Jan. 1-7, 2024

Weather | 1/1, cloudy, 25°, 31° | 1/2, p. cloudy, 19°, 41° | 1/3, cloudy, 21°, 38° | 1/4, p. cloudy, 22°, 39° | 1/5, cloudy, 21°, 36° | 1/6, 0.03", cloudy, dusting of snow, 28°, 35° | 1/7, 0.01", cloudy, snow dusting, 29°, 33° | 

• Monday, 1/1: New Year's Day
  
  • For about 15 days, we're now seeing eggs from our chickens. Several are small, an indication that our three pullets are now laying.
  • We are now adding pecans, instead of hazelnuts, to our breakfast oatmeal. It also includes a sliced Granny Smith apple and blackberries. Mary adds cinnamon, nutmeg, and a half tablespoon of Splenda brown sugar. It's very tasty.
    
  • Mary fixed up a very delicious hot venison sandwich with acorn squash for a midday meal.
    
  • I spent most of today collecting six months of blood glucose morning and evening readings  from the two meters I use for such measurements. Then I created a chart on one sheet of paper and listed the readings from July 5th to now. I'll hand it over to my doctor during a visit to him in two days.
    
  • Mary and I took a hike with the dogs northeast to the Cherry Deer Blind. We noticed lots of deer tracks and trails that weren't there during hunting season. On the way back home, I saw a deer with a black coat veer into a cedar grove. The dogs sniffed the air for quite some time.
    
  • Mary drew an acorn and cross stitched.
  • I started reading This is Chance!, by Jon Mooallem, describing the woman who announced messages between dislocated family members on KENI radio immediately after the 1964 Alaskan earthquake. I remember hearing her after the quake. I was in first grade.
  • Our pets like to cozy up together in the living room, where woodstove heat is warmest (see photo, below).

  

  Mocha and Gandalf snugged up on living room couch.

• Tuesday, 1/2: Racking Parsnip Wine
  
  • A pink eastern sky greeted us as we walked puppies around 6:45 this morning. I noticed black flashes of deer running in the east field. Plato saw them, too, and was bounding up in the air about two feet high. It was a very unusual sight because he usually has his feet on the ground.
    
  • I racked the parsnip for a third time. There was about 3/8 of an inch of fines in the bottom of containers. I lost 750 milliliters of liquid, mostly left behind in the 3-gallon carboy. I used the auto-siphon in the carboy and just a quarter-inch hose to move liquid out of the half-gallon jug and 1.5-liter bottle. I was able to leave hardly any liquid while using the hose, so maybe I should try using it even on carboys. The specific gravity was 1.000 and the pH was 3.4. I don't normally add K-meta on the third racking, but with a higher pH, I decided to add 25 percent of my normal amount, or 0.2 grams. Remaining liquid went into a 3-gallon carboy, a half-gallon jug, and a 750-ml bottle. The taste is citrusy, with earthy undertones. It's much better than the last batch of parsnip wine at this stage.
    
  • Mary walked dogs on the east loop, which is down Black Medick Hill, along the dry creek bed in the east woods, then up the Bramble Hill Trail. Dogs loved the walk. Mary found a foot long piece of furry rabbit skin about 10 feet high in an ash tree in front of the old cow barn. She looked online and determined it was probable put there by a mature red-tailed hawk while it ate a bunny. These hawks can lift upward of five pounds with their strong talons.
    
  • I split two wheelbarrow loads of firewood. One load went into the woodshed and the other load went inside, next to the woodstove.
    
  • We watched three episodes of first season of Star Trek: Picard. Bill gave us the entire Picard series, or all three seasons, for Christmas.
    

• Wednesday, 1/3: Good Doc Visit
  • The 8:30 a.m. doctor's visit resulted in good news. My blood pressure was 110/70...really good. Dr Abueg thought my six-month blood glucose numbers looked good. He suspects with my numbers, my A1C level might be below 6. If so, he will remove one of my diabetes medications. They took blood and gave me a flu shot. 
  • This shot made my arm more sore as the day wore on. I decided to stay inside, as a result.
    
  • I picked a bowl full of winter greens (lettuce, kale & arugula) that Mary put on top of chimichangas that she made.
  • Mary and I walked the dogs on a north loop around the north field. We spotted some excellent downed firewood next to the north woods fence.
    
  • After chores and in the middle of washing dishes, we counted 11 deer out our west and south living room windows. Most were does, with youngsters. One was a buck with one antler missing. A big doe didn't like Mary's looks through the window and stomped her front hoof several times. She leaped high in the air and all of the others ran a few feet south with her. They stopped just a little ways later and meandered off into the west woods.
  • A flock of about a dozen trumpeter swans has flown south of the house every evening for the last two days. Mary said that tonight the sunset oranges and pinks lit up their breasts beautifully.
    
  • We celebrated my good medical news by sharing a bottle of cherry wine tonight that was made in December 2021. Mary says, "It is fabulous. You can't buy anything better."
    

• Thursday, 1/4: Cutting Firewood
  
  • While Mary washed two loads of laundry and walked bills down the lane to mail them, I sharpened a chain for the big chainsaw.
  • Mary and I took the tractor/trailer to the edge of the north woods where we spotted a downed tree yesterday. It's a red oak. I cut it up while Mary loaded about 3/4 of the trailer. The bottom five pieces involving the trunk of the tree I sawed in half so we can lift them easier. Mary left early to start evening chores while I loaded the rest of the trailer. We have at least another wagon load of firewood that's still sitting in the woods. I drove the tractor home and unloaded most of the wood, stacking it next to the woodsplitter. The rest went inside.
    
  • We watched two episodes of the 1997 PBS documentary Liberty!, that Bill gave Mary for Christmas. It's quite good with new information never taught in American history class in school.
    
  • I got a call this morning from the Lewistown Clinic. My A1C is higher than six months ago, but not by much. On July 5, 2023, it was 6.3. Yesterday, it was 6.8. The message from the doctor was that we'll keep on the same medications and see what it's like in six months.
  • While finishing evening chores, I watched two big trumpeter swans fly over the west field, just above tree tops. They're very large birds!
    

• Friday, 1/5: Shopping, Hauling Firewood
  
  • Mary and I took a light shopping trip to Quincy in an attempt to stock up in case of winter conditions predicted next week. Highlights: 1) got a nice pork loin at $1.88/lb. at HyVee; 2) purchased half of my meds in a 90-day prescription at Sam's Club, so I don't have to visit every dang-blasted week; 3) visited Petco and talked to Molly Brown, who is the new Quincy store manager (new store, same problems) and discovered that new employees knew who I was by comments Molly has made about me working circles around other employees (her words). Her assistant asked if I wanted a job. I ignored her request. The guy checking us out at Petco started in 2019, a few months after I left. I mentioned that the newer computers/registers were a vast improvement from the old store. He said the computers running registers in the old store were old enough that you could play Oregon Trail on them. When they crashed, he said he'd tell others that he just died of dysentary, one outcome depicted in that game that Katie and Bill played ad nauseum.
    
  • On the way home, Mary counted 22 swans in the disced-up corn field east of our property.
  • Mary unloaded the pickup and did the evening chores while I drove the tractor north and loaded the remaining pieces of the oak tree we cut up yesterday. The halves of the trunk pieces were heavy and the whole pieces were really heavy. This wood filled the trailer. I unloaded the pieces into the machine shed, which is now really stuffed with wood ready for splitting (see photo, below).

  

  Machine shed: splitter (middle, background) & new wood (foreground).

• Saturday, 1/6: Splitting Firewood
  
  • Cedar branches were highlighted with snow dust this morning, making for a beautiful scene. Fog, mist, and an occasional snowflake infiltrated the rest of the day.
    
  • Mary and I split firewood most of the day, moving 10 wheelbarrow loads. Six loads went to the woodshed and four loads of wet wood were stacked in criss-cross fashion to dry along the north wall of the machine shed.
  • Carpenter ants are amazing. Honey locust wood is extremely hard, yet we found hundreds of these ants inside two chunks of locust firewood. Fine dust from carpenter ant chewing turned Mary's dark blue coat red.
    
  • After dark, we played a long game of Michigan Rummy, ate the last of the lime zinger cookies, and drank two pots of China Yunan loose leaf tea. My luck stunk in the opening hands of the game. I was left with 14 cards in my hand with Mary going out at one point. She won. It was fun.
    

• Sunday, 1/7: More Firewood Stacked Away
  
  • Mary saw a snow geese flock heading west this afternoon that included over 100 birds.
    
  • We saw and heard trumpeter swans off and on all through the day. Mary saw 22 swans fly by this evening and heard even more to the east.
  • Mary and I split wood all day. Seven wheelbarrow loads went into the woodshed and five loads of wet wood was stacked to dry inside the machine shed's north wall. Most of the red oak wood is damp. It should be ready in 2-3 weeks. We split about half of the oak firewood. We'll try to split the rest tomorrow.
  • Our weather forecast is calling for 6-12 inches of snow, with 40 mph winds, from Monday afternoon through Tuesday night. That's a main reason we're concentrating efforts on firewood gathering and splitting.
  • Since we need dry wood, Mary marched east in search of potentially dry firewood. She found a tall standing ash tree with all the bark gone and a beautiful silver color, indicating it's well cured wood. First thing tomorrow morning, we'll drop that tree, cut it up, take it home and split any large pieces.