Oct. 13-19, 2025

Weather | 10/13, 0.01" rain, cloudy, 61°, 76° | 10/14, sprinkles, cloudy, 59°, 78° | 10/15, cloudy, 59°, xx° | 10/16, xx°, xx° | 10/17, xx°, xx° | 10/18, xx°, xx° | 10/19, xx°, xx° |

• 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.