Nov. 10-16, 2025

Weather | 11/10, cloudy, 17°, 35° | 11/11, cloudy, 25°, 51° | 11/12, sunny, 35°, 62° | 11/13, sunny, 35°, 64° | 11/14, sunny, 47°, 74° | 11/15, p. cloudy, 58°, 71° | 11/16, sunny, 30°, 53° |

• Monday, 11/10: Wood Duck Blind is Ready & Bottling Peapod Wine
  • We had a real hard overnight freeze. Leaves dropped off most of the trees, except the oaks. Whole collections of leaves tumbled out of the pecan trees at almost every second.
  • Mary picked a lot of pecans off the tree nearest the house. Those pecans are larger and possess thicker husks, which squirted juice with every squeeze. "Man, was that messy!" exclaimed Mary.
  • I weedwhacked the rest of the Wood Duck Trail, cleaned leaves out of the Wood Duck Blind, stuffed grass in gaps in the hog fence surrounding the blind, wired a lauan wood roof to the blind, and put several oak branches with leaves over the roof and weighed them down with heavy sticks. That blind is ready for deer hunting season.
  • On the way to the blind, I saw eight wild turkeys walking on the trail near the north field. They flew in several directions once I got too close to them.
  • At twilight, three deer were looking over the south orchard apple trees while smacking their lips. I ran outside and clapped loudly to send them running.
  • I racked the peapod wine for the fifth time and bottled it. The wine is still a little hazy. The specific gravity was 0.990 and the pH was 3.2. The alcohol content is 12.445, which is rather high, caused by the very low final specific gravity level. I corked five bottles. Mary and I tasted the remaining wine. This wine needs a lot of aging. Right now it has a strong alcohol flavor. It's actually a complex taste. It's flowery, with a citrus accent, along with an essence of grape Kool-Aid, which is odd! The color is yellow/green (see photo, below). I'll hide it for a year and then give it another taste.

  

  2025 peapod wine in a clear bottle.

• Tuesday, 11/11: Bottling Cherry Wine
  • A strong southwest wind blasted through most of the day.
  • Mary picked pecans from on the ground and off the tree nearest to the house. She used a ladder to get up higher on limbs of the tree. She said she's officially done picking pecans.
  • I racked and bottled 11 gallons of cherry wine. It amounted to seven hours of work, ultimately corking 56 bottles. The specific gravity was 0.995 and the pH was 3.0. The alcohol content is 10.15 percent. I added 1.1 grams of Kmeta to the wine from the 6-gallon carboy and 1 gram to the wine from the 5-gallon carboy and the 750-ml bottle. Mary and I drank the leftovers, which was an amount just shy of 750 ml. It has the strongest cherry flavor of any cherry wine I've ever made. It's also very smooth, which is amazing for a newly bottled wine. This will be a great wine, well worth the effort of picking all those cherries and making the wine.
  • Bill called with dates of when he's visiting us for the two upcoming holidays, which are Nov. 26-28, and Dec. 24-26.
  • Katie and Mary sent texts back and forth in the nighttime hours. Katie showed several photos of the aurora dancing above Anchorage.

• Wednesday, 11/12: Pears, Begone, & Cleaning Guns
  • Mary tossed all of the remaining Bartlett pears out of two drawers in the chest of drawers on the upstairs landing. It was just too many pears for us to eat before they went bad. Fortunately, Mary put plastic down on the bottom of each drawer.
  • Mary raked mulberry leaves near the entrance to the chicken yard and put 12 wheelbarrow loads into the compost bin, covering rotten pears.
  • Mary watered the dry rows of garlic in the far garden.
  • She also poured a 40-pound bag of sunflowers into buckets that stay inside the chicken coop.
  • I used the loppers to clip tree branches and autumn olive saplings along the gravel road that were hiding purple paint, which indicates no trespassing to hunters. The Asian ladybugs were so thick that on some tree trunks, I counted 100 bugs in a one foot area.
  • I cleaned the two 30-30 rifles. In the process, I broke my cleaning rod and bent the 30 caliber gun cleaning brush. It's an aluminum cleaning rod I got from Mary for Christmas back in the 1990s when we lived in Roseau, MN, so it lasted a long time. Fortunately, I cleaned the rifle with the longest barrel first before it broke. The two remaining sections of the rod were long enough for me to clean the rifle with the shorter barrel.
  • I measured from the corner of the trail to the ponds where it first turns east and then whacked tall grass and weeds for just over 100 feet to get me the total 100 yards I need for sighting in the two 30-30 rifles.
  • In the evening, I finalized my Christmas wish list and sent it to Katie and Bill. I also ordered a gun cleaning kit for myself for Christmas. I just can't look at it or open the package until Dec. 25th. 
  • We heard flying squirrels talking to each other in the pecan trees when we walked Plato on his last outing before bed. They sound like squeaky birds.

• Thursday, 11/13: Sighting in Rifles
  • Mary mowed part of the front yard and mulched a row and a half of garlic in the far garden.
  • I used a 100-foot measuring tape to accurately measure 100 yards on the trail to the ponds. Yesterday's measuring was nine feet off, so I whacked down another 10-12 feet of tall weeds. Then, I set up a target clamped to a saw horse at the 100 yard mark and my rifle rest on a Workmate portable work bench. I loaded the rifle rest with several boxes of shotgun shells. The lead in these old shells gives the rest plenty of weight to keep it from moving. I sighted in both 30-30 rifles. The adjustments of the scope on the short barreled rifle doesn't seem to change the end result. I made no adjustments on the long barreled rifle...it was spot-on.
  • I watched a fly tying Webex detailing scuds and midges. Scuds are tiny freshwater crustaceans and midges are tiny flies, but spend most of their life in water. They had a camera that needed an update which was discovered immediately prior to going live, so they tried using a cell phone's camera to show tying details. It didn't work very well, so they verbally described how to tie the fly. Interestingly enough, two hairs from moose mane are the best material for making these tiny flies. They will present a series of beginning fly tying classes starting in January. Sign up starts on Nov. 17th and they limit it to 20 participants. I'm going to attempt to get in that online class.
  • Mary and I got Santa's elves lined up to make presents for Christmas.

• Friday, 11/14: Making Salsa & Finishing Deer Blind Prep
  • Mary made salsa, canning 14 quarts. One pint of unprocessed salsa went into the fridge. I tried a little of it and it's quite yummy. With warmer outside temperatures, she had some windows open to let out the moist air from steam coming off the the canner, that boils water for 90 minutes.
  • I took the small chainsaw east to the dry creek bed and cut out several willow trees that fell over and blocked the way. It helps open up a walking area for deer. There are a ton of deer tracks in the sand of the dry creek bed.
  • After whipping up waffles so Mary didn't have to cook a meal, I took the trimmer east and cleaned up a trail to the dry creek bed, then walked south on that bed and cleaned up a trail from it to the East Woods Deer Blind. I wired some chunks of wood into the east wall of that blind and replaced old cedar branches at its entrance with oak branches with leaves attached that I cut a few days ago on the Wood Duck Trail. The East Woods Deer Blind is now ready for the deer season, thereby finishing all deer blind preparations.
  • Tomorrow is the start of the main rifle deer hunting season. I noticed a bunch of traffic on the gravel road at twilight. The head hunters (those who are only after a big rack to hang on their wall) have arrived. 
  • I watched a Webex session on identifying waterfowl in Missouri. It involved extremely basic information. Again, a software update made things difficult for the presenters.
  • Mary and I did more encouragement to Santa's elves during nighttime hours. They're getting slightly testy with us.

• Saturday, 11/15: Salsa Batch #2 & Tractor Maintenance
  • Mary made the second batch of salsa, resulting in another 14 quarts. The push is on to finish three batches prior to my deer hunting, when spending all day whipping up a batch of salsa is out of the question. Three salsa batches is enough to keep us supplied for one year.
  • I did maintenance on the 8N Ford tractor. First, I cleaned up battery clamps with a wire brush, then attached the clamps and tested starting the tractor. The new battery spins the motor over quicker than the last battery. Next, I cleaned the four spark plugs and reset their gaps. I was startled to discover three of the four plugs weren't tight. I'm sure that decreased engine compression. Again, on the test start up, the engine ran much better. Tractor engine maintenance at this time of the year helps it start when it's needed to help move a deer and the temperatures are colder.
  • I set up lights in the machine shed in preparation to butchering deer.
  • Today was the first day of the main rifle deer hunting season and it was extremely quiet in the morning. We heard three shots right after sunset. One involved four shot, three of which were quick shots to the northwest. That usually indicates someone trying to shoot a running deer, which usually doesn't work. 
  • Mary and I watered the garlic. We're hoping the rain predicted for us in the next couple days results in actual moisture.
  • I called Mom on her 91st birthday. Hank drove in from Glasgow, MT, to help her celebrate with a nice cake. She and three other November birthday folks celebrated birthdays at the Circle Senior Center. Hank took her out for dinner before leaving for his home due to snow mixed with rain coming down on the highways. Mom and some other friends were off in the evening to a Glendive Community Concert.
  • Mary and I ordered the final Christmas presents. We like to get it done early enough for items to arrive before the Christmas shipping rush.

• Sunday, 11/16: Salsa Making is Finished
  • We must be home to hundreds of blue jays. We saw a continuous supply of them out all of our living room windows this morning.
  • Mary finished making salsa by cooking up another 14-quart batch. This time, one quart jar didn't seal, so it went in the fridge to be eaten, soon. She was very happy to be done with this chore.
  • Mary also finished mulching all of the garlic by mowing the rest of the front lawn and moving grass clippings to the far garden.
  • I sharpened eight knives that we'll use for field dressing and butchering deer.
  • I collected 85 black walnuts to add to our supply. The nuts under walnut trees between the gardens grew to a very large size this year.
  • The spider balloonists were plentiful while we were outside, today. 
  • I got items, such as outdoor garments, ready for hunting deer tomorrow morning.
  • We enjoyed a bottle of spiced apple wine.