Aug. 18-24, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

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

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