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!