Sept. 10-16, 2023

Weather | 9/10, 53°, 83° | 9/11, 0.02" rain, 61°, 67° | 9/12, 54°, 75° | 9/13, 51°, 79° | 9/14, 52°, 79° | 9/15, 52°, 80° | 9/16, 0.14" rain, 60°, 79° | 

• Sunday, 9/10: Bill Leaves for St. Charles, MO
  
  • Katie ran one leg of a relay race between Skagway and Whitehorse. Her leg ended or started (I can't tell which) in Carcross, Yukon.
  • I added two tablespoons of pectic enzyme to the apple cider brew bucket and squeezed the mesh bags.
  • I also squeezed mesh bags in the blackberry wine brew bucket. The wine yeast is starting to win out over wild yeast and developing fizz and foam. The specific gravity before bed was 1.060, so the good yeast is moving along.
    
  • Bill left at 3 p.m. (see photo, below), after we enjoyed a smoked scrambled eggs meal garnished with fresh tomato slices.
    
  • I fixed a hose garden hose. It broke at a plastic fitting yesterday and soaked my shirt and pants.
    
  • Mary moved the Halloween tree, a dried up cedar tree that was stashed in the north woods, to the machine shed to keep it dry. She said it's in good shape.
  • Mary dug up potatoes from nine hills in the gardens. The results were paltry, but we don't care. We get a few free potatoes this way. They came from supermarket russet potatoes that were sprouting, anyway.
    
  • When we started watering gardens, we heard a raccoon growl from near the compost bins. We were probably 20 feet away. They sound like a small bear. A raccoon growl will make the hair raise on the back of your head.
    
  • I picked 56 Esopus apples, cleaning all of the good apples off that tree. Woodpeckers nailed a couple apples in upper branches of the tree. That's why I decided to strip the tree of good apples. It makes 90 apples picked from Esopus in the past couple days.
    
  • Mary used the blacklight flashlight after dusk and pulled 25 worms out of the garden...23 on tomatoes and three in the pepper plants.

  

  Bill waves goodbye from his car while leaving for his St. Charles apartment.

• Monday, 9/11: Triple Winemaking Day
  
  • After squeezing two nylon mesh bags full of applesauce in the apple cider brew bucket, the specific gravity reading was 1.040, a drop from 1.043 two days ago. I added a half pound of sugar to bring it up to 1.050. It makes for total sugar used in this cider of one pound, six ounces. I worked up a starter batch of Lalvin R2 yeast. Late at night, I pitched the yeast into the apple cider brew bucket. The specific gravity at that point was 1.048. I didn't add anymore sugar. The pH was 2.9...very acidic.
    
  • I racked the cherry wine for the third time. After adding one gram of Kmeta, a specific gravity check revealed 0.995, a minor change from a month ago of 0.994. The pH was 3.0. This wine has a nice, red/orange color. Mary and I tasted it. The cherry flavor is strong in it...quite good for a green wine. The must went into a 5-gallon carboy and a half-gallon jug.
  • The blackberry wine has the deepest purple/red color. The specific gravity is 1.053, so the yeast is slowly eating up the sugar content. Get near it and the brew bucket sounds like it's groaning, as CO2 gas is released through the purple cottage cheese that covers the top of the liquid.
    
  • Mary finished two Halloween cross stitch ornaments.
  • She also picked six worms and two worm eggs off the tomato plants.
  • Katie texted that her leg of the Klondike Road Relay was from the British Columbia/Yukon border to Carcross, Yukon. One of Katie's friends put an explanation with photos on Facebook. HERE is a link.
  • A motorized paraglider flew over our property right at dusk. His engine cut out and we think he landed in a pasture southwest of us. It was getting too dark.
    
  • We enjoyed a wonderful chicken dinner with our own garden potatoes and slices of garden tomatoes.
  • For dessert, we each ate two Esopus apples. They are extremely tasty. Too bad the tree is so susceptible to every disease known to apples, including fire blight, which is killing it.
    
    
• Tuesday, 9/12: Winter Greens Planted
  • Thick fog lifted in the morning for a full day of sunshine.
  • At sunrise, Mary watched four deer in the south lawn consisting of two does and two fawns. One doe was gray. They were eating and loving chicory stalks.
  • Mary made up a quart and a pint of refrigerator jalapeño pickles.
  • A midday check of the apple cider showed specific gravity of 1.043. It was 1.040 on a late night check. The must is fizzing a great deal.
    
  • The specific gravity of the blackberry wine was 1.039 at noon, and 1.034 at night.
    
  • I ordered a pound each of pectic enzyme and yeast nutrient from a home brew company that's going out of business, so prices were reduced by 35 percent. I also ordered vitamins.
  • I scrubbed sooty blotch and fly speck off about half of the Esopus apples I recently picked. These apple fungi are harmless. They just make the apple skin look ugly. Running warm water, a scrub brush, and vigorous scrubbing make the apples look great in a couple minutes.
    
  • I removed old lettuce stalks and grass from the six winter greens tubs. While loosening up the soil, I discovered that maple tree roots entered holes in the bottoms of five tubs and filled the potting soil within the tubs with feeder roots. After breaking off tree roots under the tubs, I cut up old chicken feed bags and laid them down under all of the tubs. Then I planted winter greens. They included:
  • Four radish types: Pink Lady Slipper, Gloriette, French Breakfast, and Zlata
  • Winter Bloomsdale spinach
  • Astro arugula
  • Red Tinged Winter lettuce
  • Winterbor kale
    
  • Mary watered the gardens, then while picking five worms off the tomato plants, she heard four separate deer snorts. We really have a lot of deer.
    
    
• Wednesday, 9/13: Blackberry Wine & Apple Cider First Racking
  • A noon check of wines in the brew buckets revealed that they were ready to move into carboys, with specific gravity of apple cider at 1.025 and the blackberry wine at 1.022. I tried to get a volume of five gallons of blackberry wine, but underestimated the amount of liquid in these berries. After squeezing the nylon mesh bags, I got 5.75 gallons, instead of five gallons.  I racked the wine for the first time into two five-gallon carboys (see photo, below), allowing for huge head spaces, since blackberry wine foams a lot when it first goes into a carboy. Blackberry wine develops what look like purple cottage cheese, while in the brew bucket. After racking, I had a lot of "curd turds" left behind.
    
  • After cleaning up, I racked the apple cider. Again, I underestimated the juice amount. Instead of three gallons I was aiming for, I got just under four gallons, with the cider going into a three-gallon carboy and a one-gallon jug (see photo, below). The specific gravity was 1.018 at racking time. Mary and I tasted the cider and it's a good drink. "I'd just like to sit here and drink the whole bucket right now," said Mary.
    
  • Mary picked a bunch of tomatoes, hot peppers (see photo, below), hazelnuts, and melons. She decided to end watering watermelon plants, because the tiny melons that are left are too small to develop to maturity.
    
  • We watered gardens, of course! NOAA's Climate Prediction Center told us last winter that spring and summer would be wet. They were very wrong. We've watered gardens almost every day of this summer.
  • While cleaning up chicken waterers on the porch, a fawn saw me from near the winter green tubs and then walked toward me. It ran north in a playful prance, then played with an older fawn. I stepped around the corner and saw a doe run off. Then, a gray doe walked in sight and ran off. Finally, the fawns ran away. This is the same foursome that Mary saw yesterday morning.

  

  Peppers: Hot Portugal (red) & Ho Chi Minh (yellow).
  

Blackberry wine after the first racking.

Apple cider after first racking.

• Thursday, 9/14: We Butcher Chickens Soon
  
  • Our young chickens are between 13-14 weeks old. We usually butcher at 14 weeks, so we decided to get ready to butcher in a couple days. It might start Saturday night, although rain is forecast for then. We'll still get ready.
  • Mary defrosted and took ice off the inside walls of both chest freezers, an annual chore in preparation of freezing chickens. She tossed two one-gallon bags of 2021 tomatoes, ten 2019 and 2020 old bags of sliced apples, and two bags of very, very old dried beans.
  • I drove to Quincy, IL, to get a medication and a couple other items.
  • Once returning home, I helped Mary water gardens.
  • The CO2 release from blackberry wine and apple cider is reducing as yeast burns up existing sugar.
    
    
• Friday, 9/15: Bartlett Pear Harvest & Chicken Butcher Prep
  • Three flights of Canada geese went over the house this morning.
    
  • Mary picked Bartlett pears. The job lasted most of the day. A total of 289 went inside to be wrapped in newspaper. An entire chest of drawers, with three drawers, is filled with newspaper-covered pears, as is an old cardboard apple box. She threw away a bucket full of fallen or misshapen fruits, which is roughly 30 pears. There are several pears still left on the tree, most of which are on high branches. We'll try to get them down to take weight of the branches that are bending down.
  • Mary also picked tomatoes and muskmelons. She froze two gallons of tomatoes and three quarts of melons. 
  • I scrubbed sooty blotch and flyspeck off the remaining 45 Esopus apples. I also picked the last three Grimes Golden apples.
    
  • We fixed up and ate white oyster and lion's mane mushrooms (see photos, below). Mary needs to get house plants inside and they go into the room these mushrooms kits are in, so we're calling it quits on trying to grow more "shromes". It's been a fun experiment. Thanks, Katie.
    
  • I hunted squirrels while sitting at the east end of the machine shed. I spotted something twitching in the brush to my left, brought up the rifle and spotted the ears of a fawn through the scope. For the next 10-15 minutes, I watched two fawns munch on anything and everything that was either green or a twig. They're amazing eating machines. These two little guys never saw me.
    
  • I whacked down grass and weeds with the Stihl trimmer fitted with the steel blade on the trail from the machine shed to the chicken killing cone. Then I knocked down tall foxtail grass around the compost bins. I also used loppers to cut tall, thick grass growing on top of old compost in two bins. Finally, I removed a couple of rusted out 5-foot wide steel panels on these bins. I'll replace these panels tomorrow and get the middle bin ready to receive chicken butchering residue.
    
  • I hunted squirrels, again, at 6 p.m., and shot a fox squirrel. At the same time, I scared two squirrels away from the pecan trees. They're high in these trees, chewing pecans like there's no tomorrow.
    
  • After evening chores, I helped Mary wrap pears with newspaper. If half of them go bad, we'll still have too many for pear wine.

White oyster mushrooms. These taste best of all varieties.

Lion's Mane mushrooms.

• Saturday, 9/16: Much Needed Rain
  
  • We had 0.03 inch of rain fall before we woke this morning. Any moisture is welcomed.
    
  • Mary made a batch of chocolate chip/oatmeal cookies to help sustain us during nighttime chicken butchering in the near future.
    
  • I moved old compost from the middle bin to the east bin after reinstalled some steel panels around the east bin. I have five half panels from when I made the walls of the bins extra high. Using old green treated boards from the south porch, I made two more panels by screwing two half panels to the 1x4-inch boards. I had to stop my work, due to an approaching thunderstorm.
    
  • The thunderstorm gave us an additional 0.11 inch of rain, which meant no watering of gardens required for tonight.
    
  • I hunted squirrels at the bewitching hour of 6 p.m. and shot one. They're tearing into all of our nut trees. We heard squirrels chomping away in the black walnut trees in our east yard, today. They really like pecans, though.
  • The blackberry wine and apple cider has stopped releasing CO2 gas.
  • Radishes and arugula is sprouting in my winter greens tubs.
  • We saw our normal squadrons of deer. One fawn was looking at me through the open north window. It was standing next to the weeping willow tree, which is right next to our house.
    

Sept. 3-9, 2023

Weather | 9/3, 61°, 89° | 9/4, 69°, 93° | 9/5, 0.08" rain, 67°, 88° | 9/6, 59°, 71° | 9/7, 50°, 73° | 9/8, 52°, 77° | 9/9, 51°, 77° | 

• Sunday, 9/3: Racking Apple Wine
  
  • We saw a black-crowned night-heron fly over our property while walking the dogs this morning.
  • I lined up purchasing 3-gallon carboys tomorrow.
    
  • Mary froze more tomatoes and hot peppers. 
  • She checked the hazelnuts. They aren't ready. Those she thought were ready burned up in the recent heat and were brown...they're normally a lemon-yellow green right now. Mary also propped up melons.
  • Mary cut down some hay from tall grass surrounding the compost bins.
  • I racked the apple wine for the second time, due to excessive fines at the bottom of the carboy and other containers. Fines were three inches deep in the beer bottle. The specific gravity was 0.999 and the pH was 3.0. A sulfite (SO2) test kit indicated 11 parts per million (ppm) in this wine. It needs to be about 60 ppm, so I added 0.5 grams of Kmeta, instead of the normal 0.63 grams for the 3.5 gallons of liquid I got after pulling the wine off the fines. Sulfur gas emitted from Kmeta (potassium metabisulfite) preserves wine. We tasted a bit of this wine. Unlike last year's apple wine, this batch has no metallic taste. It will be good.
  • Using a flashlight and getting down on the floor, I noticed that the cherry and spiced apple wines do not have deep fines in the bottoms of the containers like I thought they did. There's only a thin line of fines, but a slight residue settling up the sides to give an illusion of thick fines. That's good news, because I don't need to rack them until later.
    
  • We watched the 2004 movie, The Librarian: Quest for the Spear. Bob Newhart is in it and he's hilarious, especially when he's kicking butt in a fight scene. It's silly fun.
    
    
• Monday, 9/4: Picking Up Carboys & Racking Jalapeño Wine
  • I drove west about 38 miles and bought two 3-gallon glass carboys from a woman whose husband bought them years ago. He used some of them only a couple times, then died in 2016 and the carboys are taking up room in her basement. They are made in Mexico and in good shape.
    
  • A check of the pears and apples on fruit trees indicated that they aren't ready to be picked.
    
  • I redid the winemaking schedule, since I didn't rack two wines yesterday. The new one is in pencil, making changes possible.
    
  • Mary canned 14 quarts of salsa. She's raving about a tomato variety grown this year. It's called Jet Star. This tomato grows large and it's meaty, greatly adding to the salsa quantity. Mary had leftover tomatoes that she couldn't put in the pot, because it was so full. All of the jars of salsa sealed.
    
  • Mary turned hay that she dropped yesterday.
  • A check of the jalapeño wine at 3 p.m. registered a specific gravity of 1.023. Yeast in this batch is extremely active (see video, below), producing heat to give it a temperature of 81°. Mary was filling canning jars, so I waited to rack it until after our evening meal. Specific gravity was 1.001 at 9 p.m. The pH was 3.1. It went into one of my new 3-gallon carboys and a 750-ml wine bottle.
  • We ate our first muskmelon from the garden. It was divine!
  Robust CO2 release from jalapeño wine after racking it.
  

• Tuesday, 9/5: Some Rain!
  
  • We received a little rain in morning from a thunderstorm, which was nice.
    
  • Mary strung hot peppers on thread loops, then hung them upstairs in the south bedroom to dry.
    
  • Mary thought her hay was ruined by this morning's rain, but it wasn't. With a strong wind blowing, Mary turned the hay, then picked it up before evening dew set in. It's a start of hay storage for winter usage in the chicken coop.
    
  • Mary and I watered the gardens, a chore that takes less time as we finish various crops.
  • Our water supplier installed a new remote-read water meter. A blue plastic lid contains an antenna that relays readings to their office in Knox City, about 15 miles west of us. Hopefully, it works better than the last meter, which was to relay readings to a vehicle on the gravel road. They still had to drive our quarter-mile lane to get in front of our house to read it. The past year, they just estimated amounts, which were excessively high, so I called in our meter's amounts each month.
    
    
• Wednesday, 9/6: Dusty Mowing
  • Our day started with a clear morning, but clouds filled in soon after sunrise, and it was cloudy all day. Clouds cleared at sunset.
  • I mowed the lane. It was really dusty. I looked like Pigpen from the Peanuts cartoon after finishing mowing, so I took a quick bath.
    
  • I drove to Quincy. I seem to run out of some medication every single week! Looking north and south while driving across the Mississippi River, I could really detect our mucky air. Occasionally, you could catch whiffs of smoke, probably from Canada.
    
  • Mary froze 17 packages of green beans, which means we're done with our garden beans.
  • While returning home, I saw a deer bedded down along the edge of our neighbor's pond. We watched two deer grazing in the west field when we put the chickens to bed.
  • We enjoyed a bottle of cherry wine from fruit picked in 2021. It's really good. Mary says it resembles the taste of the cherry in chocolate-covered cherry candy.
    
    
• Thursday, 9/7: Start of Blackberry Wine
  
  • I started a 5-gallon batch of blackberry wine. Past blackberry wine creations started with 5 gallons and ended up with 6.5 gallons, so this time I made less to ultimately get 5 gallons. I thawed 16 quart bags on the sunny porch, crushed the fruit in each bag, then dumped the berries into two nylon mesh bags. Added to the 20 pounds, 5.5 ounces of blackberries was 3.5 gallons of water, 4.5 teaspoons of yeast nutrient, 0.8 grams of Kmeta, and seven pounds of sugar. The liquid level was 4.35 gallons, or 16.5 liters. Specific gravity was 1.078 and the pH was 3.3. It now sits overnight in the pantry.
    
  • Mary says she bowed to the inevitable and rearranged the pantry floor to accommodate my growing batches of wine. I now have five different wines in the making and taking up space on the pantry floor (see photo, below).
    
  • We watered the gardens and while doing so, Mary picked two muskmelons.
    
  • While checking fruit trees, we picked four Esopus apples, one Grimes Golden apple, and two Bartlett pears. Granny Smith apples aren't ready and several Esopus apples are green. Bartlett pears are due for picking anytime, now.
    
  • We discovered that the Grimes apples are not as good as described. They're too sweet for our liking. We prefer a tart taste. Esopus has that taste, but that tree is susceptible to every apple disease imaginable.
  • Katie texted me a photo of Haines Junction, Yukon Territory, Canada. She's on her way to Skagway where she will run in the Klondike Road Relay, between Skagway and Whitehorse, Yukon.

  

  Five wines on the pantry floor. In November,
  there will be eight!
  

• Friday, 9/8: Bill Arrives
  
  • Bill showed up around 11:30 a.m. for a three-day visit.
    
  • Mary made three pizzas, using garden produce. Bill, Mary and I ate all of them...take no prisoners!
    
  • I picked 34 apples off the Esopus tree. There are several more to collect.
    
  • Bill picked several worms off the tomato plants while Mary and I watered the gardens.
    
  • We watched the first two Fantastic Beasts movies, which involve the 2016 movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and the 2018 film, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. We each ate huge, 6-quart containers of popcorn that I popped up.
    
    
• Saturday, 9/9: Starting a Batch of Apple Cider
  • Something is suspect with the blackberry wine must. It's already showing signs of fermentation. I think some wild yeast that was on the blackberries survived the Kmeta I added and started developing. I worked up a starter batch of Lalvin RC 212 yeast and pitched it into the the brew bucket late at night. The specific gravity dropped from 1.078 to 1.070, so wild yeast indeed was eating up the sugar in the must. The pH dropped from 3.3 to 3.0.
    
  • Bill and I started a 3-gallon batch of apple cider. After thawing out four one-gallon bags of Empire applesauce, we put 25 pounds, 4.6 ounces into two nylon mesh bags. Added to the brew bucket was a gallon of water, 0.4 grams of Kmeta, two teaspoons of yeast nutrient, and 14 ounces of sugar to get a specific gravity of 1.043. I want to start with specific gravity of 1.050, which will put the alcohol level between 6-7 percent. More sugar should release from the apples over the next couple days. The pH was 3.2. No acid blend is necessary.
    
  • Mary picked a half a bucket of hot peppers, 8 watermelons, 2 muskmelon, an ice cream pail of cherry tomatoes, a bucket of big tomatoes, and a third of a bucket of hazelnuts.
  • Mary and I watered gardens while Bill picked worms off the tomato plants.
    
  • We watched the third Fantastic Beasts movie, which is the 2022 film, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.
    
  • When Mary and I walked the dogs, a nighthawk that was in the lane flew away as Plato approached it. The bird was parked right on the gravel.
    

August 27-Sept. 2, 2023

Weather | 8/27, 58°, 77° | 8/28, 59°, 80° | 8/29, 60°, 83° | 8/30, 57°, 79° | 8/31, 49°, 78° | 9/1, 49°, 80° | 9/2, 54°, 85° | 

• Sunday, 8/27: Processing Zucs & Corn
  
  • Mary processed and then froze 23 packages of sliced zucchinis. That means we're done with zucs and the zucchini plants now get removed.
    
  • Mary picked, processed, and froze 35 ears of sweet corn.
  • I used the Stihl trimmer and whacked grass and weeds grown into the electric fence surrounding the far garden. The growth was phenomenal. It took five tanks of gas to finish the job. The last weed fell at the northeast corner of the fence after sunset.
    
  • By evening, the spiced apple wine's fermentation slowed to a crawl and there's 3/4  of an inch of fines at bottom of the carboy. I'll need to rack this wine, again, tomorrow, to get the liquid off the fines.
    
  • Mary watched an eastern wood-peewee adult feed a fledgling while they both sat on a cow panel in south orchard. At first, Mary thought she was watching two adult birds, because they were the same size. But when the second bird opened what was obviously a gaping mouth belonging to a chick, Mary knew she was looking at a fledgling.
    
  • After whacking weeds in the far garden and upon plugging in the electric fencer, I found it wasn't energizing to its fullest. Since I found nothing after surveying both gardens, Mary and I both checked all wires. I found a slack support wire of a corner post touching several hot wires. I fixed the problem. Mary also found two wires crossed in two different places. Once remedied, the fencer gave out a full charge.
    
  • After dark, Mary took the blacklight flashlight and checked for worms on tomato plants. She found one big army worm. Surprisingly, there were no hornworms. We wonder if recent hot days killed off the hornworms.
    
  • We heard a screech owl while we were in the gardens after dark. We then heard a barred owl.
    
    
• Monday, 8/28: Tomatoes By the Buckets, Apple Wines
  
  • The twin fawns were in our east yard munching on tree branches around noon. One got close to apple trees, so I stepped out to scare it off. It only went a few feet, so I put on my rubber boots and walked to the apple trees in the east yard. They ran off, but I suspected they only went a few feet, so I continued to the far garden and walked north on the west side of that garden. Sure enough, as I got close to the north end of the garden, my two culprits ran to the McIntosh tree and beyond. We suspect these two young deer have spent the whole summer watching us walk through the yard and just aren't too concerned about us.
    
  • I found two Esopus apples under that tree, so I brought them inside. We ate them prior to our evening meal. They were green, but their seeds are brown, which indicates they're getting close to ripe. They were very good.
    
  • Mary picked nearly two buckets of tomatoes, a plastic grocery sack full of green beans, and a few tomatillos.
    
  • I started a batch of plain apple wine. I thawed five one-gallon bags of Empire applesauce in the sun on the porch. Together they weighed 27 pounds, 8.3 ounces. This went into two nylon mesh bags. Added to the brew bucket was 2 quarts and 2 cups of water, 1.5 pounds of sugar, 2 teaspoons of yeast nutrient, 0.4 grams of Kmeta, and a cup of strong tea. The specific gravity was 1.059 and the pH was 3.3...perfect! Now it sits in the pantry until tomorrow.
    
  • I racked the spiced apple wine, because all container bottoms were filled with fines. I added 0.6 grams of Kmeta, then moved it back into the 3-gallon carboy, the half-gallon jug, and half of a beer bottle. The specific gravity was 1.000, which gives it an 8.25 percent alcohol level at this point. We tasted it. The cloves shined through the flavor. It's one of the few absolutely green wines that didn't have a strong yeast taste. It's going to be a good wine. This went back into the pantry to age for a month.
  • The pantry is filling with wines in the making (see photo, below). I've got to keep kicking out the wines in order to eliminate frozen bags of fruit to give Mary freezer room for incoming garden veggies. I might run out of wine bottles for all the wines currently brewing and others on the agenda. Future wines include blackberry, jalapeño, pear, garlic, parsnip, and maybe autumn olive. I need someone to drink up existing wine so I have more wine bottles...Bill?
    
  • Our hens and rooster are molting, so Mary keeps picking up good feathers for my future fly tying hobby. You can spend a fortune on fly tying feathers, but I don't have to spend a dime with our own flock of chickens spewing feathers all over the ground.

  

  Wines in pantry: (l to r) spiced apple, cherry, and apple.

• Tuesday, 8/29: Wine Bottle Considerations
  
  • Two tablespoons of pectic enzyme went into the apple wine brew bucket today. This helps break down the fruit and release liquid. I also squeezed the mesh bags.
    
  • I pulled all empty wine bottles out of the west room closet to determine if I have enough. There are 157 empty bottles. Then, I added up estimated bottle needs for current and future wines for 2023. I need 185 bottles for the three wines in production (spiced apple, cherry, and apple) and seven future wines (jalapeño, apple cider, garlic, blackberry, Kieffer pear, Bartlett pear, and parsnip). The last wine scheduled for this year, garlic, won't be ready to bottle until February 2024, so I'm pretty sure we can make up the difference by drinking enough bottles of wine in the next six months. Oh, woe are we!
    
  • Mary started watering the gardens while I put away bottles. When I was done, I helped her with watering. She showed off the pumpkins. Two are large and one of them is just starting to turn orange. There are a ton of hot peppers. Several jalapeño peppers are red. These will require immediate picking prior to hot temperatures predicted to start this weekend, or we'll lose them. It means jalapeño wine is next on my winemaking agenda.
    
  • Mary picked the last of the corn and froze 13 ears. That makes 48 ears of corn for this year. We have 90 ears from past years, so we're good on corn. That's one less row of garden plants to water.
    
  • I hunted squirrels from the east end of the machine shed. No squirrels were to be found.
  • For the Orsens (Mary's relatives) in Beaufort, SC, please stay safe. We keep watching hurricane reports.
    
    
• Wednesday, 8/30: Alison is Gone
  
  • I worked up a starter batch of Red Star Cote des Blancs yeast for the apple wine and pitched it into the brew bucket before bedtime. The specific gravity went down to 1.050, so I added a pound of sugar, bringing it up to 1.067. So, a total of 2.5 pounds of sugar went into this batch. The pH was still 3.3, so no acid adjustment is necessary. Immediately after pitching the yeast, a fruity yeast smell filled the pantry.
    
  • Mary cut up and froze four gallons of tomatoes.
  • I was shocked when Karen informed me about Alison Rabich Boyce. She attended Homer High School and UAF with Karen and me. Her husband, Dennis, who I remember from UAF, said she entered the hospital in Fairbanks on Thursday, 8/24, with pancreatitis. They moved her to ICU on Friday, 8/25, with multiple organ failure. She died. Alison was a very honest soul. She will be missed.
    
  • Mary made a shopping list.
  • For several minutes, we viewed the super moon and Saturn, which was near the moon. We even saw a lightning bug. It's the latest we've ever seen one of those. While moon gazing, we heard a whip-poor-will. Again, it's late in the year to hear one of those birds.
    
    
• Thursday, 8/31: Shopping Trip
  
  • Mary and I drove to Quincy on a shopping trip.
  • We spent time moseying through the new Target store. Mary picked up a hardcover journal and I bought headphones, to replace the old ones that put black foam bits on my ears. Mary noticed that the colors of all interior decorating items were boring...black, white, charcoal, and taupe.
  • We couldn't find a sponge mop at Home Depot, or raisins at Sam's Club. More and more, you need to go online to find what you want. Quincy stores continue to stop stocking things.
    
  • The worst corn in several counties belongs to our neighbor bordering east of us. It's shriveled, gray, with tiny ears. Corn on the Missouri side of the Mississippi river bottom looks wonderful...better soil and better farmers.
  • I counted six dogs in the yard in front of the house southeast of our property. David Marquette, who lives south of there, says they have eight dogs...it's just too many.
  • The apple wine's specific gravity was 1.044, taken 24 hours after pitching the yeast. It means the yeast is moving fast and I'll need to rack it soon.
  • We heard coyotes howling southwest of us while walking the puppies tonight. They were close.
    
    
• Friday, 9/1: Apple & Jalapeño Wines
  
  • The specific gravity of the apple wine was 1.020, so I racked it into a 3-gallon carboy, a half-gallon jug, a 750-ml wine bottle, and half of a beer bottle. The pH was still 3.3. Unlike the spiced apple wine, this regular apple wine foamed into the airlock. It might be that the oil from cinnamon in the spiced version held back the foam. I installed a blow-off airlock and it bubbled the rest of the day into a Mason jar half filled with water.
  • With 22 red jalapeño peppers Mary picked from the garden, I figured out how many more peppers I needed to make a 3-gallon batch of jalapeño wine, based on last year's recipe. I guessed 35, but after weighing them, I only added 29 green jalapeño peppers, for a total of 51 peppers. It amounted to 2.5 pounds of peppers that I cut up, then chopped up in the food processor. I chopped up a pound, 12 ounces of black raisins. These two ingredients went into a nylon mesh bag. Added to the brew bucket was 2.5 gallons, 23 ounces of water, 3 teaspoons yeast nutrient, 4.5 teaspoons of acid blend to yield a 3.5 pH, 0.5 grams of Kmeta, and 4 pounds of sugar to produce a specific gravity of 1.066. I put a towel over the brew bucket and left it sit in the pantry overnight. I finished winemaking activities at 9:15 p.m.
    
  • Mary picked the last of the green beans, some hot peppers, tomatoes, jalapeños for me, and the last of the tomatillos. She also froze the tomatillos.
    
  • Mary watered all of the gardens and did most of the evening chores while I worked on wines.
    
    
• Saturday, 9/2: Yeast Starter for Jalapeño Wine
  • I worked up a starter batch of Red Star Premier Blanc yeast. By evening, when I pitched it into the jalapeño wine's brew bucket, it looked like a butterscotch milkshake with foam on top (see photo, below). The specific gravity of the must when I poured in the yeast (see photo, below) was 1.079. The pH was 3.7, which is too basic, so I added a 1/2 teaspoon of acid blend to correct the pH to 3.4. I tasted the must. It's spicy hot, but yummy. After pitching the yeast, the pantry smelled like pizza.
  • I worked up a four-month timeline involving the 10 wine varieties I'm making this fall. In September and October, I need three 3-gallon carboys. I own two. In December, I need four 5-gallon carboys. I own five, so I'm good on that account.
  • I looked online and found a three-gallon carboy for sale for $20 in Brashear, MO, 38 miles west of us. I left a text message.
  • Mary and I watered gardens. It's easier with fewer rows of plants to water. In the near garden, all that's left are three small apple rootstock trees and parsnips.
  • Mary encountered a juvenile western fox snake, that was a foot long, at the gate to the far garden. It curled itself up into a tight S-shape and kept leaping at her, a phenomenon that's not normal for most snakes we encounter. It's actions helped identify it. They aren't poisonous, but they're aggressive. They are endangered in Missouri.
  • There was a doe and a fawn on the lane at Bluegill Pond when I got the mail. Prior to walking onto the gravel road at the end of our lane, I heard a vehicle coming, so I stopped. It was a neighbor in the house that's southeast of us on a golf cart. Of course, it has no lights, and it was starting to get dark. He was driving along, looking down at his cell phone, instead of paying attention to where he was driving...not very safe!!!

Jalapeño wine yeast starter prior to pitching it.

Pitching the yeast into the brew bucket.

August 20-26, 2023

Weather | 8/20, 71°, 93° | 8/21, 77°, 91° | 8/22, 73°, 97° | 8/23, 76°, 93° | 8/24, 77°, 99° | 8/25, 73°, 97° | 8/26, 0.56" rain, 71°, 77° | 

• Sunday, 8/20: Bottling Pumpkin Wine
  
  • A quick check of the pumpkin wine found that it still had a strong sulfur smell. I rigged up a plastic pipe stuffed with a copper scratch pad. Then I filtered just under eight gallons of wine through this contraption to successfully eliminate the sulfur smell and taste. I added 1.4 grams of Kmeta. The specific gravity is 0.994, giving the wine an alcohol content of 12.84 percent. The pH is 3.4. A taste test indicated the sulfur was gone, but it has a strong alcohol taste. The pumpkin and cinnamon flavors are there, too. We decided to bottle it. After bottling and corking, I ended up with 39 bottles of new pumpkin wine.
  • We harvested the second batch of pink mushrooms. This batch was even bigger than the first bunch we harvested from this kit. They were delicious.
  • Mary watered the gardens while I bottled wine. Extremely high humidity meant she was dripping wet after finishing that chore.
    
    
• Monday, 8/21: Too Many Photos
  
  • My laptop computer was extremely slow at showing characters I entered from the keyboard. After a bunch of online checks, I suspected large photo files were bogging it down, so I eliminated them by throwing out several and storing some on a zip drive. Now, the laptop works like a champ. There were too many stupid winemaking photos and videos.
    
  • Mary cleaned house.
    
  • Mary and I both watered gardens. My help at filling watering cans and marching them partway to her vastly reduces the time it takes to finish this chore.
  • Mary walked to the chicken coop to start to put the chickens to bed and there were six deer at the edge of the west yard...three does and three fawns. They looked at her for quite some time, stomped their feet, then ran off to the west. We also saw twin fawns in the north yard this morning. That's a total of eight deer seen today.
    
  • We're experiencing hot weather. It's summer. That's what happens in the summer. While local news folks rant about goofy "feel's like" temperatures from high humidity, we noticed an opposite benefit. High humidity and early morning fog created clouds that kept the sun away through large parts of the day and kept temperatures lower than predicted. We hope that continues. Meanwhile, we'll savor air conditioners indoors and head outside only when needed.
    
    
• Tuesday, 8/22: Spiced Apple Wine
  • I discovered in Jack Keller's Home Winemaking book that apples contain more sulfur, so too much Kmeta added to the wine harms apple wine flavor. I used too much as preservative last year, hence the off-flavor of that wine. Apples are also high in malic acid, so tartaric acid, not acid blend that contains additional malic acid, should be used to increase acid content. I worked up a spiced wine recipe from Keller's website, decreasing the clove amount, but increasing cinnamon and ginger amounts, to adhere to our tastes.
    
  • I made a two-gallon batch of spiced apple wine. Leaving frozen gallon bags of applesauce on the sun-drenched porch with outside temperatures in the high 90s made for quick thawing. A total of 25 pounds, 14 ounces of apples went into this batch. I chopped up two pounds of raisins, crushed six cinnamon sticks, and chopped up 8 ounces of ginger root. I included 0.55-ounces of cloves (see photos, below). This all went into two nylon mesh bags in the brew bucket, along with 0.4 grams of Kmeta, two teaspoons of yeast nutrient, a gallon of water, and 1.5 pounds of sugar. The specific gravity was 1.054. It should rise with additional sugar released from apples and raisins and if not, I'll add more sugar, later. I covered the brew bucket with a towel and let it sit overnight in the pantry.
    
  • Mary picked tomatoes and froze several. While in the garden, she found two more small rabbits. She thinks they were born in there. This year, the bunnies are damn Houdini experts.
  • We heard a wood thrush in the north woods while releasing chicks from the coop this morning. We saw two male wood ducks fly by the far garden. Mary had a hummingbird buzz over her head while watering gardens.
  • Mary watered most of the far garden before I finished winemaking and helped her. High humidity and heat means you're soaking wet with any outside work. I notice that temperatures are in the 40s, 50s, and 60s in south central Alaska these days...oh, the joy!
  • A quick check of the wine prior to bedtime revealed a wonderful spiced apple aroma and an reddish-gold liquid. This will be nice wine!
    

Thawed gallon bags of Empire applesauce.

Ingredients (l to r): cinnamon, cloves, ginger, raisins.

• Wednesday, 8/23: Jumpy Chicks, Heat, & Nighttime Cicadas
  
  • We were watching the chicks after letting them out of the coop this morning when a blue jay called and I coughed. The combination made all birds jump and run into the tall weeds at the east side of the chicken run. They have a natural sense to dodge perceived trouble. At over 10 weeks old, these chicks are almost the size of our fully-grown hens. We switched them to an all-flock variety of feed earlier than past years and it seems they grow faster on that food.
    
  • I added two tablespoons of pectic enzyme to the spiced apple wine. The usual amount is one teaspoon, but some of Jack Keller's apple wine recipes call for this huge amount in order to better push liquid out of the apple fruit. The pH is 3.5. It needs to be 3.3. I'll wait until I pitch the yeast and adjust the pH at that point, since the pH might change by then. The brew bucket went back into the pantry to sit for another day.
  • I labeled half of the recently-corked pumpkin wine bottles, with plans to finish them tomorrow.
    
  • We watered all gardens, our daily chore. Mary found little bunny trails under our chicken wire fence. I might have to bury the fencing in the future.
    
  • The heat got to me a little, today. After hauling the garbage can and mail back home, then helping Mary with filling watering cans, I had to take an early break.
    
  • We heard a cicada calling at 11 p.m. They aren't a normal nighttime sound, but Mary looked it up and they can sound off with high nighttime heat or light. It was 81° at that time.
    
    
• Thursday, 8/24: Moon/Star Gazing
  
  • I squeezed the two nylon mesh bags in the spiced apple wine must and more dark brown juice emerged. The pH is 3.5 and the specific gravity is 1.063. The sugar content rose from yesterday. With this sugar content, the alcohol level would be nine percent. I decided to wait until I pitch the yeast for any adjustments, if needed. Mary and I tasted the must...WOW! It is very good...like spiced applesauce.
    
  • I worked up a starter batch of Red Star Côte Des Blancs wine yeast throughout the day. It started quickly, but seemed to slow significantly by nightfall. I pitched the yeast into the brew bucket late at night and it instantly put a nice aroma into the pantry. Prior to adding yeast, a pH check showed 3.3 to 3.4, so I didn't add tartaric acid. The specific gravity was still 1.063, so I also didn't add sugar.
    
  • I labeled the rest of the pumpkin wine, then made an assessment of all wines and updated my numbers on the food chart in the pantry. I have 248 bottles of wine in storage. Yes, my winemaking hobby has taken over!
    
  • We watered all gardens in the heat. West winds made the high heat tolerable.
    
  • This evening, I saw five deer...a buck in the west yard and two sets of two deer eating tender shoots from the lane. Mary saw a half-inch long tree frog and a young prairie king snake, the first snake we've seen this summer.
  • From the website space.com, we learned that when the star, Anteres, which is in the constellation, Scorpius, goes behind the moon, it suddenly blinks out, instead of slowly fading away. This is because of a lack of an atmosphere on earth's moon. We watched through binoculars and used the electric power pole as a way to block the bright side of the moon in order to view this phenomenon. High clouds edged in and over the moon, enabling us to see a moon dog, or a type of rainbow created by the moonlight. Then, sure enough, at 9:15 p.m., Anteres blinked out of sight. That was really cool!!!
  • Katie texted that she participated in her first triathlon and she placed 14th, overall. HERE is a link to an article about it.
    
    
• Friday, 8/25: Harvesting in Buckets
  
  • When we first start harvesting tomatoes, they arrive inside the house in a small bowl. We are now to the bucket stage. Mary picked a four-gallon bucket full of tomatoes and a few tomatillos. She also picked two plastic grocery sacks stuffed with green beans. Garden picking took all afternoon, with several breaks, due to the heat. The fridge is now stuffed.
    
  • I drove to Quincy and picked up meds for me, along with chicken feed. I saw a temperature of 101° on a bank thermometer sign. On the way back home, I heard on the radio that St. Louis set a record high temperature of 104°. I texted Bill, asking if he did okay today in the non-air conditioned warehouse he works in. He responded with an animated file of the Bee Gees singing "Stayin' Alive," and texted "I made it through the day."
  • A wonderful wine yeast aroma emanates from the spicy apple wine in the pantry. A nighttime check of the specific gravity registered 1.053, 10 points down from yesterday's reading of 1.063, so the yeast is moving along, nicely.
    
    
• Saturday, 8/26: Racking Spiced Apple Wine
  
  • A steady rain persisted for most of the day. After several days of high heat, it was very welcome.
    
  • Mary froze several bags of tomatoes, some tomatillos, and a huge batch of green beans. The job took a chunk of the day to finish.
    
  • We have a vegetable-loving dog. Plato just adores green beans picked from the garden. While Mary cuts them up, this crazy dog sits next to her with his ears perked up, watching her every move. Occasionally, she'll throw a piece of bean on the floor and Plato quickly gobbles it up. His other favorites are celery, broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots.
    
  • I checked the spiced apple wine mid-afternoon and the specific gravity was already at 1.022. That's very fast working yeast to be ready in just two days. The pH was still 3.4, within the acceptable range of 3.1 to 3.55, so I didn't alter acid content. I squeezed the two mesh bags to yield just 10 ounces shy of four gallons of wine must. So, fermenting these apples almost doubled the amount of liquid I initially added to the brew bucket. I racked the must into a three-gallon carboy, a half-gallon jug, a 750-ml wine bottle, and a 330-ml beer bottle. It now sits in the pantry until fermentation stops and I see over a half-inch of fines in the bottom of the containers.
    
  • We saw a fawn with fading spots in the east yard. I chased it away before it tried eating apples. We watched a nighthawk fly over the house this evening.
    
  • Mary and I shared a bottle of 2022 dandelion wine. It was bottled a year ago and this wine is very good. It glows with a beautiful golden color. You can taste the dandelion flavor, but there's also a citrus component. Extra ginger root enhanced the flavor of this wine. Unfortunately, picking dandy petals takes forever, so I didn't do it this spring. I need to try to get back to it next year.
    

August 13-19, 2023

Weather | 8/13, 0.19" rain, 64°, 71° | 8/14, 0.02" rain, 63°, 75° | 8/15, 61°, 76° | 8/16, 55°, 80° | 8/17, 63°, 79° | 8/18, 54°, 81° | 8/19, 61°, 88° | 

• Sunday, 8/13: Heard of Apple Dumplings...We're in the Apple Dumps!
  
  • We designated today as hobby day. With all of the rain outside, it was a good time to stay indoors.
    
  • Mary did cross stitching on a Halloween "Nine Lives" ornament.
  • I finished tooling on the checkbook cover and looked online at various leatherwork websites. One that's interesting is called Elktracks Studio, started by Jim Linnell, who grew up on a ranch 50 miles from Miles City, MT. He started leatherwork in 1967 as a seventh grader, and now lives in Texas. He was heavily involved with Tandy Leather. Several instructional videos are on this website.
  • We saw five deer in our yard in the morning, including a buck that got too close to the Grimes Golden apple tree (see photos, below). Mary stepped outside and sent him away. When we put the chickens to bed, we watched the twins running around in the west field in playful moods. Mary says they're our wild cows.
    
  • After a tasty chicken dinner, Mary baked eight apples. They were adequate, but Empire apples aren't the best baked apples.

A fawn and a doe deer in the north yard.

A buck deer looking into the near garden.

• Monday, 8/14: Racking Cherry Wine
  
  • Mary picked more garden produce, then froze tomatillos, tomatoes, and hot peppers. She's happy to report no signs of tomato hornworms, or bunnies inside the gardens.
    
  • I racked the cherry wine for the second time. A good half to three-quarter inch of lees were at the bottom of the carboy. I added a gram of Kmeta. It has a strong yeasty/alcohol taste, but there's a faint hint of cherry flavor. Aging will help. The specific gravity was 0.994, which gives it an alcohol level of 10.3 percent, a lower amount that might improve the wine's overall taste. The pH was 3.2, an improvement from 3.0 when I started brewing. The must went into a 5-gallon carboy, a half-gallon jug, and a 330-ml beer bottle. I added distilled water to the bottle to top it up. I cleaned the 6.5-gallon carboy that stored this wine for the past 11 days outside. Subsiding foam dried inside the top of the carboy into an orange/red mess. A garden hose, a bent bottle brush, and Dawn soap cleaned it up nicely.
    
  • We saw the normal amount of deer cattle in our yard.
    
  • Mary cut up four apples and made eight sandwiches for tomorrow's lunch. We went to bed early, because we're going to the Illinois State Fair in Springfield tomorrow.
    
    
• Tuesday, 8/15: Illinois State Fair
  
  • The alarm rang at 5 a.m. and we walked the dogs in faint morning light. After breakfast, letting out chickens, and packing up, we left just after 8:30 a.m., gassed up in Lewistown, then drove to Springfield, IL. Visiting a state fair is something we wanted to do since 2020, but a pandemic got in the way. The Illinois State Fair is closer, at 142 miles. The Missouri State Fair, in Sedalia, is 174 miles away, and the Iowa State Fair, in Des Moines, is 187 miles away.
    
  • We showed up at the fairgrounds around 11:45 a.m. Reduced prices meant we entered two adults and got a parking ticket, all for only $9. They parked us on the half-mile horse racing track. We wandered for a little bit through an edge of the fair until we found a fairgrounds map, then went back to the pickup and ate half our lunch. Then, we ventured through the entire fairgrounds. 
  • We saw the dairy building, with a butter carving of a cow being milked (see photos, below). 
  • Next were miles of horse barns. The fairground buildings are brick structures built in the late 1800s and there are several. Signs in the horse barns indicated they were recently refurbished. Immense, fine-looking Belgium draft horses filled several stalls. They are extremely impressive. There were also Percherons, Clydedales, and Morgan horses. In some stalls were very fancy wagons pulled by these horses. Most of these draft horses came from outside of Illinois...a couple from MO, some from IN, and most were from OH.
    
  • We marched through more miles of dairy cattle barns. There were several Jersey cattle. We heard a group of people enter one barn and say, "Yup, more cows!"
    
  • We took in the show ring in the hog barn. It was interesting to note that the judge was built similar to the animals he was judging.
  • In the sheep barn, another show ring was in action.
  • We looked for 4-H work, but nothing was there. 4-Hers must have exhibited earlier in the fair. The home economics building is abandoned, needing refurbishing. 
  • We walked to the conservation area. A huge aquarium showcased game fish.
  • While walking back, we spotted a hummingbird in blue salvia flowers. There were mobs of people walking through, but nobody else noticed this little bird. It's amazing the blindness of the human race.
  • The coliseum on the fairgrounds is in the middle of reconstruction. Built in 1901, it's beautiful.
  • Mary laughed when we heard a mother tell her kids, "Your father is standing around talking, because that's just what he does."
  • After returning back to the pickup, we sat on the tailgate and ate apples.
  • The drive to and from Springfield is nice, on a pretty smooth I-72 interstate.
  • We picked up a couple items in Quincy.
    
  • We arrived back home with the sun still in the western sky, but close to setting. After chores, we sat down to big drinks of tea.
    
  • There are lot's of people to dodge at a state fair. It was nice to get back to the peace and quiet of our place. To paraphrase Ron Weasely in Harry Potter, "It isn't much, but it's home."

A dairy cow carved out of butter.

There's even a person milking the cow.

The fine details of the cow's tail, in butter.

A separate butter carving of a child with a calf.

This Belgian horse dwarfs its stall.

Glistening Belgians inside a horse barn.

Beautiful horse-drawn wagon.

A junior showman with overall reserve champion hog.

Two sheep in the sheep barn.

This 1901 building is being refurbished.

• Wednesday, 8/16: Mowing & Tomatoes
  
  • I sharpened the lawn mower blade. It's a cheap Chinese knock-off from Home Depot that looks like shredded tin foil after mowing just grass. We need to spend more money and get an authentic one from a Husqvarna dealer.
  • I mowed the north lawn. Tall chicory stalks and hidden mounds of mole dirt made for tough work. Damp soil and wet weeds combined to build up a thick layer of green cement under the mower deck. I cleaned that off with a putty knife and collected a partial wheelbarrow load for the compost pile.
    
  • Mary picked tomatoes. They're starting to pour into the house. She also watered plants. It looks like we're getting one, maybe two, pumpkins after all.
    
  • Mary found the first tomato hornworm of the season. It was a monster at three inches long. Stalks remain on one tomato plant where the beast was munching.
    
    
• Thursday, 8/17: More Mushrooms
  • About a week ago, we started seeing white oyster mushroom buds on the box of three boxes involving a mushroom kit Katie gave me for Father's Day. It was the last variety to show any signs of life. They grew quickly. We harvested them today, cooked them, and ate them (see photos, below). They were really good, especially with sliced garlic and garlic wine. A second batch of pink oyster mushrooms are now growing. The lion's mane mushrooms are brown and don't look edible.
    
  • Mary and I handed off the mower and mowed the north reaches of the north yard. We filled the gas tank three times and accomplished a bunch of mowing.
    
  • Mary picked more tomatoes and froze them. Just over two gallons are in the freezer.
  • She also raked some of yesterday's mowed grass and put mulch on the Porter's Perfection apple tree.
  • While doing chores, I saw a woodpecker in the top of the Esopus tree, probably pecking apples. I don't care. That tree is history come this fall or winter, due to fire blight in the trunk.

White oyster mushrooms ready for harvest.

Cutting up mushrooms. Garlic is in the foreground.

• Friday, 8/18: Peppers Picked
  
  • Mary mowed grass north of the near garden to give her a spot to stretch out the hose for watering gardens. Mary and I mowed the lane, handing the mower off to give each other a break. We wanted to get the lane mowed while outside temperatures were relatively tame. Later in the afternoon, I mowed the west yard.
  • Hot temperatures into the 100-degree range are predicted next week, so Mary picked all large peppers, or those on tops of plants that will suffer sun scald if left in intense heat. It amounted to a full four-gallon bucket of peppers.
    
  • Mary watered all gardens. I helped her after I finished mowing the west yard.
  • Karen and I texted back and forth. I wanted to know how she liked the Subaru Outbacks she once leased.
    
    
• Saturday, 8/19: Freezing Sweet Peppers
  
  • Mary washed and sliced up a bunch of sweet peppers (see photo, below) and froze 19 packages. She needs 20 packages. There are several more peppers in the garden.
    
  • Mary also picked a number of tomatoes.
  • I mowed the east yard immediately next to the house. I cleaned tall grass and sedges from around two of the three small apple trees we planted this spring and put a deep thickness of grass mulch around them.
    
  • Bill called in the evening. He ordered a sweatshirt from Warroad for a statewide Minnesota hockey event that will be held there in January. They sent it to his billing address, which is us, instead of to his mailing address. We'll save it here for him to pick up on his next visit. He took in an art festival, today.

  

  Large sweet peppers from the garden.
  

  
  
  
  
  
  

August 6-12, 2023

Weather | 8/6, 0.13" rain, 65°, 83° | 8/7, 0.11" rain, 63°, 81° | 8/8, 61°, 83° | 8/9, 0.83" rain, 63°, 73° | 8/10, 61°, 85° | 8/11, 0.01" rain, 68°, 89° | 8/12, 0.52" rain, 64°, 83° | 

• Sunday, 8/6: Apple Harvest Starts
  
  • Since Empire apples are falling from the tree, I started processing them (see photo, below). I took the 25 Empire apples I've collected from under the tree so far, washed them, cored them, cut them up, ran them through the food processor I bought last year, and froze them. Once chopped up with the food processor, all 25 fit into a gallon freezer bag. The food processor is a huge improvement over the hand-cranked grinder I used last year. Using lemon juice and water in a large bowl as a way to keep the apple slices from browning is also better than the Kmeta I sprinkled on the apples last year. I used too much then and I think it harmed the taste of the wine. I also have much better quality apples this year. All 25 apples were good, without imperfections. Last year was a completely different story. It all equals faster processing. I expended only two hours on 25 apples. Plans are to pick 25 at a time to process each day until I have enough for winemaking, then freeze the rest for our own use.
    
  • I found five apples under the Esopus apple tree that were chewed on. I thought squirrels worked them over, so I did a little squirrel hunting next to that tree. I also spent 30 minutes at the east end of the machine shed with a .22 rifle. I didn't see a thing. The chewed apples were probably from small bunnies.
  • Mary worked on a Halloween ornament cross stitch project.
  • Bill texted that he saw the Oppenheimer movie. He wrote, "Oppenheimer is incredible! Just a master class in storytelling."
  • We were under a tornado watch in the afternoon. Storms developed to the east of us after a front went through. Nothing came of it for us. We got a little rain after dark and in the morning.
    

  

  Empire apple pieces (left), in food processor (center), and ground up (right).

• Monday, 8/7: Harvest Time With Several Items
  
  • I processed another 25 apples from the Empire tree. I now have two one-gallon bags holding over 10 pounds of course applesauce in the freezer. Last year, 23 pounds made 2.25 gallons of apple wine, so I need several more apples. The tree still looks full, despite recent pluckings.
    
  • Mary harvested several cucumbers, tomatoes, tomatillos, hot peppers, and onions. She also put pieces of wood under 11 muskmelons and watermelons to keep them from rotting while they develop.
  • Mary mowed the west lawn and between the woodshed and the machine shed.
    
  • I removed fire blight from the big Bartlett pear tree where I could reach from the ground. Black branches filled two old laundry baskets. I also took a long branch off the small Bartlett tree infected by fire blight. All pear trees were horribly infected by this disease this year. I still have a great deal of ladder work to get all of the fire blight in the large Bartlett tree.
    
  • I saw five deer while walking the lane to get today's mail. The doe and her two fawns, along with the young buck, were part of this deer party.
    
  • The mushroom kits that Katie gave me for Father's Day are growing (see photos, below). Some will be ready for harvest, soon.

Pink oyster mushrooms.

Lion's mane mushrooms.

• Tuesday, 8/8: No New Taxes!
  
  • I processed another batch of 25 Empire apples and put a third five-pound bag of coarsely-ground apple sauce into the freezer. I'm now about an ounce shy of 16 pounds ready for apple winemaking. I picked another 26 apples for processing tomorrow.
    
  • Mary made minestrone soup. It was yummy.
  • We drove to Lewistown and voted. The local school superintendent tried sneaking through a tax increase on an off-year special election vote. We voted against it. The last time taxes went up after a successful vote for the school district, the high school installed a huge LED billboard that is on 24-7. Publicity by the school in support of the measure this year was minuscule. Mary discovered the school was trying to raise taxes during a mention at the bottom of another story last week on WGEM. She dug online and finally found an article in the Hannibal newspaper describing it. Today's election had 12 percent voting yes and 88 percent voting no. Asking for a tax increase didn't work this time.
    
  • I cut more fire blight branches out of the big Bartlett pear.
    
  • Mary picked several onions and tomatoes.
  • Mary raked dried grass from the west yard and mulched the blueberry bushes and the Porter's Perfection apple tree.
    
  • After evening chores, I let the pups out and watched a bat fly over Plato's head into the the light from the kitchen window.
    
  • A orange-red crescent moon rose to the northeast as we walked the dogs for their final outing. We stood and watched two bright Perseid meteors light up the sky above us after the dog walk.
    
    
• Wednesday, 8/9: Apple Munching For All!
  
  • Wildlings are enjoying too many apples off the Empire tree. Low-hanging fruit on the west side of the tree were stripped off and I found seven chewed apples under the tree, along with several green leaves. I also found two more Esopus apples under that tree with tiny teeth marks. I suspect deer, bunnies, and squirrels.
    
  • Apple processing continued. I did a total of 54 apples, freezing two more gallon bags of course applesauce. I now have 27 pounds, 6.6 ounces in the freezer, which is probably enough for a five-gallon batch of apple wine.
    
  • The pink oyster mushrooms, part of the mushroom growing kits that Katie gave me, were ready for harvest, so I removed them (see photos, below). Mary cleaned them up and cooked them in olive oil and homemade garlic wine. They were divine! Now I need to work on growing more of them and the other varieties.
    
  • Mary dusted living room books.
  • We got another big bunch of rain. We haven't watered gardens since Bill left after a visit on Monday, July 31st.
  • I picked 78 apples off the Empire tree that are destined for processing into frozen apples to be used in apple pies and apple crisps. In the process, I chased a woodpecker away. I guess it's time for those dastardly bastards to start wrecking apples. What I need is force fields, like shown in space movies, to keep wild things away from our fruit trees.
  • A revealing quote in WGEM news by the local school board president indicates the school's thinking in yesterday's special election. He said, “There was a lot more voter turnout than I thought there would be.” They were trying to sneak this tax increase through with as few voters as possible. It didn't work.

Harvested pink oyster mushrooms.

Sliced mushrooms ready for cooking.

• Thursday, 8/10: Freezing Apples
  • Mary and I washed, peeled, and sliced up 77 apples. Mary then blanced them in hot water and froze 16 quarts, the minimum she wants on hand until the next apple season. It means we don't need to buy apples to freeze from Edgewood Orchards in Quincy.
    
  • I'm starting to find apples under the Empire apple tree with holes drilled in them from woodpeckers. There were seven apples like this under the tree this morning.
    
  • Mary picked tomatoes, tomatillos, hot peppers, cucumbers, and a big bunch of onions. Today's onions filled a four-gallon bucket. We now have 2.5 milk crates full of onions. Some are very large.
    
  • There will be no pumpkins this year. The plants only have male flowers and it's too late for any pumpkins to develop and ripen prior to frost. A baby bunny that we think was born in the garden is eating sweet potato leaves. But, the good news is we have lots of squash developing. Mary propped up more melons.
  • I cut more fire blight branches out of the big Bartlett pear tree. I'm over halfway done with when I can reach from an eight-foot step ladder. 
  • I took breaks from cutting out fire blight by lighting off fire crackers any time I heard woodpeckers nearby. They scatter after I bang a couple of fire crackers that echo off the timber.
  • We saw the normal amount of resident cattle...I mean deer. I saw several while walking down the lane to get the mail. I saw a young owl near the mailbox.
    
    
• Friday, 8/11: Empire Apples Picked
  
  • With about eight chewed apples under the Empire tree and predicted temperatures to 90, we decided to pick all apples off that tree. I picked 377 apples that filled four milk crates. The grand total of apples picked off that tree is 589 and that doesn't include about 25, or more, chomped up by bunnies and deer. It did really well this year.
  • Mary picked garden produce, including all the rest of the onions. It's the most onions we've ever raised, with a little over three milk crates full.
  • Mary made a batch of pickles. One jar broke just as it went into the water bath, so she stopped it at just four jars. We have an abundance of pickles from previous years and she has a strong hankering for cucumber salads, so that's where the rest of the cucs are destined.
  • I drove to Quincy to pick up meds and other food items. The new Target store in Quincy is open. I popped in for a fast look. It's a vast improvement over the Kmart store it replaced. I had a hard time finding whole cloves that I want for a spiced apple wine recipe I want to try. I finally found some at Niemanns, formerly called County Market. That store is remodeled and looks great. Most all grocery stores in Quincy rebuilt and look better, due to the new Target store that came to town.
  • When I got home, the air was so humid that condensation was forming on vehicle windows where the AC blasted air onto the glass. The setting sun turned the sky a vivid orange color.
  • David Marquette, Ansel Marquette's son, visited us, along with his shaggy Australian shepherd dog. He just fixed up his father's old three-wheeler and was driving it. With a dirty bandana around his head and tennis shoes without laces, held together with duct tape, he looked the part of a Missouri hillbilly. He's fixing up a 1960's mobile home on Ansel's land south of us as he lives in it. After Ansel dies, he inherits the property. David checked bringing water to the property and the local water district wants $12,000 to trench in a water line. He's decided to rebuild an old cistern and haul pond water into it. Ansel said to David that Ansel and his father fixed that cistern, so it should be fine. David responded with, "Grandpa died in 1973!" He commented on all of the junk he hauled out of the place, like hundreds of empty plastic motor oil bottles. "Why keep all those oil cans?" he asked his father. Ansel told him he might need one someday. David told his dad when he needs one, dig it out of the trash, because he's throwing them out. He talked forever. It was almost dark when David left.
  • By bedtime, a very strong thunderstorm with a ton of lightning, dumped more rain on us. The U.S. Weather Service has us under a severe drought. It was that way a couple weeks ago, but not so, now, thank goodness.
    
    
• Saturday, 8/12: 12 Hours of Apple Processing
  
  • Mary and I decided to put a massive effort into processing all apples in one day. Mary is faster at coring and chopping up the apples, so she did a bulk of that chore. I did some of that, but also ran the food processor and packaged course applesauce into gallon bags for the freezer. Mary also kept out 70 apples that went into the fridge to eat and make into baked apples. Empire apples don't keep long, so we need to eat lots of apples over the next couple weeks. Mary also cored, sliced, and blanched 32 apples into eight more quarts for the freezer destined for future pies and apple crisps. Twelve hours after we started, we packed our smaller freezer with 14 one-gallon bags full of future apple winemaking sauce. I now have a grand total of 78 pounds, 10.7 ounces of course-ground, frozen applesauce.
  • The used food processor I bought last year did fine at chopping up all those apples, but I'll have to progress to a different method if and when we get more apples. Mary says if I don't, she's officially on strike! We need an apple grinder that handles whole apples in a hurry, which eliminates steps and saves time in processing large numbers of apples into juice.
  • Mary picked more tomatoes and found another small bunny in the north end of the far garden. I helped her find and capture the little guy. We hauled it down the lane and released it. Mary watched a large brown rabbit in the south end of the near garden bounce off the four-foot high fence I created on the north end, then easily jumped over the two-foot high fence on the east side. I guess I need to put four-foot high chicken wire around all gardens, since adult bunnies have learned to clear two-foot high fences. DAMN!!!
  • Katie texted me a photo of her with an award (see photo, below). She won first overall out of seven racers in the Mineshaft Grinder, her first-ever half-marathon at Hope, AK. It included a 1,783-foot elevation gain for the first five miles with rainy and muddy conditions. Katie said most people rode the race on bikes.
  • Mary and I watched the Perseid Meteor Shower and saw several. Some meteors left smoking trails as they streaked across the sky. Night sky conditions were perfect.
  • We enjoyed a bottle of blackberry wine in celebration of finishing chopping up apples to make even more wine. It's really good.

  

  Katie, the Mineshaft Grinder Half-Marathon winner!