving!!!.

• Saturday, 11/23: Butchering Second Deer
  
  • All day was spent butchering the doe I harvested yesterday. I first sharpened four knives. It took me two hours to skin the deer. After eating a midday meal, Mary and I deboned the hind quarters, packaged up the venison pieces, and froze them. After evening chores, we removed shoulder meat, along with inside and outside loins. Mary packaged them as I cleaned up in the machine shed. All told, we froze 36 meals of venison from this deer. With the 51 meals from this year's buck, we have 87 meals of venison added to the freezer from this deer hunting season. I. Am. Done!!!
    
  • While Mary and I were cutting off the last meat from the deer, a young opossum walked up the path to the front door of our house. Plato was barking, which drew my attention. It probably smelled the deer meat and was hiking up to see when it could find. It ran off once I showed up.
  • We also had a mixed bag of birds eating on venison bits outside the porch, before I collected it all up to get rid of it.
    
  • I took hair off both of the deer we harvested this year to use for tying flies in the future. Fly tying shops sell deer hair. It's nice to get it for free.
  • Using the tractor and wagon, I drove the carcasses, hides and buckets of fat residue to the north woods, near where the Four Trunk Deer Stand is located. Wild creatures clean this all up in just a few days.
  • While I was loading items in the trailer, I heard several shots to the south. When you hear more than one shot, it's usually from an hunter who is a poor marksman, who keeps trying to hit an animal, but never quite gets it done. I'm happy to be finished hunting deer, because with the saturate the woods with bullets approach, deer are going to become very scarce. They get low when the bullets keep flying.
  • They aren't scare, yet. While walking dogs in the late afternoon, Mary and I saw seven deer cross the lane in front of us.
    

• Sunday, 11/24: Bill Arrives
  
  • Bill arrived around midday. He's visiting us for a week.
    
  • I cleaned up and put the last of the butchering items in the machine shed away, including lights, extension cords, ladders, and buckets.
  • An opossum meandered around the yard this afternoon, digging here and there and eating grubs (see video, below). We named him Homer.
  • We heard a great deal of traffic on the gravel road through the day. It involved a lot of rattling trailers, which means the guy from St. Louis who owns property west of us, who always brings deer hunters onto his place, took all of his stuff out of the woods and went home.
    
  • We had a mid-afternoon wienie roast outside. Mary made a big salad, to go along with hotdogs, since temperatures are expected to drop into the teens by next weekend, which will probably kill off the greens. A flock of red-winged blackbirds serenaded us from the maple tree tops. Tufted tit mice were also peeping at us.
    
  • Bill picked out the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to watch. We viewed three episodes.
  Homer, the opossum, searching for grubs in our lawn.
  
  
  

Nov. 11-17, 2024

Weather | 11/11, sunny, 40°, 59° | 11/12, sunny, 30°, 52° |11/13, 0.07" rain, cloudy, 40°, 55° | 11/14, cloudy, 45°, 47° | 11/15, sunny, 27°, 58° | 11/16, cloudy, 35°, 50° | 11/17, cloudy, 49°, 64° |

• Monday, 11/11: Moving Wood Duck Deer Blind
  
  • This morning while we were letting the chickens out, we heard snow geese flying overhead, but we never saw them. They must have been extremely high.
    
  • I checked the spiced apple wine this morning and the specific gravity was 1.028, so it dropped five thousandths overnight. The nighttime specific gravity was 1.022 for a drop of 11 over 24 hours.
    
  • Mary and I walked down to Wood Duck Pond. We first looked at the current deer blind. So many dead trees near it means it must be abandoned. It's not safe. We walked around and picked a new location for a deer blind. It's somewhat in the open, so I'll have to build a blind that is superior at hiding me from the deer. It's on the west side of the dry creek bed, opposite from where I've parked the last several years. In 2010, I had a deer stand about 100 feet further west of where I'm building this one. From this new location I can see the pond and the forest floor west of the dry creek bed as I look north and east. I can also spot animals coming down the hill to the west of me.
    
  • We spooked up two coveys of bobwhite quail as we walked around near the pond. When we first walked to the pond's edge, about eight ducks took off. We couldn't identify them, but we know they weren't wood ducks.
  • Mary mowed our quarter mile lane. Even on a cooler day, like today, that's a hard job.
    
  • I went back to Wood Duck Pond with the tractor and wagon loaded with saws and tools. I tore down the cattle and hog fences at the old blind and moved them to the new location. I'll start assembling it tomorrow.
  • On the way to Wood Duck, I spotted a bufflehead duck swimming in Bass Pond. It was nervous with the sound of the tractor, but stayed in the pond. They have a striking appearance. HERE is a link to a photo of a bufflehead.
    
  • We heard barred owls calling from all over the place about 30 minutes prior to the sun going  down.
    
  • We enjoyed a bottle of perry tonight. It was made last fall and bottled in January 2024. We drank it at room temperature, which we decided is better, because when iced, some of the flavor disappears. The spice is lighter than the spiced apple wine. The pear taste comes out nicely. It's got a light, happy flavor.
    

• Tuesday, 11/12: Garlic Mulched & Deer Blind Construction
  
  • Mary mowed part of the east yard and finished mulching the last row of garlic in the far garden. It's now good for the winter.
    
  • I wired together the cow panel and hog panels of the new Wood Duck Deer Blind. I want to be a little more discreet, so I used a four-foot square sheet of quarter-inch lauan paneling I found in the old cow barn as a roof, instead of bright silver steel barn siding. I sawed five-foot long logs from a nearby ash that fell to the ground. Then, I stacked and wired the logs into the cow panel on the west side of my semi-circle blind. I've got more concealment work that I'll do tomorrow.
    
  • I saw tracks of a large deer on the trail I'm using to get to my new blind that runs parallel to the dry creek bed. I also watched a duck gliding the west shoreline of Wood Duck Pond. Without binoculars or a scope on a gun, I couldn't see what kind of duck it was.
    
  • A huge, thick halo appeared around the moon while we were walking the puppies at night.
  • We are finally getting weather matching the month of November. Snow is expected in next week's weather prediction.
  • A check of the spiced apple wine in the morning resulted in a 1.017 specific gravity. By nighttime, it was 1.010, so I racked it into a 3-gallon carboy and a half-gallon jug. Most of the jug was applesauce slurry, so I'm expecting mostly thick fines from that container when I rack for the second time in a few days.
    

• Wednesday, 11/13: New Blind Nearly Done
  
  • While Mary made flour tortillas, I cut down a tall maple stump and finished stacking logs on the west side of the new Wood Duck Blind. A deer snorted at me from the east side of the pond while I was checking out the fold-up garden seat inside the new blind. I was talking to myself about how it all fits nicely when the deer heard me and snorted. 
  • I went home after Mary texted that chimichangas for a midday meal were ready in 10 minutes. They were topped with winter greens...yummy!
  • I walked back to the Wood Duck Blind and stuffed tall grass that I picked up along the trail to the ponds. I wove it between the sections in the hog fence. I'm amazed I haven't used this for camo in the past, because it works wonderful at concealing the inside occupant, while appearing very natural (see photos, below). I cut a couple oak branches that grew into the trail, placed them on the roof top so they draped over the side and added a heavy dead branch on top to weigh them down. Light rain started the moment I showed up for the second time and it turned to a steady rain, but I kept working to get all grass stuffed into place. I was pretty wet after driving the tractor home.
  • I got deer tags for the upcoming hunting season. It's all done online, which is nice and easy.

Southeast corner & entrance of new blind.

Northeast corner of Wood Duck Blind.

Southwest corner of blind. Stacked logs are braced.

East side of blind. My vision is through top of hog fence.

• Thursday, 11/14: Baked Bread & Finalizing Deer Blinds
  
  • Mary baked four loaves of bread, which always puts an amazing scent throughout the house.
    
  • I finished all deer hunting preparation in the field by first marking all new trails to blinds and the deer stand with reflective thumbtacks. A quick check of existing blinds and the deer stand showed all were in good shape. I added more oak branches to the top edges of the newest deer blind cut from limbs invading paths. I cut out a massive multiflora rose bush growing across the dry creek bed and other weeds and shrubs growing on the trail to the other deer blind in the west woods, the Black Medick Blind. There is a major north/south deer trail just down the hill from that blind. Finally, I checked out sitting in the new Wood Duck Deer Blind with my two 30-30 rifles. The 30-30 Marlin with a shorter barrel works best in that blind, due to its close quarters, so I'll have to put both rifles in use this year. I usually only use the 30-30 with the longer barrel.
    
  • I cleaned the two 30-30 rifles. Mary's Uncle Herman neglected cleaning the 30-30 Marlin with the long barrel, so all I can do is clean it to a point. The shorter 30-30 Marlin rifle cleans up nice and shiny inside the barrel. I bought that one from Ansel Marquette in 2010.
    
  • FedEx has improved, slightly. They find our location. They still have issues. When the FedEx driver showed up with our shipment of oatmeal, he discovered that the folks in Quincy failed to load our package into his truck. It will hopefully show up tomorrow.
  • Mary saw a belted kingfisher while she walked our lane to the mailbox. It followed her up the lane from the mailbox, then cut in front of her to the east, continuing with its rusty chain call. THIS is what they sound like. She also watched a sharp-shinned hawk haunting the lower reaches of bushes and trees in the yard. That's why we don't have little birds in the yard right now.
    

• Friday, 11/15: Tree Skirt & Sighting In Rifles
  
  • Mary started making a Christmas tree skirt. Last year she bought a green Christmas tablecloth that has a damask holly pattern on it. Today she used our round dining room table as a pattern to cut it into a large circle, cut out a small circle in the middle, cut a slit to the middle circle, then pinned a shiny gold bias tape to all edges. She made a similar tree skirt in 2001 and it's shot. Nick and Holly (cats) were born on the old tree skirt in 2009. Holly is gone, but Nick and his mother, Rosemary, are still with us.
    
  • I sighted in the two 30-30 Marlin rifles. Initially, they both were shooting high. I believe the rifle with the shorter barrel has a faulty scope. Changes on the dial made no difference on where the shot hit the target. I just need to remember that on that rifle, it shoots two inches high at 50 yards, so I need to aim low. The rifle with the longer barrel is now zeroed into the bullseye of the target.
  • Today was perfect for sighting in guns. It was sunny and calm.
  • Mom's 90th birthday is today. I talked to her on the phone. She had a great birthday celebration. Mom told the crowd at the Circle Senior Center luncheon of how her father traded a truckload of potatoes to the sisters at the Catholic hospital where she was born in Missoula, MT, as a way to pay for the bill of her birth. She said a truck in 1934 was about the size of a large pickup, today. "So, that's what I'm worth, a truckload of potatoes," she told the group, which drew a big laugh. I didn't know it, but apparently Grandad Robison grew potatoes and sold them in the early days, while he operated a dairy at Lolo, MT.
  • We ate Aldi turkey franks cooked over the woodstove fire this evening. With Mary's homemade piccalilli relish added as a topping, along with mustard, they taste great.
  • Afterwards, we enjoyed a bottle of last year's apple wine. We're finding all apple wines are better at room temperature, because apple flavor comes out stronger.
    

• Saturday, 11/16: Firearms Deer Season Starts
  
  • Today is the first day of firearms deer hunting season, November portion. This year it is Nov. 16-26. But not for me. Lewis County is now in the Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Management Zone, which means that all hunters who bag a deer during the opening weekend (today and tomorrow) must take the deer to a sampling station, where they collect a lymph node sample for testing. I don't want to load a bloody deer carcass in the pickup and drive it to and from the Lewis County Fairgrounds before butchering it. Also, temperatures are high this weekend. So, I'll wait a couple days. Another factor is that with the CWD designation, our county gets an additional CWD hunting season that is Nov. 27-Dec. 1. Then, there's an anterless deer season that runs between Dec. 7-15. So, there are several days available to hunt deer beyond the opening weekend.
  • There were fewer rifle shots on the opening day, compared to what we've heard in years past. Maybe others are going with my rational of putting off hunting for a couple days.
    
  • Mary and I pulled out the last two air conditioners. As I removed them, Mary was ready with a shop vac to suck intruding Asian ladybugs. Surrounding the large AC in the living room window were hundreds of the crawling stinkers. We moved the ACs to the machine shed.
    
  • I strung several lights up in the machine shed in preparation for butchering deer. I moved the location of where I hang the deer to the middle of the building. It gives me a place to butcher deer, yet allows me to park the tractor and wagon inside the shed and not out in the weather.
    
  • Our order of tea came in from Harney & Sons. It smells absolutely wonderful.
    
  • I watched an old airplane fly overhead. It was louder than most single prop planes and it had a British Spitfire logo on it, so it was obviously an old World War II fighter plane. There certainly wasn't any stealth involved with those loud engines.
    

• Sunday, 11/17: Firewood Collection
  
  • I sharpened one of the two chains on the big Stihl chainsaw. Half of the teeth were well worn. They were all on the left side of the chain, where I must have hit something hard with the saw. It only took five strokes with a file to sharpen the right side, but 15 strokes on the left side. The sharp chain proved excellent while cutting firewood later in the day.
    
  • Mary and I took the tractor and wagon east of the garden, down the hill, to some downed maple branches. I sawed up and Mary loaded a full wagon load of firewood. Most of it was either standing, or above ground, so it was exceptionally dry and in great shape. Maple burns hot and fast, which makes it perfect for small fires when it's not too cold outside, such as is the case right now. We loaded small pieces into the woodshed and large pieces to split into the machine shed, next to the splitter.
    
  • Mary vacuumed bugs inside the house. They were mainly flies, today, and they were in a continuous motion from out to inside the house.
    
  • I sharpened knives. The weather forecast predicts a 100 percent chance of rain for tomorrow. So, I only sharpened one knife to use inside the house and two knives used for field dressing venison. If I get out, tomorrow, I can sharpen the rest after a deer is hanging in the machine shed. If it's too wet for me to venture outside, I'll have plenty of time to sharpen the rest.