Dec. 8-14, 2025

Weather | 12/8, p. cloudy, 8°, 29° | 12/9, p. cloudy, 29°, 47° | 12/10, cloudy, 29°, 31° | 12/11, cloudy, 21°, 30° | 12/12, cloudy, 25°, 31° | 12/13, 1" snow, 11°, 23° | 12/14, sunny, -3°, 14° |

• Monday, 12/8: Firewood Hunting & Racking Jalapeño Wine
  • Mary saw a juvenile bald eagle fly south over her head as she attended to chickens this morning. It checked her out, then turned back north and headed on.
  • I split three chunks of firewood from a red oak tall stump and moved two wheelbarrow loads to the woodshed.
  • I walked north hunting for standing dead trees that we can cut up for more firewood. I found a few in the woods immediately north of the machine shed and then several more further north.
  • Mary made a food chart for 2026 that records all food stored in the freezers, plus bottles of wine stored in coolers in the upstairs north bedroom.
  • Blue jays are frequenting the spot in the east yard where we rinsed out the doe.
  • I racked jalapeño wine for the third time into a three-gallon carboy. The specific gravity was 0.992 and the pH was 3.5. Mary and I drank the remaining 8 ounces. It tasted really good. Obviously, a majority of red jalapeño peppers, combined with the dark raisins that we used for the first time, results in a milder jalapeño flavor.

• Tuesday, 12/9: Sawing Firewood
  • Mary uncovered the two layers of plastic and blankets off the tubs of greens and after 11 days in the dark and going through single digit outside temperatures, they all looked pretty good. The multiple coverings really work.
  • I greased the clutch bearing and changed the chain on the big chainsaw.
  • I cut down three trees in the north woods and sawed them up. One was a medium-sized ash. The second was a small red oak and the last one was a large red oak. All of the wood was very hard. I already need to sharpen the chain I put on the chainsaw just today. Mary helped me fill the first wagon load of firewood. I filled the second wagon load with 11 pieces of the base of the big red oak, some of which were two foot in diameter. They were heavy and a chore to hoof out of the woods to the wagon. All firewood was dry except for outer edges that fell into the snow.
  • I watched three deer run east as I backed the tractor and trailer to the edge of the north woods. 
  • We watched The Polar Express (2004) and the first Downton Abbey Christmas special (2011).

• Wednesday, 12/10: Online Discoveries
  • We had a major thaw overnight so that when we opened the bedroom curtains, what just yesterday was a lawn full of snow was now bare ground and slightly green grass.
  • Strong northwest wind gusts to 41 mph blew through the night and well into today. By evening, all was calm.
  • Blue jays enjoyed the wind once it started to wane in speed. They would turn themselves perpendicular to the ground and let the wind carry them across the lawn, then right themselves and go back and do it, again. 
  • After lugging monster red oak firewood chunks yesterday, I did absolutely no physical activity today.
  • I discovered a place in Ely, MN called Henry's Shoe Repair that will make chopper mittens out of moosehide based on a traced outline of your hand for $40. I might give them a try. The old chopper mitts that Mom & Dad gave Mary and I for Christmas in 1990 are finally wearing out.
  • I also found a place in Bloomfield, Iowa called AW Metal that sells everything related to building post frame buildings. It's 84 to 94 miles away, depending on which route you drive. It might be a good source for laminated posts, trusses, metal roofing and siding, and hardware for constructing a new home.
  • I like today's calendar image (see below). It reminds me of Clancy, my Basset Hound when I was a kid.

  

  This looks like Clancy, my pup when I was a pup.

• Thursday, 12/11: Antique Fly Tying
  • Mary heard a rifle shot from Rich's property this morning. He's next to our southwest property border. Deer are scarce now that we're near the end of the anterless hunting season. It ends on Sunday, 12/14/25.
  • I split firewood and moved four wheelbarrow loads of mostly red oak into the woodshed.
  • I took in a webinar about making antique flies. The first fly was one made in England by a Roman in 200 AD. The next four flies made came from a nun in England in 1492 who described making fly fishing line out of horse hair and dying it. Poles were 14 feet long. All of the flies that they made had a body made by wrapping black wool yarn around the hook shank. Chicken, duck, or goose feathers replicated bug wings. Using feathers off the tips of each opposing bird wing puts natural curves in the correct position to exactly reproduce the curl on the two wings of a bug. A book used as a reference for old fishing flies for this Missouri Department of Conservation webinar is Favorite Flies and Their History, by Mary Orvis Marbury. It's a book I want to get.
  • They closed schools in this county over a skiff of snow that fell this afternoon. It's hardly enough to cover the ground. Geesh!!!

• Friday, 12/12: Shopping
  • Right after I wrote in this blog that we weren't seeing deer, a doe and two fawns were eating grass next to the Empire apple tree, right outside our south living room window.
  • We went shopping in Quincy. Friday isn't the best day. I suspect that several factory workers do four day work weeks and take Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off. Also, weather predictions for the area indicate we're in for snow and cold temperatures. That's probably why there was no toilet paper in Sam's Club! Today, all of the stores were full of large crowds, so a few items on our list weren't on the store shelves...such as popcorn. Oh, popcorn exists, as long as you want popcorn seeds with all kinds of unnatural goo on them. We just want plain, unadulterated popcorn seeds. They were not to be had on this shopping trip. 
  • We did find 50-cent-a-pound frozen turkeys at Walmart. We picked up two. We would have bought three, but some guy has several pounds of frozen applesauce in the freezer that isn't converted to apple wine, yet!
  • Upon driving up the lane on returning home, we spotted three rabbits running across the area where we park the pickup. We are temporary residents in this wildlife sanctuary.
  • We watched two movies, which were A Christmas Story (1983) and While You Were Sleeping (1995).

• Saturday, 12/13: Homemade Minestrone Soup
  • Mary made a big pot of minestrone soup. She used a gallon bag of frozen ripe tomatoes from this year's garden in the soup. Wow! It tasted wonderful.
  • We watched eight deer walk by the south side of our house, through the south orchard. They were does and yearlings. Several sniffed the air as wind blew from the north. One doe had hair up on her back and walked by pounding her front hooves on the ground. A few minutes later, while doing chores, I noticed that I could smell minestrone soup at the front door. I bet that doe smelled the soup, thought it was an unfamiliar odor, and got upset.
  • I tried mailing Christmas cards, today, but the mail delivery person didn't deliver or pick up mail. I checked online and the U.S. Postal Service works Saturday. This isn't the first Saturday that I haven't seen mail. I suspect the woman who does our mail route is just lazy. She's the same one who can't bother to shut mailbox doors. I see them all hanging open along Highway 156. She leaves our's open all of the time.
  • Temperatures dropped to single digits prior to bedtime, so I stuffed rags in the cracks around our main door. I ought to adjust the door, but I'd have to make monthly adjustments, due to the constant shifting of this house on poor foundations over ever-changing clay soil. Old sock rags keep cold air out and keep the back porch area much warmer.

• Sunday, 12/14: Mitten Mending
  • Mary and I ordered coffee beans after we discovered that Sam's Club quit selling the variety we like. We both looked online and after a bit of searching, Mary found some on Amazon for a good price that I ordered.
  • Mary mended the thumbs of the wool liners in my leather chopper mittens. I sewed up the thumb in the right-hand mitten. The leather is worn enough that this is probably the last winter for these 35-year old mittens.
  • We started and ended with cool night with temperatures below zero and in the single digits.
  • We watched two movies, which were Green Book (2018) and Love Actually (2003).
  • Today was the last day of the anterless deer hunting season. I have a hunch that the number of deer harvested this year is going to be lower than in past years, due to the cooler winter weather. Shots from neighboring properties were a lot less, this year.