April 1-7, 2024

Weather | 4/1, 0.11" rain, 46°, 69° | 4/2, 0.49" rain, 41°, 42° | 4/3, 0.02" rain/sleet, 33°, 45° | 4/4, cloudy, 33°, 48° | 4/5, p. sunny, 30°, 58° | 4/6, sunny, 31°, 56° | 4/7, 0.20" rain, p. cloudy, 45°, 69° |

• Monday, 4/1: Low Activity
  
  • Minimal physical activity wears us out, fast, even though we're slowly recovering from COVID. Mary made tortillas and was shot. I walked the quarter-mile lane to the mailbox and back and was tired. There's so many things that need doing, but it isn't happening right now.
  • Bill's friend, Mike, couldn't make it to the NHL game, so he got another friend, Craig, to go with him. While at Craig's place in Maryland Heights, a St. Louis suburb, hail put some small dings in Bill's car. They waited out a tornado warning before going to the game. The Blues beat the Oilers 3-2 in overtime. Bill said it was a good game. It was Craig's first professional sport's game.
    
  • I found a free live ESPN feed and watched Iowa beat LSU and UConn beat USC in Women's NCAA basketball, which was fun to see.
  • We didn't witness nasty storms. They were all south of us. We only saw a little thunder in the early afternoon.
    

• Tuesday, 4/2: Wet & Wind
  
  • Just after waking up, I saw four of our neighbor's black dogs on our lane and running west across the field. They were gone before I could get outside. What our neighbors need is a big German Shepherd that hates stray dogs.
  • Today we had clouds, rain, mist, and wind. Pear blossoms are coming and going without weather good enough for pollinators to get into them. The Sargent crabapple and McIntosh apple trees are full of opening white blossoms.
  • Mary baked four loaves of bread. Fresh bread made for a great treat this evening.
    
  • For the first time in several days, I didn't take a nap, but I'm still not over COVID. Coughing is what I do, now. Mary is on Day 11 of not enjoying this damn bug.
    
  • I spent time researching how to build house foundation drainage.
    
  • We watched the 2004 movie, Hildago.
    

• Wednesday, 4/3: Clouds, Pizza, and an Order
  
  • Today was dreary, with clouds, rain, mist and northwest wind gusts to 45 mph. We stayed inside and didn't let the chickens out of the coop. The woodstove heat was perfect, but we're almost out of firewood.
    
  • I assessed all of my winemaking supplies and ordered a few things from hobbyhomebrew.com in Carbondale, IL. On top of the list was 200 wine corks. I also put winemaking stuff away that was sitting out in the downstairs west room.
    
  • Mary made two pizzas and paid the bills.
  • Five deer marched around south and west of the house in the evening. They started munching on the lilac bush, so I opened the window and sent then away. They didn't go far. Soon, they were heading back to the south apple trees, so I went outside and clapped to send them running. Then, three other deer ran to the east from the north yard. We really have a lot of deer.
    

• Thursday, 4/4: Bottling Parsnip Wine
  
  • While walking the bills down to the mailbox, we found a smashed crayfish near the gravel road, but in our lane. Mary identified it as a grassland crayfish. We're guessing it was stepped on by our neighbor's horses.
  • The same neighbors that own a roving pack of black Lab mutts made a slipshod electric fence out of plastic pipes and a single strand of electric tape in their yard to hold their horses. The problem is their two horses step right through the fence and wander down the gravel road to our property. These slobs are getting real annoying with their animals spilling onto our land.
    
  • I racked and bottled the parsnip wine. Made 135 days ago, this was the fifth racking. The specific gravity was 1.001 and the pH was 3.2. This wine has a 10.2 percent alcohol content. I added 0.6 grams of Kmeta, the full dosage for 3.5 gallons. It has a beautiful orange color (see photos, below). I corked 18 wine bottles. We drank a tiny bit of the clear wine and all of the fines. This is a very good wine. It's hard to describe the taste, since there are so many flavors involved. The second half of the fines we drank chilled. It wasn't nearly as good as at room temperature.
  • Mary counted her canning lids and decided she has enough, but she plans on getting more.
  • Mary covered the winter greens, due to a freeze warning predicted overnight.

18 bottles of parsnip wine.

This wine has a deep gold color.

• Friday, 4/5: Shopping & Scrounging Firewood
  
  • We had a frosty morning. There was no fruit tree damage. The McIntosh and the Sargent trees are full of bees attending to blossoms.
    
  • I drove to Quincy and picked up a FedEx package of strawberry plants and a blueberry bush, medications, and a few other items.
  • The package of winemaking items that I ordered on Wednesday showed up in today's mail, which was super fast shipping. I paid for agglomerated corks, meaning they are made from bits of cork glued together. They sent me the more expensive solid corks.
  • I bought gas in Lewistown, where it's cheapest, at $3.19 a gallon.
  • Our firewood supply is out, so Mary gathered up wood from our wienie roast firewood pile and sawed up some persimmon posts that I never got around to peeling.
  • I watched the two women's NCAA Final Four games on ESPN. The South Carolina team looks very good. They beat NC State. Iowa beat UConn by two points in a very close game. It was fun to watch. Mary is rooting for SC. She attended a SC campus her college freshman year. I'm rooting for Iowa.
    

• Saturday, 4/6: Removing Fence Posts
  
  • The wind blows constantly, day and night. It's been always blowing for several days.
  • Mary made venison General Tso for our main meal. She uses both garlic and jalapeño wines in making this recipe and was running out of them, so I retrieved two bottles from my supply. While lifting a cooler loaded with bottles, I pulled a muscle in my lower right back. I felt it for the rest of the day, but the meal was wonderful.
  • I looked at a couple wooden fence posts in a fence I'm dismantling on the south edge of the north field. They're just as wiggly in the ground as metal fence posts and they weigh a ton. They come from an Osage orange tree and the wood doesn't decay. I also looked at some laying on the forest floor in the north woods. I decided to forego using them, since I'd need something mechanical to hoist them up and put them in the ground, which I don't have.
  • I worked at removing more metal fence posts. I now have 30 and need eight more to have enough for encircling two sets of fruit trees with electric fences. The work is tedious while I dodge multiflora rose bushes and spiky cedar boughs. One post stayed in place. Two cedar trees encapsulated its base. While removing one post in tight quarters amongst cedar boughs, I was wiggling it back and forth and accidentally whacked the tip of it against my forehead, leaving a bloody mark. I went inside and dabbed hydrogen peroxide on the wound. Mary says it looks like she hit my forehead with a brick. I quit at that point.
  • While getting my bucket of fence post removal tools, I watched a mature bald eagle chasing an immature bald eagle as they circled above me. As they got close to one another, the younger eagle would dive to a lower elevation to avoid contact. It was quite spectacular to watch.
    
  • I watched highlights of the two men's NCAA Final Four basketball games. I really like the 7'4" center for Purdue, Zach Edey. I watched a clip of him meeting Shaq O'Neal in a back tunnel and Edey is taller than O'Neal. Edey has a wicked sky hook shot.
    

• Sunday, 4/7: Bad Back Gets Worse
  
  • Bill called and we talked for over an hour. He's winding up the chore of shipping all inventory to other warehouses at his job. The numbers of employees have dropped significantly. He thinks his employer is going to ask him to work at their South Carolina location once work is done in St. Louis. He's against going there. Bill's car received hail damage. He plans on getting estimates on fixing it. Bill plans on visiting here the weekend after next weekend. 
  • We walked dogs westerly and saw trout lily flowers while in the north woods.
  • I watched South Carolina beat Iowa in the NCAA women's basketball championship. Mary's team won. They're really good.
  • I pulled three more posts from the north fenceline and rolled up more barbed wire. With a bad back, it was excruciating, because most of the time you are bent over while dodging cedar boughs. After doing that job, I was pretty stove up and having a hard time just walking. Out came the heating pad. I went to bed in the easy chair, with small pillows behind my back.
    
  • The ticks are back. I picked nine ticks off me after playing with fence posts. Three were biting!
  • Bees are thick in blossoming fruit trees. The McIntosh apple tree smells great. Cherry blossoms are starting to open. Pears are almost done blossoming.
    
  • Mary started pepper seeds in small Styrofoam cups filled with potting soil.
    
  • Mary baked a wonderful-tasting pumpkin cake that we enjoyed with deviled eggs and jam on toast for our evening meal.