Jan. 6-12, 2025

Weather | 1/6, p. cloudy, 0.5" moisture from 1/5 snow, 13°, 23° | 1/7, sunny, -1°, 23° |1/8, sunny, 10°, 23° | 1/9, sunny, 5°, 35° | 1/10, 1" snow, 0.09" moisture, cloudy, 25°, 35° | 1/11, p. cloudy, 17°, 38° | 1/12, sunny to cloudy, 30°, 39° |

• Monday, 1/6: Snow Shoveling
  
  • While Mary shoveled snow for about a fourth of our quarter-mile lane, I shoveled all of our paths. We've got several...house to chicken coop, to woodshed, to west and east ends of the machine shed, to where we dump wood ashes, to the north and south sides of the compost bin, and to our lane. The snow is light and easy to toss. This evening, our muscles told us that we're not young bodies anymore.
    
  • I walked to the mailbox. There was no sign of the mail carrier's vehicle. The gravel road to the east might be filled with snow drifts. There were several deer tracks in the snow crossing the lane just south of Bluegill Pond.
    
  • Wild birds were nonexistent in the morning, but we noticed a lot of wild birds in the late afternoon. We watched trumpeter swans fly overhead, with one veering off to the north to join others flying further north of us. We watched two flocks of Canada geese heading south. 
  • Juncos jump onto grass seed heads and take a ride down to the snow, due to their body weight, where they eat seeds. Once they fly off the seed head, the sprig of grass pops back into the air. I saw several juncos doing this in the far garden. All of a sudden, they all flew into the nearby trees. Then a sharp-shinned hawk swooped through. After several minutes, the juncos returned to teeter-totter the seed heads to snow level.
  • I ordered a pair of hard glass cases with carabiner clips to house my cheater reader glasses. That way, I can always have them with me.
  • The garlic wine's fermentation is fizzing away very nicely.
    

• Tuesday, 1/7: Shoveling Snow & Splitting Wood
  
  • Mary shoveled snow like a beast! She did all the rest of the lane, or about three-fourths of our quarter-mile lane in three hours. When I walked down with another shovel, she was almost done and said she promised herself that if she finished, she wouldn't do anything but sit on her butt, tomorrow. I shoveled the entry driven by the mail delivery person to the mailbox and the few feet at the end of the lane along the gravel road.
    
  • There was no mail delivery, again. Someone plowed on the gravel road, but I think it was from folks at the dairy west of us to help employees get to work. The gravel road east of us might be plugged with snow drifts.
    
  • Mary saw at least 70 trumpeter swans as she shoveled snow. She said they kept streaming through all day.
    
  • Mary and saw a bald eagle fly right over the house as we did our evening chores. It was low enough that we could hear its wing beats. It was flying really fast, but with steady flapping.
    
  • I split and stacked five wheelbarrow loads of firewood. It's a combination of ash and oak and this batch burns for a very long time, compared to the maple, which burns up quickly.
    
  • A check of the garlic wine indicated a specific gravity of 1.074.
    

• Wednesday, 1/8: Firewood Splitting
  
  • I split the rest of the firewood that we cut last Friday and put next to the wood splitter. It amounted to three wheelbarrow loads. Next, I need to find dead standing trees close to the house so we can move the firewood on a toboggan over the snow.
    
  • This evening we drank some hot cinnamon tea from Harney & Sons. Wow! It's really good. The flavor is perfect for a cold winter's night.
    
  • We watched two episodes of the HBO series, John Adams.
    

• Thursday, 1/9: Hoar Frost & Tea
  
  • There was beautiful hoar frost on all of the tree branches this morning. A slight south breeze was blowing it out of trees as I dumped ashes and it made the air sparkle.
    
  • I reviewed possible apple and pear tree purchases to use with the gift certificate that Katie gave me for Christmas. There are seven apple (Black Oxford, Crimson Crisp, Enterprise, Prima, Pristine, Redfree, & Williams Pride) and three pear varieties (Seckel, Atago, & Shinko) on my list. I ruled out plums, because two trees are needed for pollination and I don't want to spend that much money on just one kind of fruit tree. I eliminated peach trees, because I first need to build up a planting area to keep their roots above clay soil that becomes waterlogged when wet. I need to decide on two trees.
  • A check of the garlic wine showed a specific gravity of 1.039. Yeast is actively fizzing.
    
  • We watched the rest of the HBO series, John Adams.
  • Mary and I enjoyed two pots each of Harney & Sons jasmine tea...wow!!! It's really good.
    
  • Snow was lightly falling when we walked the dogs on their nightly outing.
    

• Friday, 1/10: Snow, Stove Repair & Racking Garlic Wine
  
  • We woke to an inch of freshly fallen snow. It highlighted all tree branches. Snow makes the world beautiful and fresh. It collects a variety of colors besides white. Hints of blue show in the shadows. Morning and evening pinks dance across the snow. It records the tracks of visiting wildlife. There is animal and bird history recorded all over our property in the snow.
    
  • An initial glimpse out our bedroom window this morning made us think a fresh mound of dirt was dug up by a mole in the path next to the near garden. When I dumped ashes, I discovered it actually was a dead bunny. We're guessing that a fox or coyote cornered the rabbit between the electric wires and the chicken wire of the near garden, drug it to the path, ate part of it, but ran off when something startled it. I used a shovel and removed the rabbit.
    
  • Mary saw some American tree sparrows in the late morning eating chicory seeds.
  • Mary created a 2025 food chart of items stored in the freezers and wine stored upstairs.
    
  • I worked on the kitchen range/stove. One eight inch burner quite working. It gets used about 90 percent of the time and where the element snaps into the terminal block shows excess wear and tear. I cleaned the contacts with wet/dry sandpaper and bent tangs back into place. The old blue wiring is black at the terminal block from excessive heat. It works now, but I ordered a new burner and a new terminal block that includes new wiring. We bought this GE stove in September of 2009.
    
  • I racked the garlic wine for the first time. It went into a five-gallon carboy, a 750-ml bottle and a 330-ml bottle. The specific gravity was 1.013 and the pH was 3.2. The yeast in this batch took the longest time to near the end of fermentation in the history of my winemaking, yet it's still extremely fizzy (see video, below). Now it sits in the pantry to settle down.
    
  • Mary and I enjoyed a bottle of 2023 blackberry wine. It has stupendous flavor and is a truly great wine. Mary says it tastes like concord grape juice. It's very, very smooth, with no bite, just good flavor. I think a key is lowered alcohol. This wine is at 10.9 percent. It makes for a perfect taste.
    
  • I picked two apple tree varieties to buy after checking out my selections on several online websites. They are Black Oxford and Williams Pride.
  Garlic wine fermentation is really fizzy (turn up your sound to hear the fizz).
  

• Saturday, 1/11: Wildlife & Fixing Door Jamb
  
  • Mary saw a deer crossing the lane just south of Bluegill Pond while walking puppies this morning. At noon while on another dog walk, she spotted a fox crossing the lane where the deer walked earlier.
  • Mary ordered zillions of skeins of floss while using up a gift certificate that was a Christmas present from Katie.
  • A rabbit lives under the pile of brush destined as kindling that Mary stored in the machine shed.
  • Two Eurasian collared doves are wintering in the cedar trees between the chicken coop and the machine shed. Mary says they sound like wheezy whoopee cushions.
    
  • I fixed the entrance door. Back when I replaced the doorknob, I used a wood chisel to enlarge the mortise behind the strike plate. Little did I know that the shims behind the door jamb were rotten and by pounding on the wood chisel, I bowed the door jam's center away from the door. It resulted in a big air gap and after locking the door, we could open it with a slight pull...not good! I removed the interior door trim and put several new shims between that wimpy door jam and the stud. The door closes tightly and the doorknob locks securely, now.
  • After removing the door trim, hundreds of Asian ladybugs streamed out of the opened crack in the wall. I yearn for a much tighter house.
  • I decided to order a Seckel pear tree. The Seckel pear is known as possessing the best flavor of all pears. Our Kieffer pear tree is on its way out and fire blight keeps attacking the Bartlett trees. Seckel is resistant to fire blight.
    

• Sunday, 1/12: Coyote, Diabetes Record, & High Anchorage Winds
  
  • While feeding pets, Mary spotted a coyote in the north yard heading for the woods just north of the chicken coop. We watched it come back through a second time and I spotted it in the trees heading for the chicken yard, so I walked to the north end of the chicken run. While I was there, Mary saw it run away to the northeast on our trail to the ponds. It was a nice sized coyote with an orange/gray coat. It looked like it was in great shape. There are lots of bunnies to eat. He probably isn't struggling to find food.
    
  • I cleaned up my winemaking materials and put them away in the west room closet.
    
  • I recorded all of my morning and evening glucose numbers since July 1st on a sheet of paper and then rewrote them in a more presentable form to give to the doctor during my biannual diabetes checkup, tomorrow.
    
  • We both vacuumed bugs a lot, today.
    
  • The garlic wine is settling a large amount of fines in the bottoms of the containers. It will require racking very soon.
  • Katie experienced extreme winds in Anchorage. In the Hillside neighborhood, winds were up to 130 mph. When we texted with her late at night, she said she had been without electricity for nine hours. She and her pets were staying warm under covers in her bedroom. Outside temperatures were in the 40s in Anchorage.