August 3-10, 2026

Weather | 8/3, sunny, 60°, 84° | 8/4, sunny, 63°, 87° | 8/5, rain, 69°, xx° | 8/6, xx°, xx° | 8/7, xx°, xx° | 8/9, xx°, xx° | 8/10, xx°, xx° |

• Monday, 8/3: Long Line at the License Bureau
  • Bill left for his St. Charles apartment around 1 p.m.
  • Before leaving our county, Bill drove to our county seat of Monticello to get his driver's license. All licensing offices have Monday through Friday hours similar to when he works, plus long wait times in St. Louis, so he thought it best to try his luck here. When he arrived in the Monticello office, there were 11 people waiting in front of him. I've never witnessed that many people in that tiny office! He was done and leaving for home at 3:30 p.m., which was an extremely long wait period. But, he got his renewed driver's license. 
  • Mary turned the hay she cut yesterday in the front lawn. It's looking good.
  • I finished draining the solar generator to 60 percent by trying it out on the refrigerator. The manual suggests to fully charge it, then drain the charge to 60 percent for long-term storage. I linked it to our wifi modem and downloaded the latest firmware update. With that update came an improved link from my cell phone to the unit. I also changed some settings on the unit.
  • I investigated linking the two solar panels in parallel, compared to in a series and learned that one needs a fuse on the positive side after each panel. Otherwise, a panel can turn to toast. Additional cables are needed for the parallel connection. I decided against using that type of a connection.
  • Mary put extra hay into the chicken coop.
  • While adding new bags of feed to the chicken coop, we discovered a young white cockerel escape artist outside of the chicken fence. We got him into the coop, then searched the fences for a possible hole. We noticed an area at the bottom of the east side of the north chicken yard where the chicken wire fencing was lifted up. We figured that some cement blocks or bricks could block that hole until I do a major fence reconstruction.

   

• Tuesday, 8/4: Missouri Primary Election Day
  • While Mary fed and watered chickens this morning, I moved eight bricks and put them in spots in the east fence of the north chicken yard where the bottom of chicken wire curled upward. When I went to leave, I watched a white cockerel on a low cedar branch that reaches out into the yard. It was hopping up the branch and was only a few inches away from leaping down over the edge of the fence to the other side. I chased him off the branch, then got my Stihl pruning saw and cut off four cedar branches that chickens might climb on. I threw them beyond the north end of the chicken yard...enough of that nonsense!
  • We did some voting research online, then drove to Lewistown and voted in the Missouri primary. The governor put two measures on the primary ballet with the intention that a lower voter turnout might allow them to pass. One was to halt the state income tax and allow legislators to boost sales taxes as they see fit, which might result in up to 16 percent in sales taxes. Another was a way to restrict voters' ability to admen the state constitution. Mary and I wanted to make sure and vote no on both of these measures, which we did.
  • I finished weedwhacking under the electric fence of the near garden. It was super humid outside, especially in the late afternoon.
  • Mary picked up the new hay that she cut and was drying for two days. She stored it in the second grain bin.
  • She also harvested a handful of white wing onions that had flopped over.
  • I heard, but didn't see, two birds that were flying overhead. They were making a loud, raspy sound. They turned out to be two great egrets. Verification came from Mary's Merlin app on her phone.
  • Thunderstorms developed to our northwest and went by just five miles north of us this evening.
  • Election results told us this evening that those two measures that we voted against failed miserably. The income tax to sales tax measure vote was 84 percent against versus 16 percent for it. The other measure failed, also. We learned that Greg Sharpe won the Republican side of our state senate race. That's good. The other two losing candidates filled our mailbox with cards telling us how rotten Sharpe and each other were. Sharpe never stooped to their level of throwing rotten eggs and he won...good for him!