Jan. 15-21, 2024

Weather | 1/15, cloudy, -15°, 4° | 1/16, sunny, -10°, 8° | 1/17, cloudy, 0°, 27° | 1/18, mostly sunny, 17°, 33° | 1/19, 0.06" from overnight snow, sunny, -2°, 9° | 1/20, sunny, -11°, 9° | 1/21, partly cloudy, -3°, 27° | 

• Monday, 1/15: Hibernating in Missouri
  
  • With cold temperatures outside, today was a lay-low day near the heat of the woodstove for all humans, dogs, and cats of this household.
    
  • During evening chores, we watched about 100 Canada geese fly due south over the house.
    
  • While feeding pets their supper, Mary watched a small coyote trot by the McIntosh apple tree, heading east, in the north yard.
  • Mary and I shared young pumpkin wine bottled in August. It contains a strong taste of sulfur, because I left it on the fines too long prior to the second racking. It needs to age a lot longer.
    
  • We watched three episodes of the first season of Star Trek: Picard.
    

• Tuesday, 1/16: Only Slightly Warmer
  
  • With cold temperatures outside, we all more or less hibernated inside again today. It was only a little bit warmer than yesterday.
    
  • Mary was the busy one, making another batch of flour tortillas, followed by chimichangas. I didn't even check for winter greens, because I'm sure they're freeze dried and dead.
  • Since Jan. 3rd, I've worked on floorplanner.com drawing up a sketch of a 24' x 40' building and trying to fit belongings into it. Our current house involves 1,980 square feet and this plan has an area of 960 square feet. The idea is that we will move into this smaller footprint, then build another structure of similar size, along with an enclosed walkway connecting the two buildings. I'm still working on the drawings.
    
  • After dark, we watched the first episode of Ken Burns' 2014 documentary, The Roosevelts.
    

• Wednesday, 1/17: Stacking, Falling, Restacking, Falling, I Quit!
  
  • I stacked firewood over and over again. The last batch of split red oak firewood is in a long stack inside the south-facing wide entrance on the west end of the machine shed. When snow melts the ground under that stack will get wet, so it needs to be moved prior to snow melting. I built a criss-cross stack on the north inside wall of the same shed. When it was chest high, it fell down. I rebuilt it into two stacks and added to them. At chest high, the original stack collapsed a second time. I quit at that point. Today is just not my day for stacking wood!
    
  • Mary made two pizzas, one of which we ate for our noontime meal.
    
  • Mary saw about 50 robins fly north to south over the yard to Bluegill Pond while doing evening chores.
  • We don't get snow that sticks around. So, our recent snow that's stayed on the ground for about 10 days shows off our high rabbit population with an abundance of bunny tracks everywhere (see photos, below). With so many rabbit tracks, is it any wonder we have coyotes wandering through the yard?
    
  • I updated the software to our Blu-ray player and our TV. The player wasn't accepting newer Blu-ray disks. I tested one that it spit out yesterday and the player started the movie, so we're now working correctly.

Rabbit tracks south of our far garden.

Bunny trail going by Porter's Perfection apple tree.

• Thursday, 1/18: Hay, Books, & Firewood
  
  • Mary moved two old clothes basket loads of hay to the chickens. It adds to their bedding, plus, they eat a bunch of it. She also opened all doors to let chickens wander outside and to dry inside walls of the coop. After several days inside, breathing chickens put frost on the inside walls that was melting, making the walls wet on the inside. We're going back into the deep freeze starting tonight.
    
  • Mary finished culling books that she's been working on for the past two days. She has 86 books ready for donating to the Salvation Army.
    
  • I stacked all remaining firewood. I redid the leaning stack and added a third stack, raising them all to head height. We now have five and a half stacks drying in the machine shed, along with firewood in the woodshed. Mary is already taking wood off the oldest drying stacks in the machine shed.
    
  • Mary watched an eastern bluebird drink water dripping off the bottom edge of our roof's valley. Then, a flock of cedar waxwings showed up and drank from the same area.
  • We both saw a large V of Canada geese flying to the southwest.
    
  • Mary heard a pileated woodpecker near our north yard.
    
  • In the evening, we watched the last three episodes of Star Trek: Picard, Season 1.
  • We now have a popcorn habit. We pop two big batches, each filling a six-quart container, which is probably bigger than the largest container sold in movie theaters. We sprinkle it with Kinder's Japanese BBQ seasoning that we get out out of Sam's Club, which includes soy, ginger, and garlic. It's recommended for seasoning meat, but the taste is amazing on popcorn. An added benefit, all of this popcorn has a minimal effect on my blood glucose levels. Plus, it tastes great.
    

• Friday, 1/19: Cold is Back
  
  • The cold temperatures arrived, again. It warmed up to a balmy 9° above zero. We kept chickens inside and puppies went out for very short walks, since new light snow makes dog paws quickly freeze in subzero temperatures. By bedtime, it was -4°.
  • When I marched yesterday's wood ashes to the ash pile, located just beyond the southeast corner of the far garden, I was amazed at the sparkling jewels as sun bounced off perfect snowflakes that fell overnight.
    
  • I made a batch of waffles for our midday meal.
  • Mary saw a pair of bluebirds drinking drops of water falling from our south roof valley. No matter how cold it is outside, sun always melts a little snow, resulting in water drops falling off the end of the valley in our south-facing roof.
    
  • We ordered seeds for our 2024 garden. We also ordered 50 new Seascape everbearing strawberry plants. Their berries taste wonderful. A new Elizabeth blueberry bush is also in the order. I held off on ordering any new orchard sprays. I'll work on that next month. For the first time in three years, Fedco had everything we needed.
    
  • We watched the second episode of The Roosevelts documentary.
    

• Saturday, 1/20: Heat of the Sun
  
  • Even though we got to -11° this morning, sun heated up the inside of the chicken coop so that by midday, temperatures reached 36° for the chickens. Even when it's cold, there's a lot of heat in the sun.
    
  • When Mary let the dogs outside around noon, she saw three deer run out of our east yard.
    
  • I cleaned off tape and label residue, then washed 12 wine bottles. These are bottles I bought from a guy who once made grape wine in the county north of us. He taped his labels on the bottles, but never removed old tape. A filet knife, followed by a green Scotch pad and some baking soda cleans it all off, beautifully.
    
  • At one point during the day, we watched starlings flying back and forth between the cedar trees east of the house and our roof. It was a sight to see them swooping onto the roof right above our heads. When starlings appear, we don't see other birds, so Mary went outside and chased them away.
    
  • Mary saw a coyote at sunset in the north yard.
  • We read books until bedtime. It was -3° when we retired.
    

• Sunday, 1/21: Damp Air Feels Cold
  
  • A southeast to southwest wind brought in humid Gulf of Mexico air. Outside temperatures were warmer, but the strong wind and damp air made it feel colder than when we had subzero temperatures.
    
  • Mary watched several eastern bluebirds on the grain bin roof this morning.
    
  • On a dog walk down the lane, we saw an owl wing print in snow where it dropped down on the snow to grab something.
    
  • I racked and bottled the apple wine, corking an equivalent of 16 bottles (one was a 1.5-liter bottle). Wine that was cloudy the last time I racked it, on 11/8, is very clear, now (see photos, below). The numbers were the same as the last racking...specific gravity of 0.998 and a pH of 3.0. The alcohol level is 9.04 percent. One cork didn't go in all the way, so we used that as an excuse to share a bottle. It has a strong apple taste and is quite good, especially for a green wine.
  • I popped up some popcorn to enjoy with our apple wine and we watched three episodes of the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
  • At bedtime, the first drops of freezing rain showed on the porch outside the east-facing exterior house door.
    

Apple wine, mainly from Empire apples.

Very clear apple wine.