April 17-23, 2022

Weather | 4/17, 0.12" rain, 31°, 40° | 4/18, 29°, 48° | 4/19, 23°, 53° | 4/20, 0.73" rain, 40°, 51° | 4/21, 0.07" rain, 47°, 67° | 4/22, 59°, 81° | 4/23, 61°, 81° |

• Sunday, 4/17: Easter
  • A gray day brought a few drops of rain, sleet, and occasional snow flurries.
  • While Mary was bringing in some firewood, mid-afternoon, the chickens were in a big fuss and Mary heard a hawk in the north woods. She ushered the chickens into the coop and closed the door, where they were protected. We don't need to lose more chickens to hawks.
    
  • We wanted to move weeping willow branches before ground became mushy, so Mary finished gleaning kindling wood from the brush pile. I moved larger branches into the machine shed, so they'll stay dry, then moved 3 trailer loads of small branches and leaves to the ravine east of the house. It feels good to have that large pile of willow branches removed from the yard, even though it delayed dinner to late evening.
  • While waiting for Mary to finish the kindling chore, I pounded 2 steel fence posts for a gate and 4 wooden posts into the ground in the near garden. About 25 more posts are needed prior to putting up the chicken wire fence.
  • We had a wonderful chicken dinner, complete with red potatoes, turkey gravy, and a bean casserole, topped off with a bottle of 2020 pear wine.
  • We watched the 1985 movie, The Goonies. It's stupid. We'll donate this DVD back to the Salvation Army.
    
    
• Monday, 4/18: Wind & Wine
  
  • A strong NW wind, with gusts to 40 mph, was good at keeping all wildlife and people under cover. It probably was tough on hunters. Today is the opening day of spring turkey hunting season.
    
  • Mary dusted books in the north bedroom.
  • She made a venison stew with biscuits for our main meal.
    
  • I cleaned 3 coolers I bought months ago with bleach. Then, I labeled 37 pumpkin wine and 5 parsnip wine bottles and stored them on their sides in my newly cleaned coolers.
    
  • We covered the strawberry plants in 36 4-gallon buckets and 4 plastic tubs with a large sheet of plastic ahead of predicted frost. We also covered the 3 tubs of radishes with blankets.
  • I got up-to-date on the wine diary and fruit tree spraying records.
  • Katie sent photos of her flight north (see photo, below), related to her work.

  

  Katie flying over sea ice in northern Alaska.
  

• Tuesday, 4/19: Spraying, Fertilizing, Mowing, Raking
  
  • There was only a slight breeze, so I sprayed fruit trees. I put Immunox (fungicide) on all of the apple trees, except for the 2 newest ones. I also sprayed it on all of the cherry trees. Sulfur went on the Sargent and prairie fire crabapple trees and the Esopus and McIntosh apple trees. Mac is showing a few opening blossoms. I was planning on spraying Fertilome (streptomycin) on the pear trees, but I spotted honey bees in the blossoms, so I held off.
    
  • Mary put fish fertilizer on the garlic, strawberries, some herbs, and the daylilies. The garlic plants were looking pale, probably due to several subfreezing mornings.
    
  • Mary mowed the north yard. I helped her rake that area. We put several wheelbarrow loads of grass/leaves into the compost bin.
  • We heard our first northern bobwhite quail, today.
  • I ordered kaolin clay, which is sprayed on fruit trees to protect the fruit from insect damage, and dissolvable wine bottle labels.
    
    
• Wednesday, 4/20: Rain & Autumn Olive Wine
  
  • It was a rainy, windy, and cold day, so we stayed inside. The ground is back with a standing water everywhere.
    
  • Mary made flour tortillas, chimichangas for our main meal, and developed a shopping list.
  • I racked autumn olive wine for the 2nd time. The specific gravity was the lowest I've ever seen, at 0.990. The pH was 3.2 with my favorite litmus paper and 3.6 on the crummy wine litmus paper. I added one crushed Campden tablet after draining the must off about 3/4" of lees in the 3-gallon carboy and about 1/3" in the half-gallon jug. The cleaner wine must went back into a sanitized 3-gallon carboy and a 330 ml beer bottle. We tasted leftovers. This has a stronger autumn olive taste. It's amazingly smooth, considering it's yet a green, raw wine. This is a very tasty batch.
  • In the evening, we noticed that buds are swelling on our 2 new apple trees.
    
    
• Thursday, 4/21: Shopping
  • It was a nice, sunny day.
    
  • We heard our first Henslow's sparrow of the season, this morning.
    
  • Even though it was sunny, we had to go shopping in Quincy, because we ran out of cat food. Everyone else had the same idea of shopping today. Traffic was high and stores were full of people. At one point, I had enough of pokey people and blasted down the Walmart aisle with a shopping cart. Mary was struggling to keep up and a woman said to Mary, "He's leaving you behind," to which Mary replied, "I know! Have you got a lasso?" The woman laughed for the longest time. Mary calls that my road rage incident. I bought another cooler for wine storage at the Salvation Army store. We found parsnip seeds at the Burpee Seed display in Menards. Gas was $3.69 a gallon, 20 cents less than the high last month. Spotting our pickup in a parking lot is easy, since the topper sits higher than most. We just look for the maroon color on top of a rusty green truck and "voilà," there it you have it.
    
  • We watched a movie we bought for $3 at Salvation Army, today. It's the 2011 movie, The Big Year, starring Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson. It's about 3 guys trying to see the most birds in North America in one year. It's unique, funny, and quite good. Critics didn't like it and it bombed at theaters. We like it.
    
    
• Friday, 4/22: Weeding, Dandelion Picking, & Garden Stake Pounding
  
  • The winds are howling yet another day, preventing me from spraying fruit trees.
  • Higher temperatures brought out more Asian ladybugs that Mary vacuumed several times.
  • Mary weeded the asparagus and garlic beds.
  • Mary saw the first giant swallowtail butterfly of the season.
    
  • We checked fruit trees. Sixty percent of Big Bart is blossoming. Hundreds of native bees are in pear blossoms of that tree and the Kieffer pear tree. Our honeybee numbers are low. Mary and I each saw one bumblebee, so those numbers are down, too. Pink buds are on several trees that were in the silver bud stage for weeks. About 5-10% of the Mac blossoms are open. There is nice bud swell on our 2 new apple trees.
  • I picked dandelion blossoms for an hour and froze 9.6 grams of dandy petals. I had to pick a dozen flowers at a time, then go inside to strip petals from the flowers, due to the wind. I need 270 grams at 90 grams a quart, for the 3 quarts to make a 1-gallon batch of dandelion wine, so there's lots of picking in my future.
  • I pounded all of the 4' persimmon posts into the ground in the near garden. Next is installing the chicken wire fence.
    
  • Mary and I looked up parsnip growing information...Mary's source was an old Rodale book on gardening and my sources were online.
    
    
• Saturday, 4/23: Planting Snow Peas
  
  • A healthy deer crossed the lane and ran west as we went with the dogs on their morning walk.
  • Southerly winds gusted to 50 mph, today.
  • Mom texted that while I talk of blossoms and bees, she and folks in eastern Montana have blizzard warnings, snow drifts, and temperatures barely above freezing.
  • Wind blew pear blossom petals away, today. Blossoms are on a couple cherry trees, Sarge, Esopus, and the McIntosh apple tree is really filled with blossoms. Tiny native bees are all over the Mac blossoms.
    
  • Mary made flour tortillas and fajitas for our main meal.
  • I picked about 9 dozen dandelion flowers and plucked 34.9 grams of blossoms for a total of 44.5 grams in the freezer. I have only 225 grams to go to make a gallon of dandy wine.
  • I mowed the near garden, again, setting the mower low. The blade edge sucked into a mound of wet soil and bent it down. It's a replacement blade made from cheap Chinese steel...good riddance! I took down the old blade hanging on the machine shed wall, which is made of better steel, worked the edge on the grinder, sharpened it further with a file, then finished mowing the garden.
  • I unwrapped the chicken wire fence around most of the posts in the near garden, then started tying the chicken wire to the posts with sisal twine. I'm 3 posts away from the halfway point of going around that garden.
  • Mary weeded all of the near garden, using a hoe in some places to take out tiny weeds.
  • She then planted 2 rows of snow peas in the near garden. She was going to plant spinach, but  threatening storm clouds ended garden work. These clouds just looked nasty and fell apart by the time they got to us.
  • Mary picked about two dozen asparagus shoots that we ate as an appetizer for supper. She sauteed them in garlic wine with garlic slices. The clear wine changes to a pink color and tastes different...quite delicious. We need to create more and larger asparagus beds!
    
  • Katie called. Prancer, her German shorthaired pointer, is sick with stomach issues. Prancer is scheduled for a vet visit on Monday. Next week, Katie flies north, again, in prep of work on village water tank repairs. She's getting ready for being away most of the summer, which starts May 9th.
    

April 10-16, 2022

Weather | 4/10, 37°, 79° | 4/11, 47°, 65° | 4/12, 41°, 77° | 4/13, 0.77" rain, 35°, 57° | 4/14, 31°, 55° | 4/15, 34°, 55° | 4/16, 30°, 51° |

• Sunday, 4/10: Hottest Temp So Far This Year
  
  • The outside temperature soared to 79° and it brought out bugs. Mary said it was lovely. I said it was too hot. Ticks liked the warmth. I found 4 ticks on me and one bit me...time to start bathing in bug dope.
  • Mom texted that a winter storm is predicted in eastern Montana for Tuesday and Wednesday. She sees a cardiologist in Miles City, MT, tomorrow.
    
  • We sucked Asian ladybugs for hours. We vacuumed in shifts. I bet the shop vac contains thousands of the stinking bugs.
  • Mary transplanted a Patriot blueberry bush that we bought in 2019 from Stark Brothers and planted in a plastic tub. It's now in the ground just west of the chicken yard. I helped her get it out of the tub, which wasn't hard, since all we had to do was to tear the rotten sides off the tub and move the soil clump, complete with roots, into the hole she dug.
    
  • I cut small persimmon trees that I took down 3 days ago near the west forsythia bushes into 4-foot lengths to use as chickenwire posts for the gardens. I now have 38 posts. I hauled 4 bunches of small tree top limbs away to the brush pile SW of the house.
  • Mary worked on the weeping willow limb brush pile.
  • I cut up larger weeping willow branches into firewood and stacked them in the woodshed. Weeping willow firewood has the heat content of water, but it's great at starting a fast fire.
  • We saw 2 snakes. One was a 6' black rat snake next to the SE side of the house. It recently ate something. The other was a tiny, but adult, northern red-bellied snake that was crossing the lane while we walked the dogs.
  • The autumn olive wine's specific gravity is 1.019.
  • The following fruit trees are showing expanding flower buds: Big Bart (the large Bartlett pear tree), Sarge (the Sargent crabapple), and Mac (the McIntosh apple tree). I took a tour around the base of the old Kieffer pear tree and noticed it's very close to blossoming.
    
    
• Monday, 4/11: Winemaking & Outdoor Tasks
  
  • I woke to the sound of a bird making a ping-pong call and said as much to Mary. She rolled over and said it was an eastern towhee.
    
  • Mary fertilized the blueberry bushes with aluminum sulfate. After picking blueberries at a blueberry operation near Kirksville last summer, I asked what they put on their plants and she said aluminum sulfate. So, we're going with it this year.
  • Mary also put fish fertilizer on the garlic plants. She said they greened up immediately.
  • She also removed weeds out of the north row of the near garden.
  • The autumn olive wine's specific gravity was 1.004, so I moved the must into a 3-gallon carboy and a half-gallon jug. The yeast is actively fizzing. The pH is 3.5 on one litmus paper and 3.0 on another. After reading that adding calcium carbonate to wine to reduce acidity levels takes hours for fizzing to subside, I decided against worrying about it. I'll work on reducing acid levels, if I need to, prior to bottling.
  • Mary gleaned more kindling out of the willow brush pile.
  • I added newspaper above the grass within the cow panel around the new Liberty apple tree sapling, then added tree limbs sawed into 3- to 5-inch sticks. They rot and help nourish the soil as the tree grows. I added larger willow logs to hold everything down until I can add grass mulch, later.
    
  • A check of fruit trees revealed that the Sarge and Mac apple trees are in the pink bud stage. Since winds were calm, I sprayed those 2 trees with sulfur. Each tree took about a gallon. Sulfur helps battle cedar apple rust. The sun set while I sprayed Sarge. I used my hat light while spraying Mac.
    
  • A male turkey gobbled to the east as I sprayed. Three different critters crashed through the nearby north woods as I sprayed Mac. They were probably startled by my hat light. Two were probably a coyote or a raccoon. The third one was definitely a deer. Their steps are loud on dry leaves.
    
  • I finished the 5-book teenage fantasy series, The Dark is Rising, written by Susan Cooper. They are very good books and I think the writing is better than the Harry Potter series.
    
    
• Tuesday, 4/12: High Wind/Fire Danger
  
  • A southerly wind blasted through the day, but intensified to 55 mph gusts after dark. We smelled smoke from a grass fire. At dusk, I heard a siren of a vehicle running south on State Highway J, then west on Highway 156. Online I learned that several area fire departments went to a grass fire on the Lewis/Marion County line. That's just 5 miles south of us. By midnight, the smoke smell was gone, so the fire was doused.
    
  • Mom texted that the cardiologist during her Miles City visit can't figure out her two fainting episodes and put her on another heart monitor for a couple weeks. Next, she goes to Billings, MT, after her heart monitor is finished to take a nuclear medicine cardiac stress test, where blood flow is assessed via a small amount of radioactive tracer. She said a blizzard was blowing through, yet they served 65 people at the Circle (MT) Senior Center. A blizzard in eastern Montana is no joke, but they always turn out for free food.
    
  • Mary made flour tortillas.
  • She also worked for several hours and knocked down most of the weeping willow branch pile. It was hard, today, with the wind slapping dead branches in her face.
    
  • I took down the chicken wire fence in the near garden, including all of the persimmon fence posts and stakes. I rolled up the chicken wire, over 200 feet long, and set it outside the electric fence.
    
  • I used the small chainsaw and cut large branches coming out of the weeping willow branch pile. I stacked several wheelbarrow loads into the woodshed.
    
  • In this evening's high wind, several American woodcocks were going nuts, flying about and sounding off. In the morning, we heard tom turkeys.
    
  • We sent Katie an electronic birthday card right after midnight, our time. She turns 30 on 4/13/22. She said we were the second people to wish her happy birthday, right after her brother did the same thing.
    
    
• Wednesday, 4/13: Rain, Cold, & Parsnip Wine
  
  • Rain fell through most of today. We're back marching through puddles. Our high was in the morning and the temperature kept dropping until the steps were frozen by nighttime. Eastern Montana Facebook friends are all talking about a blizzard.
    
  • I racked, then bottled the parsnip wine (see photos, below). The specific gravity was 0.998, yielding an alcohol content of 10.6%. Acidity is 0.65%, which is perfect. After racking the wine into a 1-gallon jug, I determined it to be clear and ready for bottling. I added a crushed Campden tablet and filled 5 wine bottles. After dipping solid wine corks (not made from cork pieces) into a sanitizing Campden table solution, I corked the bottles with the floor corker Katie gave me. It works effortlessly, doing an excellent job. Mary and I tasted the wine. It's wonderful. Mary says it tastes like spiked lemonade with an earthy flavor. The aftertaste reminded her of carrots, after they've been baked with a pot roast in the oven. "It sounds like a mess, but the wine tastes divine." This ought to be really amazing after aging.
    
  • Mary made 2 pizzas. We ate one for a midday meal and the other in the evening.
    
  • She also cross stitched.
  • A quick text to Katie and she said she was going out with friends to celebrate her birthday. We'll call her tomorrow.
    
  • We watched the first episode of the TV show Genius: Einstein.

2021/22 parsnip wine. It tastes great!

Floor corker plunges corks nicely into bottles.

• Thursday, 4/14: Bottling Pumpkin Wine & Hawk Kills Chicken
  
  • We experienced strong west winds, with 50 mph gusts, so outside activities were difficult.
    
  • I bottled pumpkin wine. First, I moved the wine from 4 containers into the large brew bucket to fill it over the 7.5-gallon mark. I sieved the lees from what was leftover to give us a quart for sipping. It tastes great. The pumpkin and cinnamon tastes shine through and it isn't as sour as in past taste tests. The specific gravity is 0.999, resulting in alcohol content of 11.92%. Acidity is toned down. The pH is 3.2, from 2.2 on March 12th. The tartaric acid reading is 0.7%. It should be between 0.6 to 0.7%, so it's fine. I added 4 crushed Campden tablets to the must. After cleaning and sanitizing 37 bottles, which took 2 hours, I bottled and corked all 37 bottles with pumpkin wine. It was well into nighttime when I finished.
    
  • Katie called when I was in the middle of bottling wine. She told Mary that she is officially with the Alaska Air National Guard, now. 
    
  • Mary made a General Tso venison dish for our midday meal.
    
  • She also weeded the garlic and asparagus beds.
  • We lost a Rhode Island red hen, called Reddy (she wore a red plastic leg band) to a hawk attack. We now have 9 hens and 1 rooster. As Mary says, "This is why we get extra pullets with each chick order."
    
    
• Friday, 4/15: Near Garden Clean Up
  
  • A calm morning gave me a chance to spray streptomycin on the 2 Bartlett pear trees. This is a bactericidal antibiotic effective against fire blight. Big Bart, the large Bartlett pear tree, was stricken last year with several cases of fire blight.
    
  • Mary washed 2 loads of laundry.
    
  • Together, Mary and I finished cleaning dead weeds and high dead grass out of the near garden. We are the worst at end-of-the-year garden cleaning. Our gardens turn to massive weed patches after crop harvest. Birds love the huge grass seed heads that they eat through the winter in our gardens. First, Mary grubbed out the garden strips, so we could find them. Then, I used the Stihl grass trimmer, with a steel blade attached, and cut down tall weeds and grass where we walk. We both carted off several wheelbarrow loads of grass/weeds to the dry pond east of the gardens. The near garden looks more like a real garden, now.
  • Mary worked on the willow brush pile.
  • Mary got several grass cuts on her hands from yanking weeds and grass from the near garden. Then, at the brush pile, a willow stick she was trying to break resisted and twanged her in the left elbow. She said, "The garden beat me up, and the brush pile finished me off!"
  • Most all of the radish seeds I planted in 3 plastic tubs are popping through the soil.
    
  • We're seeing several pear blossoms on the Kieffer and the big Bartlett pear trees.
    
  • Hyacinths north of the machine shed are blooming, as are some between what we call the Four Brothers, which are trees in the north yard. Tiny keys are showing on the red maple in the north yard.
    
    
• Saturday, 4/16: More Near Garden Prep
  
  • A check of all fruit trees revealed honey bees working over the emerging pear blossoms. The McIntosh apple tree is close to breaking bud.
    
  • I serviced the working lawnmower by replacing the air cleaner, spark plug, and oil, plus sharpening the blade.
    
  • I mowed the near garden, turning what remained of tall grass and weeds into grass dust.
    
  • I cleaned dead leaves out of all of the buckets of strawberry plants, then moved tubs of strawberries to the end of the line of strawberry buckets. Last year, the buckets were in the near garden and the tubs were in the far garden. They'll be all together, this year. I covered the buckets with 4' long persimmon sticks as a rabbit deterrent with the absence of the chicken wire fence.
    
  • Mary cleaned all of the floors in the house and washed a load of towels.
  • I lit a small outdoor fire and we enjoyed smoked scrambled eggs and garlic toast.
    
  • Katie called. She's getting ready for an overnight North Slope Borough trip in preparation for her summer supervisor job of repairing a village water tank. She starts that job in May. An ex-girlfriend of a job supervisor at work will be house and pet sitting her apartment this summer while she's working in the bush, which will save Katie significantly on not needing to farm her pets out through the summer. She goes to Hawaii at the end of August with the Air National Guard to help build a Special Olympics building on the island of Oahu.
    

April 3-9, 2022

Weather | 4/3, 32°, 64° | 4/4, 0.02" rain, 37°, 57° | 4/5, 35°, 67° | 4/6, 0.24" rain, 43°, 52° | 4/7, 0.03" rain, 37°, 45° | 4/8, snow showers, 29°, 39° | 4/9, 27°, 55° |

• Sunday, 4/3: Removing Tree Refuse
  
  • Mary made barbecued pork loin for our main meal. She also made a zucchini chocolate cake.
  • Mary vacuumed gobs of Asian ladybugs.
    
  • Bill and Mary tore into the pile of weeping willow branches, breaking up small branches for kindling, throwing tiny branches into another pile, and putting large branches to be sawed up behind the woodshed.
  • I picked up sawed-up stuff from small trees I took down yesterday and stacked them behind the woodshed. I also moved branches that I didn't saw up to piles either SW of the house, or down the hill at the gully where I've thrown other branches away.
  • Bill found 2 fleas on Plato's head. We removed Plato's collar and did a thorough search of his body. Mary also used a flea comb. We found 10 fleas on him. His collar and his blanket went outside to be cleaned at a later date. We never saw more, so we think we got them all. He must have stuck his head in a flea nest today, while sniffing around.
    
    
• Monday, 4/4: Bug Sucking, Car Work, Winemaking, & Triopoly
  
  • Mary made a big batch of chicken noodle soup.
  • She also dedicated her life to vacuuming bugs.
  • I drove to Quincy and picked up the 2 apple trees sent to us by Fedco in Maine. I also got a couple grocery items.
  • Bill said a motor oil shortage meant he couldn't buy oil in St. Louis. I looked in Quincy and found his oil, so I bought a 5-quart bottle and an appropriate oil filter.
  • Bill vacuumed and cleaned the interior of his car, including the seats.
  • I told Bill he ought to change his car's oil and filter, since it was a nice, sunny day. He agreed, and did that instead of helping me right away on winemaking.
    
  • I started a 3-gallon batch of autumn olive wine. This used up all of the autumn olives in the freezer, which involved 14 quart packages equaling almost 15 pounds. This usually would make 3.7 gallons, so this batch will be extra tasty with a little more berry juice. All packages were squished, then dumped into a nylon mesh bag. These berries picked last year were very ripe and large. Bill started helping me. We added 1.2 gallons of boiling water, 5 pounds, 4 ounces of sugar to get specific gravity to 1.084, 3 crushed Campden tablets, and 3.75 teaspoons of yeast nutrient. The pH was 4.4, according to 2 different litmus papers, so I added a tablespoon of acid blend, even though I haven't added it in the past. Then, the pH was 3.8 on the wine litmus paper that I don't trust and 3.4 on the better litmus paper. We covered the brew bucket and let it sit overnight in the pantry.
  • We played Triopoly. All of one side of the 3 boards became double skyscrapers. Mary won. Her ending cash was about $9100. She won the lottery many times. I was second. A monopoly on New York properties helped me. Bill was third, due to horrible luck on huge gambling debts, but even he had double skyscrapers on Washington, D.C. properties. The game was fun.
    
    
• Tuesday, 4/5: Pepper & Radish Seed Planting
  
  • After a midday meal of homemade chicken soup, Bill left for his St. Charles apartment at 2:30 p.m.
  • Mary planted pepper seeds.
  • Bugs are really thick. Mary vacuumed thousands of bugs. I even got in on sucking them up, getting a few more thousand.
  • Mary weeded most of the garlic beds. She would have finished, but thunder forced her to go inside.
  • I planted radishes in 3 tubs of soil that once held winter greens.
  • After adding 1.5 teaspoons of pectic enzyme to the autumn olive wine in the morning, I worked up a starter batch of Lalvin RC 212 yeast and pitched it into the must 12 hours later. It smells very yeasty, yummy, and good.
  • I was going to plant the 2 new apple trees, but predicted thunderstorms delayed that job. I took pliers to the 6-foot long tree box, removing 11 huge copper staples in a very well packaged cardboard box. The trees are in wonderful shape. Fedco's trees are the cheapest and in the best shape. You really get your money's worth on the $22 of shipping that you pay for with this company. Stark Brothers, who is south of us in Louisiana, Missouri, sends you rootless, scrawny sticks that die.
    
    
• Wednesday, 4/6: West Winds & Forsythia Clean Out
  
  • West wind gusts to 40 mph blew throughout the day, so planting new apple trees wasn't in the works.
  • We relaxed inside and caught up on journals and this blog.
    
  • Years ago, Mary planted forsythia twigs east of the Kieffer pear tree. Persimmon trees grew up since then and blocked them from the sun, but they persevered. Today, I cleaned up small persimmon trees withing 10 feet of the forsythias, using the small chainsaw. Then, I took the large fencing pliers and cut away the tomato cages surrounding these two forsythia bushes. This was tough going, because the cages were homemade from concrete wire mesh. I kept nearby persimmons with hop vines running up their trunks and I moved a wild grape vine to neighboring persimmon trees. The flowering forsythias are more visible (see photo, below).
    
  • Mary finished weeding the garlic in the far garden. 
  • She also weeded the asparagus bed and found one shoot emerging.
    
  • Mary continued splitting up more weeping willow kindling.
  • We had a big flock of pelicans glide over top of us, floating into the west wind. They're really huge birds.
    
  • I caught up on my wine dairy.
  • The autumn olive wine's specific gravity is 1.080, down 4 thousandths from its starting point. Yeast aroma fills the pantry.

  

  Two forsythia bushes with Kieffer pear in the background, right,
  and small persimmon trees on the ground.
  

• Thursday, 4/7: New Apple Trees Planted
  
  • Mary made flour tortillas and venison fajitas for our main meal.
  • I set an appointment for our second COVID booster shot for tomorrow afternoon in Quincy.
  • Karen messaged me nice photos of flowers at her place in Georgia (see photos, below).
    
  • We planted the 2 apple trees in the west yard, between the clothesline and the chicken yard. Mary cut turf off with a shovel and put the sod in the rut I made with the lift last fall next to the lane. I put the trees in a bucket of water, dug holes, then mixed in amendments in these holes in prep for the trees. We put trees in the ground and tamped down the soil as clouds dumped rain on us. We added rebar stakes, plastic trunk guards (to keep rabbits from chewing trunks), tied trees to stakes, then placed cow panels wired into circle cages (to keep deer from chewing limbs) around each tree. Finally, we watered them. We still need to add mulch. They look good (see photos, below), and hopefully they'll grow and thrive.
  • A check of the autumn olive wine shows a specific gravity of 1.074, with about 1/2" of foam at the top of the brew bucket.

An azalea flower from Karen's house.

Karen's pretty flowers.

Our new Liberty apple tree (weeping willow limbs, top, left).

Our new Porter's Perfection cider apple tree.

• Friday, 4/8: 2nd COVID Booster
  
  • We drove to Quincy and got our second booster, or our fourth COVID shots. Mary felt hers while we were in Walmart. Then, symptoms slowed for her. I didn't feel my shot until I got home, then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I wish we could be done with these shots, but until this stuff goes away, or mellows out, we'll keep getting the vaccinations.
  • Snow fell, but nothing stayed on the ground. The drive to and from Quincy was extremely windy. Trees shelter us at home somewhat from the wind.
  • We enjoyed a Roald Dahl movie-watching event. First, we watched the 1971 movie, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, then we watched the 1996 movie, Matilda. It was fun. We once had the first movie in tape format, but purchased it today in DVD form while in Quincy.
    
    
• Saturday, 4/9: Vaccination Blues
  
  • Mary and I feel rotten, today...the result of our vaccination booster shots.
  • Mary heard a brown thrasher...first of the season.
    
  • A crop dusting airplane roared over our house at low altitudes, starting at 8 a.m., and ending just before sunset. With the dairy to the west of us possessing a runway, it puts that loud plane right over us when he's going to fields NE of our property.
    
  • Mary washed a mixed load of laundry.
  • Winds were slight to calm, so I sprayed Immunox on trees that are about to bud out with flowers, which included the Sargent and prairie fire crabapple trees, and the Esopus and Mac apple trees. Today was a perfect day for spraying, so I took advantage of it, even though I felt crummy. Going outside and doing things keeps your mind off your own miseries.
  • Mary and I toured all of the trees and plants. A lone asparagus shoot popped through the ground. The flowers in the woods have barely started to show.
  • The specific gravity of the autumn olive wine is 1.040, a significant drop from 1.074 just 2 days ago. I'll be moving it into a carboy, soon.
    

March 27 - April 4, 2022

Weather | 3/27, 22°, 43° | 3/28, 29°, 46° | 3/29, 34°, 58° | 3/30, 0.62" rain, 51°, 39° | 3/31, 0.31" rain, 31°, 36° | 4/1, 23°, 52° | 4/2, 0.02" rain, 36°, 57° |

• Sunday, 3/27: Cleaning Cupboards & Hauling Branches
  
  • When I set the woodstove ashes out on the front porch, four deer scampered about in the north yard and then ran into the north woods.
  • We uncovered strawberry plants that we put blankets over to protect them from frost. Temps in the 20s didn't affect fruit tree buds, although they're stalled out right now.
    
  • Mary cleaned kitchen cupboards, cleaning both the contents and the shelves. A few items were sorted out to donate.
  • I hauled branches all day to the gully east of the house. I trudged down and up the hill all day. First went the last of the heavy black walnut branches, then light elderberry branches, and very heavy autumn olive branches, and finally load after load of sawed-up rose branches. I used a pitchfork to load these thorny sticks onto an old kids' plastic toboggan, then towed them down the hill. It took many trips. Next, I need to saw up persimmon poles into 4-foot garden stakes, and put fishline fences around the two apple trees.
    
  • We watched a low-flying and large V of cackling geese go overhead while doing evening chores.
  • We watched the Downton Abbey movie, and the extras on the disc, the last of our Downton multi-week binge.
    
    
• Monday, 3/28: Asparagus Bed & Fishline Fence
  
  • I asked Lisa Gross, the personnel director at Mid-Rivers Communications in Glendive, MT, about paperwork I need to sign related to the pension. One option had a higher monthly dollar amount than what we currently get. Lisa explained our current option involves Mary getting a 100% monthly pension amount, in the case of my death, whereas the other option listed for a higher monthly payment is for a 50% pension after my death. We'll stay with what we have.
  • I weedwhacked a path in the high grass to and around the asparagus bed in the east yard.
  • Mary removed all dead asparagus stalks, cow parsnip greenery, old weeds, and grass from the asparagus bed. She removed a side of steel roofing from the compost bin containing 2-year old compost and added a generous helping to the asparagus bed. It's now ready to grow new shoots. YUM!
    
  • Mary also gave the garlic a batch of fish fertilizer.
    
  • I cut persimmon saplings larger than an inch in diameter into 19 four-foot long stakes for holding up chicken wire fences to hold out rabbits from getting into the gardens. The small Stihl chainsaw does this nicely. I hauled off persimmon sapling tops to the edge of the dry pond east of the gardens.
  • I then took the small chainsaw and cut down 2- to 3-foot persimmon saplings that grew from stumps of larger saplings I cut down last year. In some cases, a dozen quarter-inch in diameter sticks grew from one 2-inch in diameter stump. Persimmon trees are extremely aggressive reproducers! I meant to clean up sticks all over the east yard and all I did was make more work for myself. It's a long slog fighting against Mother Nature's work.
  • Mary filled all outside lines with 2 big loads of laundry.
    
  • I removed the 2 cow panels that were around part of the Esopus Spitzenburg apple tree, cut down tall grass that grew up next to these panels with the grass trimmer, pounded in 4 steel fence posts, then tied 3 strands of 100-pound test fishline around the posts to form a deer barrier to that tree. A east wind blowing with temps below 40° meant I went inside a few times to warm my numb fingers. The fishline trick really works. Deer reaching for leaves or fruit feel this unseen resistance and shy away, not knowing what that weird feeling is all about. It's cheap and effective deer repellent for fruit trees.
  • Mary did most of the evening chores, since I finished the fishline fence right at sunset.
    
    
• Tuesday, 3/29: Low-Flying Jets
  
  • During the morning hours, we had 4 different instances when low-flying fighter jets went over the property, from east to west. We think they were practicing under-the-radar maneuvers with a strong east wind blowing while flying over variable fields and woods.
    
  • Mary cleaned ceilings in the sunroom and the bathroom. She also vacuumed bugs over and over, again.
  • Mary made a very fine tasting apple pie.
    
  • I picked up sticks in the east yard, including small branches knocked off persimmon and black walnut stalks, thousands of short persimmon stalks, and 4 piles of old branches from persimmons I cut down last year that were buried in tall, dead grass. It took all afternoon, as I hauled several wheelbarrow loads to the dry pond.
    
  • We tried some cherry wine with slices of apple pie, as an evening treat. This is wine that I recently bottled (see photo, below). It's still in a raw state, with a strong alcohol taste, even though a tart sour cherry taste peeps through. Aging will help this wine.

  

  Cherry wine from cherries off our trees.
  

• Wednesday, 3/30: New Apple Trees Shipped
  
  • We got an email that Fedco is shipping our 2 apple trees to us. One is a Liberty apple tree and the other is a Porter's Perfection, a cider apple, or crabapple tree.
    
  • Cold and rainy weather kept us inside for most of the day.
  • I gave Mary a haircut.
  • Mary made a shopping list and planned the location of plants in this year's gardens.
  • We enjoyed baked chicken with sweet potatoes for our midday meal.
  • Mary and I took turns vacuuming armies of Asian ladybugs.
    
    
• Thursday, 3/31: Two Feet of New Books
  
  • We went to the spring book sale for Friends of the Library in Quincy, IL. We purchased a couple stacks of books that are a total of 2 feet high for 50 cents an inch, or $12. We also picked up some food items.
  • At Salvation Army, Mary spotted a set of dishes called Raspberry Social that she really liked. So we bought it for $40 to replace the ugly dishes Mary bought at a dollar store in Glendive, MT, 23 years ago (see photo, below). Mary looked online and a set of eight of these dishes costs $260. We got 10, instead of 8 dinner plates. We're missing 5 salad plates. Everything else is there. It's a nice improvement.
    
  • It rained light mist, with occasional sleet, that came down with gusto at times while we were in Quincy.
    
  • Mary and I enjoyed an indoor wienie roast by opening the door of the woodstove and cooking the hotdogs inside the stove over the burning logs. It was yummy.
  • We looked over all of our 2' of books. Several were American Heritage hardcover magazines to further fill up Mary's collection. I remember looking at them when I was a student librarian for Mrs. Jane Cason at Homer High School in the '70s.
  • When we drove to town, we saw a tom turkey try to ram through the panels of a sheep/hog fence along the gravel road. Finally, it flew over top of the fence. It was a huge one, with a big beard.
  • While reviewing our new books, Mary heard what sounded like little song birds. She looked out the south living room window and saw a mama rabbit inching up to the house. The sound was coming from a nest of baby bunnies...more food for coyotes, hawks, and owls.

  

  Our new dishes, called Raspberry Social.
  

• Friday, 4/1: Fruit Tree Spraying
  
  • An 4-year old hen died overnight. We called her Crook, because her comb always fell over sideways on top of her head. She was always ornery, pecking all of the younger hens. We now have 10 hens and 1 rooster.
    
  • Mary mopped floors, dusted, and put away recently purchased books.
  • Mary spent an hour to vacuum bugs. I did an end-of-the-day bug vacuum.
    
  • I sprayed Immunox, a fungicide, on all of the cherry trees, the mystery apple tree, the Sargent and prairie fire crabapple trees, the Esopus, and the Mac apple trees. This was the second Immunox spray for the Mac and Esopus trees. It took 3 hours and 3 gallons of tank mix. There is an ever so slightly movement on tree buds. This morning was ideal for spraying. It was sunny with hardly any wind and I finished spraying well before the start of the next rain, predicted for 5 a.m., tomorrow.
    
  • At one point I was on the step ladder spraying the top of the prairie fire crapapple tree when I thought the tree was hissing at me. I got off the ladder and realized a whirlwind went through and oak leaves were dropping in all of the trees just north of me, creating that sound. That was an odd sensation.
  • I checked an old pile of soil made from piling up sod removed when we made garden strips in 2009. It's too laden with deep grass roots, so forget that! I harvested 2 buckets of rotten wood from a downed oak tree in the north woods. I'll use it beyond the root zone of the two new apple trees that we'll soon receive.
  • After dark, we heard coyotes howling just outside our south living room window. They're getting a little too brave and close.
  • While on our last dog walk, we heard a lone snow goose calling. It's late for a snow goose.
    
    
• Saturday, 4/2: Bill Arrives
  
  • Bill arrived during the noon hour for a 4-day visit. He received a bonus and a 7% raise this week at work.
  • Mary and I took turns vacuuming bugs. They never end, it seems.
  • I collected up a wheelbarrow load of soil from mounds dug in the north yard by moles. I'll use it to build up soil for the 2 apple trees we'll get, soon. According to FedEx, the trees arrived in Quincy, today. I'll drive to Quincy on Monday to pick them up.
  • I also took the small chainsaw to a twig pile and sawed up another wheelbarrow load of sticks that I'll use as ramial wood chips to put just beyond the driplines of the 2 new trees.
  • While I had the chainsaw in hand, I sawed down 4 small trees, a maple, an elm, and 2 mulberry trees, that have grown in and around the lilac bushes, sapping them of nutrients and water. I also cut them up into firewood chunks. Then, I cut down 6 tall coppice branches of a pecan tree that grew out of an old stump and into the McIntosh apple tree branches in the north yard. I also cut down another small tree growing close to the apple tree. I cut all of these up into firewood lengths and left them all on the ground. I'll pick them all up and stack them, tomorrow.
  • We ate nachos and watched 2 movies selected by Bill. They were the 2019 movie, Midway, and the 2011 movie, Super 8.
    

March 20-26, 2022

Weather | 3/20, 34°, 69° | 3/21, 50°, 71° | 3/22, 0.54" rain, 44°, 59° | 3/23, 0.16" rain, 39°, 41° | 3/24, 0.18" rain, 31°, 42° | 3/25, 36°, 53° | 3/26, 29°, 46° |

• Sunday, 3/20: Fruit Tree Cleanup & Spraying
  
  • I used several tanks of gas in the weedwhacker to clean tall grass and brush from under and around the rest of the fruit trees on this mostly sunny day. This included the 2 Bartlett pear trees, 2 apple trees south of the house, 5 small cherry trees SW, west, and SE of the house, and the large McIntosh apple tree in the north yard. On the small trees, I unwired and moved out the circled cow panels, grubbed out the grass, pulled dead weeds and grass from right next to each tree, then reinstalled the cow panels. I also whacked down a trail between cherry trees SW of the house, to the sweet cherry tree, by the lilac bushes (which are showing green leaf buds), and to the east end of the clothesline.
    
  • Mary did 2 loads of laundry, spent a bunch of time sucking bugs, and did some housecleaning.
  • A south wind blew all day, but it died enough at dusk, with just a slight SE breath of air, for me to put copper spray on the 2 Bartlett pear trees, the Esopus Spitzenburg apple tree, and the Grimes golden apple tree. I used a hat light to view where I sprayed. A hatch out of small moths flew through the Esopus tree as I sprayed. Coyotes howled all around me and a great horned owl hooted to the west. I finished at 8:30 p.m.
  • Bill texted that he tried the November 2021 autumn olive wine and said it is really nice and light and tasted "polished," even though it's not a year old. So, we tried a bottle (see photo, below). It's very good...better than past autumn olive batches. I think the difference is lower amounts of Campden tablets and no potassium sorbate prior to bottling, which isn't needed for making a dry wine.
    
  • We watched 4 episodes of Downton Abbey's 6th season.
  • The yeast in the blackberry wine is lasting a long time. It still bubbles, but the foam on top is dwindling.

  

  Two glasses of very good Nov. 2021 autumn olive wine.
  

• Monday, 3/21: Bugs & Old Electric Fence
  
  • It was national bug day for Mary. It's not how many times she vacuums bugs, but how many hours spent at it, which was over three hours, today. Outside, flies by the thousands are all over the exterior of the house.
  • A tour of all of the fruit trees with Plato and Amber revealed that green tip buds are showing on the Bartlett pear trees and the McIntosh apple tree. Silver tip buds (the first swelling) are on the Esopus Spitzenburg and the Grimes golden apple trees. Cherry trees and the south apple trees are still dormant. The Sargent crabapple is the furthest along, with about 3/8" of green showing on buds.
    
  • I cleaned up old electric fence wires of a big area in the east yard that I once put up to guard the asparagus bed and strawberry beds. We've since discovered that deer and rabbits don't harm asparagus. Invading grass, mold, and rodents nail strawberries on the ground. Plus, persimmon saplings took over that area, so an electric fence is unnecessary. Three very long strands of wires were buried under years of tall grass growth. They had to all be pulled out from under dead tall grass, which was quite a chore. I rolled all of the wires up on an empty spool that once held new wiring, completely filling the spool. I recovered a dozen steel fence posts from the fence. I moved four poles to the Esopus apple tree. They will be four corners of a fish line fence for that tree. Four more went to the Grimes apple tree and the final four went to the skinny mystery apple tree south of the house.
  • High-stepping through the dead grass and the small persimmon trees, I noticed several dead persimmon saplings, all with a black band of bark about a foot above the ground. Some disease killed them. I suspect fire blight, except that usually starts at branch tips. We don't want these little trees there, anyway, so I'll be cleaning them out.
  • Rain started falling just after dark. It was a light rain, but steady.
    
    
• Tuesday, 3/22: Mist & Walnut Coppice Removal
  
  • Intermittent rain or mist fell throughout the day. Mini ponds are everywhere.
    
  • Mary cleaned cabinets in the west room. She also made flour tortillas.
  • A tour of the fruit trees: the big Bartlett pear is showing green tipped buds, none on the small Bartlett, thorough green tip buds on McIntosh apple tree, gray going to green on Esopus Spitenburg apple tree, gray tip buds on the Grimes golden apple tree, 1/2" green on Sargent crabapple, dormant on skinny mystery apple tree, green tip on Liberty apple tree, small pie cherry trees are dormant, sweet cherry and large pie cherry are showing bud swelling.
    
  • I took down 5 tall coppice branches that grew out of an old black walnut stump resulting from when I cut down a lightning-damaged tree about 10 years ago. They were interfering with growth and the well-being of 2 apple trees in the east yard. They were about 20 feet high. There's one more to remove, but it leans northerly and without the help of Mary on the end of a long rope, it will hit the Esopus apple tree when I cut it down. I sawed up all branches larger than an inch thick into firewood lengths and stacked them behind the woodshed. Long skinny branches are stacked in a pile, ready to be hauled off. It rained hard at the end of me hauling off firewood-length pieces in a wheelbarrow, soaking me down a bit. It wasn't a downpour...more like thick mist.
  • Katie texted great news. She went through a job evaluation and received a 10% pay raise, which boosts her salary, considerably.
  • The blackberry wine keeps bubbling, but at a slightly diminished rate.
    
    
• Wednesday, 3/23: Spring Showers
  
  • Mucky, rainy, mist weather continues. The U.S. Weather Service puts our area in a drought. I invite any one of those dart boys (the way they forecast seems like they're throwing a dart to determine results) to sit anywhere on our "dry" lawn. The result would be an instant very wet backside.
  • Mary sorted her cross stitch patterns.
  • I ordered a birthday gift for Katie, directing it to be sent to her Anchorage address.
  • I ordered a whole bunch of winemaking stuff with the use of a gift card to The Home Brewery in Ozark, MO, that I got for my birthday from Katie.
  • We watched the last 2 episodes of Downton Abbey's final season, plus the extras.
  • Fruit tree budding is stalled.
  • Yeast in the blackberry wine is giving off the longest acting fermentation I've experienced. There's a little less CO2 release, but it's still bubbling.
  • Mary and I each drank a small aperitif glass of jalapeño wine. With aging, the wine is mellow and not as hot. It's quite good, especially accompanied by a glass of water or tea.
    
    
• Thursday, 3/24: Marshy Land, Spraying Trees
  
  • Another mooshy day started with wet snow falling. That led to mist with periods of rain that ended around 3 p.m.
  • We saw a raccoon print in the chicken yard mud this morning. 
    
  • Mary cleaned more ceilings, this time in the kitchen. She also made turkey pot pie.
  • A tour of the fruit trees resulted in no change on bud growth.
  • Dwindling wind and rain in the late afternoon, with the promise of high winds tomorrow, made me decide to spray trees. I filled the sprayer with water, set it outside, and rain fell, again, so I dumped the sprayer. After waiting, then walking the dogs, I decided to spray Immunox, a fungicide for killing apple scab, on the McIntosh and Esopus apple trees. The wind stayed light and rain skirted by to the north. One and a half gallons covered both trees just right. I finished before darkness fell.
  • The blackberry wine still burps, 2 weeks after yeast was added, which is a very long time.
    
    
• Friday, 3/25: Sunshine & Blackberry Winemaking
  
  • The sun shines bright on our old Missouri home! Northwest winds blew with gusts to 40 mph. The double whammy dried ground very nicely.
  • Mary worked on cross stitch projects, because she couldn't mop the floors.
  • She couldn't mop floors, because I racked blackberry wine for the second time. Wine drops aren't nice on newly mopped floors. Specific gravity was 0.994, producing a 12.576% alcohol content. The must is extremely reddish purple. It tastes tart with a yeast flavor. The blackberry taste will improve with aging. Lees were an inch deep in the 6.5-gallon carboy and 1/2" deep in the gallon jug. I added 6 crushed Campden tablets, dissolving 3 at a time in 2 ounces of heated distilled water, then adding the solution to the must. The must, minus the lees, went into a 5-gallon carboy and a gallon jug. A little distilled water topped up both containers. It now sits for a month, or two, prior to bottling.
    
  • Juncos are still bee-bopping around. They should be leaving in the next week. Each evening, our trees are stuffed with red-winged blackbirds. They, too, should be leaving, soon.
    
    
• Saturday, 3/26: Cleaning, Inside & Outside
  
  • Mary swept and mopped all of the linoleum floors in the house.
    
  • I used the large Stihl chainsaw and cut down the last black walnut coppice near the east yard apple trees. With the help of a step ladder, I tied a lengthy nylon rope to this coppice, that had a 4- to 5-inch base. Mary pulled on the rope while I cut the base, so it wouldn't fall on the Esopus apple tree. I sawed it up and hauled firewood chunks away.
    
  • I used the same chainsaw and cut up a huge multiflora rose bush. It stood about 7' high and had a 3-inch base. The bush involved several different plants. It was invading the space of Esopus apple tree. I also took down several nearby persimmon trees, a autumn olive bush, and an elderberry bush. The whole idea is to give the apple tree air space.
    
  • I hauled off 4 big bunches of black walnut branches. They went into an expanding gully about an eighth of a mile east of the house. I trudged them off by foot, because a tractor would leave deep ruts in the soft ground right now.
  • While I was piling up branches for my second haul, I heard pounding horse hooves approaching from the south. I ran to the lane and there were our neighbor's 3 horses next to the Sargent crabapple tree. I raised my arms and said, "Nope, you're going home." Instantly, they galloped back down the lane and to their home. They even ran into their paddock, but promptly moved out to the front lawn of that house. I walked over to tell the neighbor his horses were out. As I walked up to the house, he came outside, saying he just noticed horses walking by the window. We talked for awhile. His name is John. Nice enough of a guy, but not the one we talked to last summer when the horses invaded our property. John is a mechanic. I think his fencing is wimpy. We now have a few deep horse prints in the grass alongside the lane.
  • Near bedtime, some coyotes howled about five feet outside our living room window. All cats and dogs intensely listened to them. On our last dog walk, Plato was very tentative. He usually sleeps downstairs in a living room chair, but not tonight. Plato slept the whole night on his dog blanket in the upstairs north bedroom.
    

March 13-19, 2022

Weather | 3/13, 20°, 54° | 3/14, 37°, 63° | 3/15, 45°, 64° | 3/16, 38°, 69° | 3/17, 43°, 72° | 3/18, 1.04" rain, 41°, 43° | 3/19, 34°, 54° |

• Sunday, 3/13: Winemaking & Woodcocks
  
  • All of our snow melted with much warmer temperatures. Every step now comes with a solid wet gushy sound.
    
  • The blackberry wine is getting very red (see photo, below). Bill viewed the photo of the cylinder of wine and said, "That's some radioactive Kool Aid!" The specific gravity is 1.085, so the yeast is barely moving.
  • Mary did some house cleaning, baked a chicken dinner, did some cross stitch work, and vacuumed bugs twice.
    
  • I measuring handles on the back lift gate of the pickup topper, since I need to get new lockable handles due to rust. I figure I need to call a company in Ohio, in order to get the correct replacements. I checked the pickup's serpentine belt, because I thought it was shot after hearing squeaking under the hood last summer. The belt looks good, with no cracks.
  • Mary heard at least 6 American woodcocks after sunset. They continue to multiply from year to year. She heard 2 squabble with one another.
  • Mary worked up a shopping list.
    
  • I put labels on the 25 bottles of cherry wine and stored them on their sides in a couple coolers. There is a little bit of residue in the bottoms of the bottles, so I probably should have racked the wine a 5th time, instead of bottling it on the 4th racking. Oh well. We aren't entering the wine in a contest and a little stuff at the bottom of the bottle won't hurt us a bit.

  

  Brightly red blackberry wine in the making.
  

• Monday, 3/14: Shopping Trip
  
  • A strong south wind blew all day. In the evening, it switched to the NW and died down.
    
  • Mary and I took the pickup to Quincy, IL, and shopped. We're stocking up on food reserves, such as flour and sugar. We picked up a package from Home Depot that I ordered of Immunox, which contains the fungicide, myclobutanil, a killer of apple scab that is prevalent on the large McIntosh tree and a couple other apple trees.
  • While going back home and crossing the Mississippi River, Mary spotted about 40 American white pelicans circling above the river to gain altitude. She also spotted a couple of bald eagles and a horned grebe.
  • Gas was still $3.79 a gallon at Fastlane in Taylor, MO. I'm keeping the tank full, so I don't have to buy a huge amount at once.
  • I didn't get to do a hydrometer test on the blackberry wine, but the yeast is fizzing and gurgling along, nicely.
    
    
• Tuesday, 3/15: Fruit Trees & Garlic
  
  • Mary made flour tortillas.
  • Garlic shoots are appearing, so Mary fertilized them.
  • Dastardly bugs fill the inside of our windows, so Mary vacuumed them three times throughout the day.
  • I gave all fruit trees a dose of dormant oil spray. I filled the 2-gallon sprayer five times. The larger trees each took one tank of spray. This spray smothers and kills bug eggs and larvae on and in the tree bark. The job took all afternoon. There were times when I climbed a step ladder to spray higher branches when the ladder's feet would sink, tilting me to one side. The ground is super soft these days.
    
  • While cleaning up from spraying, three Vs of snow geese flew over us very high in the sky. A squadron of blackbirds filled the trees east of the house. It sounded like every blackbird that spends the summer in Iowa and Minnesota were nearby. We heard several woodcocks after dark.
    
  • Mary put away oil sunflower seeds and potting soil that we bought yesterday.
  • Brent Sass won the Iditarod, arriving in Nome at 5:38 a.m. My high school classmate, Alison, is happy. She always roots for him. Brent was born in MN and went to UAF as a cross-country skier.
  • We watched 2 episodes of Downton Abbey's 5th year.
  • The blackberry wine's specific gravity was 1.076, today. It's still chugging along.
    
    
• Wednesday, 3/16: Wind, Firewood, & Spring Birds
  
  • A strong south wind blew today, which is why I knew I needed to finish my dormant oil fruit tree spraying yesterday, while winds were calm.
    
  • Mary made 2 quiche pies and coleslaw.
  • We took turns vacuuming flies and Asian ladybugs as the armies of bugs march through our impeccably sealed home. Air exchange is not an issue in our humble abode.
  • The blackberry wine rumbles along, with the specific gravity at 1.064.
  • I split firewood logs left next to the woodsplitter. Most of them were wet.
  • Bill texted that he's asked to take April 4th off, so he can visit for an extended weekend.
  • We watched a group of cackling geese fly overhead.
  • I watched a male meadowlark with a bright yellow breast literally dance on a tree branch while singing its song to a nearby female meadowlark.
    
    
• Thursday, 3/17: Firewood Harvesting
  • As usual, a massive bug collection continued to amass in our Shop Vac.
  • Mary made a pumpkin cake. The New England long pie pumpkins make a very good cake. We'll have to plant more of them.
    
  • The blackberry wine's specific gravity is 1.046, making the pantry smell amazing.
    
  • I moved "winter" greens out of the machine shed. I put them there prior to Bill and I going north to see the NHL Winter Classic in Minneapolis on Jan. 1st, since I failed to construct a greenhouse. The 2 tubs of kale and the tub of spinach survived. The tubs of winter lettuce, Fun Jen, and arugula all died. Before darkness fell, we covered the live plants with a mesh cloth, to keep out bugs, and anchored it down with bricks.
  • I also moved the 4 tubs of strawberries out of the machine shed and pulled the layer of grass clippings off the top of the tubs. These were munched down by deer last fall. Several plants are showing green.
  • Mary and I uncovered grass clippings from atop the buckets of strawberry plants in the near garden. They all look marvelous, with several green leaves showing.
    
  • Mary put wood ashes on the sugar maple in the north yard.
    
  • We heard and saw the first eastern phoebe for the season.
    
  • We also saw this spring's first butterflies. The are called commas or hop merchants. Apparently, they love hop plants. They were in the north woods.
    
  • With rain predicted, we were in the north woods cutting and collecting dead and dry firewood. The ground is too mushy for driving a tractor, so we selected the north woods, because we can move firewood from the edge of the north yard to the woodshed very easily with wheelbarrows. I used 2 tanks of gas in the small Stihl chainsaw. Mary and I moved 10 wheelbarrow loads of firewood to the machine shed.
    
  • Bill texted that he is taking Monday and Tuesday, April 4-5, off for his upcoming visit.
    
    
• Friday, 3/18: First Racking of Blackberry Wine
  
  • We experienced a very wet day. Rain fell until noon, followed by a heavy mist that existed all afternoon and into the dark. Standing water lies everywhere.
  • The specific gravity of the blackberry wine is at 1.029, so I racked it. Roughly 5.75 gallons went into a 6.5-gallon carboy and I put about 3/4 gallon in a gallon jug, which allowed for foam expansion. I squeezed a once-stuffed nylon mesh bag of blackberries down to about a quarter bag of pulp. These berries gave me an additional 1.5 gallons of juice. The CO2 off-gassing continues. A glup, glup, glup sound of this off-gassing, with rain coming down, made us jump up more than once to look for a new non-existent leak in the roof. The must is very dark red. It ought to be a good wine.
  • Mary made venison General Tso for our main meal.
    
  • When I got the mail, I spotted 5 deer on a knoll west of our driveway's end, near where the neighboring dairy has a feed bunker that once fed steers. One of the deer spotted me, spooked, and ran off to the woods north of where it was eating grass. That made all of them wander off to the north.
  • We watched 3 episodes of Downton Abbey's 6th season.
    
    
• Saturday, 3/19: Fruit Tree Stuff; Katie Takes 5th Place
  
  • A sunny day dictated outside activities for me. I serviced the Stihl trimmer by changing the spark plug, cleaning the air filter, and cleaning the exhaust screen. It ran significantly better after the changes.
  • I knocked down weeds and tiny persimmon sprouts, using the trimmer with the saw blade attached, under and around the prairie fire crabapple, the Esopus Spitzenburg apple, and the Grimes golden apple trees. I also knocked down a trail in the tall grass to the Grimes tree, and between it and the Spitzenburg tree. I started under our mystery apple tree south of the house, but ran out of gas and quit.
    
  • Mary cleaned kitchen appliances and scrubbed the living room ceiling.
  • She also made venison in gravy on biscuits for our main meal.
  • Katie called. She placed fifth in her 18-29 age group in a 5K Shamrock Shuffle race in Anchorage. Check out her race results and photos HERE. There are a couple village water tank projects that Katie will head up this spring/summer. One involves an emergency repair of a collapsed water tank and the other is a water tank demolition. They are at Point Lay and Point Hope, both in the North Slope Borough on the NW coast of AK.
  • In the evening, I figured out the start of a fruit tree spraying schedule.
  • The blackberry wine keeps bubbling along.
    

March 6-12, 2022

Weather | 3/6, 31°, 43° | 3/7, 1" snow, 0.54" moisture, 25°, 32° | 3/8, 15°, 41° | 3/9, 25°, 40° | 3/10, 4" snow, 0.34" moisture, 17°, 21° | 3/11, 15°, 33° | 3/12, 3°, 25° |

• Sunday, 3/6: Bugs & Firewood
  
  • We both vacuumed bugs at 2 different times. Any infinitesimal bit of outdoor heat brings hundreds of Asian ladybugs and flies to our inside windows.
    
  • Mary made venison General Tso for our main meal.
  • She also figured bills and savings monies, enabling us to knock another monetary chunk off our credit card bill left from doing the roof last fall.
  • I moved split wood from the machine shed to the woodshed. A few days of warm temperatures and strong south winds dried it quite well while it was in the machine shed.
  • Two bird firsts for this year...we heard an eastern meadow lark in the morning, and heard and saw the first 3 American woodcocks at dusk.
    
  • Katie texted and put images of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race start from Wasilla on Facebook and Instragram. One of Katie's photos is below.
    
  • We enjoyed 2 pots of China Yunnan tea, each, and watched 3 episodes of Downton Abbey's 5th season.

  

  Start of the 2022 Iditarod (50th year) in Willow, AK.
  

• Monday, 3/7: Bottling Cherry Wine
  
  • On the morning dog walk, I saw 6 bluebirds on the power line. It's snowy, again. It snowed less than an inch overnight, but it was really wet snow, resulting in over a half of an inch of moisture.
    
  • Mary did house cleaning, some cross stitching, and sorted new floss that she received in today's mail.
  • I racked the cherry wine for the 4th and final time. Prior to racking, I cleaned and sanitized bottles. Specific gravity is 0.992, up 2 thousands from the last racking. Alcohol level is 12.05%. Tartaric acid level is 0.825%, which means it contains a high acid content, giving it a tart taste. The highest reading of white wine should be 0.75%. The pH is 3.0, further proving high acid. It's no surprise, considering pie cherries are quite tart. Correcting it involves diluting the wine with distilled water. We decided we like the tart taste, so I'll leave it alone. I filled 25 bottles (see photo, below). Bill is usually around for bottle filling, so he's become an expert. I overfilled a couple bottles, which proved the case when I corked a couple bottles, felt wine drops on my arms during the corking process and noticed no air gap after the cork went into the bottle. This time I only dunked corks in a solution of a bit of crushed Campden tablet and distilled water for about 10 seconds. The wonderful floor corker that I got from Katie for Christmas plunged the corks in beautifully. We drank about 400 ml left after corking. The wine tastes neutral until it hits the back of your throat, then the cherry taste pops in your mouth. Aging is going to make this another big hit on the wine parade.
    
  • In the evening, we heard coyotes calling just outside our living room windows.

  

  25 bottles of 2022 cherry wine.
  

• Tuesday, 3/8: Shopping & Wild Critters
  
  • Two FedEx shipments redirected to the Quincy Walgreens store needed picking up, so I drove the pickup to Quincy to get them. While there, I got some herbicide concentrate containing triclopyr for killing lespedeza, and a 3-gallon sprayer dedicated to herbicide usage. I bought a pork loin for $1.88 a pound, cat and dog foods, and other human food items. When I went to town, gas was $3.69 a gallon. When I drove home and bought gas, it was $3.79 a gallon. Lesson learned...buy gas earlier in the day, because it will probably increase in price.
    
  • Mary made flour tortillas, then cooked up the last of the pumpkins we grew last year. She added 6 more quarts of pumpkin meat into the freezer.
  • Birds were plentiful. Mary spotted wood ducks and some common golden eye ducks. We heard several woodcocks in the evening. A towhee sat in the forsythia bush, not 5 from where Mary was walking by while carrying firewood, and sang the entire time.
  • We heard a coyote howling at night just NW of the house. It makes us glad chickens are sleeping in a securely shut-up wooden chicken coop. 
  • A raccoon walked on the trail to the chicken coop just a few feet from the house. The raccoon tracks weren't there during evening chores, and the ground froze overnight, so it walked through just after the sun set (see photos, below).
     

Raccoon tracks left in trail near our house.

Raccoon tracks over boot print proves the
animal left these tracks in early night hours.

• Wednesday, 3/9: TVP, Stroganoff, & Tree Spraying Research
  
  • Mary divided up the 25-pound bag of textured vegetable protein (TVP) that I picked up yesterday into 120 one-cup amounts in sandwich bags and froze them. We use this soybean item in the place of hamburger. Each bag is the equivalent of a pound of cooked hamburger. Mary figured out that we save over $500 by using 25 pounds of TVP in the place of hamburger.
    
  • She also split up the pork loin into 6 meals and froze it.
  • Mary made venison stroganoff.
  • I researched the timing of spraying all of my various fruit tree sprays. It gets very detailed, based on what stage leaf buds of the trees are showing in the spring.
  • I took the dogs on a walk on our old east loop trail. Deer trails follow the old trail that I need to further clear. We scared up a flock of wood ducks that were swimming on Dove Pond. We also spooked 2 deer that I saw running through the east woods.
    
  • We set 23 quart bags of 2021 blackberries out to thaw. They equaled 20.5 pounds of fruit that I'll make into 5 gallons of blackberry wine tomorrow.
    
    
• Thursday, 3/10: Christmas in March
  • Snow fell all day. It started as very light snow. By evening, grass still showed through the white stuff. After dark, bigger flakes fell, so that by the last dog walk, we were wading through about 4 inches.
    
  • Mary saw 2 northern harrier hawks while doing evening chores.
  • I made a 5-gallon batch of blackberry wine by first squishing 23 quart bags of blackberries and dumping them into a nylon mesh bag. After adding 3.75 gallons of spring water, I put in 5 teaspoons of yeast nutrient and 5 crushed Campden tablets. Nine pounds of sugar went into the must, giving it a specific gravity of 1.089, and bringing the liquid level up to 5 gallons. The pH was 3.5, so I didn't add acid. I covered the brew bucket with a flour sack towel and set it into the pantry to soak overnight.
    
  • Mary did some cross stitch, since it was wintry outside.
    
    
• Friday, 3/11: Blowing Snow, Pizza, & Wine Yeast
  
  • A strong NW wind blew snow out of trees and across the fields all day. It was a cold wind, so we stayed inside. Online news indicated that people crashed and smashed cars throughout Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa, both yesterday and today.
    
  • Mary made 2 pizzas. We ate one for a midday meal and one in the evening.
    
  • I stirred up the blackberry wine must, then added 2.5 teaspoons of pectic enzyme. A specific gravity check gave a 1.082 reading, so I added a pound of sugar to raise the level to 1.090. The pH is now 3.2. As the blackberries break down, even more acid is going into the must. I began a yeast starter with Lalvin RC 212 yeast, adding 2 ounces of must heated to 95° every hour. The yeast starter went into the brew bucket 12 hours later. A specific gravity test gave a 1.086 reading, so I added 8 ounces of sugar to take it back up to 1.090. Now the brew bucket sits, covered with a towel, while the yeast breaks sugar down into alcohol in the next few days.
    
  • During evening chores, we saw 2 batches of snow geese fly very low over the house. Their white breasts were the color of cantaloupes in the setting sun. Normally, we don't see snow geese that close.
    
  • We watched 4 episodes of Downton Abbey's 5th season.
    
    
• Saturday, 3/12: Blackberry & Pumpkin Winemaking
  
  • I made breakfast waffles.
  • The blackberry wine was quiet when I checked it around 1 p.m., but the specific gravity dropped to 1.088 and there was a strong wine yeast smell in the pantry. In the evening, the top of the brew bucket was covered with what I call a purple cottage cheese lava bed (see photo, below). Occasionally, a bubble pops out from under the curds. When I sent this image to Bill, he texted back with an image of Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein saying, "It's alive!"
  • I racked the pumpkin wine for the 3rd time. About of 1/2" of fines were at the bottom of the 6.5-gallon carboy and roughly 1/8" in the gallon and 1/2-gallon jugs. Cleaning this yeast poop out was interesting, because it was like sticky toothpaste. And, it stunk like sulfur. Specific gravity is still 1.000, as it was a month ago. The pH is 2.2, which is way too acidic. It needs adjusting prior to bottling. The wine is clearer, but still needs time to clear completely. The taste was good, but tart. The pumpkin and cinnamon flavors come through loud and clear. If I tame the acidity, it will be even better. After racking, I have 7.5 gallons...a 5-gallon carboy, two 1-gallon jugs, and a half-gallon jug (see photo, below).
    
  • A strong westerly wine and single-digit temperatures kept outside wildlife quiet.
     

7.5 gallons of pumpkin wine after 3rd racking.

A weird foam next to mesh bag atop blackberry wine.