Oct. 27-Nov. 2, 2025

Weather | 10/27, cloudy, 48°, 65° | 10/28, 0.05" rain, cloudy, 45°, 52° | 10/29, rain, cloudy, 44°, xx° | 10/30, xx°, xx° | 10/31, xx°, xx° | 11/1, xx°, xx° | 11/2, xx°, xx° |

• Monday, 10/27: Parsnip Wine & Garlic Garden Prep
  • The pecan trees were messy with squirrels this morning. I shot one squirrel.
  • Bill and I checked the parsnip wine. The specific gravity was 1.070, so sugar content increased from soaking the raisins. The pH stayed the same at 3.5. We created a yeast starter from Red Star Premier Classique (Montrachet) yeast. Late at night, the specific gravity was the same, at 1.070, when I pitched the yeast into the brew bucket. As usual, it smells wonderful!
  • Bill left  mid-afternoon for his apartment.
  • I mowed tall grass in the near far garden and put grass mulch on the first two rows. Mary plans on planting three rows in garlic as soon as she adds compost and turns the soil over.
  • Mary picked a few more pecan nuts from the ground under the trees.
  • The colors of autumn are slowly creeping in. Fall is late this year for us.
  • Katie texted Mary, "I'll be helping do damage assessments on villages affected by the typhoon with my regular job."

• Tuesday, 10/28: Quail, Deer & Webex on Bats
  • In the morning and evening, we experienced misty rain.
  • When we walked the puppy first thing this morning, a covey of Bob White quail burst from under the cedar trees next to the lane.
  • I chased away three squirrels from the pecan trees with .22 bullets. I never hit anything.
  • Around noon, while on a dog walk, Mary turned to face me and realized that two young deer were just a few feet away on the other side of the hazelnut bushes. They weren't too concerned about us, walked away with their tails up, then stopped to eat. In the evening while putting chickens to bed, Mary had a doe deer near her just outside of the chicken yard.
  • Mary picked a few pecan nuts that dropped to the ground.
  • The parsnip wine is slowly bubbling and emitting a wondrous odor. 
  • I ordered a 50-pound bag of oatmeal and after searching for the best price, ordered a roll of newsprint paper from Staples. The paper is for starting fires in the woodstove. We're almost out of our newspapers that once was a high stack.
  • I watched a Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) Webex about bats. One bat will eat 600-1000 insects in one night. Less than one percent of bats have rabies. You have a better chance of getting rabies from a domestic cat or dog. The MDC employee lecturing on this topic from Joplin, MO, said she once saw a snake hanging from the top of a cave opening catching bats as they flew out of the cave.
  • We watched the seventh Harry Potter movie.

Oct. 20-26, 2025

Weather | 10/20, sunny, 39°, 73° | 10/21, sunny, 45°, 57° | 10/22, sunny, 35°, 59° | 10/23, sunny, 33°, 60° | 10/24, cloudy, 35°, 61° | 10/25, cloudy, 49°, 59° | 10/26, cloudy to sprinkles, 47°, 62° |

• Monday, 10/20: Nuts!
  • We noticed a small patch of frost on the grass near the lane prior to sunrise this morning. It was a very windy day.
  • Several robins were flying about in the morning. We suspect a number of them flew in from the north.
  • Mary picked pecans twice, today, gathering a nice number of nuts. I helped in the evening by using a step ladder to collect several off branches above the first grain bin roof.
  • I gathered black walnuts that fell from trees over the lane. Over two days, I collected enough in a milk crate to give me only two more inches before I need to start putting nuts in another crate. At first, I was wiping gooey husk sludge off the nuts in the grass, but it takes too much time. I've progressed to swiping the husks off the nuts in a quick backward foot motion while wearing boots with aggressive cleats. This takes less time. I feel like a bull tossing dust on his chest when I'm kicking walnut husks off the nuts. I hope to collect several milk crate loads of walnuts.
  • Mary mowed several portions of the lawn and left the grass lay, instead of picking it up. Mowing goes faster with this method. I helped her by mowing the stretch just north of the house.
  • We watched the sixth Harry Potter movie.

• Tuesday, 10/21: Harvesting Prior to Frost & First Woodstove Heat
  • Strong west winds blew today. At one point, Mary heard a tree crash in the north woods. I took a look and spotted a large hickory tree down just northwest of the north end of the chicken yard.
  • I removed the air conditioner from the living room's west window. It was leaking too much cold air, especially with a strong west wind. Mary and I moved it to the machine shed. 
  • I collected a handful of black walnuts that fell on the lane, due to the wind.
  • Mary collected pecans that fell on the ground under the trees two times today.
  • I drove to Lewistown for high octane gasoline for trimmer and chainsaw use and put $20 of gas in the pickup. The price is $2.59 per gallon.
  • Mary picked tomatoes, one last acorn squash (there are now 75 stored away), and several hot and sweet peppers. A chance of frost prompted this harvest session.
  • I picked the last of the apples off the Granny Smith and Goldrush trees. Later in the evening after cutting apples open, I discovered the Granny apples were too far gone. I should have picked them a month ago. However, the Goldrush apples were firm and great tasting. They indeed can be picked well into October.
  • I ran a tank of gas in the Stihl trimmer to clear more tall weeds and grass from the trail to the ponds. Today, I ended just before the area between Bass and Dove Ponds. Head-high lespedeza is really thick right there.
  • Right at sunset, I lit a fire in the woodstove for the first time this autumn with several windows open to let the wind blast smoke out of the house. It only took a minute or two for high heat to burn mineral oil off the stove pipes that Mary applied in the spring. That oil keeps the metal pipes from rusting through summer. After closing windows, the wood heat felt really good.
  • The dog bed placed in front of the woodstove attracted feline friends next to Plato this evening (see photo, below). There's nothing cozier than a large, warm puppy on a big bed in front of the fire.

  

  Left to right, Mocha, Gandalf, & Plato on the big dog bed.
  

• Wednesday, 10/22: Picking Kieffer Pears & Transplanting Saplings
  • Mary picked the equivalent of one four-gallon bucket of Kieffer pears. She said the area under that pear tree smelled like the makings of bad wine, but with a higher alcohol content. Rotting pears covered with yellowjackets were in the tree and all over the ground. It was hard to find good pears. Mary says she was late at collecting the Kieffers.
  • I transplanted two Sargent saplings that were under the east side of the large Sargent crabapple tree to the spot in the south orchard where an earlier transplant died. After the transplant was done, I gave the saplings four gallons of water, a bucket of sawdust and shavings from under the woodsplitter, plastic tree protectors tied to a rebar stake, and a two-foot wide tube of quarter inch hardware cloth tied to a second rebar stake.
  • I used a pitchfork to toss weeds and grass that I cut down yesterday from the trail to the ponds. Then I mowed that section of the trail with the push mower.
  • Mary picked pecans in the morning and evening. I helped her in the evening by grabbing pecans off the tree from a six-foot ladder.
  • We covered the winter greens with blankets, since frost is expected in the morning. 
  • Mary and I ate two Goldrush apples, each, as an evening snack. They have excellent taste.

• Thursday, 10/23: Quincy Library Book Sale
  • A solid frost covered the ground when we walked Plato this morning, prior to sunrise.
  • We had our first morning woodstove fire. It felt very nice.
  • We bought the following books at the Quincy Library Book Sale for 50 cents an inch, or $6 total:
    • Einstein. Relativity: The Special and General Theory.
    • Oberrect. Home Book of Picture Framing, an excellent DIY book.
    • Time-Life Foods of the World. American Cooking: Southern Style, to add to Mary's collection.
    • Strickland. Alaskans: Life on the Last Frontier, featuring several people I recognize.
    • Queenan. One for the Books, a collection of essays on authors, books, and reading.
    • Mordal. 25 Centuries of Sea Warfare, translated from French to English.
    • McCullough. The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, to add to Mary's collection by this author.
    • Beard. Confronting the Classics, a series of essays arguing for the reading of ancient Greek and Roman literature.
    • Haygood & Grossfeld. Two on the River, on traveling the Mississippi River in the 1980s.
    • Teyckare. The Lore of Ships, a very thick reference all about ships through the ages, written by a Swedish author.
    • American Heritage (August 1956).
    • Horizon (Spring 1970).
  • We also did a bit of shopping. Two foot-long sandwiches, plus drinks, from Subway was $33.09! And we thought it was outrageous when Subway's charge was over $20.
  • After we returned home, I emptied the pickup and put our purchases away while Mary raked up grass cut a couple days ago and stored it inside the second grain bin.
  • Mary and I both picked pecans.
  • We spent the evening reviewing the books we bought today. The two seafaring reference books are very good.

• Friday, 10/24: Nuts & Firewood
  • We watched two young deer walk on the lane in front of our house early this morning and then turn east on our trail to the far garden. Mary went outside with Plato while the second deer was near the northeast corner of the near garden. It looked at Mary and Plato, then slowly meandered further east. We're just part of the scenery to our resident deer population.
  • I hunted squirrels in the pecan trees and shot two of them. I saw a barred owl fly into those trees a couple times and the squirrels just ignored it. There were also gobs of nuthatches going up and down the tree trunks.
  • Mary and I picked pecan nuts. Mary searched the ground and I grabbed nuts off the tree while standing on a step ladder.
  • I moved probably about 100 black walnuts from the grass along the edge of the lane, then mowed the lane.
  • I cut firewood from the hickory tree that toppled over northwest of the chicken run. When I tried to start the 8N Ford tractor, the battery was dead. I left the ignition switch on about a month ago when I moved it prior to butchering chickens. I attached the charger and let it run while I cut wood. The chainsaw's bar became stuck on one cut when the tree shifted and the end of my cut wedged up against another tree. Mary held the saw while I used a hatchet to remove wood under the saw. Boy! Hickory is really, really hard wood! After several whacks with the hatchet, it came loose. The tractor started, so I moved it to south of where I was cutting and hoofed several arm loads of firewood up the hill to load the trailer. When I tried starting the tractor, the battery was dead, again. I got wrenches, removed the battery, hauled it to the machine shed, and set the battery charger to it, again. After several minutes charging and after a two minute 30-amp boost with the charger, I hauled the battery back to the tractor while using a hat light. After installing the battery, the tractor fired up and I drove it back to inside the machine shed with the first of many loads of firewood for the season.

• Saturday, 10/25: Splitting Firewood
  • There were seven squirrels in the pecan trees this morning. I shot one. Our pecan trees are like neon signs to squirrels from miles around.
  • Bill arrived around 11:30 a.m. He's here for three days.
  • I split firewood and stacked most of it in the machine shed to dry. 
  • The wood splitter started on the first pull and ran better than when we first arrived here in 2009. Maintenance I did earlier on the engine and hydraulics really made a big improvement. It split hickory logs with ease, which usually are usually difficult, since it's such hard wood that often splinters.
  • A quick check of the 8N Ford tractor's battery indicated that it held a charge and works fine in starting the tractor. 
  • We had turkey chimichangas covered with winter greens, ripe garden tomatoes, and Greek yogurt for our midday meal. It was super filling.
  • Mary was on the pecan nut search for about an hour in the afternoon and found several. Squirrels, blue jays, and wind knock nuts to the ground. 
  • After dark, we watched two movies that Bill picked out, which were Super 8 and Stardust.

• Sunday, 10/26: Parsnip Wine & Cleaning Far Garden
  • Bill and Mary pulled parsnips from the near garden. It was an average harvest. Most had good, straight roots. Only a few grew weird, stubby roots. The first parsnip that Bill pulled out had about a four-foot whip root at the very end. I cleaned a little over half of them with a brush and a bucket of water. Mary finished the task.
  • While Mary and Bill harvested parsnips, I removed husks off black walnuts that fell in the path between the gardens and collected enough to fill the rest of a milk crate of this year's nuts, along with starting a new crate.
  • Bill and I made a four-gallon batch of parsnip wine. Bill did a lot of the work. He chopped up 60 ounces of black raisins while I washed parsnips. Bill also zested eight lemons and squeezed juice from them. He chopped up 11 pounds, 10.3 ounces of parsnips, ending up with nine pounds, 11.8 ounces of finished product, equaling only 16.4 percent waste. Raisins and lemon zest went into a nylon mesh bag. We boiled two batches of sliced parsnip roots in 1.5 gallons of water each time. A little over a gallon of liquid went into the brew bucket after each of the two boils. After getting to a rolling boil, we let the roots boil for 15 minutes. By making parsnip wine immediately after harvesting the roots, the parsnip slices stayed intact and didn't turn to mush, which happened the last time we made this wine. After each boil, I removed most of the slices with a spoon. Then we poured the liquid through a colander and into the brew bucket to collect remaining parsnip slices. The leftover parsnip pieces went into the compost bin. Added to the brew bucket was: 1.5 gallons of apple juice, 0.7 grams of Kmeta, 1 teaspoon of tartaric acid to yield a pH of 3.5, 2 pounds of sugar for a specific gravity of 1.059, and a cup of tea brewed from 2 tea bags. The brew bucket went into the pantry for an overnight soak.
  • Mary cleaned all partially dead plants from the far garden. It involved several wheelbarrow loads that were stacked neck high with plants, complete with green tomatoes, peppers, and squash that went through a couple frosts.
  • We watched two movies, which were The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Practical Magic. 

Oct. 13-19, 2025

Weather | 10/13, 0.01" rain, cloudy, 61°, 76° | 10/14, sprinkles, cloudy, 59°, 78° | 10/15, cloudy, 59°, 79° | 10/16, p. cloudy, 57°, 81° | 10/17, p. cloudy, 61°, 81° | 10/18, p. cloudy, 61°, 75° | 10/19, 0.49" rain, sunny, 45°, 60° |

• Monday, 10/13: Ladybugs & Jalapeño Wine
  • I installed the woodstove's outer casing nuts and bolts to secure it into place. One connection required small hands, so Mary helped. She couldn't get her fingers into place, so she used tape to attach the nut to an open end wrench and I screwed the small bolt into the nut.
  • I didn't deal with the stovepipe. Old stovepipe bolts are #8 hex head screws and the holes they go through in the stovepipe sections are so worn that the screws don't stay in place. I decided I need to move up to #10 x 1/2" hex head screws for better stovepipe connectors. I'll get them during our next shopping trip.
  • Mary washed all of the house curtains and cleaned all the interior house windows.
  • The first of the autumn Asian ladybug invasion started today, so Mary vacuumed bugs from all of the windows. They were thick outside. I always thought that a frost followed by warming temperatures triggered Asian ladybugs to seek out our house, but that's not the case this year. The actual trigger must be fewer minutes of sunlight in the day.
  • Mary picked 60 jalapeño peppers that I made into three gallons of jalapeño wine. A vast majority of these peppers were ripe red (see photo, below). After cutting off stems, I had one pound, 14.52 ounces of peppers. The past two years, 50-60 peppers weighed 2.5 pounds, but that was before stems were cut off. I think I have about the same amount this year. I ground the peppers in Mary's food processor, then chopped up one pound, 14 ounces of black raisins. After putting the peppers and raisins in a nylon mesh bag, dark red liquid oozed into the brew bucket. I added 2.5 gallons and 3 cups of water, 4.5 teaspoons of acid blend to yield a pH of 3.1, 0.6 grams of Kmeta, and four pounds of sugar for a specific gravity of 1.067. The resulting liquid resembled root beer in color. I covered the brew bucket with a flour sack towel and put it in the pantry. A strong pepper odor soon filled the air.
  • While finishing evening chores, I spotted a great horned owl on the top of a cedar tree southeast of the south orchard.

  

  Freshly washed jalapeño peppers in the kitchen sink.
  

• Tuesday, 10/14: Squirrel Hunting & Winemaking
  • Rain was falling right when I opened the curtains after waking up, but it quit immediately. It wasn't even enough to register in the rain gauge.
  • I hunted squirrels before breakfast with five shots that didn't hit anything. Around noon, I tried, again, and shot two big squirrels. The three shots I made in the evening missed the mark, but at least I sent the little demons away. I found a branch from the pecan tree on the ground with husks that surrounded pecan nuts about to open. That's probably why squirrels are on the attack to pecan trees right now.
  • I saw a small doe deer in the north woods near the Boys' Fort Deer Blind this afternoon.
  • I worked on jalapeño wine throughout the day. I added two teaspoons of pectic enzyme to the brew bucket, along with 2.2 grams of diammonium phosphate. I created a starter batch of Red Star Premier Blanc yeast and added healthy amounts of must to it two times. Before bedtime, the specific gravity was 1.078, an 11-point increase in sugar content from yesterday, due to the raisins releasing more sugar. I pitched the yeast into the brew bucket.
  • Mary watched five blue jays escorting a sharp-shinned hawk out of the area and into the southwest woods. She said that they were absolutely silent and surrounding the hawk on three sides. "It was as if they were escorting a dangerous prisoner," Mary said.

• Wednesday, 10/15: Shopping
  • We went shopping in Quincy, IL, today. We got a used spray painting device at Salvation Army. We also got a new-to-us rice steamer at Goodwill that looks like it was hardly used. Mary found a Missouri history book and a wildflower identification book at Goodwill. I picked up various woodstove parts at Menards. I discovered that unlike what their website says, O'Reilly's won't take used hydraulic oil, but Walmart will take it.
  • When I hauled the garbage down our lane at dusk, two deer ran off the lane at Bluegill Pond. One young deer stood at the edge of the trees outside the pond and watched me walk by without moving. When I returned home, four deer ran away at that same location.
  • Our Missouri Conservation Department calendar states that the average first frost date in northern Missouri is Oct. 12, which was Sunday. Frost will come later this year.

• Thursday, 10/16: Pecan Nuts & Cleaning Stove Pipe
  • The jalapeño wine is fizzing with intense yeast activity. A hydrometer check 36 hours after pitching the yeast showed a specific gravity of 1.051, a 27-point drop.
  • Mary picked pecan nuts off the trees and from the ground under the trees throughout the day, gathering a significant amount to dry in the upstairs south bedroom. She noticed a lot fewer nut chewings from squirrels compared to what we saw in previous years. Mary also picked up dead branches under the pecan trees to store in the machine shed for future kindling.
  • I dismantled and worked on stove pipe. I took a long wire barbecue grill brush to the inside of each stove pipe section. I also used an old screwdriver and a putty knife to scrape off hardened stove cement at the ends of each stove pipe section, which took quite a bit of time. In past years, I've had to rush this job, because we needed heat at night. That's not the case this year, giving me extra time to do a thorough job. We burned better dry wood last heating season, because there's less soot inside the pipes and no pile of soot where the last stove pipe section goes into the chimney. I hope to finish this dirty job tomorrow.
  • As I cleaned stove pipe sections a little bit east of the Granny Smith apple tree, I occasionally heard walnuts dropping from trees growing on either side of the lane. We had a big nut year and wherever black walnut trees grow, the ground around the base of these trees are covered in walnuts that have fallen. The path between the gardens is filled with nuts (see photo, below).
  • I grabbed the dog bed we stored for several years in an upstairs closet and brought it downstairs for Plato. It was in storage because two cats who are gone, Merlin and Rosemary, were constantly using it as a toilet. After Mary cleaned it with cat urine remover, she stored it away. Plato doesn't go upstairs to sleep on his bed anymore, because he can't manage successfully going down the steep stairs, due to old age. So, his bed is now permanently on the first floor. The big dog bed gives him more comfort. Mocha, our youngest cat, also likes the bed, along with Plato (see photo, below). 

Black walnuts on the path between the gardens.

Plato and Mocha on the large, soft dog bed.

• Friday, 10/17: Stove Pipe Installed
  • We experienced a strong south wind today.
  • Mary picked over half of a bucket of ripe tomatoes from the garden, 10 green, but ripening tomatoes, and some cherry tomatoes. She also picked nine acorn squash.
  • She picked a bunch of pecans nuts from under the pecan trees.
  • I cleaned three partial bucket loads of soot from the inside base of the chimney. Then I cleaned the outside of each stove pipe section and installed stove pipe a section at a time. Stove cement went into each stove pipe connection, along with new stainless steel #10 x 1/2" hex head screws. I finished after the sun went down.
  • Mary watched four wood ducks fly over the cedar trees, just east of the house, heading for Wood Duck Pond.
  • We watched the 2001 film, Monsters, Inc., that we picked up from Goodwill on our last shopping trip.

• Saturday, 10/18: Racking Jalapeño Wine & Woodstove Gaskets
  • Mary picked several more pecans from the trees and off the ground.
  • I racked the jalapeño wine for the first time into a 3-gallon carboy, a 750-ml bottle, and a 12-ounce bottle. The specific gravity was 1.019 and the pH was 3.0. This batch has a rusty/orange color, due to all of the red jalapeño peppers that were used in its making (see photo, below). The wine's yeast is still producing lots of fizz. Fortunately, this wine doesn't foam up with that much fizz like blackberry or cherry wine. Mary and I tasted the tiny bit of liquid left over. It was sweet and warming, but not overwhelmingly hot. It also has a solid pepper flavor. It might be the best jalapeño wine I've made.
  • We watched two big flocks of snow geese fly overhead. The first group was flying due south. The second flock was flying east and dropping for the night.
  • Mary heard a blue jay making a perfect imitation sound of a red-shouldered hawk.
  • I scraped out the old woodstove door gaskets, cleaned the grooves with a wire brush, applied stove gasket cement and new door gaskets. By closing the woodstove's doors onto opened newspapers, the cement dries without sticking the gaskets to the wrong parts of the stove. I also added a bit of cement to where the stove pipe enters the chimney, making sure there is a tight seal at that location.
  • We watched the fifth Harry Potter movie.
  • A nearby lightning strike cut off power for a second and ended our movie watching. Fortunately, we were a few minutes away from the end of that film. We had a good rain after that lightning strike.

  

  A rusty/orange color of the jalapeño wine.
  

• Sunday, 10/19: Clearing Trails
  • The cool weather makes it finally feels like autumn around here, which is nice.
  • When we walked Plato this morning, at least two red-shouldered hawks were calling from a couple different locations.
  • A flock of juncos blew in with yesterday's storm and are here for the winter.
  • Mary froze three gallons of tomatoes. They are destined for future homemade soup.
  • She also brought in the wood rack and some firewood, in case we need it overnight.
  • Mary picked several more pecans. 
  • I used the steel blade on the trimmer to knock down tall weeds and grass on the trail to the ponds. Two tanks of gas in the trimmer got me to where the fence once was into the north pasture.
  • I finished reading Alexander Kent's 13th British Navy novel, The Inshore Squadron, and started the 14th book, A Tradition of Victory.

Oct. 6-12, 2025

Weather | 10/6, sunny, 60°, 82° | 10/7, 0.60" rain, cloudy to sun, 55°, 65° | 10/8, sunny, 43°, 70° | 10/9, sunny, 43°, 73° | 10/10, .41" rain, p. cloudy, 52°, 69° | 10/11, fog to p. cloudy, 49°, 70° | 10/12, p. cloudy, 46°, 76° |

• Monday, 10/6: Halloween Decorations
  • We heard coyotes howling during our predawn walk with Plato. Coyotes aren't usually howling at that hour.
  • I took the .22 rifle north to the machine shed to blast squirrels first thing in the morning. Two squirrels bounded across that building's tin roof and gave me a quick eyeball look, then spun around and loudly ran away. There's nothing quiet about a squirrel running on a tin roof! I never got a shot off.
  • An American kestrel flew over the yard as I was looking for squirrels this morning. Mary saw it, too.
  • After we let the chickens out and were back inside, I spotted a buck deer between the machine shed and the grain bins. He had a nice rack.
  • I picked up all of the soiled wall calendars and chicken feathers on the dirt floor of the machine shed. In past years, I left this stuff. I'm trying to eliminate feathers that mice stuff into the cracks and crevices of the woodsplitter engine.
  • Mary vacuumed spiders from throughout the house and found 11 Asian lady bugs, so the autumn/winter bug invasion has commenced.
  • I hunted squirrels in the late afternoon while sitting on a stool at the east side of the machine shed. I saw nothing. Then during evening chores I checked and two squirrels were in the tops of trees northeast of the machine shed. I tried a long shot and got another fox squirrel.
  • We put up the Halloween tree and decorations (see photos, below).
  • I finished Alexander Kent's 12th nautical novel, Signal—Close Action!, and started the 13th novel of the series, The Inshore Squadron.
  The fully decorated Halloween tree, this year with blinking lights.
   

  

  New Halloween pumpkin lights over a door in our kitchen.
  

• Tuesday, 10/7: House Plants & Racking Wine
  • We experienced a big rain at 4:30 a.m., when we weren't supposed to get much moisture. It amounted to 0.60 inches. Lightning and thunder got Mary out of bed to unplug appliances. She said rain was pounding on the house roof.
  • Mary cleaned all of the house plants and repotted the bay trees, which were brought inside the house from the woodshed where they were for the summer. She also started three plants, which were the rosemary plant, a ficas tree, and a pothos plant. The rosemary plant is 3-4 foot long and hangs to the floor off an old wooden chair seat. She wants to keep the ficas tree small. The pothos plant grew to about 25 feet long, wrapped around the pot. Once her restarts grow, she'll discard old plants.
  • Mary also cleaned the sunroom.
  • I racked the following two wines:
    
    • Apple - Deep fines meant I lost about a half gallon of liquid from must that was in a 3-gallon carboy and two 1-gallon jugs. The resulting must filled a 3-gallon carboy, a half-gallon jug, and a 750-ml wine bottle. This was the second racking, so I added 0.7 grams of Kmeta. The specific gravity was 1.000 and the pH was 3.0. Mary and I tasted a bit of it. This batch has a very strong apple flavor.
    • Cherry - Fines were much smaller on the third racking of this wine. The resulting liquid filled a 6.5-gallon and a 5-gallon carboy, along with a 750-ml wine bottle. I went directly from carboys to carboys, without adding any additives. The specific gravity was 0.994 and the pH was 3.1. The 500 ml of leftover wine was our before supper treat. It was good, even for a young wine. It will get better with aging.
  • Mary spotted the first duck of the season. It was impossible to identify...a small, dark form against a dim sky.
  • She also heard a big tree fall in the southwest woods. The sound of it falling at first resembled firecrackers. A few seconds later she heard creaking and groaning, followed by a loud crash. We might have future firewood to seek out. It's not far from the west yard.

• Wednesday, 10/8: A Woolly Worm Army
  • This year's woolly worm numbers are huge. They're everywhere and it's hard not to accidentally step on them.
  • Mary and I washed a big amount of dishes, mainly because after racking two wines yesterday, I produced several dirty items.
  • I drove to Quincy to pick up three drug prescriptions. I also got a few other items.
  • Mary picked and froze more tomatoes. She started gallon bag number 14 in the freezer. Fifteen is the magic number of gallons we need for making enough salsa for a year, so we're almost there.
  • We watched the third Harry Potter movie.

• Thursday, 10/9: Purple Painting Property Lines & Picking Pears
  • During our predawn walk of Plato, we heard a white-throated sparrow for the first time this autumn. HERE is a link to their pretty song.
  • Last year we bought a gallon of what was supposed to be purple latex paint from Menards, but it turned out to be blue. I added several ounces of red paint to the can and turned it into purple color for painting our property borders. In Missouri, purple paint on tree trunks or fence posts indicates no trespassing to hunters.
  • Mary picked four cat litter buckets full of pears from the big Bartlett pear tree. Some were exceedingly big (see photo, below). Each bucket weighed about 20-25 pounds, so she brought about 80-100 pounds of pears into the house. She wrapped each pear in a piece of newspaper and put them in a chest of drawers at the top of the stairs landing, with the drawers partially open to release humidity.
  • I purple painted our property borders, starting on the south border running adjacent to the gravel road. Tomorrow is the start of a three-day early anterless deer hunting season. I won't be hunting, because the temperatures are too warm for adequately cooling venison meat. I had to stomp down emerging autumn olive saplings that grew next to our south fence line. I walked half of the west property line and only painted a couple trees with purple paint. Most old paint marks were perfect. A walk down the north property line showed excellent paint marks, so I didn't add any paint. The same was true down the east property line. 
  • I heard deer running away in two different instances during my march around the property.
  • I noticed that just a few feet west of our west field, our neighbor has a fresh salt block planted in front of a trail camera. We are a CWD (Chronic Wasting Disease) county, so salt blocks to attract deer are unlawful. Deer possessing CWD pass on the disease in saliva left behind in the soil under a salt block, so that's why they are outlawed. I might have to say something to the Lewis County Conservation Agent.
  • I scared up a wood duck at the east side of Wood Duck Pond. I never saw it, but heard the telltale call of a female wood duck flying away.
  • On the way home from the east property line, I cut through the woods and walked home via the trail to Wood Duck Pond. It's filled with weeds. I dropped by the blind I built last fall that's next to Wood Duck Pond. It looks to be in good shape and just needs a roof on top.

  

  A massive Bartlett pear dwarfs Mary's hand.
  

• Friday, 10/10: More Nice Rain
  • Bright lightning, followed by a thunder crash, woke both of us around 5 a.m., when we jumped out of bed and pulled the electric plugs on appliances. The thunderstorm gave us 0.41 inch of rain.
  • On a morning squirrel hunt, I shot one that at first peered at me from the northeast corner of the machine shed roof. It crawled into some small trees along the north side of the machine shed, where I got off an easy shot.
  • I gave Mary a haircut. She says it feels wonderful.
  • Some of the lilacs are blooming. Nature is whacked out, this year!
  • I heard four shots before darkness fell. They were all from down in the Troublesome Creek bottom, west of us. Today is the opening day of an early anterless deer season that ends on Sunday. 
  • We watched the fourth Harry Potter movie.

• Saturday, 10/11: Working On the Woodstove
  • A bunch of cardinals were eating ragweed seeds just outside of the living room's west window in the morning. We keep seeing more and more cardinals on this property.
  • Mary picked and froze more tomatoes. She finished filling the 15th gallon bag for the freezer, so we now have enough for salsa. She started on the 16th bag. Now we save tomatoes for wintertime soup-making.
  • I worked on the woodstove. First, I removed the stovepipe from the stove's exhaust flange, and then the outer casing, using the ratchet box wrenches that Mom gave me a few months ago to remove 10 nuts. Mary and I moved the outer casing to the machine shed, where I'll remove peeling paint on the back and paint it, tomorrow. I thought I'd have to order one or two grate support angle iron pieces, but they were fine. The defective part I found once I cleaned out ashes was a cracked and warped grate. 
  • I checked the woodstove stored in the first grain bin. It was in this house when we first moved here in 2009. I thought because Herman, Mary's uncle, owned it and probably abused it, that it was nearly shot. It's actually in better shape than our current stove, which we bought in 2011. Herman's old stove just has rust on the outer casing. I swapped one of the grates in Herman's old stove with the warped grate in this stove.
  • I removed two of the three nuts and bolts holding the brick retainer and swung it up to gain access to the firebricks. Two were cracked along the back of the stove. I replaced them with two I stored in the machine shed and replaced the nuts and bolts to the brick retainer. Several other nuts were loose, so I got Mary to help as we tightened all nuts. I swept hairy dust off internal parts that were out in the open now with the outer casing removed. I closed off the end of the stovepipe by tying a plastic grocery bag over it. I'll proceed with more woodstove work tomorrow.
  • We heard a number of barred owls while walking Plato at night.

• Sunday, 10/12: Big Pears & Repainting the Woodstove
  • When I walked to the east side of the machine shed to see if squirrels were in the pecan trees, a barred owl flew into the top of one of those trees. Three bluejays were instantly interested in harassing the owl and flew in to nip it, occasionally. A flock of noisy crows flew by to the north. After a bit, the barred owl moved to the cottonwood tree north of the machine shed and several crows started calling. I clapped real loud. The crows and bluejays flew away, leaving the owl in peace. 
  • I attached small wire brushes to the DeWalt cordless drill and removed rust and chipped paint from the woodstove's outer casing. For the first time in several months, I recharged the 20 volt batteries to those tools, and I use them almost every week. I used a natural hair paint brush and a clean cloth to remove dust, then spray painted these areas with flat black Rust-Oleum paint that's good to 2000°F. I touched up a couple places on the front with flat aluminum spray paint with the same temperature capability. The casing dried through the afternoon. Mary and I moved it back inside prior to sunset and put it over the woodstove's interior burner section.
  • Mary made flour tortillas and then venison fajitas. I picked a bowl of greens from our tubs. Mary included some ripe garden tomatoes. It was yummy!
  • Mary finished picking pears from the big Bartlett tree. She collected even bigger pears than when she picked them two days ago. I weighed the largest pear (see photo, below) and it weighed 1.21 pounds. The chest of drawers at the top of the stairs is full of pears wrapped in newspaper, as is an apple box. There are more pears on the tree, but we probably have enough. The Kieffer pear tree is also loaded with fruit that we haven't touched.
  • I put on old boots, rolled walnut husks off nuts that fell on our lane, and collected black walnuts. I got about two inches in the bottom of a milk crate.
  • We watched the film, The Sorcerer's Apprentice. 
  • While watching the movie, we shared a wonderful bottle of 2021 pear wine. After aging almost four years, this wine is super smooth and has a marvelous taste. It also has a deep golden color and a great aroma that fills the house the instant the bottle is opened.
  • Mary discovered that an early morning shooting in South Carolina where four people were killed involved folks who were celebrating at a popular bar who were alumni of Battery Creek High School, which is the school that Mary graduated from in South Carolina's Sea Islands. She's hoping that no one she knows was killed or injured.

  

  Our biggest pear picked today that weighed 1.21 pounds!

  
   

Sept. 29-Oct. 5, 2025

Weather | 9/29, sunny, 57°, 83° | 9/30, p. cloudy, 56°, 85° | 10/1, p. cloudy, 57°, 80° | 10/2, p. cloudy, 59°, 86° | 10/3, sunny, 60°, 85° | 10/4, sunny, 61°, 83° | 10/5, sunny, 56°, 83° |

• Monday, 9/29: Deer CWD
  • After three very late nights, we're tired.
  • When letting chickens out of the coop this morning, we opened the gate between the south and north yards so that the five new pullets, the hens, and Leo, our rooster, could get to know one another. 
  • I cleaned up chicken butchering stuff. I still need to put away the lights that I set up.
  • I took a nap while Mary watered the gardens, picked tomatoes and a few tomatillos.
  • I took in a Webex session by the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) on deer management. Missouri is one of the better localities in North America at managing Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in whitetail deer. Statewide, less than one percent of the deer herd has CWD. Wisconsin and Alberta have much higher concentrations of the disease. In northwest Arkansas, over 50 percent of the deer have CWD. It's very fatal to deer and takes 1.5 to 2.5 years before a deer dies as the disease slowly attacks the spine and brain. There is no known cure for CWD. The best remedy is to cull deer from areas where an outbreak occurs. MDC works with landowners to cull deer after hunting seasons. Landowners can have the meat of deer culled that don't have CWD, or the meat is donated to the state's Share the Harvest program, in which surplus venison is donated to needy families. We have a good conservation department in this state.

• Tuesday, 9/30: Buying Chicken Feed
  • The cockerels that we butchered ate up two bags of food in just a few days. At the end, we could only get five days out of a 50-pound bag. So, I drove to Quincy to get more hen food. I also picked up a few other items, like another 2.5 gallon container of hydraulic fluid and a swivel coupler for the woodsplitter. Mary gave me a list of a few food items, too. While at Sam's Club, I got my second shingles shot. The pharmacist said, "You're set for life," once he gave me the shot.
  • While I was away, Mary froze more tomatoes from the garden. We now have 9.5 gallons in the freezer.
  • We watched the first Harry Potter movie.
  • While walking Plato at night, we saw a rare moon dog, a rainbow-like feature similar to a sun dog, but created by the moon. It was unique.
  • The soreness of the shingles shot grew more intense so that by bedtime, I took a couple acetaminophen to ease the pain.

• Wednesday, 10/1: Shingles Shot is Severe for Me
  • While getting my blood glucose reading, I became so light headed that I passed out in the bathroom. Our bathroom is tiny. The top of my head hit the lower cabinet door with a bang. Mary hollered from upstairs, asking if I was okay. I didn't hear her, because I was out cold. I came to noticing a severe crook in my neck and rolled over to relieve the pain. I sloughed off to the couch and Mary covered me. For much of the rest of the day, I was cold, so I wore extra clothes and slept a lot. The second shingles shot really knocked me for a loop! Mary said it's a good thing I got the shot, because developing shingles might have been devastating for me. She also thought I was low on liquids and as a result, I drank a lot today. By evening, I felt much better and was able to do the evening chores.
  • Mary pulled down all of the garlic from the machine shed rafters, sorted it, and stored the garlic in cardboard boxes. She said that this year's garlic crop was smaller, but of a better quality.
  • She also picked more tomatoes and peppers.
  • We had a taco salad for our midday meal, complete with lettuce and arugula picked from the winter greens tubs, along with ripe tomatoes from the garden. It was really good.

• Thursday, 10/2: Katie News
  • We are very hot and dry. It doesn't feel like October. It's more like August.
  • Mary washed winter coats and dried them on the line. It was an excellent drying day.
  • She also strung hot peppers to dry. The different varieties make for a colorful arrangement (see photo, below).
  • Mary also harvested comfrey leaves and laid them out to dry.
  • Mary watered all of the gardens.
  • She recently took some photos of autumn flowers (see one of them below). 
  • I removed the wall inside the chicken coop that separates the adult hens from the chicks. I swept off all of the boards and studs and stored them in the rafters of the machine shed.
  • I started taking down the lights that we used for chicken butchering in the machine shed.
  • Mary spotted a really giant Carolina wolf spider on the lane that was carrying babies. We have a lot of them on this property. 
  • We ate a Granny Smith apple after I cleaned out bad sections from it. The taste is so different from store-bought apples.
  • After dark, Mary and I enjoyed a bottle of 2023 pumpkin wine. This wine tastes the best when chilled with ice. It's a nice tasty fall drink after a hot autumn day.
  • Katie texted. She spent three weeks of August in Hawaii on a National Guard stint where she was the enlisted person in charge of coordinating small projects for 60 people. In her full-time job, she's starting one project, in the middle of another, and closing out a third. She was in Nome for a day last week and in Barrow Saturday through Tuesday. Snow is on the Chugach Range next to Anchorage and it's winter in Barrow (see photos, below).

Hot peppers hung to dry. They are Ho Chi Mihn (yellow),
Bulgarian carrot (orange), and hot Portugal (red).

A photo taken by Mary of a heath astor.

Termination dust, or snow, covers the Chugach
Mountains south of Anchorage.

It's now winter in Barrow, AK.

• Friday, 10/3: Air Conditioner Mishap
  • As we stepped out in the predawn light to walk Plato, two deer snorted at us and ran away from the south orchard. They stood in the field and looked at us, so I marched into the tall grass until they finally ran away into the west woods.
  • I took down the rest of the lights that were up in the machine shed that we used while butchering chickens. I cleaned them up, along with all of the extension cords, and put them away.
  • While cleaning house, Mary discovered water on the floor below the air conditioner in our bedroom. Condensation from the AC was leaking all over the place. I removed it. The AC was leaking into the channel below the bottom sash, swamping it with water that overflowed into the wall and beyond to the floor. After wiping up water from the window sill, I directed a fan on it to help dry it out. I rinsed out the AC, but Virginia Creeper leaves and what I call "frog snot" was still inside, so I removed the cover and flushed it thoroughly with a high pressure setting from the garden hose. I cut a new 2x4 to length that supports the inside of the AC, since the old one was waterlogged. When I installed the AC in the window, I positioned it more level, since lowering the outside end of the AC downward put the drain hole under the AC's compressor directly above the window channel. I taped it all back up and now condensation drips to the outside, like it's intended to do.
  • Mary picked and froze tomatoes. Even though she's throwing away more tomatoes away than she's keeping, she's still getting several. She started the twelfth gallon of tomatoes in the freezer.
  • Mary also picked and hung more hot peppers to dry.
  • We watched The House with a Clock in Its Walls. It's a fun movie.

• Saturday, 10/4: Cleaning the Coop
  • I cleaned the chicken coop. Several wheelbarrow loads of manure went to the compost bin. I swept loads of cobwebs and three wasp nests from the ceiling and walls. While sweeping the floor, our oldest white hen stuck her head through the south chicken door three times and squawked real loud to me, as if to say, "Hurry up, Buster!" Mary hauled three large wheelbarrow loads of hay and spread it on the coop floor, giving the coop a nice cut hay smell. I built nests in the milk crate nest boxes with some of the hay. 
  • Mary watered the gardens, then mowed part of the north yard. She put mulch on some of the small apple trees in the south orchard.
  • We ate the Roxbury Russet apple. It's a motley looking apple (see photo, below). I let it stay on the tree too long. It was mealy and without much juice, but it tasted very good. Most of the taste was in the skin. Most online sources indicate October as the time to pick this variety. It's not so for us. This apple should be picked in September when grown here.

  

  The Roxbury Russet apple feels fuzzy to the touch. It's tasty.
  

• Sunday, 10/5: Woodsplitter Ready & Acorn Squash Harvest
  • Online agriculture sources show us to be in a moderate drought. Most all ground shows big cracks, due to the dry clay soil.
  • Mary picked and froze tomatoes. She finished the twelfth gallon in the freezer. She also hung hot peppers. She harvested 65 acorn squash (see photo, below). There are still a few unripe squash in the garden, but Mary decided to stop watering squash plants. She watered both gardens, which takes less time with fewer plants.
  • Mary had a speckled kingsnake cross her path between the gardens. She said it's a very pretty snake. It is sometimes called a salt and pepper snake, due to white spots on a black body. HERE's a photo of it. 
  • I cleaned chicken items, such as the hanging feeder, a chick grit dish, and three ceramic eggs that we put in the nests to let young hens know where to lay eggs.
  • I hooked up the last hydraulic hose on the woodsplitter by adding a new swivel coupler. I removed the old hydraulic tank breather, which was nothing more than a 90 degree 1/4 inch black pipe street elbow that a mud dauber filled up with dried mud. I added a new breather that has a bronze screen. I added five gallons of hydraulic fluid and started the splitter's engine. After fully extending and detracting the hydraulic ram three times, I tested the splitter on a piece of apple wood and it split the log just fine. I dumped the old fluid into the empty hydraulic oil containers and discovered I removed 3.5 gallons from the splitter. It means the oil level was low by 1.5 gallons. Right now, the level is at 6 inches in a tank that's 8 inches high, which is about perfect. After checking all fittings, I tightened two to stop slow leaks. The woodsplitter is now ready and 16 years after I first set eyes on it and said that we need to change hoses, it's finally done!
  • In the middle of evening chores, I heard nut shells dropping on the grain bin roof. I grabbed the .22 rifle, snuck into the machine shed, spotted it high near the top of a pecan tree, and shot a big fox squirrel that bounced off the top of the grain bin with a mighty loud thump.
  • We watched the second Harry Potter movie.

  

  65 freshly-picked acorn squash in the wheelbarrow.

  
   

Sept. 22-28, 2025

Weather | 9/22, p. cloudy, 61°, 81° | 9/23, .26" rain, cloudy, 62°, 71° | 9/24, cloudy, 61°, 75° | 9/25, sunny, 53°, 75° | 9/26, sunny, 55°, 81° | 9/27, sunny, 57°, 83° | 9/28, sunny, 57°, 87° |

• Monday, 9/22: Trimming Trails and Freezing Produce
  • I sharpened the steel blade for the Stihl trimmer, then whacked down tall grass and weeds on the trails to the killing cone and to the compost bins. Then I clipped down tall grass around the compost bins. I discovered a large branch that fell out of the pecan tree nearest to the house. The walnut tree next to our killing cone grew a branch that now nearly covers the cone. I'll have to cut it away.
  • I pulled out giant and yellow foxtail that grew inside the compost bins. One clump sunk its roots into about a quarter of the top of the compost. It took a lot of time beating the roots against the sides of the compost bin to get all of the compost to dislodge from the root mass.
  • I mowed the trails from the house to the compost bins and to the machine shed.
  • Mary picked more tomatoes, hot peppers, sweet peppers, and strawberries. She froze all but the strawberries. We now have five gallons of tomatoes in the freezer, which is enough for one batch of salsa. We also have three quarts of hot peppers, enough for three salsa batches. Twenty packages of green peppers went into the freezer today, with a total 49 green pepper packages in the freezer from this year.
  • A walking stick showed up on our screen door (see photo, below).
  • I picked and we ate the two Calville apples for dessert during our midday meal of venison on potatoes. Calville is by far the best tasting apple that we raise.
  • Our chicks, that are now fully grown, are 15 weeks old, today. 

A walking stick insect on our screen door.

Calville...ugly apples, but the best taste.

• Tuesday, 9/23: Rain & Squirrel Hunting
  • Rain was predicted by the afternoon, so Mary picked tomatoes immediately after breakfast and then froze more of them. We now have 5.5 gallons of tomatoes in the freezer.
  • I shoveled leftover compost from the eastern bin to the top of the middle bin and then installed a piece of tin on south side to close it up. Rust holes are forming on the north side, so I got a piece of tin that's half the height of the original tin that I will use to reinforce that side. Rain started falling, which ended my outside work.
  • It rained 3-4 hours with a steady drizzle.
  • While the rain fell, I sat where it was dry in the east end of the machine shed and hunted squirrels in the pecan trees. The little buggers are starting to grab pecan nuts. I got one squirrel. A big and wise fox squirrel spotted me and jumped from tree to tree to zip off to the north.
  • I was scheduled to view a Webex session on monarch butterflies, but forgot about it while hunting squirrels...DAMN! 
  • When we walked Plato in the evening, I went on down the lane to get the mail. When Mary and Plato turned to go back home, there was a yearling deer in middle of lane. The deer stood and looked at Plato and Mary for over a minute. Mary said Plato stood still and calmly looked back at the deer, never barking or stirring. "He was a perfect older gentleman dog," said Mary. 
  • We watched the film, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindewald.

• Wednesday, 9/24: Getting Ready for Chicken Butchering
  • I cut up downed branches with the small Stihl chainsaw. One large branch fell sometime this summer from a pecan tree and covered the trail from the machine shed to the killing cone. I also cut down a walnut branch that grew out and covered the killing cone.
  • I set up lights in the machine shed after backing the 8N Ford tractor until the trailer behind it was just at the edge of the rain drip line on the east end of the building. The lights are needed for nighttime chicken butchering. I also put down old Mid-Rivers wall calendars to catch stuff that drops to the ground while butchering.
  • As I was setting up lights, Mary defrosted the big freezer, then created an empty space for future frozen chickens.
  • I watched a Fine Homebuilding webinar on WRB, or water-resistive barriers used in house construction. It was interesting and very informative.
  • Mary picked more tomatoes, cut ripe ones up, and froze more of them. She is now into the seventh gallon of tomatoes in the freezer.
  • We saw a cooper's hawk while walking the puppy this evening. It floated over the lane and flew off to the east, then disappeared into a cedar tree.
  • I spent a couple minutes at sunset squirrel hunting. I didn't see any, but heard one sassing in the woods to the north of me. A bird started yelling at me from the inside of the machine shed. I think it was some kind of a wren. I kept hearing something moving around on the ground in the woods. When I worked the .22 rifle's lever action to remove the bullet from the chamber, the click of the gun caused a deer to sniff quietly from the woods. It was similar to a deer snort, just a lot softer.

• Thursday, 9/25: More Butchering Prep
  • After a bit of housecleaning, Mary made chocolate chip/oatmeal cookies for treats while we butcher chickens.
  • Everywhere you look outside, you see sulfur butterflies. We're also seeing more monarch butterflies than we've seen in many years.
  • I set up two step ladders with a spud bar between them just east of the machine shed. We hang chickens from the bar prior to skinning them.
  • I added half a tin to the bottom north side of the west compost bin where the current tin shows rusty holes. Then I raked tall grass that I knocked down on the trail from the machine shed to the killing cone and filled up the empty compost bin with grass. Finally, I mowed the trail to the killing cone and put clippings outside of the compost bins to use in the future.
  • I added a few pieces of aluminum tape to the killing cone. I also filled four buckets with water and put them in locations where they will be needed for butchering. These four buckets sat empty next to the outside hydrant all day. By late afternoon, 22 blister beetles collected in the buckets. I'm guessing they liked the yellow/green color of the plastic in these buckets.
  • By 6 p.m., we decided to put off butchering for one more day. I was tired and still needed to sharpen several knives. We'll start tomorrow night.
  • We watched the film, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.
  • We didn't get very far down the lane while walking Plato at night before coyotes howled from our south field. Plato listened for a bit, spun around and headed home in a hurry. He hates coyotes.

• Friday, 9/26: Butchering Chickens Commences
  • At noon while walking Plato, a big prairie kingsnake was in the middle of the lane near the Sargent crabapple tree.
  • Mary picked and froze tomatoes. She started gallon bag number eight of tomatoes in the freezer. She also picked a few strawberries.
  • I sharpened knives for butchering chickens, plus one dull paring knife Mary uses. It totaled nine knives.
  • I attended to last minute butchering details when I found a big plains leopard frog sitting at the bottom of a bucket of water (see photos, below). I dumped it out and got new water.
  • We butchering eight cockerel chickens, starting at 7:45 p.m. and ending around 2 a.m. Around 11 p.m., coyotes howled to the south and southeast. I heard a couple barred owls early in the nighttime. Stargazing was amazing, as the Milky Way crossed the clear nighttime sky. As the celestial sky rotated around Polaris, we watched Gemini, Pleiades, and then Orion rise above the eastern horizon. I saw dozens of spider eyes shining in the grass as they reflected light back from my hat light. Mary, who walked behind me in the dark, noticed several glow worms giving off their whitish, green luminosity. Life is truly magical at night. We have two more nights of chicken butchering ahead of us. 

A plains leopard frog in a bucket of water.

The same frog, but with sky and leaves reflecting off the water's surface.

• Saturday, 9/27: Butchering Night 2
  • Mary picked more tomatoes and is close to finishing up the eighth gallon bag in the freezer. She also watered garden plants.
  • I cleaned up chicken butchering items.
  • After a midday meal of waffles, we napped in the late afternoon.
  • We went through another 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. chicken butchering session and handled eight more cockerels. Wild animals were busy. After a coffee and cookie break midway through the birds, I spotted eyes glowing back at me from the northwest edge of the far garden. I spotted them, again, about 20 feet north of the original spotting. Based on the swift and silent movement and the fact that the eyes were somewhat low to the ground, we think it was a fox. Mice did calisthenics in the machine shed, making noise and zipping all around. At one point, I caught a glimpse of something larger than a mouse...it might have been a mink, since they're nocturnal hunters. I heard coyotes howl a couple times, lots of barred owls, and the chirp sound of a flying squirrel in the pecan trees east of the machine shed. The stars were amazing on another clear night. 
  • During the coffee and cookie break, I finished Alexander Kent's eleventh nautical fiction novel, Form Line of Battle and started the twelfth book entitled Signal—Close Action!

• Sunday, 9/28: Butchering Is Done!!!
  • This morning we watched a turkey vulture at the top of a dead tree in the west woods soak up the heat from the morning sun. It spread its wings so that it looked like a thunderbird at the top of a totem pole. It probably overnighted in that tree and after we spotted it, the bird was probably there for another hour.
  • Mary picked more tomatoes while I cleaned up chicken butchering items.
  • We repeated yesterday by taking afternoon naps...a little longer today.
  • During our final night of chicken butchering we noticed how much more mature the birds were compared to just two days earlier. One barred rock cockerel was big, feisty, and extremely tough to skin and cut up. He was so big that Mary had to set meat pieces sideways in order to fit the cut-up bird into a one-gallon bag for the freezer. We decided that 15.5 weeks is the outermost limit of growing time before we need to butcher chickens. Tomorrow, these birds would have turned 16 weeks old. The eight birds left tonight were too mature. We took an extra half hour to complete tonight's butchering session, due to tougher chickens. Thank goodness it's all done! Mary and I look forward to a full night's sleep.
  • Barred owls were really talking a lot throughout the night. I also heard flying squirrels in the pecan trees several times. The stars were really amazing. I didn't hear coyotes, but when Mary walked Plato around midnight, he didn't get far before he spun around to go home, indicating coyotes were there, but not howling. 

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 to thunderstorms, 0.81" rain, 64°, 81° | 9/19, morning fog, p. cloudy, 0.01" rain, 59°, 79° | 9/20, cloudy, 0.15" rain, 64°, 69° | 9/21, morning fog, cloudy, 0.15" rain, 60°, 78° |

• 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.
  

• Thursday, 9/18: A Tree Frog's Rain Prediction
  • I checked the apple wine twice, today. During the morning check, the specific gravity was 1.023, so I left it. Then after dark, the specific gravity was 1.021. It hardly moved. I checked the specific gravity with a different hydrometer and got similar results. I decided that the yeast in the wine ran out of sugar, so I added a quarter pound of sugar, which raised the specific gravity to 1.022. I racked the wine into a three gallon carboy and two 1-gallon jugs. From a two gallon recipe I got four gallons after squeezing the three nylon mesh bags. There was a lot of juice in that applesauce.
  • During the day, I cleaned the middle of the east end of the machine shed to make room for a place to park the riding mower. Since I bought it, the mower was parked right behind the 8N Ford tractor and trailer. I removed all burnable trash and several dozen empty dog and cat food bags, sunflower seed bags, and chicken food bags. I restacked cat litter buckets in an orderly fashion and had lots of room for the riding mower. Then I swept off all feed bags and rolled them up into three bundles.
  • I watched a Missouri Department of Conservation fly tying Webex session detailing how to treat and save wild bird skins to use as feather material for tying flies.
  • Mary picked and husked a full four-gallon bucket of hazelnuts. I helped her at the end.
  • She also picked and froze tomatoes and hot peppers. We now have 2.66 gallons of frozen tomatoes.
  • She picked a small bowl of strawberries destined for tomorrow's waffles. 
  • Mary brought the Halloween tree, which is an old dried up cedar tree, from out of the woods and stored in the machine shed.
  • Mary watered the gardens, but with a smaller amount of water, because a tree frog told her it was about to rain by croaking, briefly. The frog was right. The U.S. Weather Service only gave us a 20 percent chance of rain.
  • Thunderstorms brought heavy rain after dark. We got under an inch of rain.

• Friday, 9/19: Hornworms Still Chomping Tomato Leaves
  • Mary hung the same laundry on the line twice, today. While she hung it the first time, looming clouds started appearing southwest and west of us. She went inside, looked on the radar, and saw that a storm was tracking right for us, so she took down the partially dry laundry. We had a little shower and then she hung them back up an hour later.
  • Mary picked and froze tomatoes and hot peppers. There are now 3.33 gallon bags of tomatoes in the freezer, along with 2.5 quart bags of hot peppers.
  • I took in a Missouri Department of Conservation webinar about sowing wildflower seeds. It was a yawner...very basic and elementary information.
  • I installed three handles on the human door of the chicken coop. These are cabinet handles that we once bought as replacements in our kitchen, but never used. With the thought of building a new home, we are no longer interested in using them. Two are now on the inside of the coop door and one is on the outside to help us open and shut the door. Next, I'll cover the old door knob holes and add a simple wooden swivel latch to hold the door shut from the outside.
  • Mary searched the gardens with a UV flashlight and found 32 worms after dark. Most of the worms are tobacco hornworms. Earlier in the summer, they were mostly tomato hornworms. Usually, there is a mix of both types.
  • While she was searching for worms, a fledgling barred owl was sounding off from a nearby tree sapling just east of the far garden. This was after she saw an adult barred owl fly by to the north of the garden. The baby squawked for several minutes before flying off to the southeast.
  • I finished reading Alexander Kent's tenth novel, Enemy In Sight! and started the eleventh in the series entitled, The Flag Captain. I read these two novels as a high school kid in Homer, AK. They're still a great read over 50 years later.

• Saturday, 9/20: Chicken Human Door Finished
  • We experienced small episodes of rain throughout the day.
  • I finished working on the human door of the chicken coop between the rains. I cut three pieces of lauan plywood and screwed them on the door to cover the old doorknob holes and countersunk holes left when I screwed in the handles. I cut a piece of half-inch oriented strand board and screwed it onto the door so that it was level with the wall of the chicken coop. I found a metal safety hasp and installed that on the door. I also installed a magnet door catch to hold the hasp open when not in use, so it won't accidentally swing over the door when we are inside the coop. I found a small carabiner and put it through the hasp to hold it in place during the night when the door is shut.
  • At one point while working on the coop door, I saw a buff orpington cockerel chasing another white cockerel all around the north chicken yard. After several continual laps by that chicken, I walked into the north yard and intercepted the charging buff orpington. Then several chickens ran to the north end of the yard and clucked vigorously. We need to get our butchering chicken chore accomplished. The cockerels are getting too mature!
  • There are some wild grapes at the entrance to the south chicken yard. Mary and I tasted a couple. They are very dark, sweet, and tasty. You only get a small taste. They are very tiny.
  • We watched the movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

• Sunday, 9/21: Sandwich Bags of Apple Slush
  • Back when I was making apple bits in the food processor for future apple wine and mentioning how wonderful it tasted, Mary got the idea to create one-person portions of that crude applesauce in the freezer to use in our morning oatmeal. It's easier to process, the skins can be kept on (which cannot be done when processing slices of apples that are blanched and frozen), plus individual portions can be frozen in sandwich bags. Today we sliced up, then ground up all of the Liberty and Porter's Perfection apples that Bill and I picked 10 days ago. Mary sliced several while I washed and scrubbed them with a brush. She switched to running the food processor and bagging what she called apple slush into one-portion sandwich bags. Twelve of these bags went into a quart bag for the freezer. I cut off poor sections of the bad apples and sliced them. We froze 58 portions of apples. We still have Granny Smith and Goldrush apples to process the same way. 
  • Mary picked tomatoes and hot peppers from the far garden. 
  • Thunder rumbled south of us while we finished evening chores. Rain started falling in earnest as I washed the chicken waterers, then it really set in after we were done with chores. We need the rain, but the daily showers are slowing our start of chicken butchering.

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.