Jan. 15-21, 2023

Weather | 1/15, 28°, 48° | 1/16, 0.01" rain, 45°, 62° | 1/17, 35°, 46° | 1/18, 0.20" rain, 25°, 35° | 1/19, 0.25" rain, 34°, 35° | 1/20, 25°, 31° | 1/21, 17°, 41° |

• Sunday, 1/15: Wild Birds
  
  • In the morning, I watched a juvenile red-shouldered hawk land on a small honey locust tree southwest of the house. It flew to various other perches south of the house while looking for rodents in the field. When the hawk flew closer to the yard, I went outside to discourage it from investigating our chickens and it flew east.
    
  • I walked the dogs on a circle through the east woods. While walking down the hill beyond the cow barn, a herd of about six deer ran south.
    
  • Mary dusted the shelves of DVDs and did a load of laundry.
  • I dug out a Cabela's fly tying vise that Dad once owned. It's a good one, much better than the one I used on Saturday in Kirksville. I also rediscovered a bunch of lure making supplies that Dad owned. It's time to have fun.
  • Mary and I looked up places to buy fly tying equipment and material. We spotted a nice fly tying kit of tools at Bass Pro.
    
  • Trumpeter swans are wintering in our part of the world. We saw the lumbering white bombers flying easterly in the morning. In evening, about 30 minutes prior to darkness, I watched several flying in circles above the field east of our property. I'm guessing our neighbor spilled a bunch of corn or soybeans on the ground, which is attracting swans to that location. We think they overnight at the poop ponds next to the dairy west of us.
  • We watched three Downton Abbey episodes.
    
    
• Monday, 1/16: Sharpening Chainsaws
  
  • We experienced a very windy day, even though the sun was out several times.
    
  • I took the dogs on a hike to the end of the west field. Our west neighbor's deer stand just beyond our property line was used. The trampled down leaves was the telltale sign. After they sniffed about, I took Plato and Amber down the Bobcat Deer Blind Trail, then back home.
    
  • Mary made a pumpkin cake, dusted books in the sunroom, and did the evening chores.
  • I cleaned up both chainsaws and sharpened one set of chains for each saw.
  • We enjoyed hard boiled eggs, jelly on toast, two pots of Yunnan loose-leaf tea, and a big portion of Mary's brandy pumpkin cake while watching the first episode of Ken Burns' The Civil War.
    
  • I read details about fly tying in a book we have entitled The Complete Book of Sportfishing. Printed fly tying instructions make it seem extremely difficult, when it is not!
    
  • Mary's cell phone barely holds a charge. I looked up DIY instructions on replacing cell phone batteries on ifixit.com.
  • I put half of the Antonovka apple seeds I recently bought into hot water to soak for 24 hours, per instructions that came with the seeds. I ordered 20 seeds. I actually received 35 seeds.
    
    
• Tuesday, 1/17: Quiet Day
  
  • I drove the tractor in the south field to pack down the grass and form a new trail to walk the dogs on. We walked it in the afternoon. The dogs loved it.
    
  • Mary did laundry, made flour tortillas, and did some cross stitch.
    
  • We watched four Downton Abbey episodes.
    
    
• Wednesday, 1/18: A Drizzly Day
  
  • We had an entire day of drizzle...a good day to stay inside.
  • We heard a robin during our morning dog walk. We haven't noticed them since sometime last fall, which isn't the case every year. We never knew robins would be more rare than trumpeter swans. We hear or see swans every day.
    
  • I updated my wine diary, which involved December and up to today in January, when I worked on several wines.
  • I started making a new wine...persimmon wine. I looked up and wrote down a recipe and then only got as far as splitting open frozen quart bags and putting the frozen chunks of persimmon fruit into a nylon mesh bag to thaw. One of my mesh bags split, leaving me only one. Half of the 17 pounds fit in the remaining bag. I put the other five bags in a big metal bowl, covered the bowl with plastic, and put the bowl in the fridge. I covered the brew bucket holding the mesh bag with a flour sack towel and put it in the pantry to let it thaw out.
    
  • Mary dusted cookbooks on the kitchen bookshelf and made a turkey pot pie.
    
    
• Thursday, 1/19: Dusting Books & Persimmon Wine
  
  • We had light rain in the morning, then it was cloudy all day.
  • Mary finished dusting all of the books, dealing with the rolling book cart in the sunroom and five shelves in the living room.
  • I searched online for sturdy nylon mesh bags and found some at hobbyhomebrew.com in Carbondale, IL. It looks like a good brewing supply source that's inexpensive, ships at reasonable rates, and is located relatively close. I also ordered 100 corks. By bedtime, the order was already shipped.
    
  • I worked on persimmon wine for most of the day. The frozen chunks were completely thawed in the brew bucket. Those in the fridge were partially thawed. Mary helped me by scooping the half-frozen baby poop-like persimmons out of the bowl and into the nylon mesh bag. After securely tying the bag, I alternately added Kmeta-treated tap water and sugar to get to a specific gravity of 1.070. That amount might increase as sugar is released from the persimmon pulp. The totals were 4 gallons, 3 pints of water and 7.5 pounds of sugar to make 5 gallons of must. The first pH test was off the charts on alkalinity. I added 3 tablespoons of acid blend to get a desired pH of 3.4. Five teaspoons of yeast nutrient went into the brew bucket. The gram of Kmeta used to treat tap water equaled the amount required for a 5-gallon batch, so no more was added. I started with the medium-sized brew bucket, but with such a big and solid 17 pounds of persimmon fruit in the mesh bag, there wasn't enough space for 5 gallons of liquid, so I transferred everything into the large brew bucket. A flour sack towel covered the top and I set the brew bucket in the pantry for an overnight soak.
    
  • At twilight, Mary saw 20 trumpeter swans fly overhead. I saw a mess of about 200 snow geese fly just over the treetops, heading west. It's our first sighting of snow geese for the season.
    
  • We watched two episodes of Ken Burns' The Civil War.
    
    
• Friday, 1/20: Pitching Persimmon Wine Yeast
  
  • I made waffles for breakfast and Mary created a venison General Tso midday meal.
    
  • I added 2.5 teaspoons of pectic enzyme to the persimmon wine, then made a starter of Red Star Côte des Blancs yeast. The specific gravity is 1.073. I decided to not add any more sugar, giving the wine a moderate alcohol content. I pitched the yeast into the wine in the evening and by bedtime yeast smell drifted out of the brew bucket.
    
  • In the morning, I saw a bald eagle flying south to north. Several flights of trumpeter swans flew over or near us at sunset. One group of five was lit up by the sun. They were beautiful. We counted 42 swans, but we heard more flying to the north.
    
  • We enjoyed a bottle of cherry wine. It's really yummy, giving a full bodied feel in the mouth. We also drank pots of loose-leaf tea.
    
  • We watched four Downton Abbey episodes.
  • Bill texted that he requested Jan. 30th off, so he can visit us next weekend. He added that he's working tomorrow (1/21).
    
    
• Saturday, 1/21: Sun to Snow
  
  • After waking up, I opened the bedroom window curtains and watched five deer walk through the field northeast of the house. They were all in a group, so at this time of the year, they were probably bucks. The sun shone in the morning hours.
    
  • Mary made two pizzas. We had one for our midday meal and another in the evening.
  • Bill called while he was at work. They were cleaning out the back of the building and he saved a couple light fixtures and a 3-foot power strip for us.
    
  • The persimmon wine had no fermentation, so I moved it to behind the woodstove. By 6 p.m. it was fizzing. I squeezed the mesh bag and took a hydrometer reading. The specific gravity was 1.072 by bedtime. It dropped only a thousandth of a degree. Of course, additional sugar may be coming out of the bag of persimmon fruit.
    
  • I burned garbage that accumulated inside the house and a few cardboard boxes in the machine shed. The wind switched from the southwest to the east and started blowing flames close to a young oak tree, so I quit. Besides, it was time to eat.
    
  • Mary and I took a walk in the north woods. She was looking for Christmas ferns, which are usually green this time of the year. There were none. They probably died with the below zero temperatures we had through Christmas. We did find other growing plant life, though (see photos, below).
    
  • I added the persimmon wine details to my wine diary.
  • Snow was falling by the time of our last dog walk. Mary says it was somewhere between heavy snowflakes and fluffy, freezing rain.
    

Moss at base of an oak tree in north woods.

Orange Mycena is supposed to grow from
June to September. Apparently, it didn't get
the right calendar.

Jan. 8-14, 2023

Weather | 1/8, skiff of snow, 0.01" moisture, 24°, 28° | 1/9, 21°, 49° | 1/10, 26°, 47° | 1/11, 31°, 51° | 1/12, 25°, 33° | 1/13, 19°, 29° | 1/14, 11°, 39° |

• Sunday, 1/8: Deer Aplenty
  
  • A skiff of snow fell overnight. It melted quickly.
  • When we walked the dogs in the morning, we had deer snorting at us from the woods on the opposite side of Bluegill Pond.
  • Bill texted that he felt ill since Saturday morning, with a sore throat and body aches, but without a fever. He said he feels a little better today.
    
  • Mary dusted books in the sunroom.
  • I washed up the newest cooler recently purchased and let it dry in the upstairs north bedroom. Mary says we soon won't have space for a bed in that room, due to all of the damn wine!
    
  • I took the dogs on a long walk into the east woods, since it was a nice sunny day. Near the old cow barn, I noticed deer running north to south to get away from us. We saw many deer tracks in the sand at the edge of Wood Duck Pond. Further up the dry creek bed, there were raccoon tracks. The dogs loved the outing.
    
  • With online research on how to build an apple scratter (the device that pulverizes apples into mush prior to squeezing out the juice), I decided to buy a used food processor, instead. I want to get away from the hand grinder, which is really built for grinding meat to make burger and sausages, not apple mush. That grinder gives everything a slightly metallic taste.
    
  • Mary and I ordered garden seeds from Fedco. The bill was $94. Seeds are more expensive, but not as spendy as buying the finished product from the grocery store.
    
    
• Monday, 1/9: Garlic Sprouts & Indoor Carpentry Ideas
  
  • Mary made flour tortillas.
  • She also made a quick check of the garlic and found 3 varieties sprouting, which is no surprise with recent warm temperatures. A return to cold temperatures won't hurt them. They will just have brown tips after they grow in the spring.
  • Mom texted that she is also working up a garden seed buying list and that seed prices are significantly higher. She has deer tracks all over her yard, with some even on her back porch.
    
  • I dug deep into two internet rabbit holes. One involved flooring alternatives. The commercial vinyl tile floor that Mary's Uncle Herman installed in this house is chipping apart. Under it in the living room, the bathroom, and the west room is old-fashion particle board, which is disintegrating, leaving nails sticking out of the plank floor under it. Plywood, which is better, is under the breaking-up kitchen vinyl squares. Our floor is a mess. When we arrived here in 2009, I painted a piece of orientated strand board (OSB) with gray porch and floor paint and put it on the pantry floor. It looks great after close to 14 years. Online searches show that an OSB floor works fine when painted with a quality primer, followed by several coats of porch and floor paint. It might be an inexpensive way to improve our floors until we can afford to put up a new and better home.
  • The other internet search that I did involved building a new, yet inexpensive, kitchen countertop. Herman built our current countertop using half-inch plywood covered with cheap laminate. The plywood is too thin. Kneading bread on it makes it bend. Plus, some of the laminate is worn through the fake marble pattern. Two sheets of 3/4-inch plywood is recommended for a countertop. Placing maple plywood on top, adding poplar trim, staining the wood, then covering it with four coats of polyurethane produces a waterproof surface that's inexpensive and looks admirable. Again, it might be a good improvement that gets us by for a few years.
    
  • We watched the first half of Ken Burns' PBS documentary The Dust Bowl. This was a Christmas present to Mary from Bill. It's very interesting.
    
  • I washed 4 wine bottles, because tomorrow I'll rack and bottle the Kieffer pear wine.
  • A package of 20 Antonovka apple seeds came in today's mail. Plans are to grow them into apple rootstocks for future apple grafting projects.
    
    
• Tuesday, 1/10: Hunting a Non-Existent Calf
  
  • The neighbor bordering our east property line, visited us, asking about a lost calf. All of his yearling calves broke out through a fence after a bunch of dogs went through. He thinks the dogs might be from someone hunting raccoons or coyotes. He returned 12 calves, but cannot find the last calf and asked if we saw it...a black calf with white markings, which could be half of all cattle in this county. I told him we haven't seen anything, but I'd take a look around our property.
    
  • Mary and I took a hike north, then east. We looked for calf tracks, but didn't see any. We did find a large snapping turtle shell on the west shore of Wood Duck Pond. There were lots deer and raccoon tracks. 
  • The neighbor north of our land has a small, white metal, fully-enclosed trailer parked just 50 feet from the fence dividing our properties. It sits on top of a hill and has sliding plexiglass windows, probably used as a hunting shack. We never heard gun shots from that area during hunting season. One reason might be the fact that it's glaring white and not concealed at all.
    
  • I racked the Kieffer pear wine for the fourth time and bottle it. The specific gravity was still 1.000, giving it a 10.22 alcohol content. The pH is 3.4, little change from 3.3 when I made this batch on Nov. 1st. There were minimal fines. I bottled and corked nine bottles. Eight were 750-ml bottles and one was a 375-ml bottle. Mary and I tasted the wine. It tasted very strongly of pear, like drinking pear cider. We think our timing was perfect on processing these pears. Often we get too late with Bartlett pears and the fruit is rather overripe when I make the wine. These Kieffer pears were ready, but still solid and not falling apart. It might make a difference in bringing out a strong pear flavor.
    
  • When Mary walked the dogs at night while I attended to the fire in the woodstove, she heard hounds baying just across the road. To avoid getting our dogs tangled into a group of coon hounds, she hurried north up our lane with our puppies. As they returned, she heard a shot. It was probably a coon hunter across the gravel road from us. We thought how nice that must be for Alma, the Hispanic mother of a 6-month old baby, while hounds are howling and a shot rings out nearby.
    
    
• Wednesday, 1/11: Firewood Collection
  
  • Mary and I cut, hauled home, and put away a load of firewood. We drove the tractor down the trail to Wood Duck Pond and cut up about six small downed trees where the trail first enters the east woods. We were looking for completely dry wood, which we found.
  • A hawk in the trees east of where we cut firewood didn't like us and told us so. Mary heard mallard ducks at Wood Duck Pond.
    
  • While chucking firewood pieces over a fence, I walked into the blunt edge of a small cedar branch. It left a bloody mark down the entire length of the left side of my face. I look like I fought off a bear, but it was only a bare twig.
  • After seeing so many dead cedar trees that are super hard after drying for years in nature, Mary thinks we should use them, since they're free to us, for fence posts and maybe even posts in a post and frame house. Yes, definitely for fence posts, and maybe, but above ground, for house construction.
    
  • After sunset, I heard trumpeter swans and watched for them, seeing a few fly by to the south of our house. Suddenly, an owl flew silently by just a few feet above my head.
    
  • We watched two episodes of Downton Abbey.
  • Bill texted that he was going to try to take a day off at the end of this month and visit us.
    
    
• Thursday, 1/12: Quiet, Windy Day
  
  • Northwest wind gusts to 33 mph made for a cool feeling day, outside.
  • I took our puppies on a walk to the east woods and back. It was fast, but they loved the walk.
    
  • Mary did some cross stitch.
  • I searched online about making cedar posts. Keys to successful cedar posts: debark the wood, remove white sap wood since it rots quickly and the red heartwood lasts a long time, let them dry for a year, seek trees in thick groves where they grow tall because they have thin growth rings and contain denser wood, pack pea gravel under and around post to allow for drainage and drying. Some farmers report cedar posts lasting for decades.
    
  • In the evening, I looked for design ideas involving solariums/greenhouses built into a house. All I found were monster homes involving millions of dollars. I'm not interested in that approach. I need to develop my own ideas.
    
    
• Friday, 1/13: A Lucky Day
  • I made waffles for breakfast and Mary made a General Tso venison dish for our main meal.
  • Mary also cross stitched the deer's nose in dark navy blue in a project she's working on. A photo of what the project will look like is below.
    
  • I cleaned labels off 9 wine bottles, using a new method that Mary discovered online (see photo below). After filling bottles with tap water so they stay put, they're placed in a canner filled with water, some vinegar, and a few squeezes of dish soap. They heat until the water boils, then let they sit for 20 minutes. The labels are supposed to peel right off. Some did and the rest came off easily with a fishing fillet knife. I did a little bit of scrubbing with baking soda and a green Scotch pad to remove glue. Next time, I'll get them to a rolling boil, instead of just starting to boil, then let it sit for 30-40 minutes. Still, this is the best method of removing wine bottle labels that I've done so far.
    
  • When Mary went to remove the indoor chicken waterer so it wouldn't freeze overnight, she walked up to a deer that was right behind the woodshed. Mary and the deer surprised one another. It was only 6 feet away and didn't seem to care about Mary's presence. Mary said it wouldn't leave until she started whistling.
    
  • I labeled the nine bottles of Kieffer pear wine and stored them in a cooler.

This is Mary's cross stitch project, today.

Wine bottles heating up for label removal.

• Saturday, 1/14: Fly Tying in Kirksville, MO
  
  • I drove to Kirksville, 50 miles west of us, to attend a free fly tying class put on by the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) at the MDC Northeast Regional Office. Pat Rigby, who works at MDC, was the instructor. He led about 12 of us through fly tying basics with hands-on instruction. Each of us tied 4 flies that we took home (see below). At the end, he showed us how a duck feather is split and tied to a hook to resemble the two wings of a bug. I always thought of fly tying as tedious and complex, but it is not. Pat kept saying, "Mistakes are fine. The fish don't care." Instead, it's easy and I'm hooked. I think I've opened up a new hobby. 
  • An interesting aspect is that I already come in contact with some fly tying materials, such as hackle feathers from a chicken, and deer hair. Marabou is downy feathers from a domestic turkey's belly. The Buff Orpington chickens are full of light-colored downy feathers that could be dyed various colors. A small collection at butchering season would give me plenty of fly tying material.
    
  • There was an MDC biologist attending the class. We talked about Bass Pond on our property. He said to produce bigger fish, catch about 50 fish, stock it with 2 varieties of minnows and bluegills. The bass will eat the minnows while bluegills reproduce. The bluegills become a reproducing source of feed for the bass. In a few months, the size of bass in the pond are about twice their original size.
  • I also asked him about Henry Sever Lake, which is 8.4 or 12.5 miles southwest of us, depending on which route you take. I read it is stocked with muskies. He said new muskie hatchlings were introduced last year to Sever Lake. In two years, they should reach 24- to 30-inches in length.
    
  • After the morning class, that ran from 9 a.m. until noon, I drove through Kirksville to the Aldi store, bought a few things, then to the Adair County Library, where I ate lunch in their parking lot. I tried to update the software of my iPhone using their WiFi, but it was too slow. So, I drove to a McDonalds and used their Wifi. It was much faster. At the library, it was going to take two hours. At McDonalds, it took four minutes. Unfortunately, preparing the upload and installing it took about 45 minutes. The McDonalds staff probably thought I was some thief, sitting there for nearly an hour, hunched over my cell phone.
  • Back home, Mary cut Aida cloth for a number of cross stitch projects. She also vacuumed bugs, a daily event this winter.
  • We watched the second half of Ken Burns' PBS series, The Dust Bowl, plus the extras. Wow, what a mess that was for so many people.

The 1st fly I tied, a zebra midge.

The 2nd fly, an elk hair caddis, but with deer hair.

The 3rd fly is a crackle back woolly worm.

My final fly, a woolly bugger, or in my case, a big mess.

Jan. 1-7, 2023

Weather | 1/1, 35°, 51° | 1/2, 37°, 46° | 1/3, 1" rain, 45°, 61° | 1/4, 29°, 35° | 1/5, 28°, 34° | 1/6, 19°, 39° | 1/7, 16°, 29° |

• Sunday, 1/1: New Year's Day
  
  • We're getting more eggs from our hens so that today Mary made two quiche pies. We ate one and we'll have the other one tomorrow.
    
  • I updated the checkbook.
    
  • Mary received a fly bite yesterday, so out came the fly swatter. There are more invasive flies than Asian ladybugs at this time of the year and this year.
    
  • We watched more swans fly by in the evening. Today, they flew to the west either south or north of our house.
  • We read into in the evening. Mary is reading The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, The Remarkable Education of John Quincy Adams, and the latest issue of The English Home magazine. I'm reading One Man's Wilderness, Farm and Workshop Welding, Princes at War, and the January issue of Astronomy magazine featuring comets.
    
    
• Monday, 1/2: Fog & Racking Garlic Wine
  
  • We woke to thick fog, which persisted throughout the day. Around 9 p.m., a thunderstorm rolled through and with rain and thunder, the fog cleared. I'm sure not used to winter thunderstorms.
  • Mary dusted books in the upstairs north bedroom.
    
  • The last time Bill was here, he accidentally chipped a piece off the top of the plastic cylinder I use to measure a wine's specific gravity after placing wine in the cylinder and dropping in a hydrometer. Today I cut the jagged top off with a hacksaw, then sanded the edge smooth with 150-grit sandpaper. It's shorter, requiring less liquid to fill it. I sent Bill a picture of it after fixing the cylinder with this message: "Thanks...you helped make this shorter, so it's better, now!"
  • I racked the garlic wine for the second time. It's specific gravity is 0.994 and the pH is 3.0. There was about an inch of fines left behind in the carboy. I added 0.9 of a gram of potassium metabisulfide, then moved the must to a 5-gallon carboy. I added about 2 ounces of distilled water to top it up. For the first time, I used an S-shaped airlock that I got from Bill for Christmas.
  • Mary "went shopping" in her supply of cross stitch floss for 6 future projects. The good news is when she buys floss that she's missing, she still has a bunch of money left in the gift card that Katie gave her for Christmas.
  • Katie sent a photo (see below) of one of her cats gazing out the window.

  

  A view from Katie's apartment in Anchorage.

• Tuesday, 1/3: Bottling Apple Cider & Apple Wine
  
  • An inch of rain fell overnight. Morning fog lifted to a mostly sunny day.
  • While walking the dogs this morning, a deer snorted at us from east of the lane.
    
  • Mary washed a load of towels.
  • I bottled apple cider and apple wine.
  • I moved two one-gallon jugs of cider into a brew bucket and added 0.4 grams of Kmeta. The specific gravity is 1.003 for an alcohol content of 4.85%. The pH is 3.0, or very acidic. I corked ten bottles. The taste if very sour with a good apple flavor. Mary says it's like lemonade, but with apples. We think it will be ideal served with ice on a hot summer day.
  • I then moved two one-gallon jugs and a half-gallon jug of apple wine into a brew bucket and added 0.5 grams of Kmeta. The specific gravity is 0.996, resulting in 11.92% alcohol. The pH is 3.4, or just about perfect. I corked 12 bottles. I tried to fill a 375-ml bottle, but ran out of wine, so we drank the last bit (see photos, below). It tasted great. Mary says it's very smooth with a good apple taste. She said if I forgot apple cider altogether and just make apple wine, it will be just fine.
  • Mary enjoyed some cross stitching and finished dusting books upstairs.
  • We listened to more of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Before Hitler took power, there were several conniving German politicians who were trying to become dictators. What a mess the German government was in the early 1930s.

Apple wine endings didn't fill a 375-ml bottle...

So, we drank it. This apple wine is very good.

• Wednesday, 1/4: Saving Money
  
  • Mary got up at midnight and some deer snorted when the bed creaked and they heard it through our open bedroom window. They apparently were in our east yard, just a few feet from the house. We are just caretakers around here. Wildlings are the real property owners.
    
  • Mary made a monthly food menu and a shopping list.
  • She also paid monthly bills and figured where to designate savings for this year.
  • Mary fixed a big pot of minestrone soup that will give us several meals. It's good.
    
  • I saved us $50 in January's water bill. The rural water district has estimated our usage since June or July. They don't read the meter. We use a lot of water in summer while watering gardens, so they have us using 7,000 gallons a month, since the last time they read the meter was in the summer. I checked the meter when we got the bill on 12/31 and we are more than 8,000 gallons under their estimate. I called them today and relayed the information. The woman I talked to changed our bill and is charging us a minimum payment of $24, instead of $76. I'm going to continue to read the meter, since they're too lazy to read it and overcharge us for monthly water usage.
  • I made an online request for a doctor's appointment. I feel it's time to get a general practice doctor.
  • I cleaned up wine items. The apple wine left a solid residue on the inside of glass jugs that required scrubbing to remove it. I suspect it was pectin from the apple fruit. I then sorted and put away winemaking items in the west room closet. A wide assortment of clean carboys, brew buckets, and bottles filled the west room's floor for several months due to my laziness. Mary complained that opening the cabinet door that holds her cross stitch items was difficult. With all winemaking material in the closet, we can now do a dance in that room.
    
  • We watched the 5th episode of the PBS Ken Burns documentary, The Roosevelts, which involved 1939 to 1944. An interesting name was adopted by a Republican U.S. Senate group opposing U.S. entry into WW II. It was called America First. Trump used the same phrase in support of his trade sanctions.
    
    
• Thursday, 1/5: Shopping Day
  
  • We drove to Quincy, IL, and shopped. On the drive, we saw several American Kestrels and a rough-legged hawk.
  • The first stop was at the Quincy Public Library, where I used their WiFi to download the latest software on our iPhones while Mary 5 bought books and 2 DVDs. The update on my phone didn't finish because of too much storage space taken up with photos. Late in the evening, I deleted photos and videos. The number of winemaking photos was unreal, so today I apologize for putting everyone through so many wine pictures on this site. I'll endeavor to cut down on such silliness.
  • Food prices continue to rocket to the moon. We saw eggs at Aldi for $4.44 a dozen. That's at an inexpensive grocer and it equals 37 cents an egg. We are happy that we have our own homegrown egg supply.
  • I picked up another used cooler for wine storage at the Salvation Army.
  • We watched 3 episodes of Downton Abbey.
    
    
• Friday, 1/6: Housecleaning & Wine Storage
  
  • Mary swept and mopped the floors, then dusted the house. She also did a load of sheets.
  • I labeled apple wine and apple cider and stored all of the full bottles in a cooler. I now have 11 coolers full of wine. And yet, I have more wine to make...ha, ha, ha. Bill sent his mother the following text, "Tell Dad his wine photos aren't silly."
    
  • We watched the last episode of Ken Burns' The Roosevelts, plus all of the extras. It's a very good PBS series. In one of the extras is a piece on Ken Burns presenting excerpts of this documentary at a Roosevelt family reunion in Warm Springs, GA. It's amazing how similar several present-day Roosevelt descendants resemble Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor.
  • We enjoyed a bottle of pumpkin wine. It's really good, especially in the winter.
  • While walking dogs for their last outing, the full moon gave off so much light that a flashlight wasn't required.
    
    
• Saturday, 1/7: Fresh Bread & Moving Firewood
  
  • Two red-tailed hawks sat on oak branches along the north edge of the west field as we walked to the chicken coop to let the chickens out this morning. Because we can't have big hawks swooping down on our chickens, I walked down the west field until they flew off.
  • Mary baked 4 loaves of bread. We enjoyed 3 slices, each, of fresh bread with our fried eggs and turkey bacon evening meal. Partially frozen muskmelon was served for dessert.
    
  • I split the remaining firewood logs next to the splitter. Then, I moved 10 wheelbarrow loads of firewood that dried along the inside north wall of the machine shed and stacked it in the woodshed. I finished after dark, with the aid of a hat light.
  • Before sunset, we saw several Vs of trumpeter swans fly overhead. The first group of five swans startled us as we walked away from the coop, after putting chickens to bed for the night. Mary and I were talking to one another when suddenly, right overhead, there were several trumpeter swan sounds of "Honk, honk, honk!" We didn't know they were above us until we heard them. They were just above the tree tops.
    
  • We watched four episodes of Downton Abbey.
    

Dec. 25-31, 2022

Weather | 12/25, -1°, 21° | 12/26, 1/2" snow, 0.02" moisture, 21°, 23° in early A.M. | 12/27, 0°, 29° | 12/28, 30°, 52° | 12/29, 45°, 64° | 12/30, 33°, 39° | 12/31, 23°, 45° |

• Sunday, 12/25: Christmas
  
  • Temperatures were finally warmer and by late afternoon, the wind was calm for the first time in several days.
    
  • I made waffles for breakfast.
  • Mary, Bill and I opened Christmas presents.
  • I called mom. We talked for an hour. Hank was going to drive her up to Glasgow, MT, but an unexpected pipe leak in an apartment neighboring his bedroom meant a fan was on 24/7 to air out the wall in his spare bedroom, requiring him to stay home. Mom had Christmas dinner with her former boss, Patti Schipman. Drifts were forming on the road while going to the Schipmans, so after dinner, Patti ran Mom back to Circle in order to avoid driving through deep drifts.
    
  • We called Katie. She hosted a Christmastime ham dinner and games that went well into morning hours. Today, she went hiking with a friend at Hatcher Pass and then Eklutna Lake. She used her new snowshoes and liked them, a lot. Her roommate had several toys as Christmas presents for Katie's dogs and cats. She thinks her procedure in Seattle relieved the itchiness of her burn scares. HERE is an article describing her laser procedure. 
  • We watched the 2022 movie, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. It's a good movie and very original.
    
    
• Monday, 12/26: A Quiet Winter Day
  
  • While walking dogs on their morning outing, tiny, wet snow pellets fell. Soon after, big snowflakes drifted down. We maybe got a half-inch of snow.
  • Mary fixed a breakfast of omelets stuffed with veggies.
    
  • After we ate BBQ pork loin, potatoes, and corn-on-the-cob, Bill left for his apartment in St. Charles.
  • We really didn't do much for the rest of the day, other than read.
  • On the last dog walk, coyotes howled to the west and northeast. Their howls echoed off the woods.
    
    
• Tuesday, 12/27: Apple Trees Ordered
  
  • Even though we had a cold start this morning, temperatures are predicted to warm up for the next several days.
  • As the result of warmer temps outside, I vacuumed Asian lady bugs and flies from all windows, twice.
  • We took down the Christmas tree. It ate up a chunk of time. All hard decorations are dusted off with a broad brush, then packed away. Mary vacuums cross stitch decorations at a later date. The living room is back to normal...not as crowded.
    
  • I saw a bald eagle fly quickly from south to north over our property. Mary and I watched a red-tailed hawk circling and getting blown from south to north. We had a downy woodpecker follow us down the lane as we walked the dogs prior to sunset.
    
  • Mary and I did a bunch of online research on various apple trees. We decided we want new varieties that work well in all three categories of eating, cooking, and making hard cider. We want tart flavor, no summer apples, and long storage capability. I used up a Fedco gift certificate that Katie gave me for Christmas and ordered three apple trees. They are Calville Blanc d'Hiver, Goldrush, and Roxbury Russet apple trees. We also bought a Herbert blueberry plant.
  • During the apple tree investigation, we discovered that two of our apple trees, Esopus Spitzenburg and Grimes Golden, have poor disease resistance qualities. I was going to get new trees of these two varieties, but decided against it. Esopus is especially susceptible to almost every apple disease.
    
    
• Wednesday, 12/28: Seven Swans a Flying
  
  • Outdoor temperatures are much warmer today. Most all of the snow is almost melted.
  • Mary and I both vacuumed Asian ladybugs and flies out of windows.
  • One of the three Christmas gifts that we ordered through Amazon for our son showed up today. Two more are outstanding. Nov. 27th wasn't early enough to order from Amazon and have the item arrive by Christmas, probably because we aren't Amazon Prime customers. I'm not paying $14.99 a month just to have something arrive quickly. Instead, I'm going out of my way to shop anywhere but with Amazon in the future.
  • I opened both ends of the plastic covering the winter greens. Several days of below zero temperatures pretty much wiped out the greenery. Time will tell if anything recovers.
    
  • I split 2 wheelbarrow loads of firewood. One load went into the house and the other was stacked to dry. Most of this wood is honey locust. I continue to find thorns buried inside of the wood, which is revealed after splitting the firewood (see photo, below).
    
  • I saw seven swans a flyin', not swimming. They have a very distinctive call and they're so big and beautiful. Mary read that more swans are migrating through our area.
    
  • We watched the first two episodes of the 2013 documentary, The Roosevelts, that Bill gave to his mother. It's quite good. These first sessions mainly cover Teddy Roosevelt.
    
  • Mary went through past garden seeds and figured out seeds that we need to buy for the 2023 growing season.

  

  A honey locust thorn in split firewood.

• Thursday, 12/29: 32nd Anniversary
  
  • As of today, Mary and I have been married for 32 years. At 64° for a high, it was 93° warmer here in Missouri than the high of -29° in Red Lake Falls, MN, when we were married 32 years ago. Plus, I live in a state I swore I would never live in when we married. Marriage changes you. You learn to adjust and enjoy the positive aspects of where you are at that moment. I used to love the cold and snow. Now I like the warmth and sun. It's all good in its own way.
  • I discovered that the Missouri Department of Conservation is holding fly tying classes, so I signed up for one in Kirksville, MO, that is on Jan. 14th.
  • I looked into buying 2 apple rootstocks in order to graft a couple of Grimes Golden apple branches and restart that variety. We have never seen fruit off that tree, because it has a dwarf rootstock under it that hates clay soil. Our soil is mainly clay. Rootstocks cost $4-$5, each, but they require special shipping that runs $20-$30. I want Antonovka, a hardy apple rootstock originating from Russia that develops into a standard 25- to 35-foot tree, which is adaptable to any soil type. I found 20 seeds on Ebay for $3.25 and bought them. I'll grow my own rootstocks and graft once they're ready.
    
  • I scrubbed up two coolers that we once purchased from the Salvation Army in Quincy and have since sat in the machine shed collecting dust. They work great for storing bottles of wine.
    
  • Mary repotted and started the two amaryllis bulbs. They're both quite healthy.
    
  • We vacuumed bugs over and over and over, again. Mary and I each performed 3 rounds of bug-sucking sessions. Warmth outside gave flies and Asian beetles marching orders to invade our house. It was warm enough to open windows and let fresh air inside.
    
  • The remainder of Christmas presents from Amazon arrived today. Due to its speed in shipping items, I have a new name for Amazon. It's Tortoise. Mary's name is Slow-A-Zon.
    
  • Mary saw a big flight of mallard ducks fly over our house, twice. I missed them, with my head down while scrubbing a cooler.
  • We enjoyed a bottle of 2021 pear wine (see photo, below). It's really good, with a strong, tart, pear flavor. You just can't buy wine that tastes this good.
  • We also watched two Downton Abbey episodes. It's winter and we're back hooked on that soap opera.

  

  Homemade pear wine to celebrate 32 years of marriage.

• Friday, 12/30: Changing Oil & Lots of Waterfowl
  
  • The wind was calm, which is the first time we've experienced no wind in many days.
    
  • Since it was calm, I changed oil and the oil filter in the pickup's engine. Wind blasts dripping engine oil all over the place. As it was, I miscalculated where the oil would hit and the moment I removed the oil drain plug, a big black glob of oil shot into my arm, soaking the cuffs of a flannel shirt, coveralls, and an ancient and tattered Carhartt coat. While topping fluids, I discovered a leaking windshield washing fluid tank, or a leaking hose coming from it. The battery and battery tray blocks my view. I need to fix it in the future.
    
  • We heard a pileated woodpecker calling in morning. I heard a mallard in the evening. We saw our group of 7 swans, then a larger group of about 20 swans. We also saw several geese. All of the waterfowl seem to eat grain spilled in fields to the east, then fly west to settle in ponds. This has become their wintering grounds, at least for now.
    
  • We watched 2 episodes of The Roosevelts. I never realized Teddy Roosevelt was only 60 when he died. When you're a teenager studying U.S. history in high school, 60 seems old. Now, it involves someone younger than I am, today. Another interesting piece is that both Theodore and Franklin followed the same path to the presidency, which was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, New York Governor, candidate for U.S. Vice President (Teddy became vice president, but FDR didn't), then the U.S. Presidency.
    
    
• Saturday, 12/31: New Year's Eve
  • I labeled and put away the 33 bottles of jalapeño wine.
  • Mary worked on cross stitch projects.
  • We're experiencing a trumpeter swan invasion. In the evening, Mary and I stood in the front yard and watched V after V of swans flying just over the treetops and go right over our heads while heading west. They spent the day in the fields east of us and flew west at dusk. They were so low, we could hear the wind in their feathers. We guessed their speed was 20 mph. Their call is very unique. HERE is a sample. Mary read that they are the largest waterfowl in North America. It's a treat to see so many in just a few minutes and they were so close...quite a show.
  • Mary and I enjoyed an indoor wienie roast, cooking hotdogs over the fire in the woodstove.
    
  • We tried a small glass of 2020 dandelion wine. It's not very good, with too strong of an alcoholic taste that hasn't mellowed out with aging. My newer dandelion wines are better. We opened a bottle of 2021 blackberry wine, which was vastly tastier.
  • We ended the year and started the new year by watching 5 episodes of Downton Abbey.
    

Dec. 18-24, 2022

Weather | 12/18, 8°, 29° | 12/19, 17°, 34° | 12/20, 21°, 23° | 12/21, 12°, 29° | 12/22, 1" snow, 0.09" moisture, -11°, 27° in early A.M. | 12/23, -12°, 1° | 12/24, 0°, 17° |

• Sunday, 12/18: Firewood Splitting
  
  • I finished covering strawberry plants in the machine shed, this time with pieces of chicken wire. Little pieces were cut to fit over top of leaf-covered bucket tops that surrounded a 4x4 post holding up the work bench. I finished by weighing it all down with bricks.
  • The wheelbarrow tire I fixed last week leaks slowly. It needs replacing. I inflated the tire to get through the day.
  • Mary and I split 6 wheelbarrow loads of firewood. Five loads were stacked in the woodshed and one went to the house. We split several pieces of honey locust, which are very hard and heavy. As we were splitting these pieces, we discovered old thorns that were buried inside the locust wood. We also have a developing pile of wet firewood that needs to be stacked in the machine shed to dry.
  • Robust fermentation of the garlic wine fills the house with such a strong garlic odor that we can now smell it outside of the house. The specific gravity was 1.091. I squeezed the nylon mesh bag and stirred the brew bucket prior to taking a reading. The brew bucket was behind the woodstove again today.
  • We watched the 1989 movie, When Harry Met Sally.
    
    
• Monday, 12/19: Building Up the Firewood Stack
  
  • Mary and I split more firewood. A pile of wet wood continues to grow. We stacked five wheelbarrow loads into the woodshed. We're nearing the top of our second ring of firewood. Mary put one wheelbarrow load into the house. The honey locust wood is hard to start, but once it's burning, locust firewood gives off wonderful heat.
    
  • Mary made dark chocolate peanut clusters...YUM!
    
  • Mary saw six mallards heading west. We both watched a big flock of Canada geese fly south. They looked like they were seeking a place to settle in for the night. The east side of their V started to head down, stalling the entire V into a bunched up flight pattern as some geese hollered for others to get back in line.
    
  • I kept the garlic wine in the pantry. Fermentation is bubbling along very nicely. The specific gravity is 1.067.
    
  • I washed 5 wine bottles.
  • Our weather prediction by the U.S. Weather Service is for 3-5 inches of snow, wind gusts to 50 mph and temperatures down to -8 on Friday. Bill shows up on Saturday. I'm hoping snow accumulation and wind is lower than predicted, or driving on the gravel road might be difficult.
  • We are receiving daily small eggs from our four Barred Rock pullets. One of our eldest hens, our only remaining Golden Comet, I've named Luna Tick, or Ms. Tick. She's kind of a mental case. I always have to round her up and herd her into the coop every evening while Mary is feeding chickens inside the coop.
    
    
• Tuesday, 12/20: More Firewood Duties
  
  • Mary and I split more firewood. Most of it was wet. One wheelbarrow load of dry wood went into the woodshed and Mary took one to the house. I built 2 criss-cross stacks of nearly dry wood and one really wet stack on the north inside wall of the machine shed, as Mary moved wheelbarrow loads to me. Darkness fell before we could finish.
  • Mary made more dark chocolate peanut clusters. Testing a couple was in order.
  • This morning, the garlic wine smell in the pantry resembled bad body odor. By evening, yeast took over and the aroma was similar to fruit. The moral of the story, if you've got bad B.O. in the morning, wait until evening and you'll smell like fruit. Or...add yeast to your stinky armpits and they'll smell like fruit by evening.
  • The garlic wine's fermentation is robust (see video, below). The specific gravity is 1.044. I'll probably need to rack it tomorrow.
  • I cleaned 5 more wine bottles. I now have enough cleaned bottles for Thursday, when I rack and bottle 3 wine varieties.
  • I'm heading for Quincy, IL in the morning to mainly pickup 2 more bags of hen feed. We don't want to run out if road conditions get bad.
  • Predictions are for airline flight cancellations and delays across the country with a large winter storm approaching tomorrow and Friday. I texted to Katie that I was glad she wasn't trying to visit us this year because of the weather. She replied that she thought the same thing, today.
  Yeast in garlic wine with robust fermentation.
  

• Wednesday, 12/21: Cookies, Shopping, & Firewood
  
  • Mary baked a triple batch of oatmeal butterscotch chip cookies.
  • She then put extra hay in the chicken coop, due to below zero temperatures predicted in the next few days.
    
  • Mary sorted piles of split firewood and moved them to new piles...2 in front of criss-cross stacks and one of damp and wet short pieces.
  • Meanwhile, I drove the pickup to Quincy to buy chicken food and some human food. It seemed as if nobody was at home or at work. Instead, the entire population of Quincy was at a store. I've never seen so many people out and about in Quincy. I only had 6 stops, but it took me 5 hours.
  • Probably all of the news pieces headlining an approaching bomb cyclone has everyone scurrying around like frightened rats, stuffing grocery stores with people pushing carts. I sound like an old fart, but 50 years ago our winter weather predictions were simply about upcoming snow. Heck, in Alaska, we drove to work and school in this stuff. On the way home, I noticed patterns of moisture on the pavement. It was from salt tossed on the road a good 18 hours prior to any snowfall. Now, that's just wasteful and dumb!
    
  • After returning home, I stacked firewood that Mary sorted. Now, all split firewood is put away. There is more to split, but it's an amount that we can easily do in one day.
  • Right at sundown, a big flock a Canada geese flew west over our property. A few minutes later, a flock of snow geese flew west.
    
  • I racked the garlic wine into a 5-gallon carboy, a 750-ml wine bottle, and halfway up a 330-ml beer bottle. The specific gravity is 1.028. Strong fermentation continued after racking, with the airlock on the carboy burping twice a second. Fortunately, garlic wine foams less than blackberry wine.
    
    
• Thursday, 12/22: Bottling Jalapeño Wine
  
  • The outside temperature was 6° with a skiff of snow on the ground when we woke. It started snowing harder soon thereafter. We only received about an inch of snow, but we experienced west, northwest wind gusts to 40 mph through the day and overnight. It was -11° when we went to bed.
    
  • Katie called and said a UPS package she was tracking was delivered to our front door. It wasn't there, so I put on winter gear and walked to the end of the lane. I saw dual tire tracks going to the neighbor's mobile home across the gravel road, so I checked with them. Juan opened the door, saw me, and said, "I have a package for you that they delivered." He was on lunch break from the dairy and saw the package on his front porch.
  • Amazon really stinks. We ordered 4 items from them on Nov. 27. I got an email today that one of those items has shipped.
  • I racked and bottled the jalapeño wine. It went into 33 bottles (see photo, below). One was a 375-ml bottle. The specific gravity is 0.991, making for a 12% alcohol content. Sanitizing 33 bottles took the most time, although filling 33 bottles also ate up time. I wanted to bottle apple wine and cider, but didn't have time for that. We tasted the jalapeño wine. It was warm, without being excruciatingly hot. It's perfect for a cold winter's night. Chocolate peanut clusters complement the wine, nicely.
  • Mary did a bit of cleaning, kept the chickens in warm water with water changes every 2 hours, did most of the chores, and some crocheting.
  • We received texts from Katie and Bill throughout the day. Bill went to work early, at 7:30, so he left work early. He said conditions weren't too bad in St. Louis, but that the wind was brutal. He learned from delivery drivers that a lot of businesses were closed. Katie said she wound up as the only employee in the office by mid-afternoon. She won a Holiday Pup photo entry at Skinny Raven Sports in Anchorage (see photo, below) with a picture of her dog, Prancer. She received a gift card from Skinny Raven.
    
    

33 bottles of freshly corked jalapeño wine.

Katie won a holiday photo contest
with this shot of her puppy, Prancer.

• Friday, 12/23: Damn Cold Day
  • I woke right after 5 a.m. and restarted the fire in the woodstove, then crawled back in bed. Later, when we got up, the living room was nice and toasty. All pets huddled around the stove at all hours, soaking in the good heat.
    
  • Outside temperatures were below zero for most of the day. West, northwest wind gusts blew harder today.
  • I bundled up and looking like an astronaut on the moon, I walked the quarter mile trek to the mailbox. Big deer tracks in the snow indicated deer crossed the lane in 4 places. There was even a well worn path of mice tracks in the snow.
    
  • Mary and I both did some housecleaning.
  • Mary made cherry and black raspberry bars.
  • She also took water out to the chickens once an hour. In one hour, water was half-frozen in the waterers. Chickens weren't moving much from one hour to the next.
  • We wrapped Christmas presents in the evening.
    
  • Katie sent her mother several photos of Katie's decorated Christmas tree.
  • We watched 2 Christmastime movies. They were Love Actually and The Polar Express.
    
    
• Saturday, 12/24: Christmas Eve
  
  • Mom texted that it snowed and blew for a big winter blast in the past few days. It was -27 in Circle, MT, yesterday. Drifts are up to 4 feet deep in her yard. Temperatures rose to above zero for the first time all week, this morning.
  • Bill showed up around 11:30 A.M.
  • I drilled holes in 4 new plastic bottles and put mothballs in them to give to Bill as new mouse-deterrents in his car's engine compartment.
    
  • Mary baked a pistachio tort, Bill's favorite treat.
    
  • Mary cut up cheese and summer sausage, along with several types of veggies and made Ranch dip for our smorgasbord.
  • We ate while playing Night Sky Monopoly. Bill won and broke the bank with the only monopoly on the board, involving the light blue properties. He ended the game with over $14,000. Mary was second and I was third. It was fun.
    
  • We watched A Christmas Carol, starring Patrick Stewart.
    

Dec. 11-17, 2022

Weather | 12/11, 30°, 36° | 12/12, 29°, 37° | 12/13, 1.08" rain, 32°, 48° | 12/14, 0.14" rain, 43°, 46° | 12/15, snow flurries, 29°, 31° | 12/16, 23°, 29° | 12/17, 16°, 24° |

• Sunday, 12/11: Wheelbarrow Repair
  
  • I fixed a wheelbarrow tire. It's a new tire and rim that I left in the woodshed for years. Sun shined on one side, eventually rotting the rubber valve stem. I cut the old stem off. After putting dish soap on a new stem, I used the cap off the cut-off stem as a sacrificial instrument, grabbed it with a stout pair of pliers and pulled the new rubber valve stem into place in the rim. The tire wouldn't inflate, due to leaks between the tire and the rim, so I used a 1" wide nylon strap from a long-dead boat tarp and tightened it around the outside of the tire's tread so the tire's sidewalls expanded outward, then successfully inflated the tire. Now we're back to 2 good wheelbarrows.
    
  • Mary fixed a marvelous midday dinner of baked home-raised chicken, homegrown sweet potatoes and a green bean casserole. The green beans grew in our garden. It's a cheap meal.
    
  • We watched 2 movies. The first was the 2018 movie, Green Book. The second was the 2006 movie, Miss Potter.
    
  • Partway through the second movie, Katie called. We talked to her for about an hour. She arrived back in Anchorage early this morning and slept most of today. Another big dump of snow hit Anchorage today. Katie's surgery to ease itching from her burn scheduled for this Friday in Seattle may have to be canceled due to the lack of having a person to help watch over her for 24 hours after the surgery.
    
    
• Monday, 12/12: Blaze Orange is Retired
  
  • Last night at sundown was the end of the anterless firearms deer season. It means we can walk outside without wearing blaze orange vests and hats in case some trespassing hunter is nearby. YAHOO!!!
  • Mary and I took the tractor/wagon to the north side of the woods just north of the house, cut firewood, and drove a filled wagon back home. We unloaded most of it in the machine shed next to the splitter. We now have four loads of firewood waiting to be split into usable pieces. Small, dry firewood went into two wheelbarrows, which we transferred into the house.
  • I asked Katie in a text if she stayed home from work today, since Anchorage is getting another big dump of snow. She texted back that UIC, her employer, had everyone work remotely from home, today. She added that main roads are alright, but side streets and parking lots are terrible.
  • In the evening, Katie texted her mother that one of her running friends volunteered to travel with her to Seattle, so Katie can do her surgery.
    
    
• Tuesday, 12/13: Full Day of Rain
  
  • Rain fell against the east window upon our waking and rain fell all day, even after it grew dark.
  • Mary worked on a cross stitch ornament.
  • I racked the Kieffer pear wine for the 3rd time. It still has specific gravity of 1.000. There was only a tiny bit of fines. It will probably be ready to bottle in a month. We tasted it. This pear wine is the smoothest. Mary says it has a tangy flavor, when compared to Bartlett pear wine. We even drank all of the dregs, because the leftover wine with fines in it tasted great, too. The remaining must filled a gallon jug, a half-gallon jug, and a 750-ml wine bottle. I topped up the wine bottle with a couple ounces of distilled water.
  • While working on the wine and while Mary cross stitched, we listened to an audiobook of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, because nothing says Christmas more than a book about Nazis! Actually, it's very interesting.
  • We enjoyed a bottle of 2021 autumn olive wine. It tastes good, but an entire bottle split between two people is a bit much on the tipsy level.
    
  • Katie texted, "Driving in Anchorage right now is kind of like those 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books. It's like Whose Line Is It Anyway?...the roads are made up and the lines don't matter."
  • I asked Katie when she will be going to Seattle. She answered that she should be flying there on Thursday and flying back Saturday, but she's still waiting on airline tickets and hotel room bookings, due to resent changes.

  

  Katie & her dog, Prancer,
  at a holiday party a couple weekends ago.

• Wednesday, 12/14: Garlic Winemaking
  
  • We had another cloudy day. The sky has been gray for several days.
  • Mary did 2 loads of laundry.
  • She cross stitched in the kitchen, listening to The Rise and Fall of the Third Riech while I worked on winemaking.
  • I started a 5-gallon batch of garlic wine. I popped Music Pink, German Extra Hardy, and Samarkand garlic varieties to get 465 cloves. I peeled skins off the cloves. After about an hour, Mary looked at my slow progress, looked at the clock, grabbed a knife and started helping while saying, "I don't want to be up until 4 in the morning." She peeled 3 garlic cloves to my one. Mary attributes it to years of practice. Five cloves were bad. I ran 460 garlic cloves through the food processor and put them into a nylon mesh bag. I added three 96-ounce bottles of white grape juice for a total of 2.25 gallons. This juice contains potassium metabisulfite (Kmeta). All experts say not to use juice containing this, since it kills off yeast. But this warning makes no sense, since every batch of wine starts with a 24-hour soak of Kmeta to kill wild yeast. Since all I could find was juice containing Kmeta, I decided to give it a try. I added 2.25 gallons of tap water treated with Kmeta to remove chlorine. I stirred in 8 pounds of sugar, resulting in a specific gravity of 1.104. This juice contains a higher sugar content than last year's juice. I added a quart of water to drop the specific gravity to 1.100. The pH is 3.5, so I didn't add acid blend. Since my total Kmeta additions to tap water equaled 1 gram, the amount needed to add to 5 gallons of must, I didn't add more. I let it sit overnight in a brew bucket covered with a towel.
  • The garlic smell makes the entire house smell like a pizza joint. We decided to make pizza tomorrow.
    
    
• Thursday, 12/15: Alaska & Montana Snow Battles
  
  • We had small snow flurries throughout the day. Actually, it was more like tiny ice balls. Nothing ever accumulated.
  • Such was not the case elsewhere. Katie sent a photo (see below) of Northern Lights Blvd. in Anchorage. It's normally a multi-lane street, but 3 big snowstorms in a row dumping a total 41.1" in December resulted in snowplow berms restricting the street to one-lane traffic.
  • Mom texted the following, "There's been a blizzard going all day today. I have a drift in my driveway that is waist high. I parked my car in the street out front before this started. It must be pretty bad out in the country. I saw a big jackrabbit hopping down the street in front of a pickup."
  • After adding 2.5 teaspoons of pectic enzyme and 5 teaspoons of yeast nutrient to the garlic wine, I worked up a starter of Lalvin EC-1118 yeast. I added heated must to it all day and pitched the yeast into the brew bucket in the late evening. The pH was 3.8, so I added 2 teaspoons of acid blend to get a pH of 3.5. Last year, I had to add 5 teaspoons of acid blend, so this year's white grape juice contains more acidic acid. The specific gravity was still 1.100. The garlic smell is very strong throughout our house.
  • Mary made 2 pizzas and cooked one for our midday meal.
  • I moved all 35 four-gallon buckets and 4 tubs containing strawberry plants and soil into the machine shed under the wooden work bench. Each plant got trimmed. They still need mulch and something to cover them so rabbits and mice don't eat strawberry crowns.
  • Katie and her friend flew from Anchorage to Seattle. Her plane was delayed in arriving into Anchorage, but she made it to a Seattle hotel and ordered some food. Her procedure is scheduled for 11:45, tomorrow.
  • We watched the 1989 movie, Christmas Vacation.

  

  Anchorage's Northern Lights Boulevard.

• Friday, 12/16: Katie's Procedure is Complete
  
  • Katie went through the procedure at the Harborview Burn Center in Seattle to relieve the itching on scar tissue from the burn she had 2 years ago. Katie tried to get this done in January, but elevated COVID numbers required the burn center to cancel her appointment at the last minute. She and her friend accompanying her leave on a flight back to Anchorage at noon tomorrow.
    
  • Mom texted 2 photos (see below) of snow drifts at her home due to a blizzard that's hit eastern Montana for the past few days.
    
  • After adding yeast to the garlic wine must last night, there is no fermentation today. The Kmeta levels are too high, I suspect. I added 2.5 teaspoons of yeast energizer, which is used to fix stuck fermentation. It contains diammonium phosphate, yeast hulls, magnesium sulphate, and vitamin B complex. I also moved the brew bucket to behind the woodstove to heat up the liquid. By bedtime, there was a minuscule layer of foam on top with the tiniest of bubbles appearing on the surface.
    
  • While Mary did the evening chores, I raked up four wheelbarrow loads of dried oak leaves and put then on the strawberry plants in the machine shed.
    
  • Mary finished an cross stitch ornament.
  • We listened to the end of the first section of the audio book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
    
  • I dug out all of the wine bottles in the west room closet, sorted them, labeled boxes of bottles, counted clean bottles, determined the number needed for upcoming wines due to be bottled and decided that I need to clean 15 more bottles. Apple wine, apple cider, and jalapeño wine are all due for bottling on Thursday, 12/22.

Mom's back yard. A driveway is under there.

Snow on south side of Mom's house.

• Saturday, 12/17: Mallards Leave as Ponds Freeze
  
  • We saw several Vs of mallard ducks flying west to east above the house as we walked the dogs in the morning. I'm guessing there were more than a hundred...quite impressive. We think they're heading to the Mississippi River, where there's still open water.
    
  • The garlic wine brew bucket sat behind the woodstove for a second day. I put it away in the pantry each night. An additional tiny bit of bubbles appeared on the top in the morning. By 10:30 p.m., considerably more foam showed and we heard fizzing. The specific gravity dropped 1 thousandth from 1.100 to 1.099, proving yeast started to burn off sugar.
  • I walked the dogs to the east woods, collected 2 buckets that I used to sit on in my deer blinds, and took the dogs and buckets home. Lots of deer tracks show on all trails. A bald eagle flew across Wood Duck Pond as the puppies and I stood on its south shore. Most water was filled with ice on all ponds. A stiff west wind stung my face as we walked home. Amber, who sports short hair, beat us all home. She was eager to lay next to the warm woodstove.
    
  • Katie sent me a text asking me if I was following the Minnesota Vikings/Indianapolis Colts game. Then Bill sent images of the Vikings game scoring with a "this is bananas" text. With Bill's help on where to find an online link, I listened to the last moments of the game. Down 33-0 at halftime and 36-7 after three quarters, Minnesota scored the biggest comeback in NFL history on a field goal in overtime to win 39-36.
  • Katie was watching the game at the Seattle airport, because her plane arrived late. Then Delta had pilot issues, delaying the flight even further. She finally left Seattle around 7 p.m., on a flight that was originally scheduled to leave around noon. Fog painted thick frost on trees and snow berms still filled Anchorage streets when Katie arrived back home (see photos, below).
  • I added a 3'x5' piece of quarter-inch hardware cloth on top of some of the strawberry buckets in the machine shed. After digging bricks out of leaves from behind the machine shed, I used them to weigh down the wire hardware cloth.
  • I washed 5 wine bottles before going to bed.

Anchorage street with frosty trees.

A snow-covered car in Anchorage.

Dec. 4-10, 2022

Weather | 12/4, 18°, 43° | 12/5, 23°, 53° | 12/6, 28, 43° | 12/7, 31°, 49° | 12/8, 34°, 43° | 12/9, 0.38" rain, 36°, 42° | 12/10, 35°, 41° |

• Sunday, 12/4: Firewood Cutting & Mallards Quacking
  
  • Mom texted that yesterday was Santa Day and the senior center folks (including Mom) set up Santa Shop in the CCM (Circle Country Market, or grocery store) building. She said it involved additional work hauling items to that building, but it worked out nicely. They also had a soup contest, a vendor show, and photos with Santa.
    
  • I sharpened one of the chains to the large chainsaw.
  • Mary and I cut firewood near the middle of the dry creek bed in the east woods. It was a mixture of dry and wet wood. We filled the trailer.
    
  • On the return home with the firewood load, we left the tractor/trailer behind and walked to the northeast corner of Rose Butt Field. There are several dead trees still there for future potential firewood cutting purposes. 
    
  • While standing there, we heard and then saw a large collection of mallard ducks paddling around in Wood Duck Pond. They didn't like our presence and were telling us about it with loud quacking.
    
  • We also heard one rifle shot way off to the east while standing in that area. It's the first shot we've heard during the current anterless deer season. A recent email from the Missouri Dept. of Conservation revealed that there will be an additional anterless deer hunting season next year for 3 days during the first week in October. The reason is statewide deer numbers are increasing, resulting in a need for the additional season.
    
  • After dark, I worked more on the wine diary and caught up to Nov. 1st.
    
    
• Monday, 12/5: A Tame Doe
  
  • While we were getting ready to walk the dogs in the morning, we saw a doe in north yard munching on grass. Eventually, it walked up to the McIntosh apple tree to start to munch on a branch. I stepped outside and onto the porch. She saw me and didn't move. I went back inside. She went back to take a nip off the apple tree, so I stepped back outside and clapped my hands. Her tail went up and the doe left, heading west. The deer on our property are rather tame.
    
  • Mary did some housecleaning, did 2 loads of laundry, and made venison General Tso for our main meal.
    
  • I dug up wood and bark bits from under the wood splitter and spread 5 wheelbarrow loads around the 2 new apple trees and the 2 Bartlett pear trees.
  • I moved a few of the firewood chunks from the trailer to near the wood splitter. I also stacked newly split green blackjack oak firewood at the inside north wall of the machine shed to dry, along with part of the wet cherry firewood.
  • While moving a big firewood log, I slammed a piece to the ground and hit my right big toe. I recently threw away my only pair of steel toe boots. They were old and falling apart. I was wearing a pair of leather boots at the time of my toe smash. As I walked off the pain, the top of the right boot was dented inward. It slowly went back into shape, but my big toe is currently red. Luckily, I didn't break anything. I decided that the next time I'm in Quincy I will buy a new pair of steel-toed boots. Meanwhile, more care is needed around big firewood logs.
    
  • I finished catching up on my wine diary.
    
    
• Tuesday, 12/6: Katie is in Hawaii
  
  • Mary moved the remaining firewood from the trailer to various locations in the machine shed and the woodshed. Most of this firewood is next to the splitter.
    
  • I re-sharpened the chainsaw chain, because I didn't sharpen it enough yesterday. It took 17 strokes of a file on each tooth to get it in better shape. As a test, I cut up some elm branches between the machine shed and the chicken coop that were about to drop on the electrical line to the coop. The saw tore right through the dry wood.
    
  • We drove the tractor/trailer to the northeast corner of Rose Butt Field and cut up a large honey locust tree that I girdled several years ago. It's been down on the ground for a number of years. When it fell, it smashed a barbed wire fence right to the ground. The wood is extremely hard and burns hot for a very long time. The problem is it grows thorns up to 6" long. If you kill the tree and let it be until it falls, all of the thorns rot away. The trunk of this tree is very wet, but split and left to dry, it ought to be good to burn by February. The bottom 4 chunks of the tree I cut in half, because they were too heavy to lift as full pieces. We drove the tractor back home and unloaded the wood.
    
  • As we sawed up the locust tree, mallards swimming in Wood Duck Pond were telling us we weren't welcome. Later, while at home, Mary and I saw flocks of mallard ducks flying overhead.
    
  • Katie texted in the morning that she's in Hawaii. I texted a couple questions and she called. She's there on military business. A building project that she will supervise involving updating a Girl Scout camp on the big island is holding a planning meeting. She sent photos of Nene Geese (see photos, below) that she snapped while running, today. Nenes are the rarest geese in the world, with a population of only 2500, and she saw two of them. Katie said she was running in warm temperatures while Anchorage had about a foot of snowfall, today. The reconstruction surgery of her burn wound that she was planning on having this month in Seattle might be postponed, again, because her friend who was going to accompany her had his father die of a heart attack while they were vacationing in Mexico. She has a couple military training trips early next year. One is to Florida and the other is to Gulfport, MS. She recently bought some cross-country skis and a pair of snowshoes. The recent big snow dump in south central Alaska provides better conditions for using them. She hopes to visit Mauna Loa's eruption before leaving Hawaii. Her flight back to Anchorage is over the upcoming weekend.

Two Nene Geese on Hawaii's Big Island.

A Hawaii Green Sea Turtle.

• Wednesday, 12/7: More Firewood Collecting
  
  • I made a quick trip into Lewistown and bought 2 gallons of 91 octane gas for chainsaws and 5 gallons of 87 octane gas for the tractor and the woodsplitter engine.
    
  • While I got gas, Mary gave the chickens more hay on the floor of the coop, emptied a bag of oil sunflowers into buckets in the coop, and raked some pecan leaves up and put them on the compost pile.
    
  • Mary and I went back to the northeast corner of Rose Butt Field and cut up firewood. This time it was mainly downed oak branches. We hauled another trailer load of firewood back home and put it away in appropriate locations.
    
  • We watched the 2012 movie, The Big Year.
  • I saw that between 1 and 2 feet of snow fell in Anchorage. Katie was happy she was in Hawaii and not trying to drive in Anchorage right now.
    
    
• Thursday, 12/8: Rest for Firewood Collectors
  
  • We kind of laid low today, after two days in a row of firewood collection. Our bodies needed rest.
  • Mary made venison gravy on biscuits for our midday meal.
  • She also created a monthly menu and a shopping list.
  • Mary finished a cross stitch Christmas ornament.
  • She saw 7 trumpeter swans flying over our property.
    
  • I took the tire off the red wheelbarrow to fix it. The inner tube's stem is cracked at the base and impossible to fix, plus the tire has deep cracks in it. I need a new tire and tube. A new wheelbarrow tire I bought years ago is too large for this wheelbarrow. I tried placing it on a green Radio Flyer wheelbarrow that we got at an auction in Circle, MT, but it's hub won't fit. So, I swapped entire wheels between the green one and the oldest cement encrusted wheelbarrow and it worked. When I inflated the tire on the green on, I discovered that stem is rotten and leaking. So, through all of this work, I started with one wheelbarrow and ended up with only one working wheelbarrow. I need tire parts to get the other two working.
    
    
• Friday, 12/9: Shopping in Quincy, IL
  
  • Mary and I left at 10:30 a.m. in the pickup to shop in Quincy. We visited 8 stores.
  • I got flu and pneumonia vaccines at Sam's Club, while Mary shopped at Walmart. Both vaccines are covered by Medicare and Humana's Plan D coverage. They tried to sell me on getting a shingles vaccine, but it costs $70 a shot for 2 shots, so I passed on the shingles shots. It took a lot of time getting the shots, resulting in Mary wandering around Walmart forever, wondering where I was. She texted, twice, but I didn't answer. Needless to say, she was breathing fire like a dragon when I found her stumbling around the Walmart aisles. I left my phone in the pickup and never bothered to look at it.
    
  • We got home about 4:15 p.m., with darkness starting to set in. Mary took care of chickens, spreading sunflower seeds on the floor and shining a flashlight while 8 younger chickens got off the roost to peck seeds. I walked dogs and unloaded the pickup.
  • With shots in both arms, I experienced aching shoulders through the evening.
  • We watched the 1994 movie, The Santa Clause.
  • For some reason, all pets really missed us being gone, today. This evening, Mary had 3 cats on her and Gandalf snuggled next to me. Both dogs were extra schmoozy, too.
    
    
• Saturday, 12/10: Inside Day
  
  • Vaccination shots seem to last quite some time in my arms. Sore shoulders were the highlight of my day, so I didn't go outside and handle chainsaws or heavy hunks of firewood, today.
    
  • Instead, I stayed inside and balanced the checkbook.
  • Mary cleaned the refrigerator.
  • While Mary was letting the dogs out around 1 p.m., she saw a young deer walking toward the house on the trail next to the near garden. As soon as she opened the door, it spun around and ran back east on the trail.
    
  • Mary enjoyed Christmas music, did some cross stitch, and finished a Christmas ornament, while I read newspapers.