Feb. 5-11, 2024

Weather | 2/5, p. cloudy, 27°, 53° | 2/6, sunny, 25°, 56° | 2/7, cloudy, 31°, 55° | 2/8, sunny, 45°, 66° | 2/9, p. cloudy, 38°, 58° | 2/10, sunny, 26°, 46° | 2/11, sunny, 25°, 41° |

• Monday, 2/5: Laying Out a New House
  
  • I removed one-gallon jugs that held switchel in the apple trees. This is a job that I should have done last fall. Last spring, I secured the jugs on branches using a clove hitch knot that sunk into the bark as the trees grew through the summer. With a filet knife, today I carefully cut the twine in these knots. Deep grooves are left in the branches. A loose connective knot must be used in the future.
  • The trunk of the Esopus apple tree that was infected by fire blight is now showing rotting wood. I need to take that tree out and burn the wood to eliminate further fire blight contamination of other trees.
    
  • I plotted out corner locations of a future house at the north end of the east yard. It took repeated efforts to get the rectangle squared with 90-degree corners. When I showed Mary, we realized that if a large pecan tree fell, it could crash on a future house roof. Mary suggested moving the house location southward and closer to water and electricity. We looked at it and decided to relocate where we'd put the house. I moved my rebar corner pieces. After several attempts at squaring up the rectangle, I quit for the day. A fresh outlook and some Pythagorean theorem applications might speed my work.
    
  • Last weekend, I sent a message to the owner of coolers for sale in LaBelle, but received no response. Today, I sent a message to guy in Quincy who is also selling old coolers. He wants $20 for a couple of them. He will get back to me on when to pick them up. It's for additional full wine bottle storage.
  • Our garden seeds arrived in today's mail. The package ping-ponged between U.S. Postal facilities in St. Louis for several days before coming north to Ewing, MO.
  • The garlic wine's fermentation is very slow, but the smell hits you like a ton of bricks, especially after coming in from outside. I stirred the must and squeezed the bag prior to going to bed, and that increased the smell even more!
    

• Tuesday, 2/6: Small House Footprint Isn't Small
  
  • Mary and I walked the dogs to Wood Duck Pond and back. On Bramble Hill, we spooked up some turkey. On the way back home, one of those turkeys flew right over top of us. They're really big birds. Water in the pond is up to normal levels. During hunting season, it was much lower. There is still ice on the middle of the pond. We watched a big ripple as something swam away from us once we walked up to the pond's shoreline.
    
  • Mary dusted books in the north bedroom and picked more books out to donate.
  • I finished flagging the house layout in our east yard. It was interesting going while stepping around small persimmon trees that are over my head and prickly rose bushes. Marked out on the ground, it looks small, but altogether, it's 2,136 square feet and our current house is 1,981 square feet. The asparagus bed has to move. The front edge of a new house smothers it.
  • While outside, I heard and saw swans flying around in our neighbor's field east of our property.
    
  • More foam and bubbles indicate yeast is starting to ferment in the garlic wine. I squeezed the bag and stirred the must twice, today. The specific gravity is 1.094, so it's got a long way to go before I rack it into a carboy. At bedtime, fizzing increased, boosted by higher yeast activity.
  • Below is how I feel some mornings. This came from a blog that Mary follows.
  

• Wednesday, 2/7: Buying a Cooler
  
  • Mary and I walked the dogs west to the Bobcat Deer Blind and then around the west field. Muddy places in the trail were filled with deer tracks. Several branches and dead trees are blown down in the timber.
    
  • We enjoyed a bottle of 2021 pear wine with turkey pot pie and corn on the cob. Both the midday meal and the wine tasted good.
  • I drove to Quincy and bought a cooler for full wine bottle storage for only $10.
  • I counted 315 bottles of homemade wine currently stored for future consumption.
    
  • While Mary was at home doing chores, she saw a Ross's goose leading a flock of snow geese. It's white, like a snow goose, but about half the size of a snow goose. Mary also saw a red-tailed hawk parked on an elm tree alongside the trail to the ponds. On the way to Quincy, I saw about 2-3 dozen trumpeter swans in the disked corn field east of our place.
    
  • I squeezed and stirred the garlic wine twice, today. Fermentation is more robust and it's loudly fizzing. The specific gravity is 1.081.
    

• Thursday, 2/8: Winds & Snow Geese
  
  • I cleaned up the cooler I bought yesterday. Coleman imprinted the name of the company it came from on the front of the cooler. There was a sticker inside that said additional charges would incur if the cooler wasn't returned. I looked up this company, based in Peoria, IL. It's a company that tests groundwater, waste sites, sewer sites, and building sites for various harmful chemicals, including PCBs. The guy I bought the cooler from works for an engineering firm. He got the cooler from work. It looks new.
    
  • On a walk around the north field with the dogs, we saw several Vs of snow geese struggling against a strong southwest wind as they flew westerly. Geese would fly into the wind for awhile, then glide to the west, northwest. Gusts were to 45 mph.
    
  • By late afternoon, wind blew the old catfish pen off the apple rootstocks and into the chicken wire rabbit fence in the near garden. I tied rootstock tops together with a piece of baling twine and put the old catfish pen back over the rootstocks, then weighed it down with three metal fence posts that I had on the south porch.
    
  • Grabbing the fence posts made me realize that the south storm door was so shot that the sliding window in it was about to fall out, especially with the strong wind. Today's storm doors contain cheap chipboard covered in white vinyl. When water gets into the board, it disintegrates to sawdust. I removed the window and all metal trim to possibly use in a homemade storm door. I bet I can make a better door than the cheap chipboard garbage available today for $210 and up. 
    
  • We watched the 2002 BBC series, Prehistoric Planet.
  • I squeezed the bag and stirred the garlic wine. The fermentation is very robust. The specific gravity is 1.054. The aroma is flowery, now.
    

• Friday, 2/9: An Oil Change
  
  • We walked the dogs to the east, down Black Medick Hill, down the dry creek bed to Wood Duck Pond, then up Bramble Hill and home (see photos, below). It was a beautiful day for a nice walk.
    
  • Mary noticed two first-of-the-year birds. One was a white-throated sparrow. This bird goes up into Canada and is here on its winter vacation. She also saw an American kestrel. It flew from one black walnut tree to another and then was scolded by a squadron of blue jays.
  • I cleaned up the mounds of sawdust left on the south porch by a crumbling storm door. I peeled vinyl off still-intact particle board, then threw all of the wood away in the southwest timber.
    
  • I changed oil and the oil filter on the pickup. Some seals are starting to leak, since there's more oil on the bottom of the engine.
    
  • In the evening, a check of the garlic wine showed that the specific gravity is at 1.027, which means I will probably be racking it tomorrow morning. This wine started as very clear. Now, it's cream colored.

Wood Duck Pond from the south shore looking north.

Our puppies on the Bramble Hill Trail.

• Saturday, 2/10: First Racking of Garlic Wine
  
  • On our daily dog walk, we darted off into the north woods from the north yard and meandered around shrubs and large trees, walking west and north. There are several standing dead trees, or dead branches, with holes bored into them. These become homes to several types of birds and rodents.
  • Mary cross stitched and finished a small project.
  • I racked the garlic wine for the first time after getting a specific gravity reading of 1.009. The pH was 3.1. Liquid filled a 5-gallon carboy, a 750-ml wine bottle and part of a beer bottle. The yeast is so strong that I had several foam overflows after placing the wine in a carboy. I was forced to siphon out liquid and then install an overflow airlock, an occurrence uncommon to my past garlic winemaking. All through the night, gas bubbled into a quart canning jar (see video, below).
  • We enjoyed three pots, each, of China Yunan loose leaf tea, and played the board game, Azul. The game is fun. We played for six hours and time passed quickly. Mary won several games in the first hours. I started winning more games in the second half of the evening.
    Robust garlic wine fermentation. Sorry for sideways tilt at the end.
    
    
    

• Sunday, 2/11: Chiefs Win Super Bowl
  
  • We startled six deer as we walked across the west lawn this morning.
  • Our daily dog walk took us on a jaunt through the southwest woods, where we found some good dry firewood.
  • Mary did some cross stitching while I did some online research about gravel depths under slab on grade construction. I also sorted through home repair books to determine several to donate out of our collection.
    
  • The garlic wine is still belching CO2 gas with one burp every second.
  • We spent the evening listening to the Super Bowl. The Kansas City Chiefs pulled it out with three seconds left in overtime to win 25-22 over the 49ers. It was quite a game! Our state team won...YAHOO!