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.