Sept. 15-21, 2025

Weather | 9/15, p. cloudy to thunderstorm, 0.64" rain, 67°, 89° | 9/16, p. cloudy, 60°, 87° | 9/17, sunny, 60°, 89° | 9/18, cloudy, 64°, xx° | 9/19, xx°, xx° | 9/20, xx°, xx° | 9/21, xx°, xx° |

• Monday, 9/15: Nice Rain...YAHOO!!!
  • We finally witnessed a nice rain of about 3/4". The last time we had anywhere near this amount of rainfall was on August 9th, over a month ago, when we got 0.59". A front stalled over us and gave us a couple significant thunderstorms. We even walked through water puddles after the rain.
  • I added 2 grams of diammonium phosphate (DAP) to the apple wine brew bucket and worked up a starter batch of Red Star Côte des Blancs yeast throughout the day. I pitched the yeast into the brew bucket prior to bedtime. The specific gravity was 1.057, a 17-point drop from yesterday's reading of 1.074. This indicates that wild yeast from the apples was already working down the sugar content. There was a slight vinegar odor coming from the wild yeast fermentation. As soon as I dumped in my yeast starter, a familiar wine yeast smell filled the air.
  • Mary picked a full four-gallon bucket of hazelnuts.
  • While she was picking these nuts, she heard a tree frog calling. It sensed rain when no weather forecast called for rain. We need to pay attention to tree frogs. 
  • Mary and I husked all of the hazelnuts during the thunderstorms (see photo, below).
  • We both picked tomatoes and hot peppers before the thunderstorms hit. After dark, Mary sorted ripe tomatoes from unripe ones and froze ripe tomatoes and hot peppers.
  • Mary startled a covey of Bob White quail from under the walnut trees on our lane while doing evening chores.
  • The doorknob on the chicken coop quit working. It was an old-fashioned knob. The screws holding the device together were buried under rosette, or the cover just beyond the knob handle. I sawed the inside and outside knobs off with a hacksaw, then unscrewed other parts. Hens on the roost just inside the door hated the sound of my hacksaw on metal. It was getting dark, so I leaned a metal fence post against the outside of the chicken coop door to keep it shut. I'll have to install a used doorknob on that door, tomorrow.
  • I heard two great horned owls calling to one another as I finished evening chores.
  • After dark, while Mary and I were reading, a pack of coyotes howled from our west yard, which is just steps away from the chicken yard and our house. After we walked Plato, I went to check the chicken coop door to make sure it was secure (it was fine) and coyotes howled from just south of the house. I walked to the south orchard and shined my flashlight south into the fog. The coyotes shut up once the flashlight lit up the fog. This morning (9/16), Mary found coyote scat under the east side of the clothesline.

  

  Nearly a full basket of husked hazelnuts.
  

• Tuesday, 9/16: Junk Box Isn't So Junky
  • I checked old door knobs with the current door on the chicken coop and they don't fit with the holes in that door. The door knob I cut out with a hacksaw was smaller. I'll probably go with some kind of a latch system like we currently use on the chicken doors.
  • The apple wine yeast is humming right along. Twelve hours after I poured in the yeast, the specific gravity was five points lower at 1.052. Before bedtime, it dropped another nine points to 1.043. I might be racking it tomorrow. 
  • While trying to find a latch for the human door in the chicken coop, I grabbed a cardboard box that we call the "junk box" and decided to clean it out. It weighed a ton. Most of the weight was due to tools. I moved tools out of a small yellow toolbox, cleaned it out, and designated it as our house toolbox. All of those tools went into that toolbox. I tossed a bunch of outdated things from the junk box, such as old keys (we had three pairs of keys to the 1984 Suburban in there), and bagged several like items. It's very much lighter, now.
  • I attended a Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) Webex session dedicated to Missouri reptiles, which was very interesting.
  • Mary picked more tomatoes and hot peppers, then froze them. She also picked a few strawberries. The ground under all garden plants was damp and there was no need for watering. That is a nice break.
  • We experienced more coyotes howling at night while walking Plato. One yipped from just south of the house, while others howled from just north of us. I shined the flashlight into the south orchard trees and waved the light around. That coyote immediately shut up and probably moved on. I'm guessing we have a lot of bunnies near the house and that's attracting coyotes.

• Wednesday, 9/17: Sweet Potato Harvest
  • I checked the apple wine twice during the day, getting a specific gravity of 1.037 the first time and 1.031 the second time. Each time that I checked this wine, I squeezed the three nylon mesh bags to release more liquid. The contents in each bag is reducing as more liquid leaves the apple pulp. Racking this wine for the first time will definitely occur tomorrow.
  • Mary dug up the sweet potatoes. After 16 years of putting down grass mulch, she was able to search out the sweet potatoes with her bare hand, instead of with a shovel or trowel, because the soil is now nice and soft. The numbers of sweet potatoes weren't as good as last year, but were still respectable. After laying them out to dry (see photo, below), she stored them in two milk crates in the back porch closet.
  • Mary and I watered the gardens. The task is quicker now that there are fewer plants to water.
  • While putting the chickens to bed, we noticed huge cracks in the ground in the north chicken yard, due to very dry soil. Mary stuck a stick a foot down into one of the cracks. Our clay soil cracks a lot when dry.
  • I cut the bad parts out of an apple that fell off the Granny Smith apple tree that we ate. It was very delicious.

  

  This year's sweet potato harvest set out to dry.

  
   

Sept. 8-14, 2025

Weather | 9/8, sunny, 48°, 75° | 9/9, p. cloudy, 51°, 79° | 9/10, sunny, 52°, 83° | 9/11, sunny, 59°, 86° | 9/12, p. cloudy, 60°, 91° | 9/13, p. cloudy, 67°, 93° | 9/14, sunny, 66°, 93° |

• Monday, 9/8: Tasting Apples
  • Mary used her scythe and cut down hay in the east yard. We should have plenty of hay with this cutting.
  • I got the photos transferred to my new phone and downloaded several apps.
  • Mary took a photo on her new phone of goldenrod (see below). The new camera takes wonderful photos. 
  • I mowed the lane. Small yellow foxtail grass was hard to cut, since it's tough and dry.
  • Mary watered all of the gardens, while I watered small trees and blueberries.
  • We saw a large number of monarch butterflies and large dragonflies migrating through all day. It's the most monarchs we've seen in a number of years.
  • Boneset is blooming now and all of the pollinators love it.
  • We ate a wonderful evening meal of caramelized shallots and over-easy eggs. The shallots gave the eggs a great taste. 
  • We tried a Liberty apple and two Goldrush apples. The Liberty apples are deep red, almost purple color. The Liberty apple was firm and juicy with a slight tart taste. It doesn't have a complex taste as some of the other apples, such as Calville, Roxbury Russet, or Goldrush. Seeds in the Liberty apple are black, so it's time to pick apples from that tree.

  

  Goldenrod: A photo taken by Mary.
  

• Tuesday, 9/9: First Hazelnuts Harvested
  • I worked on Mary's new phone to get all of her photos to show from iCloud. I also installed the Cornell Ornithology Lab's Merlin app, and got her reading list to show. 
  • Mary spread out the hay in the east yard.
  • She also watered all garden plants.
  • I took measurements of diameters and lengths of all five woodsplitter hydraulic hoses. Fortunately, one of the hoses connected to the hydraulic ram had writing on it, identifying it as a 3/8" inside diameter. All but two hoses have the same sized diameters. The other two seem to have an inside diameter of 3/4". I sawed the return hose to the tank in half to measure that diameter.
  • Mary picked hazelnuts and strawberries. Some of the hazelnut husks dried during our last heat spell and are impossible to remove. After washing chicken waterers, I helped her husk the remaining hazelnuts as darkness approached.
  • We ate the good half of a Granny Smith apple that fell off the tree. I tasted wonderful and significantly better than store-bought Granny apples.
  • A pair of Eurasian collared doves recently started perching in cedar trees between the machine shed and the chicken coop. Mary says that they sound like a tired whoopee cushion.
  • Mary heard a barred owl calling from the Kieffer pear tree while she was sitting in the living room tonight.
  • I finished reading Form Line of Battle by Alexander Kent, which is the ninth book of the series.

• Wednesday, 9/10: New Splitter Hoses & Phone Plan Change
  • I went to Quincy and bought hydraulic hoses and fittings at Farm & Home for the wood splitter. Now I hope everything fits and works correctly. 
  • I also paid outright for the new cell phones and removed us from the "upgraded" four phone numbers that enabled us to get our "free" phones. We don't need our old phones active on their own new phone numbers...we're done with them. When I added up the monthly charge of the three-year contract to get the supposedly free phones, we would have been paying more than double the original cost of those phones. Yet, I had to tell the U.S. Cellular store manager three times that the free phones weren't free at all and I insisted on a change back to just two, instead of four, phone numbers. I got my way. I also took off the device protection plan on the internet router, since the damn thing sits on the shelf and the only way it would move is if we had an earthquake.
  • Mary watered all garden plants. When she was done, she picked a hornworm off her shoelace.
  • After dark, Mary used the UV flashlight and collected 49 hornworms off the tomato and tomatillo plants, which is a record for this year. Most of them were big. She wasn't looking for hornworms with the recent cooler temperatures, but cold didn't stop hornworms from eating and growing.

• Thursday, 9/11: Bill is Visiting Us
  • Bill arrived here around 11 am. He's visiting us until Sunday afternoon. Plato is super happy!
  • Bill and I picked all of the apples off the Liberty and Porter's Perfection trees. The Liberty apples turn to a maroon/red color (see photo, below). We got 57 apples off the Liberty tree and threw one away. That's pretty good for the first year of producing fruit. We got 19 apples off the Porter's tree and tossed five. We were a little late at picking apples off Porter.
  • Mary picked a few tomatoes and hot peppers from plants in the far garden, including two large-sized tomatoes. She also picked hazelnuts and husked them.
  • Mary watered garden plants while I watered small trees and blueberries. While we watered, Bill found nine hornworms on tomato plants.
  • We watched the BBC movie, North and South.

  

  Liberty apples before we picked them off the tree.
  

• Friday, 9/12: Heat, Hay, & Hoses
  • High heat has returned to us with a high of 91°. Mary read online that our location is in what is termed as a flash drought, where extreme drying occurs quickly. It enhances the chance of wildfires, so we hope recent dove hunters are careful while in the woods.
  • Mary picked up and stored the hay into the second bin. It amounted to 11 large wheelbarrow loads. The bin is now stacked almost to the ceiling with hay, which is good. We should have plenty for overwintering chickens in the coop. 
  • Mary watered gardens while Bill found nine worms in the tomato and tomatillo plants. 
  • I installed the new hydraulic hoses onto the wood splitter. I didn't pay attention to the fact that I needed one more swivel coupler for one end of the six-foot hose that runs from the pump under the engine to the directional valve above the splitter. So, I left one connection loose until I buy that coupler.
  • Mary took Bill on an after dark hornworm safari in the far garden to show him how the UV flashlight works. They found 13 more worms.
  • Bill picked out Men in Black 3 and we watched it.

• Saturday, 9/13: Making Apple Wine
  • A red-shouldered hawk flew across the south field as we walked Plato down the lane this morning. It landed in a tree on the edge of the woods and blue jays had fit because of the hawk.
  • Mary picked some tomatoes and a few hot peppers. She started gallon bag number two in the freezer. We have one gallon and need 14 more gallons of tomatoes. Hopefully, the autumn freeze holds off until all of the tomatoes are ripe.
  • Bill and I racked the peapod wine for the fourth time. It has a weird greenish yellow color. The specific gravity was 0.993 and the pH was 3.0. I accidentally spilled some of the wine when I first started transferring the liquid to a new gallon jug. Since the wine's level needs to be topped up in order for it to stay in good shape, we added a couple ounces of water. This water also contained 0.2 grams of Kmeta. The wine sits for another month.
  • Bill and I also made a two gallon batch of apple wine. I bet this will get to be 3-4 gallons once liquid comes off all of the applesauce. Five bags of Empire applesauce easily thawed in today's outdoor heat. It totaled 36 pounds, 8.1 ounces. I put it in three nylon mesh bags. Added to the brew bucket was 2 quarts, 2 cups of water, 0.4 grams of Kmeta, a cup of strong tea made with 2 teabags, and 2 pounds of sugar to yield a specific gravity of 1.074. It sits overnight in the pantry, covered with a flour sack towel.
  • Mary watered gardens. The cucumber vines dried with this second stint of intense heat, so Mary quit watering them. She's also considering digging up sweet potatoes, because those plants are drying up. I'm watering the Seckel pear tree every day, but I don't know if it will make it through this recent bout of blast furnace weather. 
  • Mary made pizza and we played Night Sky Monopoly. Mary won. Bill came in second. I was in last place. I traded property with Mary that put her at a solid advantage. We shared a big bottle of 2024 cherry wine, which was very nice.

• Sunday, 9/14: Crunchy Brown Walnut Leaves
  • We found a spring peeper frog in the netting that covers the winter greens. Frogs seek out the tubs housing the winter greens, due to the daily watering that the plants get. It's moisture in a very dry world.
  • The walnut leaves in the trees arching over the lane near our house are turning brown and falling onto lane, crunching under our boots. Usually, walnut leaves turn yellow, but not so much this year. They're just drying up in the crispy air.
  • I added 2 tablespoons and a teaspoon of pectic enzyme to the apple wine brew bucket and stirred it slightly. The pH is 3.2, which is perfect. I'm letting it sit another day for the pectic enzyme to help release liquid from the chopped up apples.
  • Bill left in the afternoon for his apartment in St. Charles.
  • Mary watered gardens while I filled watering cans. Watering goes quicker when I help Mary.
  • I'm concerned about the Seckel pear tree. Its leaves are drying up with this second bout of heat. I hope it survives. I water it daily. 
  • We have four Eurasian collared doves that visit us each evening. They look at us from the electric line. Before it gets dark, they fly into the cedar trees and perch there for the night.

Sept. 1-7, 2025

 Weather | 9/1, p. cloudy, 60°, 78° | 9/2, sunny, 54°, 79° | 9/3, cloudy, 0.11" rain, 56°, 77° | 9/4, sunny, 47°, 71° | 9/5, cloudy, 55°, 68° | 9/6, sunny, 45°, 72° | 9/7, sunny, 40°, 69° |

• Monday, 9/1: Labor Day
  • Today is Labor Day and the first day of dove season. We never heard a single shotgun go off, so the doves are safe in this neighborhood.
  • I found two more apples under the Porter's Perfection tree that I cleaned up and put in the fridge. They are tart and tasty.
  • While Mary watered the far garden, I watered small fruit trees and blueberries. They seem to be doing better from my twice-per-week watering. I helped Mary with the very end of watering the far garden and watering the near garden.
  • I picked a small handful of strawberries. Since Mary has all of the zucchinis that she needs, I picked three medium zucs, chopped them up, and fed them to the hens. By the end of the day, they devoured everything, including the skins. 
  • Mary picked a few tomatoes and some cucumbers. She made a cucumber salad. We probably won't get enough cucumbers for making pickles. 
  • Our water pressure at the kitchen faucet was so low last week that I called the water district about it. Then, we noticed plenty of water pressure at the bathroom faucet and outside at the hydrant. I removed the aerator fitting at the end of the kitchen faucet's spout. I removed a tiny decayed valve ahead of the aerator. Upon opening it up a second time this weekend, Mary noticed that pieces of a plastic screen broke and fell into the water outlet, significantly blocking water flow. She removed the plastic pieces with tweezers and our flow increased. Today, we noticed an even stronger flow of water, so the water district also fixed a leak to boost the pressure.
  • Ben Woodruff, who owns property west of us, leaves his home in St. Louis and shows up with his kids every holiday. They roar around on four-wheelers, making loud noise, usually in the evenings. We always know when these city morons are here, because the internet slows to a snail's pace, as his kids download movies and eat up bandwidth coming off cell towers. By tonight, after they left for home, the internet was back to normal.

• Tuesday, 9/2: Watering & Woodsplitter Engine Maintenance
  • Mary made some very yummy venison stew and biscuits for our midday meal.
  • She also watered all gardens. We're in a dry cycle, where garden plants require daily watering.
  • I cleaned the woodsplitter's engine crevices that were filled with oil-soaked chicken feathers and nut shells that mice moved into place. What an absolute mess! With various sized screwdrivers and needle nose pliers, I removed a ton of junk. There were times when I wondered how on earth a hickory or pecan nut got wedged between the fins of that eight horsepower Briggs & Stratton engine. I changed the spark plug, tightened the spring in the pull start so the pull cord returns correctly, lubed it and the throttle cable with WD-40, and sprayed carb cleaner on the throttle and governor springs to clean them. I put everything together and fired up the engine. It sounds better. From the engine numbers I determined that it was built in 1989. At night, I ordered the following parts for the engine: gas filter, air cleaner foam, and a magneto armature (coil). The last part includes a spark plug wire, which is badly chewed by mice right now. 
  • We ate four of the five Porter's Perfection apples that were in the fridge. They're very bitter. In the description of this apple on Fedco's website, it indicates that the apple is not for eating, but best for enhancing apple cider flavor. We're weird, because we like eating it, anyway.
  • I finished reading Alexander Kent's With All Despatch, his eighth in the series of British Navy novels.

• Wednesday, 9/3: First Rain in Almost a Month!
  • While viewing online images of the engine that we have in our log splitter, I noticed that I didn't assemble the parts of the rope pull start mechanism correctly, so I took it apart and put the parts in the right way. Then I changed oil in that engine. It was black. I need to do a better job at changing oil in that machine.
  • Mary watered garden plants. We just don't trust the forecast for rain. I helped her with watering the near garden. She also picked some tomatoes and cucumbers.
  • Mary took photos of a swallowtail butterfly larvae in the parsnips (see photo, below). They love parsnip leaves.
  • We had rain for the first time in nearly a month when a thunderstorm rumbled through. We were outside putting the chickens to bed when the only two lightning strikes hit nearby. It made us move quickly for the protection of the house.
  • I found two apples under trees after wind knocked them out of trees during the thunderstorm. One was a Roxbury Russet and the other was a Goldrush apple.
  • I started Form Line of Battle, Alexander Kent's ninth book of the series. These last two books we purchased at the Quincy Library Book Sale for 50 cents an inch.

  

  A swallowtail butterfly caterpillar in parsnip leaves.
  

• Thursday, 9/4: Shopping Trip, New Phones
  • While walking Plato on the lane this morning, we spotted a turkey poult at the curve of the lane near Bluegill Pond. It is nearly adult size.
  • I cut out bad parts and we ate the two apples I found that I found yesterday in our morning oatmeal breakfast. The Roxbury Russet apple tastes excellent after cooking with the oatmeal. It will be a great baking apple in the future.
  • We shopped in Quincy. Farm & Home has a sale going on and we got extra bags of hen and cat food, two more pairs of rubber boots, AA and AAA batteries, and a big thermometer for inside the chicken coop. Mary bought a couple books at Salvation Army and Goodwill. They are Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious Pirates, and The Illustrated History of Canada. Then, we spent two hours at US Cellular and got two new iPhone 16s.
  • While looking west from Quincy, we could see smoke in the air. When we crossed the Mississippi River while going home, we really noticed the smokey air. On Plato's final walk before going to bed, the moon was orange, due to the smoke.

• Friday, 9/5: Another Day Without Rain
  • After letting out the chickens this morning, we looked up after closing the gate and saw our resident deer family munching on grass in the east yard. It's a doe and twin fawns. Her kids are pretty big.
  • When Mary picked tomatoes, she saw a mouse staring up at her from the tomato patch. She tapped it gently on the rump to get it to move out of the way. It moved a couple inches and stopped, again. Mary tapped it a second time to get it to move on. It was rather tame. 
  • It was watering day, again, because even though clouds looked like rain many times today, we never received a drop. Mary watered gardens and I watered small trees and blueberry bushes.
  • I found a Goldrush apple under that tree. I cut out bad parts and we ate it. Goldrush apples are very tasty. 
  • Mary cut up and froze two pork loins that we picked up yesterday while shopping in Quincy. They were on sale at Niemann's for $1.77 a pound. Mary also froze tomatoes. We have half a gallon of tomatoes in the freezer. We need 15 gallons to make the three batches of salsa that Mary wants to make, so we have a long ways to go to reach her goal.
  • The wood splitter engine parts that I ordered on Tuesday arrived in today's mail. The online Briggs & Stratton store is in Florida, but the order came from Iowa, which was nice.
  • We watched a movie we picked up yesterday. It's a 2009 film called New in Town, which was filmed in Winnipeg in the winter to depict life in Minnesota. In the extras after the movie we learned that some of the nighttime filming took place when temperatures were -57° F. The movie was predictable, but we liked it for the northern cold aspect and some of the Minnesota lingo bantered about by the actors. The film stars Renée Zellweger and Harry Connick Jr.

• Saturday, 9/6: Cool Temperatures
  • We're experiencing really nice cool temperatures. The U.S. Weather Service says we're 10 degrees colder than normal, which is fine with us. Unfortunately, the forecast for the upcoming week gets temperatures into the lower 90s...double YUCK!
  • Mary cleaned house and washed furniture covers and blankets, which includes a small red plaid fuzzy blanket that we got on our last shopping trip with Gandalf in mind. He was on it for the first time tonight. He purred as he kneaded the blanket with this claws. He likes it.
  • I installed the new parts in the wood splitter's engine. First, I put in the new fuel filter. Next, I tossed the old foam air filter, cleaned the air filter housing and parts, oiled the new foam and installed it. Finally, I removed the old coil, loosened two bolts to slide the new coil's ground wire through a loop in the engine housing cover, retightened those bolts and the nut on the ground wire, snipped the old spark plug wire to slide off the spark plug boot, cleaned it, shortened the spark plug wire, stripped the wire and crimped on a new spark plug snap tab, slid the boot over the tab, snugged down nuts holding the coil to the flywheel after getting it .010 inches away from the flywheel, then cleaned and installed the blower housing cover. The engine started on the first pull and ran nicely. A new coil made a huge difference.
  • I found another apple under the Goldrush tree. This one was bad.
  • We marveled over several of the features found in the latest Apple cell phone operating system in our iPhone 16s. Our old iPhone SE (1st generation) phones couldn't update beyond system 15. These new phones are on system 18. We're still waiting for a confirmation from Apple to change Mary's password, so we can finish linking the phones to iCloud.
  • We heard a screech owl at night while walking Plato. It was in the east yard.

• Sunday, 9/7: Processing Peppers & Removing Wood Splitter Hoses
  • Mary picked bell peppers from the far garden and put 29 bags of cut up green peppers in the freezer. She would like to put away 60-70 bags of peppers. We have predicted highs in the 90s next week and she didn't want the peppers to go bad. As it was, a couple had sun scald, so it was time to act.
  • Mary watered all garden plants.
  • I added mothballs to all of the plastic bottles we use to keep mice from chewing up wiring in vehicles and drilled holes in five more bottles to store around the log splitter engine. We have 32 bottles in and around the pickup, 10 for the riding mower, and now six at the splitter engine. I draped an old plastic laundry basket over the splitter engine to keep the mothball bottles from blowing away in the wind or getting knocked off by critters.
  • I drained the hydraulic fluid from the log splitter and removed all five of the hydraulic hoses. These rubber hoses had cracks in them when we first inherited the splitter in 2009 and every year since then, I've commented on how we need to change the hoses. They're rather expensive, so we kept putting it off. Since we rely on that splitter, it's time to change them. Several fittings are tight enough that I had to use a pipe as a cheater bar on the end of the wrench to break them. This splitter is homemade and obviously cobbled together by a local farmer, but it's much more powerful than anything I ever see in a store. The hose running from the tank to the pump was a piece of old hydraulic hose with the fittings cut off and clamped onto hose barbs at both ends. I was extremely hard to remove from the hose barbs and I tore up one end of the hose while digging at it with a screwdriver to get it off the barbs. I covered all 10 of the exposed and open hose fittings on the splitter by stretching plastic wrap on them and securing the wrap with rubber bands.
  • I cleaned up my tools after dark while using a head lamp. Several wild birds that roost inside the machine shed were upset with some guy wondering around with a bright light on his head.

Aug. 25-31, 2025

Weather | 8/25, sunny, 51°, 70° | 8/26, sunny, 47°, 74° | 8/27, p. cloudy, 54°, 79° | 8/28, sunny, 53°, 83° | 8/29, sunny, 57°, 84° | 8/30, sunny, 61°, 84° | 8/31, cloudy, 63°, 79° |

• Monday, 8/25: South Orchard Weeding
  • When I stepped outside with Plato for his morning walk, I saw the legs of three small deer that were under the Sargent crabapple tree as they zoomed off through the cedar trees to the east. At first I thought I saw dogs, but by the way those legs moved, they were deer.
  • We tasted a couple apples that were under apple trees. They were Goldrush and Porter's Perfection apples. Mary said the Goldrush tastes like an old fashioned Golden Delicious, but not like what you get in today's grocery stores. The Porter's Perfection was bitter, the way we like apples. It's astringent taste is supposed to vastly enhance apple cider flavor.
  • I moved four large dead weed piles surrounding the Empire apple tree, then cleaned weeds under and around seven small apple trees in the south orchard. I discovered all kinds of issues that were hidden under thick weeds. The Goldrush tree had two apple-filled branches on the ground. I found the tubular mechanism of a folding camp chair in the machine shed and propped it between holes in the surrounding cow panel to hold the branches off the ground. The Calville tree was leaning, so I found an old pipe in the machine shed and used it as a stake, then ran a wire through a chunk of old garden hose and pulled the tree upright. I cut two branches growing from the rootstock area of the Roxbury Russet tree and painted tree tar on the cuts. The Antonovka tree grew so tall that two branches were rubbing on the top of a hardware cloth tube encircling the tree. I removed the hardware cloth cage and painted the rub marks with tree tar. I installed the hardware cloth cage around the small transplanted Sargent tree. The ground is very hard where I pounded a rebar stake into the soil to stabilize the hardware cloth tube.
  • I saw a white wooly worm, which Mary identified as an Isabella tiger moth larva. Folklore says that spotting this worm signifies a winter with heavier than average snow, or even blizzards...aha!...more firewood.
  • There is now a huge pile of weeds where I dumped what I removed from trees. It's about 8' by 8' by 5' high.
  • I looked up and wrote down apple ripening dates. There is a wide variance from various websites and I notice that we're earlier than what most people list as ripening dates.
  • Mary picked a few more beans and watered the near garden.
  • During Mary's hornworm hunt, she found 16 worms and 14 eggs.
  • With a cooler nighttime temperature predicted, I closed the chicken coop windows to help keep the chickens warm. It's the first time in months that we closed coop windows.

• Tuesday, 8/26: Stairs Fix & Watering
  • While Mary went up the stairs, the top board of the step came loose and tilted up and out. Fortunately, she had hold of the rail in one hand and the top of the landing in her other hand and didn't fall. I removed that loose board, knocked out broken nails, drilled four holes and countersunk the holes, then installed long screws on both sides of the board. When Herman built the steps, he used finish nails. They're pulling out or breaking in half and aren't appropriate for stair steps. I'll eventually need to replace all of these finish nails with screws.
  • I watered all of the small fruit trees, which involves two pear trees, seven cherry trees, four blueberry bushes, and seven apple trees. All trees were pretty dry. 
  • During that same time, Mary watered the far garden. Tomato plants are finally setting fruit. The extreme hot weather in past weeks set them back in fruit production. We aren't seeing any tomatillos and green beans are very skimpy. On the plus side, we're seeing a lot of acorn squash and the sweet potato plants look healthy. We have all of the zucchinis that we need.
  • Yesterday, I killed a bunch of aphids on the top young leaves of the Antonovka apple tree. Today there were even more aphids. With Mary's help, we doused the leaves with Dawn soap spray and rubbed out aphids until our fingers were yellowish green. Then I poured water on the leaves to wash off the soap. Mechanic's soap that removes grease and oil wouldn't take the yellow aphid stain off our fingers.
  • Mary picked 27 worms off the tomato and tomatillo plants while using the UV flashlight after dark. I visited her after cleaning chicken waterers. She was on the last row of tomatoes. I watched satellites fly by in the night sky as stars slowly appeared after the sun set, which was really cool.

• Wednesday, 8/27: Mowing & Wienie Roast
  • Mary picked beans, zucchinis, cucumbers, and a handful of cherry tomatoes. She decided it is time to remove the bean and zucchini plants, since the green beans lost production to flea beetles and we have enough zucchinis.
  • Mary watered what's left of the near garden and two rows in the far garden.
  • I cleaned out the poke berry forest under the Granny Smith apple tree. This time, I was careful to lop off branches of the poke berry stalks and carefully move them to the wheelbarrow, putting permanent poke berry stains on the wheelbarrow, instead of on my pants. They grow to heights above my head and into the apple tree. I then mowed under Granny Smith.
  • Both Mary and I mowed the west yard, so we'd have cut grass around the area where we enjoy a wienie roast fire. We put mulch around a couple of small trees.
  • As the sun set, we enjoyed an outdoor wienie roast with a fire that I lit on the cement pad next to the mulberry tree in the west yard. It's always fun to notice changes in sounds and sights as it goes from daylight to darkness. Birds eventually quit singing, then you hear crickets and tree frogs. After stars appear, you start to watch satellites moving across the sky overhead. While watching one satellite, we also saw a falling meteorite. Bats occasionally flitted in and out of site. It's amazing how relaxed you get while simply gazing into an outdoor fire. We saw a firefly...they're still around.
  • I burned up a large stick that we've used for over a decade to poke logs about in an outdoor fire. After moving a chunk of wood into the fire, that poking stick stayed lit, like a fireworks punk. So, I decided it would be safer to toss it into the fire. It burned hot with blue flames.
  • We enjoyed some 2023 apple wine and a bottle of 2024 spiced apple wine. Apple wine is a perfect companion taste to crispy hotdogs. This time, I didn't filter the spiced apple wine. The cinnamon taste was much stronger and it tasted better. I won't filter it in the future.

• Thursday, 8/28: Watering During Dry Conditions
  • Mary and I both watered for two hours in the afternoon. She watered the rows of tomatoes in the far garden while I watered all of the small fruit trees and blueberry bushes. I discovered two more blueberries that I didn't know existed, because they're all covered with tall grass and weeds. Mary showed them to me.
  • This summer is tough on green living plants, due to the two periods of high heat without any rain. There are several trees, especially mulberry trees, that show dried up leaves. Garden plants, like tomatoes, tomatillos, and strawberries, didn't set fruit during the bouts of 90+ heat. We'll see if anything comes on now that temperatures are lower.
  • Mary found 14 eggs and six hornworms in her worm hunt.

• Friday, 8/29: Black Snake & Preparing Winter Greens Soil
  • In a morning check of the near garden, Mary spotted a long black snake crossing her path. Later, she identified it as a western ratsnake.
  • I removed weeds in the winter greens tubs. The soil in the tubs was very dry. Some big weeds had immense roots. After shaking off all soil, I had a large wheelbarrow full of dead weeds. I broke up the soil with a triple claw hand cultivator and threw out a lot of small roots. One of the tubs was split on one side in the middle. I found a hardwood board in the machine shed and screwed it into place at the top of that side of the plastic tub to give it a straight shape.
  • Mary knocked down grass just north of the house with her scythe and piled the tall grass near the compost bin.
  • Mary watered the near garden and two rows in the far garden. All soil is very dry. The chicken yard is full of deep cracks, due to clay soil drying out and developing crevasses.
  • I found a perfect Goldrush apple under that tree.
  • I looked up possible online locations that sell parts for our woodstove and found two entities. One is in Columbia Falls, MT.
  • I finished reading Alexander Kent's book 7, Passage to Mutiny. These British Navy novels are hard to put down.

• Saturday, 8/30: Calville Apple Tastes Wonderful
  • Mary watered all gardens. She said the plants looked as if they never received water at all. We need rain.
  • Mary saw a velvet ant (a female wasp without wings) that is very pretty. It was walking down the path to the gardens. 
  • I added to the soil in the six winter greens tubs. First I collected soil from mole mounds in the front lawn and added a wheelbarrow load to the tubs. Then I added a half wheelbarrow load of compost. Finally, I added over two 4-gallon buckets of potting soil that Mary didn't want anymore. When we bought it last year, it was extremely wet and it seemed to harm plants, rather than help them. It worked in nicely with the extremely dry soil in the tubs after I thoroughly mixed all of the levels of soil.
  • Mary picked seven eggs and three small worms from the gardens.
  • We saw three common nighthawks flying overhead in the evening when we put the chickens to bed. They're migrating and were flying southeast. 
  • One of the Calville Blanc d'Hiver apples was under that tree. The name translates from French to white winter Calville. I cleaned it up, cut out bad sections, and Mary and I tasted it for the first time, ever. Oh my! Even green, this is an excellent tasting apple. It's touted as the best culinary apple in the world and I believe it. Unfortunately, that small tree leaned over in a wind this summer and the top was trimmed by nibbling deer. I'm going to have to work at helping this tree along so we can get more fruit from it.

• Sunday, 8/31: Small Number of Green Beans
  • Mary processed and froze 20 sandwich-sized bags of green beans. This is about a fourth to a third of the amount that she normally processes from the garden. The weather and flea beetles changed that this year.
  • I sowed seeds for our winter greens, covered the tubs with tulle fabric, and watered them. There is one tub of Winter Bloomsdale Spinach, one big tub of Winterbor Kale, a tub of Astro Arugula, one of Red Tinged Winter Lettuce (2024 seeds), another of the same lettuce (2025 seeds), and one with Red Fire Leaf Lettuce.
  • Hops climbed over the Virginia Creeper vines on the east side of our house and are putting on cones. We see them out our bedroom window and from the outside near the peak of the roof (see photos, below).
  • Mary picked a few more worms and worm eggs on her garden worm hunt.
  • I suspect a squirrel or a raccoon is climbing the Porter's Perfection apple tree and knocking off leaves and apples. I collected three apples that were on the ground when we put the chickens to bed this evening.
  • The tick switch clicked off for the summer. We're now not picking any ticks off Plato after his walks down the lane.
  • We had popcorn and parsnip wine while we read books after dark. The earthy and tart taste of parsnip wine is impossible to describe, other than it's amazingly good.

Viewing hops cones out our bedroom window.

Hops cones (light green) on the east side of our house.

Aug. 18-24, 2025

Weather | 8/18, sunny, 72°, 91° | 8/19, p. cloudy, 72°, 87° | 8/20, p. cloudy, 67°, 87° | 8/21, p. cloudy, 63°, 78° | 8/22, fog to p. cloudy, 64°, 82° | 8/23, cloudy to sunny, 64°, 81° | 8/24, sunny, 54°, 75° |

• Monday, 8/18: Heat, Watering Garden, & Apples
  • Mary watered the near garden. The plants were very dry. The sweet potato leaves were severely wilted, but sprang back to life after a thorough soaking. Mary, on the other hand, returned inside several times and was very wet, due to the heat.
  • On Mary's worm patrol, she found 10 worms. They were mainly tiny army worms. She also found four hornworm eggs.
  • I was on the apple detail and processed another milk crate of Empire apples. I have 2.5 crates left to handle after today's work. I'm mostly through filling the tenth gallon of applesauce in the freezer. Wow, I'm really going to be in the apple winemaking business. I added 20 unblemished apples to the refrigerator, giving us a grand total of 104 to eat.

• Tuesday, 8/19: Apples & Hornworms
  • I started the day by throwing out poor fruit in the remaining 2.5 milk crates of Empire apples and tossed two four-gallon buckets. After days of slicing apples, it's easier to tell bad ones from good apples. It reduced the remaining apples to 1.5 crates. I processed one crate of apples today. There are now almost 14 gallons of applesauce in the freezer. I added only nine unblemished apples to the fridge, giving us a grand total of 113 to eat. Today's apples came from the top of the Empire tree, where more bug and bird damage occurred. They also caught more sunlight, resulting in a dark red color. I should be done processing Empire apples tomorrow.
  • Mary watered the far garden and picked three zucchinis.
  • Mary found a bunch hornworms in the tomato, pepper, and tomatillo plants. She found 22 during her evening search. After darkness fell, she returned with a blacklight flashlight in hand and got another 38 worms, for a grand total of of 60 hornworms. She also found two hornworm eggs.
  • During her daylight stint of worm patrol, Mary heard a rattly sound, looked up and watched a great blue heron fly overhead. It was on its way to Bass Pond. 
  • We noticed an immature hummingbird looking into house windows twice during the day.

• Wednesday, 8/20: Last of Empire Apples & Wasp Battle
  • I finished processing Empire apples by sorting through half of a milk crate. There are now 15 gallons of applesauce in the freezer. I saved out another 14 unblemished apples for a grand total of 127 for us to eat.
  • There were 65 apples in this last half crate load. With that number I estimated that I picked 875 to 900 apples off that single tree. Whew!
  • Mary picked the first green beans from the near garden. Bean leaves are almost white due to flea beetles eating on them, so this year's bean crop is looking small. She also picked two zucchinis.
  • Mary watered the near garden and checked for hornworms in the far garden. Her hornworm numbers were greatly reduced after yesterday's big worm collection.
  • While putting a bucket away in the woodshed, I was stung by a wasp on my right shoulder blade. I ran inside, put baking soda on a wet paper towel, then zipped out to the far garden to get Mary's help in applying the baking soda-filled wet paper towel to my back, since I couldn't reach it. I stood bent over for awhile in the garden as the magic of the baking soda eased the sting. I returned to the woodshed armed with a squirt bottle of Dawn soap and water and killed wasps. I received another wasp sting on my neck. It was a glancing blow, but I nailed a ton of wasps. They die quickly once hit with Dawn soap spray. After Mary finished her hornworm hunt, she joined me in the woodshed and took a shovel to knock down five wasp nests. She tossed them into the tall grass south of the house. I bet I'll be feeling those two wasp stings for awhile.

• Thursday, 8/21: Shopping Day
  • My two wasp stings were itchy, today.
  • We shopped in Quincy, which was rather uneventful.
  • Mary picked more green beans and one zucchini. She also checked for hornworm eggs and got just a few.
  • We watched two movies: the 2007 movie, Enchanted; and the 2022 film, The Lost City.
  • After nine days of sitting in the pantry, the cherry wine has changed to a deep red color.
  • While walking Plato after dark, we heard coyotes howling to the southeast and we looked at a beautiful night sky, due to extremely clear air.

• Friday, 8/22: Second Racking of the Cherry Wine
  • While walking our puppy, we noticed that dew made spider webs stand out in the morning sunshine. The field east of the lane is full of them.
  • I helped Mary water the near garden, then Mary watered the far garden by herself. All plants were very dry, so those in the far garden each received a two-gallon load of water. It meant watering took almost all day for Mary.
  • I gave the cherry wine a second racking. After pulling the liquid off the fines, I had 11.69 gallons of wine in two large buckets. I added 2.1 grams of Kmeta to the wine. The pH was 3.1 and the specific gravity was 0.995. There was about a third to a half an inch of fines at the bottom of the three 5-gallon carboys. I miscalculated carboy sizes to hold the resulting wine. At first, I filled a 6.5-gallon carboy. Then I filled a 3-gallon carboy, but realized I had more than enough to fill a 5-gallon carboy. So, I emptied the 3-gallon into a 5-gallon carboy and filled the latter, along with a 1.5-liter wine bottle. Mary and I tasted the tiny bit of remaining wine. It's strong on the alcohol taste, but tart and with a full body feel in the mouth. After aging, this will be a good wine.  
  • Mary hunted for hornworms in the gardens after dark with a UV flashlight. She found 19 of them. Some were quite large.
  • While doing her nighttime worm search, Mary heard an unknown call from a cedar tree just southwest of the far garden. She then recognized it as the call of a yellow-billed cuckoo. Mary thinks she startled the bird.

• Saturday, 8/23: Zucchini Processing & Really Good Baked Apples
  • We watched a goldfinch feeding on cone flower seeds out of our west living room window. The bright yellow bird showed up nicely in front of deep green comfrey leaves.
  • I investigated the weight of the fruit that I last used when making apple wine versus what's called for in recipes. It was 28 pounds for a two-gallon batch. A recipe in Jack Keller's Home Winemaking book calls for 18-20 pounds of fruit per gallon of wine produced. Since I'm overrun with applesauce for making wine, I'll increase the amount in the next batch of apple wine.
  • The cherry wine has a super red color (see photo, below).
  • Mary processed 27 packages of sliced zucchinis. She is getting close to enough for a year of upcoming meals. Our fruit bat dog, Plato, likes raw zucchini slices.
  • Mary picked green beans. She says, "Thank goodness for wax beans," because they are producing through the stress of high heat and a flea beetle invasion. She also picked a tiny amount of strawberries. We've decided to buy new strawberry plants for next year. 
  • I put away winemaking items, which included seven empty milk crates, and straightened out the west room and the its closet where I store winemaking things.
  • I vacuumed spiders throughout the house.
  • I helped Mary water the near garden.
  • On Mary's hornworm hunt in the tomato patch, she found nine worms and nine hornworm eggs.
  • When we put the chickens to bed for the night, we found a dead buff orpington cockerel on the chick side of the chicken yards. There was no sign of something attacking it, so we can only guess that it died of natural causes, such as a heart attack.
  • Mary fixed up baked apples that we ate after our evening meal. Wow!!! They were very yummy! 
  • While walking Plato, we heard several coyotes calling from north of our property.
  • I finished reading the sixth book of Alexander Kent's British Navy series, Command a King's Ship.
   

  

  The cherry wine has a very deep red color (snow pea wine is on the left).
  

• Sunday, 8/24: Watering, Weeding, & Mowing
  • We're enjoying cooler weather, which beats the 90+ temperatures that were prevalent earlier this week. We even wore jackets at night while walking Plato. Fifty-degree temperatures feel downright nippy after you experience highs in the 90s.
  • The pickup's rear bumper is rusty with holes in it. I reviewed the price of new beefier rear bumpers for pickups and they're too costly. The best prices seem to be from people parting out their pickups with ads on Facebook Marketplace.
  • Around noon, Mary went to the far garden to pick a few tomatoes to add to our midday meal. She scared up two turkey poults that flew from the edge of the far garden east into the field.
  • Mary watered the far garden in the afternoon.
  • I cleaned weeds from under and around four small cherry trees. I had to remove cow panels surrounding the trees, chop down big weeds, then run a push mower under each tree. After mowing, I replaced the cow panels around each cherry tree. I also mowed all of the paths between fruit trees in the south orchard, between the small cherry trees, and to a brush pile just beyond the south orchard.
  • After dark, Mary used a UV flashlight and found 31 hornworms in the tomato and tomatillo plants. I joined her on the last half of the worm search. Hornworms gleam as bright green masses under the beam of a blacklight and are very easy to spot.
  • Mary and I read books and enjoyed a bottle of 2021 pear wine. It has a deep gold color and tastes marvelous. The wine is very smooth with a strong pear flavor.
  • I started Alexander Kent's seventh British Navy novel. It's entitled Passage to Mutiny. 

Aug. 11-17, 2025

Weather | 8/11, sunny, 69°, 87° | 8/12, 0.33" rain, p. cloudy, 67°, 83° | 8/13, p. cloudy, 67°, 83° | 8/14, sunny, 59°, 82° | 8/15, sunny, 68°, 91° | 8/16, sunny, 73°, 93° | 8/17, sunny, 74°, 93° |

• Monday, 8/11: Cherry Wine Goes Bonkers
  • We ate an oatmeal breakfast filled with food from our property, such as pecan nuts, black raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, and Empire apples from our tree. 
  • Bill left for his apartment by mid-afternoon.
  • The cherry wine yeast is fizzing along very nicely. A citrusy yeast aroma fills the house and a fizzing sound is heard outside of the closed pantry door. Specific gravity for the day was: Batch 1, 1.066, and Batch 2, 1.067 at around noon; Batch 1, 1.054, and Batch 2, 1.056; at about 11 p.m.
  • Mary checked for hornworms in the far garden and found 15 hornworm eggs, two cucumber beetles, one army worm, and one large snail.
  • I picked 16 apples off the ground under the Empire tree and threw away four of these apples.
  • A thunderstorm rolled through around midnight, giving us a brief bout of strong winds and a third inch of rain. We receive regular rains this summer, which is perfect for all growing green things.

• Tuesday, 8/12: Onions Harvested, Cherry Wine Racked
  • I went through all of the coolers of wine bottles in the upstairs north bedroom, counted wine, and compared it to my running totals. In many cases, my inventory was off. I also found two lost wines. One was four bottles of 2022 persimmon wine and the other was four bottles of 2021 pear wine. Occasionally I cleaned out the insides of coolers, along with dusting off a few bottles.
  • Mary finished harvesting all of the onions in the near garden. We now have three full milk crates of onions in the back porch closet. It smells like a burger joint inside that closet right now.
  • Mary picked a tiny bit of strawberries, one zucchini, 12 hornworm eggs, and one small worm that held onto a tomato leaf and looked like a stem.
  • I found 17 apples under the Empire tree and threw away four of them. We're eating these apples in our morning oatmeal. All seeds are black, so they're ripe and ready for picking off that tree. 
  • The cherry wine had a specific gravity of 1.032 in Batch 1 and 1.033 in Batch 2 around noontime. By about 8 p.m., the specific gravity of both brew buckets was at 1.020, so I racked the wine for the first time. It took several minutes to squeeze the four nylon mesh bags full of fruit in both brew buckets, which gave me an additional gallon of juice per brew bucket. That makes a total of 12 gallons of wine. I racked the liquid into three 5-gallon carboys, which gave each one a nice amount of headroom for foam (see photo, below). Now I wait for the yeast activity to settle down. Mary and I tasted a bit of the liquid left in the bottom of the bowl where I put the squeezed mesh bags. It was amazing, with a strong cherry taste.
   

  

  Three 5-gallon carboys of foamy cherry wine.
  

• Wednesday, 8/13: Picking Empire Apples
  • I grubbed out big weeds and tall grass from under the Empire apple tree and in the process, I found more apples that fell from that tree. Some of the poke berry plants were so big that when I pulled them out, the branches were tangled in apple branches and apples fell with their removal. Poke berries are deep purple and can be used as a permanent dye. Some poke berry juice got on my pants, so I'll have a few permanent blotches on the leg of those britches!
  • I picked apples off the Empire tree where I could reach from the ground and collected a little over three milk crates full of apples. There are even more apples that I'll need to get with step ladders. I'm trying to get them all collected before high temperatures in the 90s are predicted starting on Friday.
  • Mary picked seven hornworm eggs off the far garden tomato plants.
  • A tree frog enjoyed a daytime nap on the hand rail next to our steps (see photos, below). 
  • The cherry wine was foamy all day until nighttime. The yeast in this wine is still very active.

A tree frog resting on the hand rail near the steps.

Tree frogs, such as this one, sing to us every night

• Thursday, 8/14: Cutting Hay & Picking All Empire Apples
  • Mary watered all of the plants in the near garden.
  • She also used the scythe and cut hay down from tall grass growing in our front lawn. Mary will let it dry over a couple days and then store it in the second grain bin.
  • Mary found 14 hornworm eggs, a fuzzy caterpillar, a small hornworm, a Japanese beetle, and one tick on tomato plants in the far garden.
  • I finished picking apples off the Empire apple tree by using step ladders and reaching the fruit high in the tree. There were times when I was in the tree with tree branches poking me in the butt and apple leaves in my ears. It's a twisty and turny time of it while picking from high in an apple tree. We now have seven milk crates of apples. Three of these crates are heaping full, with the apple level well over the top of the crates. Picking the apples was the easy part. My future will be quite busy in slicing, grinding up, and then freezing bags of applesauce for making apple wine. Of course, we'll save good ones for eating.
  • I finished reading the Alexander Kent British Navy novel, To Glory We Steer, the fifth in his series of books.

• Friday, 8/15: Processing Zucs & Empire Apples
  • Mary spread out the hay today that she cut yesterday from the tall grass in the front lawn. It's drying nicely and smells so good.
  • We are back into hot temperatures in the low 90s. YUCK!
  • Mary watered most plants in both gardens. She saw an acorn squash the size of a softball. Tomatoes and peppers are developing.
  • Mary processed and froze 26 packages of sliced zucchinis. 
  • I processed about a milk crate of Empire apples, which equaled 2.5 gallons of applesauce in the freezer. I set aside 14 apples without blemishes for future eating and put them in the fridge. I've only got six more milk crates of apples to process. EGADS!!!
  • Mary picked a Liberty apple that we tasted. It's nice and crunchy, but without any apple taste...just sour and rather disappointing. Hopefully, more time ripening on the tree will improve the taste of this apple variety.
  • I started the sixth novel written by Alexander Kent entitled Command a King's Ship.
  • We continue to see fireflies on nighttime walks with Plato. It's so late in the year to still see these. Usually, fireflies quit flying about around the end of June.

• Saturday, 8/16: More Apple Processing
  • Temperatures are still stinking hot outside. I stayed inside for most of the day. Mary ventured out for short stints.
  • Mary turned the hay in the front yard.
  • She also watered the near garden. She picked off hornworm eggs in the far garden.
  • I processed a milk crate of Empire apples. There are now 4.75 gallons of applesauce in the freezer. I saved out 27 unblemished apples, so we now have 41 in the refrigerator.

• Sunday, 8/17: Apples, Apples, Apples
  • Mary picked up hay off the front yard and hauled four oversized wheelbarrow loads to the second grain bin. While walking by that grain bin later at night, I could smell the new hay.
  • Mary watered the far garden as it was getting dark. Temperatures are cooler at that hour of the day. She said that she noticed the squash leaves waving, when suddenly a big bull frog landed on her knee cap, then jumped off and headed out the garden's gate. The frog was about six inches long, including it's legs, and it weighed a lot.
  • Mary also did a hornworm patrol of tomato and pepper plants.
  • I processed 1.5 crates of Empire apples. There are now seven gallons of course applesauce in the freezer. I added 43 unblemished apples to the refrigerator, giving us a grand total 84 to eat. I'm starting to see apples in my dreams.
  • I used my hat light to do evening chores, since by the time I was outside, it was dark. Moths seem to love parking on the chicken waterers at night. As I was cleaning the waterers, I'd look down to grab another one to clean and see 6-12 moths sitting of the white plastic waterer tops. In the night, when a hat light shines light on them, the eyes of moths reflect back in vivid red, which at first seems a little frightening.

Aug. 4-10, 2025

Weather | 8/4, sunny, 56°, 80° | 8/5, p. cloudy, 63°, 83° | 8/6, p. cloudy, 65°, 87° | 8/7, 0.45" rain, T-storms, 67°, 80° | 8/8, sunny, 69°, 88° | 8/9, 0.59" rain, cloudy, 74°, 87° | 8/10, cloudy, 73°, 83° |

• Monday, 8/4: Mowing and Mulching
  • Mary harvested more onions and a few tomatillos.
  • She also watered all gardens. Some of the plants looked like they needed more moisture.
  • Mary mowed part of the west lawn, adding mulch to the small Bartlett pear tree and the youngest cherry tree. High grass means mowing goes slower than usual.
  • I cleaned out tall weeds and grass around and under three cherry trees, giving Mary and I places to put mulch. I also used the steel blade on the Stihl trimmer to clean out tall weeds and grass on the path between the small cherry trees and around several of them.
  • I mowed the east and south sides outside the near garden, and then between the fences of that garden. I changed the trimmer to the string attachment and scrubbed out vegetation under the electric fence of the near garden. The orange string line kept breaking off, which it does when it's all dried out. I was three-fourths completed when the last of the string shot out of the trimmer, so I quit for the evening.
  • The apples on the Liberty apple tree significantly enlarged once the poke berry weeds were removed from around the tree (see photo, below). This is the first year that we're seeing apples on this tree.
  • We're hearing the call of a wood thrush in the north woods.

The Liberty apple tree with fruit developing.

A nicely sized Liberty apple.

• Tuesday, 8/5: Circling Peregrine Falcon
  • Mary mowed most of the rest of the west yard and put grass clippings as mulch around nearby fruit trees.
  • I replaced line in the trimmer head and whacked down weeds and grass on the rest of the wire under the electric fence around the near garden.
  • While at the porch, we noticed birds on the power line, so Mary ran inside to get the binoculars. While she was gone, I noticed the birds flying up into the air. They attacked a larger bird that was circling. Through the binoculars, Mary identified the larger bird as a peregrine falcon and the smaller birds as eastern king birds. The falcon easily dodged the kings birds and kept circling. It got so high in the sky that we eventually lost sight of the bird. 
  • I helped Mary and we watered the far garden. Plants are all healthy and thriving.
  • When I dumped the waste water left over from washing chicken waterers on one of the south apple trees, a young deer bounced off to the southwest and into the woods.
  • For two days in a row, we hear the crop duster flying over fields well after the sun sets when it's essentially dark outside. He's taking too many risks. We hope that when he plows that airplane into the ground, it isn't on our property.

• Wednesday, 8/6: A Thousand Ticks!
  • We experienced the worst tick situation with Plato. The poor pup got into a big nest of tiny ticks during his morning outing. After the noon walk with him, we noticed multitudes of blown up seed ticks all over his legs. We started pulling them off outside. There were so many that I partially filled a bucket with water and added a big amount of Dawn soap to kill them. Plato was getting hot in the sun, so we moved inside. Mary kept running a flea comb over Plato while I picked the tiny seed ticks off the floor. We literally collected hundreds of ticks. We're guessing at least a 1000 ticks came off that poor dog. One of his front legs was turning red and slightly swelling. But, he was very patient. After two and a half hours, we gave Plato some Benadryl and he slept some in the afternoon. He was just fine by the evening. We're now taking him south, down the lane, because there's only regular-sized ticks there, and no seed ticks, like he picked up somewhere in the yard.
  • We watched a fledgling hummingbird feed on comfrey just outside our west living room window. It was chased away by an adult male hummingbird.
  • With Bill arriving in a couple days, I mowed the lane.
  • Mary watered the near garden and harvested more onions.
  • I finished reading the fourth of the Alexander Kent British Navy novels, Sloop of War. 

• Thursday, 8/7: Long Thunderstorm
  • An unexpected series of thunderstorms ran through us between 8:45 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. With the storms, we got just under a half inch of rain. There are two nice aspects about the rain. We get a respite from watering gardens and a break from laboring outside in high temperatures.
  • I finished changing passwords. Altering the password on the social security website took the longest time, because of all the hoops you have to go through, including a photo of the front and back of a driver's license, along with a photo of yourself.
  • We still notice an occasional firefly out at night. This is by far the latest for the season that we've noticed fireflies on our property.
  • Mary texted with Bill. He will be here sometime tomorrow morning for a four-day break from work. 

• Friday, 8/8: Bill's Birthday Celebration
  • Bill arrived around noon. Plato saw him through the front door's storm door, while whining and wagging his tail.
  • Mary made a pistachio tort for Bill's birthday, which we're celebrating late. He opened presents wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper (it's what we have on hand). Mary wrote a message within each snowman on the wrapping paper, such as "Don't pet otters, they bite," and "Pass the hot sauce." Bill immediately started reading a book entitled Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer's Guide. Later, he added magnetic side window sun screens to his car. He also sampled a couple of the large chocolate bars.
  • Mary picked a nice bowl of strawberries. We enjoyed them on waffles that I made.
  • The tail light parts came in today's mail. With Bill's help, I removed the old rusty screws and the push-in clip nuts, then installed the new ones. I added a stainless steel washer with each screw, plus a dab of Permatex Anti-Sieze Lubricant to the screw threads. We checked all tail lights after installation to make sure all was well.
  • Bill brought a six pack of Gosling's ginger beer and we tried it. This non-alcoholic brew is extremely good.
  • We watched two movies that Bill picked out, which were Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit and Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Amongst Thieves.

• Saturday, 8/9: A Big Winemaking Day
  • Bill and I racked the snow pea wine for the third time. I transferred the liquid into a different gallon jug and left a minuscule amount of liquid in the original gallon jug. Then we added only an ounce or two of distilled water to bring the level into the neck of the jug. The specific gravity was 0.990, which is very low. The pH was 3.1.
  • Next, Bill and I made 10 gallons of cherry wine must. I thawed frozen quarts of cherries on the trailer bed outside. The bags thawed quickly in the outside temperatures. Bill wore out his finger muscles while he squeezed 12 pounds of mandarins. He got about 32 ounces of juice in each of the two measuring cups. I zested two oranges per batch and saved the orange fruit. Batch 1 got 332 ounces, or 20.74 pounds of cherries, while Batch 2 received 321 ounces, or 20.1 pounds of cherries. The first batch had two quarts of 2023 cherries and the rest were 2024 cherries. Batch 2 involved 2025 cherries. Each batch received 7 pounds of sugar, 3.5 gallons of water, and 0.9 grams of Kmeta. The specific gravity of Batch 1 was 1.073 and it was 1.072 in Batch 2. The pH of Batch 1 was 3.0 and it was 3.1 in Batch 2. Liquid level in Batch 1 was a little over 5 gallons and it was a little under 5 gallons in Batch 2. We let them sit in the pantry overnight.
  • Mary harvested another big bunch of onions. After removing their tops, she stores them in milk crates in the back porch closet. She's started her third milk crate of stored onions.
  • Around 6:30 p.m., a thunderstorm came through and dumped a nice bunch of rain on us. Along with it were high winds. The weather service issued tornado warnings for areas west of us and we saw online that lightning struck the metal dome on the roof of the Villa Kathrine, a historic house on the Mississippi bluffs in Quincy, and started a fire in the attic that the Quincy Fire Department put out right away.

• Sunday, 8/10: More Winemaking, Pizza & Yahtzee
  • Bill and added the following to the two 5-gallon batches of cherry wine: 3.75 teaspoons of pectic enzyme, 4.1 grams of diammonium phosphate (DAP) to Batch 1 and 3.9 grams of DAP to Batch 2. I worked up two batches of Red Star Côte des Blanc wine yeast using 5 grams of yeast for each batch from my 500 gram bag of yeast I bought a couple months ago. Through the day, I added liquid from each brew bucket to the two yeast cultures to eventually get full quart Mason jars of bubbling yeast. Late at night, before pitching the yeast, the specific gravity of Batch 1 was 1.070. It was 1.071 in Batch 2. A nice smell emanated from the pantry after pitching the wine yeast.
  • Mary found 18 hornworm eggs in the tomato, pepper, and tomatillo plants in the far garden.
  • She also picked four zucchinis from the near garden.
  • Midway through the day, we saw an immature bald eagle circling overhead.
  • I picked 19 apples off the ground that blew off the Empire tree during the wind from yesterday's thunderstorm. I left one apple that was mostly chewed by bunnies and threw a small, rotten apple away.
  • Mary made three pizzas that we enjoyed with a bottle of 2023 apple wine while playing Yahtzee. Bill won through the seven games that we played. He had a grand total of nine yahtzees!

July 28 - Aug. 3, 2025

Weather | 7/28, sunny, 73°, 91° | 7/29, 0.03" rain overnight, sunny, 72°, 91° | 7/30, 0.48" rain, cloudy, 69°, 81° | 7/31, cloudy/mist, 66°, 77° | 8/1, smokey/sunny, 56°, 77° | 8/2, smoke/p. cloudy, 61°, 76° | 8/3, p. cloudy, 55°, 75° |

• Monday, 7/28: Knocking Back Mother Nature's Growth
  • During blackberry picking season, the lawn went nuts with growth. I used roughly three tanks of gas in the Stihl trimmer to whack open trails in the tall grass and weeds. This included paths to the clothes line and under it, to the chicken coop, to the machine shed, to all of the apple trees south of the house, and to the far garden and around the compost bins. This task took me all day.
  • Mary cleaned the refrigerator coils, running the shop vac for about a half hour. It scared Juliet, one of the cats. When Mary shut the vacuum off and peered around the edge of the fridge, there were two big blue eyes staring at her.
  • Mary scythed the tall chicory stalks and common plantain seed heads in the north yard. This makes it easier to mow. Chicory is like wood and takes several passes with a mower to knock it down.
  • Mary picked a nice bunch of strawberries, along with some blackberries. She also harvested 44 onions, adding to the collection of onions stored in an old milk crate in the back porch closet (see photo, below). Most of the harvested onions are of the white wing variety.
  • We went through another really hot day with high humidity. Work outside got a little too hot for Mary. She felt poorly in the evening from too much heat.
  • We still have chimney swifts. Mary saw one drop into the chimney during Plato's noontime walk, then I saw and heard two of them flying about in the evening right after sunset. We thought they left early, but obviously they're still raising their youngsters.

  

  Onions harvested from our garden, so far.
  

• Tuesday, 7/29: More Heat & Humidity
  • Mary picked up the rest of the chicory stalks she knocked down recently with the scythe and hauled them away in roughly five wheelbarrow loads.
  • I whacked down and then mowed half of the outside of the electric fence around the near garden. The electric fencer barely puts a pulse through the wires when the existing high grass and weeds are wet with dew in the evening. Mulch from the mower went around the base of the Porter's Perfection apple tree just south of the chicken yard.
  • It is still very hot and humid outside, which means we spend more time inside cooling off in front of the air conditioner than outside working. It also means we can only do a fraction of the work we normally accomplish when outside.
  • We saw a chimney swift, again, today.
  • While putting the chickens to bed, we noticed that our chicks are really growing quickly.

• Wednesday, 7/30: Rain & Password Enhancements
  • A nice morning downpour gave us just under a half inch of rain. Along with it came cooler outside temperatures, which is a nice relief.
  • Mary read a Moneywise article about an online security breach where 184 million passwords were exposed. I changed online passwords we use, starting with bank websites. Where I could, I enabled two-part verification. I use a free password manager called KeePass and through it I went from websites starting with Abe Books and ended with MoreWine. KeePass can generate random large passwords and keep them in a record. Several websites we haven't dealt with in years deleted our passwords. I still have to get to the end of the alphabet (took all day to get from A to M). I also added a free authenticator app to my cell phone that generates time-based, one-time passwords that are used along with the regular password when signing into sites that allow the authenticator.
  • The pickup's tailgate hinge parts from RockAuto came in the mail and I startled a covey of over a dozen Bob White quail when I walked to the mailbox. They had a good year of producing young quail in 2025.
  • Mary picked a nice big bunch of strawberries and announced that I was making waffles tomorrow, so we can enjoy these berries. That's fine by me!
  • I noticed that one of the Sargent crab apple transplants died in the recent extreme heat. The other one is growing new branches and leaves, so it took to the transplanting quite nicely.

• Thursday, 7/31: Smoke, Passwords & Tailgate Hinges
  • Along with a northern wind and cooler temperatures, our air quality tanked with an influx of Canadian wildfire smoke. Little did we know that back when we were boiling, we had good air, even if it was humid. Mary stayed inside. Poor air harms her breathing and makes joints ache.
  • Dusting books while inside was Mary's job for the day. 
  • I changed more online passwords. Today I did changes to websites starting with letters M through Q.
  • I changed the tailgate hinges and the latch pins. The tail light assemblies must be removed to get to the nuts holding the latch pins. They are held on with two small Phillip's head screws. The head of the bottom screw on the passenger side stripped out. I was able to wiggle the light assembly out enough to get a box wrench on the nut. I'll need to buy a replacement screw and an extractor to remove that screw. The hinges were really bad. It's amazing that the tailgate didn't fall off. The new hinges didn't allow me to get the tailgate back into place. Then I remembered a filler plate behind the left hinge that I removed. With some rubber mallet persuasion, I got the tailgate on. I adjusted the hinge pins so that the tailgate closes nice and tight...so much better than before.
  • Mary and I enjoyed a bottle of 2023 parsnip wine in the evening while reading books. It's very smooth and tangy with a great taste. Parsnip is one of the best wines I make.

• Friday, 8/1: Smoke Fills the Air
  • Canadian smoke prevailed today.
  • I drove to Quincy and did a little bit of shopping, including buying screws and an extractor kit for working on the pickup's tail lights, and ingredients for cherry wine. Most importantly, I bought two 50-pound bags of food for the chicks, since they're growing and eating very heartily. From downtown Quincy, a view of the Mississippi River was very smokey and vague.
  • Mary cleaned house while I was gone. The cleaned and rearranged pantry is vastly improved.
  • She also harvested another big batch of strawberries, a number of onions, and a few shallots. The white wing onions are almost done. Blossoms are on the tomato plants and some small cherry tomatoes are developing.
  • In the evening, I finished reading the third Alexander Kent novel about the fictitious British naval officer, Richard Bolitho, entitled In Gallant Company, and started reading the fourth novel, Sloop of War.

• Saturday, 8/2: Truck Tail Lights
  • After letting the chickens out of the coop this morning, we heard the first crow from one of the young roosters. They're developing quickly.
  • The air was still smokey from Canadian wildfires, but it was a little less smokey, today.
  • Mary watered the near garden.
  • I used my new screw extractor kit to remove the stripped bottom screw holding the pickup's right tail light in place. It took the cap of the screw off, but the shank remained. I tried the screws I bought at Lowes in the top location of that tail light. It didn't work very well. The threads were the wrong size. I found on ebay and bought four new screws and four push-in clip nuts to replace all screws and nuts on both tail lights. These are GM parts. Once I get the right parts, I'll use needle nose pliers to bend the clip nuts off the plastic tabs of the tail light assemblies and put on new nuts and screws. I put the tail light back together.

• Sunday, 8/3: Apple Tree, Lawn, & Garden Work
  • We tried an Empire apple in our morning oatmeal. The apples from that tree are still not ripe. The apple was tart and tasty, though. The Empire tree is loaded with fruit this year (see photo, below).
  • I sharpened blades on both push mowers, cleaned air filters, and brought fluids up to correct levels.
  • I removed the cow panel surrounding the Liberty apple tree and tore out all of the tall grass that was surrounding the bottom couple of sections of the panel. That grass was feeding on rotten wood and mulch we add above the tree roots. Over a few years of adding things, the soil under the tree is about 4-5 inches higher as the mulch rots. I then cut down huge poke berry stalks and an apple shoot growing from the root stalk of the tree.
  • Mary mowed the lawn between the woodshed and the machine shed, putting grass mulch under nearby fruit trees.
  • She discovered that the seckel pear is alive. Green leaves are growing from branches where other leaves died just a few weeks ago...yahoo!
  • I mowed the north chicken yard, where poison ivy was starting to reappear. I also mowed the west and north sides, between the fences, in the near garden. The grass is very high. 
  • We had a wayward chick, a buff Orpington pullet, that was in with the adult hens and our rooster, Leo, in the south chicken yard when we went to put the chickens away in the evening. She apparently was frightened by me mowing the chick yard and either flew over the fence or found a hole in the fence between the two chicken yards. After putting all chickens in the coop, we coaxed her through the gate and into the north yard, then through the chick door into the chick side of the coop. 
  • We called Bill on his 32nd birthday. Back a few weeks ago, Katie called him and asked him what present he wanted for his birthday. He answered, "A pony." So, one of the gifts she sent him was a toy Palomino pony with a pink polka dot ribbon called a "HollyHOME Stuffed Animal Pretty Plush Toy." Bill asked his friend, Mike, if his preschool daughter would like the toy for her upcoming birthday. The answer was yes.

  

  The Empire apple tree is filled with fruit this year.