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.