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°, xx° | 10/3, xx°, xx° | 10/4, xx°, xx° | 10/5, xx°, xx° |

• 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.

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.

Sept. 1-7, 2025

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

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

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

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

  

  A swallowtail butterfly caterpillar in parsnip leaves.
  

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

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

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

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