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.