Sept. 27-Oct. 3, 2020

Weather | 9/27, 64°, 73° | 9/28, 0.51" rain yesterday & overnight, 46°, 61° | 9/29, 0.01" rain, 47°, 61° | 9/30, 51°, 68° | 10/1, 43°, 57° | 10/2, 37°, 59° | 10/3, 0.13" rain, 43°, 53° |

• Sunday, 9/27: Activities:
  • Mary moved the garlic and 2 pumpkins from the back porch closet to the upstairs south bedroom.
  • She then raked up recently mowed grass, picked a half bucket of tomatoes from the garden, and froze 3 more gallons of ripe tomatoes.
  • I cleaned the inside of the Cadillac, where lime, sand, and concrete dust leaked out from paper bags. The pickup bed would be a better transportation device.
  • I checked the 7-prong trailer plug-in on the pickup. It tests out fine, but the hanger attaching it to the rear bumper is rusted, so I wired the plug-in to the bumper, thereby transforming the pickup to a true baling wire farm truck. I also changed the pickup's air filter right when it started raining.
  • We had bacon, shallots, tomatoes, and eggs for our main meal.
  • I reviewed applying flashing to a chimney that has one side right at the peak of the roof, like our chimney is built. From several photos, I figured out what I need to do.
    
  • I used Messenger with Katie to find out she's flying south out of northern Alaska tomorrow to take in 2 months of Air Force Guard monthly stuff that she does (can't remember the lingo).
    


• Monday, 9/28: We did:
  
  • Mary finished cleaning the upstairs south bedroom.
  • It was rainy outside, so I was inside researching methods of laying brick and building chimney flashing.
    
  • I looked for bricklaying tools, found several that once belonged to Mary's Uncle Herman, and cleaned up several of them with an electric wire brush.
    


• Tuesday, 9/29: Events:
  
  • I drove the pickup to Quincy, got the manlift, and towed it home (see photo below). While in Quincy, I also bought chick & hen food, plus other items I need for fixing the chimney.
    
  • Once home, I hooked the tractor to the manlift and backed it into place on the west side of the house. It took a lot of time to do this, since the 1950 8N Ford tractor is a piddly thing with as much power as a chicken scratching dirt.
    
  • Mary froze the last of the corn, picked and froze more tomatoes, and made a 3-day supply of tortellini soup.

  

  The towable manlift behind our pickup.

  
  
• Wednesday, 9/30: Today we did:
  • I figured out how to operate the manlift. After getting it running, I went up to the roof and right away decided that the manlift wasn't close enough to the house, so I spent an hour putting chains on the tractor. Then, Mary helped me as we worked to back it further to the house.
  • I went up on the manlift a second time and determined that the chimney exposed to the outside was really shot, with bricks that were wobbly and about ready to fall. I still wasn't as close as I wanted to be, so I decided I would run to Quincy and get brackets, so I could place a plank to stand on nearer to the chimney. I made one piece of flashing, and determined I needed more flashing material. I went to Quincy as the moon was rising, bought brackets, more flashing, and gas for running the manlift and the tractor.
    
  • Mary made Mississippi mud, an intensely chocolate dessert, did some cleaning, picked more tomatoes, and harvested the 6 hills of sweet potatoes (see photo below).

  

  This year's sweet potatoes from just 6 hills.

  
  
• Thursday, 10/1: Work today involved:
  
  • I took off extremely loose bricks that were just about ready to fall from the chimney. Then, I nailed 2 brackets to the roof and nailed a 5' long 2x10 to the brackets. After that, I detached and removed chimney bricks down to close to the roof. Next, I removed piles of dried up tar, aluminum flashing, and shingles around the chimney. Uncle Herman's roofing job included vast amounts of nails, both into the shingles and into bricks of the chimney, which cracked the bricks. At one point, there were 5 nails that I removed from a 1" square area! I cleaned up the worksite, then washed up 15 bricks, of which I have many, many more to do. Below are photos that Mary took of me on the roof.
    
  • They are predicting frost for Sunday night, so Mary was busy getting garden items. She harvested and hung a bunch of comfrey. She picked 2 buckets of sweet peppers and a bucket of hot peppers. She froze most of the hot peppers and strung up and hung the ripe hot peppers to dry. She picked 7 pumpkins, 24 acorn squash, and 4.5 buckets of tomatoes. The upstairs south bedroom is loaded with garden produce.

Removing bricks from the chimney.

Leaving roof with a load of bricks.

Up in the sky.

Old bricks from the chimney.

• Friday, 10/2: Why is it that every project takes so much longer to accomplish than the time I figure it will take? And, I don't seem to get better at estimating time allocations with age. I'm nearly halfway through my rental of a lift and I'm no way near halfway through my chimney project, let alone getting another roof issue, a leaky roof where an old gas heater exhaust pipe exists. The other problem is the "Persnickety Dicky Syndrome," when I have to get everything "just so." I'm afraid I inherited that from my grandfather, Willis G. Melvin. He was the ultimate in being precise.
  
  Happenings today:
  
  • I took a few more loose and split bricks off the chimney. It's down to 3 bricks high on low side of the roof and a brick or 2 below the roof peak on the high side of the roof. Then, I used a mortar chisel and hammer and ever so lightly tapped at old mortar and stucco to remove it from remaining bricks. Most of the 100-year old mortar is impregnated with black soot, but it's twice as strong as the stucco that was put on by Mary's Uncle Herman. Still, Herman's stucco job helped fill recesses in the original mortar job.
  • Mary made flour tortillas and chimichangas for our midday meal.
    
  • In between 2 loads of laundry, Mary scrubbed bricks all day...a total of 82 bricks. That was a lot of work for her.
  • I decided to call the rental place and reserved the lift for another week, just in case I don't finish by next Tuesday at 1:30 pm, when the week's rental is due. 
  • I carefully removed more asphalt shingles to a point where I can put new ones back into place. In several places, I carefully cut them, making sure cuts will be overlapped by new shingles. While doing this, I noticed how warm it felt while working above old black tar paper. The temperature was only in the upper 50s, but it felt like it was above 70. I would hate to be working on a roof at 90°.
  • Next, I put stucco on the existing bricks exposed to the outside of the roof. Finally, I added tar paper to the left and right roof sides of the chimney.
  • After cleanup and chores, I went back up with a sheet of plastic, stuffing edges under shingles, tar paper, and the board I stand on, to guard against tomorrow's expected rain. I noticed a lot of warm air coming up the chimney. When I returned inside, I asked if the damper was open. "I don't know," said Mary. Then, we both looked in the living room. Of course, I took the stove pipe off the stove on Monday to remove soot at the bottom of the chimney prior to working on the chimney, and I didn't put the stove pipe back. Mary asked, "How the hell are we supposed to shut the damper?" There we stood, looking at thin air. We both laughed until our bellies hurt.
    


• Saturday, 10/3: Today:
  
  • We woke up to rain. It lightly rained until noon, then heavy mist started in at dusk. Crawling around on a 2x10 wet plank on our 45° angle roof was not an option today for me. Instead, I contemplated my next moves on the chimney project with bricks and flashing. 
  • Mary froze 3 gallons and most of a 4th gallon of tomatoes. We now have 12 gallons of tomatoes in the freezer. We also have a dump truck (not really) of green tomatoes ripening in the upstairs south bedroom. Any tomato with a tinge of ripening color is put in 2 large bowls and an ice cream bucket that Mary stores in the microwave when it's not in use. Somehow, the enclosed environment inside the microwave speeds up the ripening process. A pale green/yellow tomato ripens in about 4 days in the microwave. The same tomato on the kitchen counter might take a week to ripen, or not ripen at all. It's an amazing discovery.
  • Mary made a venison General Tso Chinese midday meal.
  • While walking down to the gravel road to get the mail, we saw a nighthawk zipping by, and then 7 wood ducks flying around looking for a place to land.
  • I took the manlift up to the chimney to take measurements and stuff plastic that blew out today into the cracks between the chimney and the roof that are open right now, since the prediction is for an 80 percent chance of rain tonight.
    

Sept. 20-26, 2020

 

Weather | 9/20, 43°, 76° | 9/21, 43°, 74° | 9/22, 53°,78° | 9/23, 53°, 77° | 9/24, 55°, 78° | 9/25, 53°, 79° | 9/26, 60°, 83° |

• Sunday, 9/20: What we did:
  
  • I crawled up the 45-degree of the NE valley of our roof to the chimney and measured distances for putting together scaffolding for a chimney repair job. It would be extremely difficult to construct. The chimney is in desperate shape, with 2-inch splits at the top on the north and south sides through several layers of brick. I was hoping to cinch it back together and patch if up, but it probably needs to be replaced with newly laid bricks. Mary and I talked about our options for quite some time.
    
  • I picked 2 more quarts of autumn olive berries.
  • Mary baked bread.
  • She also picked and froze 27 ears of sweet corn.
  • We both picked tomatoes.
    


• Monday, 9/21: Today:
  
  • Our chicks are 10 weeks old today.
  • I was online for most of the day, looking up bricklaying details and where I can rent a manlift in Quincy for helping me to get safely on our roof for chimney repair. Three locations exist in Quincy and one has a towable 34-foot articulating manlift. One of the businesses also is a masonry contractor that covers 40 miles around Quincy, which would include us.
    
  • I measured heights to our rooftop...it's 22.5 feet and 9 feet in from the west side of our house to the peak. The 34' manlift would work. I checked the angle of the roof peak. It's at 90 degrees, so our roof slope is 12/12, or for every 12" out, it drops 12" down.
  • While I was going up the ladder for roof measurements, I spotted 4 pelicans high overhead, riding air currents while floating eastward. 
  • At one point in the afternoon, I heard chickens raising a stink, then Mary hollered and I went running outside. She saw a big red tailed hawk fly off and we had a dead chicken, a buff Orpington cockerel, in the north chicken run. The hawk ate most of the bird...feathers were spread out in a 2-foot square area, and the mostly-eaten carcass about 10 feet away. Most all of the young chickens were in the coop, but a few were hiding in the weeds along the fence lines. 
  • Later, when we put the chickens to bed, we had a barred rock cockerel outside of the fence on east side of the north chicken run. He must have flown over the fence when the hawk struck. I had to wade through head-high ragweed and stickery cedar branches to chase it south to the human gate, where Mary drove it into the chicken run. Then, we chased it out of inside the fence line of the south chicken run, where hens stay, through the gate separating the north and south chicken runs, and then through the north coop chicken door to where he and his mates roost safe inside the coop. What an ordeal!
    
  • Mary picked tomatoes and 15 ears of corn. We both watered the gardens. I transplanted 2 strawberry plants into 4-gallon buckets. These plants were once shoots off our existing strawberry plants. I've got 12 more prior strawberry shoots that are now plants to transplant.
    
  • Mary washed and dried half of our fall and winter jackets and coats.
  • On the way to get the mail, I saw a doe and a yearling deer midway down our driveway. They trotted off to the west, but just watched me walk by, then went back to munch clover on our lane. Then, a cooper's hawk flew overhead.
    
  • We watched QBVII, a television 3-part series about a London trial between an American playwright and author of a WWII holocaust book and a Polish doctor who practiced in a German concentration camp. It was quite a moving series about forced sterilization of Jews. It hits home with recent reports of hysterectomies of Hispanic immigrants in ICE facilities in this country...an eerie example of history repeating itself.
    


• Tuesday, 9/22: Undertakings:
  • Before letting chicks outside, Mary said, "I hope today is a better day...nope, there's a red tailed hawk!" It was sitting in a tree just NW of our north chicken run. It flew off to the south. Mary walked to where it flew, made some noise with a plastic tree guard, and walked back while I released the chicks. We kept a keen eye out for hawks all day long, but didn't see any.
  • Mary picked and froze most of the ears of corn remaining in the garden. She also picked more tomatoes. They are slow to ripen, this year.
    
  • Mary mowed grass in the west yard in front of the chicken coop and south chicken run.
    
  • She also picked the rest of the hazelnuts, which amounted to a large full basket. We both husked them in the evening, while dinner was cooking.
    
  • I picked another 3 quarts of autumn olives. We now have 16 quarts from this year in the freezer.
    


• Wednesday, 9/23: I read a piece of news today that quite literally put terror in my heart. Our president says he will have to see whether he will peacefully transfer power if he loses the election. This guy is teetering on the brink of dictatorship. I don't like anything at all with the tone of his comments. My only hope is that all elected members of our government demand that the oath of office and the U.S. Constitution be implemented to the fullest extent.
  
  In other activities:
  
  • Mary checked the woods for hickory nuts. They don't exist, just like black walnuts are nonexistent this year. We're guessing that the snow we got this April nailed tree blossoms. Then, we got several weeks of dry weather, which didn't help. It might be tough on squirrels this winter.
  • Mary watered the gardens and picked some tomatoes. 
  • I picked a quart of autumn olive berries to raise our total from this year to 17 quarts.
    


• Thursday, 9/24: Today's events:
  
  • Mary cut down, sorted and put away our crop of garlic. Six varieties of garlic filled 3 old grapefruit bags that once held 18 pounds, each, of grapefruit. She also put away 6 boxes of the largest bulbs to be replanted in November for our next garlic crop. Only 4 garlic bulbs were thrown out. One was bad and three were chewed by mice, although Mary thinks they didn't develop a taste for garlic.
  • Mary also finished washing coats and jackets, and made a turkey pot pie for dinner.
  • Mary and I picked several more tomatoes and Mary found 3 more small ears of corn. She froze another gallon of ripe tomatoes, giving us 4 gallons in the freezer.
    
  • I balanced our checkbook.
  • I found old bricks and laid them on a sheet of plywood to determine their configuration to make our chimney that is 17.5" on the outside and about 8" on the inside. Each course of bricks includes 6 bricks.
  • I then dug out bricks stored behind the machine shed and sorted them according to size and condition. I came up with enough good bricks for 17 courses of 6 bricks each, way more than I require to redo the top of our chimney.
    


• Friday, 9/25: Merchandise packaging is stupid. In an attempt to disguise higher prices, stuff is packaged into diminishing sizes, plus volume amounts are all over the place. I checked out prices for stuff to use to fix our roof and chimney today. Blackjack tar is sold in 10.1-ounce tubes, when it once was in 12- or 16-ounce sizes. You can find mortar in 80-pound, 75-pound, 70-pound, 65-pound, 60-pound, 55-pound, and 50-pound bags. Want to buy a can of roof cement? It's not in a gallon can, but in a 0.90-gallon can. I wish merchandisers would be honest in their efforts to squeeze more money out of our wallets. Just raise the price. Don't squish the quantity down in size!
  
  Events:
  
  • Mary washed and dried sheets and blankets, figured 2 months of our savings funds, and stored hay that she cut several days ago in the 2nd grain bin.
  • I read books on laying bricks, then went to Quincy, shopped for a few groceries, and items to fix the chimney. The manlift isn't available through the weekend, because it's rented out. I reserved it for a week to be picked up on Tuesday at noon, which is perfectly matched to weather predictions of rain on Sunday through Monday. I found prices for mortar and other supplies at Lowes, Home Depot, and Menards and bought Portland cement, lime, and sand at the last place. My kids would have loved this trip...hours staring at bags of cement at 3 different home supply stores. It's kind of a standing joke in our family. I added 2 bushels of potting soil and a bag of chick feed, then drove my loaded Caddy home.
  • Meanwhile, Mary mowed 2 sections of lawn.
    
  • Mary and I picked tomatoes. I unloaded the car as Mary watered the gardens.
  • We ate nachos and watched a horrible movie call The Heartbreak Kid, starring Ben Stiller. We'll donate that DVD back to the Salvation Army. It's garbage.
    


• Saturday, 9/26: My sister has been posting autumn colors on Facebook as Karen and Lynn drive their pickup and camper trailer through northern states. I remember driving tour buses in late August along the Alaskan Highway between Beaver Creek, Yukon Territory, and Tok, Alaska, with brilliant yellow fall colors in aspen trees along the highway. We start seeing fall colors here in mid-September. First, it's yellow goldenrod flowers. Then, ash trees turn red to dark purple. Virginia creeper, a vine in trees, turns a bright red. It's beautiful right now. Next, shagbark hickory trees turn yellow. We're just starting to see the first tinge of that, now. Finally, deep dark shades of red and purple show as oak trees turn, which is a few weeks away. I love how our autumn in Missouri evolves over several weeks. It gives you time to enjoy the fall colors.
  
  Our day:
  
  • Mary did partial cleaning of the upstairs south bedroom...what we call the room of requirement, from the Harry Potter movies. It's one place in the house where we can block cats from marauding through our stuff. With freezing temperatures expected next week, it's where green tomatoes will be put to ripen. That's why Mary is trying to free up space in the room.
  • She also re-potted several of the house plants and moved them into the house. Tin foil covers the tops of pots, to keep cats out, which works well. We now have a large ficus tree in our living room (see photo below).
  • I transferred sacks of mortar materials into 4-gallon plastic cat litter buckets, giving the Portland cement, lime, mortar sand, and old Rapid Set mortar mix a drier place to be and it gets it out of the house. I labeled all 11 buckets and stored them in the machine shed. 
  • I found an old roll of aluminum flashing, left over from when we re-roofed our house in Circle, MT. It's 15' long, which is enough for putting new flashing on our current chimney.
  • Mary and I picked half a bucket of tomatoes, the most we've collected so far this year.
  • It was almost dark when I got the mail. A quarter of the way back from the mailbox, I mumbled something to myself and a deer that was probably only 10 feet away snorted. I watched 2 white tails bob up and down as they ran off to the west.
  • We watched the movie, Darkest Hour, one of our favorites.
    

Ficus tree in living room.

Sept. 13-19, 2020

 

Weather | 9/13, 0.02" rain, 52°, 73° | 9/14, 52°, 73° | 9/15, 53°, 79° | 9/16, 57°, 80° | 9/17, 53°, 74° | 9/18, 49°, 70° | 9/19, 42°, 68° |

• Sunday, 9/13: Today:
  
  • We experienced an electric outage between 5:30-11:09 am, which made us realize we're low on propane for using a campstove and the Coleman lantern.
  • Mary did laundry.
  • She also picked hops, tomatoes, and tomato hornworms.
  • I cleaned filters and inside covers on our 4 air conditioners.
  • I checked autumn olive trees throughout our property. They are ready to be picked, which means our plans for the week are altered. While marching around our property, I spotted a new wild flower, a rough blazing star. I also saw lots of monarch butterflies, and tons of honey bees in the goldenrod flowers that are now blooming.

Freshly picked hops.

A rough blazing star wildflower.

• Monday, 9/14: Yesterday, I couldn't get photos to load correctly, but I got the above photos related to the prior day's blog to load today, so there they are.
  
  Happenings:
  
  • Mary washed 2 loads of laundry and cut another area of tall grass with her scythe, laying it out to dry.
  • I picked autumn olive berries from one tree, then Mary joined me after lunch and together, we picked berries off 3 more trees to give us 7 quarts of autumn olives that we froze.
  • We picked several more tomatoes. Mary found just 1 army worm.
  • Our chicks are 8 weeks old and growing big, fast. We hear several half-baked attempts at crowing from cockerels every morning. We might be butchering at 12 weeks, rather than the normal 14-week stage, due to fast growth.
  • We had bacon, then shallots browned in bacon grease, then over-easy eggs dropped on the shallots, all with fresh tomatoes and toast...a truly amazing meal. It's the first time we've had bacon in about 10 years. We found smoked bacon at Aldi, instead of nitrate-treated bacon, so we gave it a try...the best!
  • Katie called. She is the foreman of her job site, constructing an electrical generation building in Nuiqsut, AK. There are 5 workers, so she does everything. The job superintendent is gone right now, so she's the acting job superintendent, too. Katie's also in charge of maintenance on the 3 Caterpillar generators currently providing electricity for the village. She procures construction items. And, she cleans and disinfects rooms once subcontractors leave. The steel subcontractor arrived today. Steel walls and roofing is going up, soon, with the building enclosed by Oct. 1. She said it was warm today...got into the mid-40s, which she says is about average for there, at this time of the year. It freezes at night. She'll be leaving on Sept. 28 to handle Air Force National Guard drill in Florida, returning to AK on Oct. 14, but her return flight to AK was just cancelled, so she has to figure that out. Her Christmas break is Dec. 18 through Jan. 14, but we don't know, yet, if she'll be visiting us, due to her many travels and this pandemic. While I was on the phone with her, one of her co-workers who also lives in the village gave her 2 boxes full of fresh produce, a rare commodity in Alaska's bush country. She was oohing and aahing over the contents at that moment. Katie told her mother that the villagers are friendly to her.
    


• Tuesday, 9/15: We did the following:
  
  • I went to Quincy and bought chick feed, along with picking up a package of coffee beans that we ordered through Sam's Club.
  • Mary checked an ear of corn that's furthest along in development. It's not ready, yet, but close.
  • She made and canned 9 pints of dill pickle relish (see photo below). She kept one pint out, which would have been the 10th pint, to refrigerate and use. She modified a recipe, adding garlic, extra dried dill, and additional onions. It tastes great. The canning process ended at 11 pm.
  • She also picked tomatoes, froze tomatoes and tomatillos, shredded and froze summer squash, and watered apple rootstocks and strawberry plants.
  
  

  

  Nine pints of dill pickle relish.

• Wednesday, 9/16: There's an inherent advantage to owning several acres of land. We own 160 acres. Probably 60-70 acres are wooded...might be more, because we're letting trees develop on land where pastures once stood. We saw up dead trees for firewood, which is our main heating source. I shoot 1 or 2 deer each hunting season, which adds meat to the freezer. We gather hickory nuts from trees in our timber. We pick raspberries, blackberries, and autumn olive berries every year, that we freeze and make into food and wine. Large gardens give us even more food. Most importantly, our 160-acre land provides home to a wide variety of wildlife that we enjoy anytime we take to the outdoors. Added to that, we enjoy hundreds of wildflowers, feeding thousands of bees (see videos below), native pollinators, and butterflies.
  
  Events:
  
  • I picked 3 quarts of autumn olives, mainly from a tree close to the gravel road and opposite from our neighbor's house, about a third of a mile SE of where our house sits. I drove the tractor cross-country on a beeline from there to our house and spotted a couple more autumn olive trees loaded with berries. Some parts I picked from had berries completely surrounding a branch of the tree.
  • After removing a plastic spigot from a glass 1.4-gallon widemouth bubbler fermenter for winemaking, I discovered a crack developing in the glass near the hole cut in the side of this container. I looked it up online and others have experienced this same flaw. I decided I don't want a replacement. It's poorly made, because the glass is too thin. Since I mainly use it to put wine in right before bottling, all I need is a bucket with the spigot installed. Food grade buckets, that were out-of-stock, are now available at Menards. They are $4, versus $20 from brewing suppliers. We decided to go buy 1 or several, tomorrow, since the stock went from 30 to 26 in a few hours at the Quincy Menard's store (obviously a hot commodity).
    
  • Mary did a load of towels.
  • She also picked and husked a big batch of hazelnuts.
  • We had a weenie roast at dusk and into the night. We tried Mary's newly-made dill relish. It's really, really good. When we started, skies were heavy with high-level smoke from fires in the Pacific NW. Clouds arrived and the wind switched to the NW, clearing the skies and allowing stars to twinkle with more brilliance. We finished around 10:30 pm.
  
  

• Thursday, 9/17: Our day:
  
  • We went to Quincy to get food grade buckets at Menards. There were only 2 left. We checked with a store employee. They didn't get the full pallet of buckets as stated on their shipping invoice, and 4 were sold to someone just prior to us arriving. We'll keep looking. 
  • We bought a nice couch for $40 at Salvation Army. They saved it for us, so we can drive the pickup in tomorrow to take it home. Mary bought a large square basket with a lid that originally was a picnic basket. She transformed it into a sewing basket.
  • We picked another bunch of tomatoes. Mary found a hornworm.
    


• Friday, 9/18: Events:
  
  • We drove the pickup to Quincy, bought 4 food grade 5-gallon buckets and 5 Gamma Seal bucket lids at Lowe's, then we picked up our new-to-us couch at the Salvation Army. I picked up another bag of chick feed that I put on top of the couch cushions. It rode very nicely in the pickup bed to home. We also bought 4 extra couch pillows at $2 each from the Salvation Army. With those and the 2 couch pillows that came with the couch, Mary looked like a stuffed pillow hugger on the way home.
  • We moved a cabinet from the living room to the west first-floor bedroom/storage room, moved my old chair to where a dog bed once was in the living room (it's now a chair for a dog), then moved in the couch. It fits perfectly and is more comfortable than the chair.
  • Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg died today.
  • We moved house plants, that are outside all summer, into the wood shed, due to a cold low temperature prediction. It went down to 42° overnight.
    


• Saturday, 9/19: Happenings:
  
  • Mary and I picked 116 pears off the Bartlett pear tree. I used a step ladder and an extended handle fruit picker to get those at the top of the tree. We got all but a couple that were high and above criss-cross branches. Several were quite small, with some so small, we threw them out. I have enough to make a big batch of pear wine after they fully ripen. At night, I wrapped all of them in quarter-sheets of newspaper and put them in 2 drawers of an old chest of drawers on the upstairs landing.
  • Mary picked 16 ears of sweet corn. She processed and froze them after dark.
  • Mary also picked another bunch of tomatoes. She froze more. We now have just over 2 gallons of tomatoes. When we have 5 gallons, she'll make a batch of salsa.
    
  • I picked what amounted to a little over another quart of autumn olive berries for the freezer.
  • Mary picked more hazelnuts and took the husks off. There are still more green hazelnuts on the bushes.
  • When walking to the tractor to go autumn olive picking, the chickens were putting up a stink, so I ran to the chicken yard. I dropped my picking bowls when I saw a Cooper's hawk fly up and then down to a post on the west side of the chicken run. Once I hollered, it flew off into the north woods. All chickens, both young and old, were hiding in the tall weeds that I leave in place in a 3-foot swath next to all fencing. They're smart birds. We didn't lose any, but they were greatly disturbed.
  • Mary saw 30-40 pelicans flying in formation from the west. Once they got over our north woods, they caught updrafts, circled for a bit, then streamed off to the east.
    

Sept. 6-12, 2020

 Weather | 9/6, 70°, 87° | 9/7, 68°, 79° | 9/8, 0.01" rain, 57°, 61° | 9/9, 0.72" rain, 53°, 60° | 9/10, 0.17" rain, 52°, 59° | 9/11, 0.15" rain, 58°, 70° | 9/12, 2.66" rain, 60°, 77° |

• Sunday, 9/6: Happenings:
  
  • We had high SE winds throughout the day, so we stayed inside during the day. 
  • We watered gardens. Bill and Mary picked worms and worm eggs. 
  • I took a video of a native bumblebee on a thistle blossom (see below). 
  • We lit a campfire on our cement pad in the west yard after the wind died down. I filled 4 buckets with water and took our big fire extinguisher and laid them all near the fire, as a precaution. We roasted pork loin pieces on long weenie roasting forks. We had to use flashlights to determine if the meat was done. We were there for 2-3 hours. 
  
   
• Monday, 9/7: I don't know why, but catching fish is an absolute joy. First, you try to use a lure that matches something fish are eating on that day, at that time. Then, how you show off the lure helps entice fish to bite. For instance, I love flipping a surface lure into waters occupied by bass. A Hula Popper is my favorite. I discovered today that 2 pops with that lure, followed by slowly reeling it in a couple feet, often resulted in a big bass gulping it up. Bill caught a bass on a lure he recently bought. It's a generic lure that we always name a "Walmart Special." It's cheap and always catches fish. You can guess where he bought the lure. He also used a lure he bought me for my birthday, and caught another fish. Mary, Bill, and I caught several bass, threw back little ones, and kept 5 large fish. It was really fun. Fishing photos are below.
  • After we finished fishing, Mary cooked a fish dinner that included a cucumber salad and garlic toast.
  • Bill left  around 4 pm to go back to his place in St. Louis.
  • Mary and I picked about a half of a bucket of tomatillos, hot peppers, and tomatoes.
  • In the evening, thunderstorms passed us to the north, again, as usual!

Bill with a bass caught on his new lure.

Dick with a bass caught on a Hula Popper.

• Tuesday, 9/8: Rain is such a pleasant event, especially when it's been absent for several days. Rain clouds are marching through, from the SW to the NE, which is a prominent moisture-producing direction at our property. Today, it was mainly mist, but future weather forecasts predict higher possibilities. Rain gives garden plants needed sustenance. Rain swells cracks in our clay ground shut and puts a sponginess underfoot. Rain gives us a chance to hibernate inside without remorse. Rain is soothing, really.
  
  In other events:
  
  • Mary did her worm and worm egg picking early, happily reporting that the gardens didn't need watering.
  • She made flour tortillas and fajitas for our main meal, using 2 large bell peppers and onions from our garden, venison meat from last year's hunting, and salsa generated from our garden.
  • I did a bunch of chimney fixing research online...yikes...I'm still not looking forward to that job.
  • I replaced the wheels on a hand truck that we use to haul the big plastic garbage can down our quarter-mile gravel lane.
  • I finished Patrick O'Brian's The Thirteen Gun Salute, his 13th book of the Aubrey/Maturin series.
  • We had a sudden crack from a thunderstorm in the late evening.
    


• Wednesday, 9/9: Happenings:
  
  • Mary thawed, removed ice, and cleaned our oldest deep chest freezer. She tossed outdated packages of blackberries, corn, strawberries, and a 2010 package of pear butter.
  • I drove the pickup to Quincy, mainly to get another bag of chick food...picked up a few other things. Bought gas for $1.79 a gallon on the way back home.
  • We watched the 1998 movie, You've Got Mail.
    


• Thursday, 9/10: We did:
  • Today was a drizzly day, with a lot of mist outside...a good day for hibernating.
  • It was the first of several times when we froze garden items. Mary froze her first bag of tomatoes. I helped her husk several tomatillos, which turned into almost 3 bags in the freezer.
  • I helped Mary husk some hazelnuts. It was only a fraction of nuts still out on the bushes.
  • We ate nachos and watched the 2007 movie, Stardust.
  • Katie texted that she was going to try the taste of whale.
    


• Friday, 9/11: Nineteen years ago on this day, our family woke up in a campground in southern Saskatchewan. The day prior, we left our home in Circle, MT, heading to Besnard Lake in northern Saskatchewan. At the U.S./Canadian border, a very nice Canadian border patrolman leaned in our pickup's window and chatted with us for several minutes. As we drove north on Sept. 11th, car after car passing us, honking as they went by. We didn't have a radio in the 1989 Chevy 1-ton crew-cab pickup, so we didn't know what was happening. We stopped at the Prince Albert (SK) Visitor's Center and the woman at the desk said, "I was hoping people like you wouldn't come in today." We asked why and she said, "It's World War III out there. Oh, you don't know, do you?" Then she pointed to the TV screen and explained. The borders were closed. We stayed at a campground on the edge of Prince Albert. That evening, we walked around the campground peering at TV screens viewed by other campers, seeing the horrific images played over and over, again. We didn't know how long we'd be in Canada, but decided to get on with our vacation. While the world was scared, we camped, fished, and enjoyed our vacation, including an evening watching an amazing northern lights display. We were about the only campers in the campground. It was great. After a few days, we headed home. The U.S./Canadian border was open just a few hours prior to us arriving. A team of about a dozen U.S. Border Patrol personnel met us, asked questions, and checked us out. They even looked underneath the boat trailer and the pickup, using mirrors on handheld extensions. Even so, we went through the border in just a few minutes. A husband and wife with 2 kids and 2 Golden Retrievers don't look like terrorists, I guess.
  
  In today's happenings:
  
  • I racked the blackberry and watermelon wines. The blackberry wine was still at 1.001 specific gravity and the watermelon was at 0.998, or a little stronger. The blackberry tastes amazing, while the watermelon still smells bad, tastes a little better, but not great. I removed a quarter of the lees out of the watermelon wine, reducing it to a full gallon.
  • Mary made venison stew and biscuits.
  • She also picked some tomatoes and tomatillos before an expected rain.
  • It rained in gushers throughout the evening. We kept adding buckets into the sunroom, catching drips in the ceiling and decided to stay up overnight.


• Saturday, 9/12: Events:
  • The rain ended at 4:30 am, so we ate breakfast, did chores at daybreak, then slept for a couple hours.
  • I burned boxes, an old foam pad, and an old boat tarp, all piled up in the machine shed.
  • Mary picked hazelnuts. I helped her husk them.
  • We went to bed early.

August 30-Sept. 5, 2020

Weather | 8/30, 53°, 79° | 8/31, 0.01", 59°, 77° | 9/1, 0.91", 61°, 75° | 9/2, 65°, 83° | 9/3, 61°, 85° | 9/4, 51°, 83° | 9/5, 55°, 87° |

• Sunday, 8/30: When you hear a wild canine howl, it puts a sense of apprehension in your soul. It shouldn't. Coyotes and wolves are just communicating. Yet, a howl, when let go close by, definitely brings your senses to attention. We experienced it when we stepped out for the dogs' last walk. Coyotes first howled off to the distant north. Then a group howled that was closer. Finally, howling came from right in our north yard. Amber, our vizsla/pitbull cross, let out with an angry "muff." We never saw the coyotes, but I kept my flashlight on as we walked away from them to the south on our gravel lane. As we walked, Mary and I discussed how we're seeing fewer bunnies since spring. No doubt, coyotes are visiting Melvin's Restaurant occasionally for rabbit dinner.
  
  In other news:
  
  • Mary dug up the potatoes. We got about 20 pounds of mostly small spuds. Dry weather, close planting, and a late planting reduced their growth potential. Mary said despite all of that, getting any potato is nice this year. 
  • I finished stringing electric wires on the NE corner of the far garden fence. Then I cut 2 pieces of steel angle iron from an old bed frame for horizontal bracing, cut 1/4-inch rebar into four foot-long pieces for wire tightening rods, ground notches into 3  steel posts, and started putting up the SE corner. 
  • Mary baked 4 loaves of bread. 
  • We watered gardens. Mary's count was 10 worm eggs, and 8 worms. While watering, we smelled a skunk on the east breezes. 
  • Katie texted that snow was in the forecast tomorrow for her job site at Nuiqsut, AK. 
  • Bill said he's arriving here Friday for Labor Day weekend. 
  • The Ironweed flowers are blooming and quite striking. Below are photos of it, and a picture of an ironweed blossom with a monarch butterfly on it.

Purple ironweed blossoms.

A monarch butterfly on ironweed.

• Monday, 8/31: Our young chickens are 7 weeks old, today (see video below). That means they're halfway to butchering age for the cockerels. They are growing nicely. That's a fun feature about chickens...they grow quickly. At this stage, we can distinguish pullets from cockerels. We bought 3 Rhode Island Red pullets, but we received 2 additional Rhodie pullets, plus a barred rock pullet and a buff Orpington pullet, for a grand total of 7 more egg-laying birds to add to our current flock of 4 hens. Our rooster, Leo, will be busy. Obviously, sexing newly-hatched chicks is not an exact science.
  
  In other news:
  
  • The day started with heavy mist, which gave us some much-needed moisture.
  • I made waffles for our main meal.
  • I installed the SE corner posts for the far garden electric fence. After tamping gravel in around the posts, I discovered I missed grinding a notch into one post, so I strung all of my extension cords, a heavy cord from the house, and a trouble light, from the house to the handheld grinder at that corner of the garden. It was 375 feet of cords, which is too far for 14-guage electrical extensions. I only used the grinder for a few seconds, then disconnected the evidence of my redneck fix to my stupidity.
  • Mary packaged up donations to the Salvation Army thrift store, and made a shopping list, since we have to go shopping for chick food tomorrow.
  • We watered both gardens and Mary found her normal passel of worm eggs and worms.
    
    
    
    
  
  
• Tuesday, 9/1: Shopping is a mixed blessing for us. We're able to get away from the house, even if it's only 35 miles away. After avoiding burr-up-the-butt drivers, viewing shoppers using facemasks as chin straps, and listening to all of the city noise, we feel relieved to be home where all we hear is the wind and birds and crickets singing.
  
  In other news:
  
  • We woke to a thunderstorm, that gave us a good, healthy rain. Today was the first time we haven't watered the garden in several weeks.
  • We shopped in Quincy.
  • Mary killed a bunch of worm eggs and worms. She says some sungold tomatoes are ripe.
  • We watched a movie.
  
  
• Wednesday, 9/2: Today we did:
  
  • Mary mowed the west yard.
  • I hung the electric fence wires on the SE corner of the far garden. I had to let out wire from connections at the gate, because each corner post is a little further outside of where it once was located. I also took apart the last corner, the SW of the garden. Posts are severely rusted, so I'll replace them.
  • Mary did her daily worm egg and worm search.
  • I did online research on ladder roof hooks for repairing the chimney...a job I'm not looking forward to at all!
  • Mom texted that a grass fire and extremely high winds forced residents of Jordan, Montana (west of her in Circle) to evacuate. The fire was headed to Cohagen, which was also evacuated. I checked a 10:30 pm update on Montana Public Radio that indicated all who were evacuated returned to their homes.


• Thursday, 9/3: Events:
  
  • Mary mowed a bunch more of the lawns. 
  • I put up the SW corner posts of the far garden electric fence, using newer steel posts and newly-cut angle iron from an old bed frame. Then, I strung 7 of the 10 wires, again, letting out each of the wires to fit a corner put in the ground wider than it was originally installed. I need to finish soon, because one of the corn silks is turning brown and once the sweet corn ears fill, raccoons will be tempted to rip and shred.
  • My old employer, Mid-Rivers Telephone Co-op, reported they have burned up facilities near Jordan, MT, and in Musselshell County (Roundup). BLM reported the Jordan fire involved 30,000 acres. They also report a 40,000-acre fire in Rosebud County, 20 miles north of Ashland, MT. A lot of grassland burned up, which is hard for ranchers.
  • Karen, and her husband, Lynn, have recently shown nice pictures on Facebook of them camping in Utah and Colorado.
  • We got back to garden watering. I picked a handful of sungold cherry tomatoes. Mary found fewer worm eggs than worms, which means we're getting to the end of horn worm season.


• Friday, 9/4: It's Waffle Friday:
  • I made waffles for breakfast, of course.
  • Mary washed sheets, cleaned house, froze blueberries and a watermelon, and turned over mowed grass that we'll save for composting.
  • I finished stringing electric wires in the far garden, then straightened and pounded in all but 2 posts between the corners and got electric wire plastic connectors in appropriate places on each post. I still need to splice out rusty wires and other fix ups.
  • Mary watered gardens and picked fewer eggs and worms.
  • I drilled holes in old Gatorade bottles and put mothballs in them to keep toothy varmints from chewing on car wiring in Bill's car.
  • Bill showed up around 9 pm, so we ate nachos and watched 2 movies.


• Saturday, 9/5: Rap music, Black actors playing our nation's founding fathers, and lots of dancing is what we watched after dark when Bill streamed his phone to our TV so we could watch the play, Hamilton. It comes at you fast and furious. We all liked it. I can understand why it was so popular on Broadway. It's a show well worth viewing.
  
  Other happenings:
  
  • We finished the far garden electric fence. I say "we," because Bill helped me. We replaced rusty sections of wiring. Then, Bill replaced bare hot jump wires around a post near the gate handles with new jump wires covered with 1/4-inch plastic tubing (see below). It's too bad I didn't do a before and after photo, because what he replaced was hideous. I tightened all 10 wires and connected hot and ground wires from the near to the far gardens. Our corn is now raccoon-proof.

  

  Far Garden electric jump wires that Bill installed.

  • Mary picked some of the hazelnuts...several still remain on the bushes. She also collected dried grass, watered all gardens, and killed worm eggs and worms.
  • Katie texted Mary. She said the ptarmigan are starting to turn white. Her favorite character in Hamilton is King George III.

August 23-29, 2020

Weather | 8/23, 67°, 91° | 8/24, 71°, 93° | 8/25, 68°, 92° | 8/26, 68°, 91° | 8/27, 70°, 90° | 8/28, 70°, 89° | 8/29, 64°, 79° |

• Sunday, 8/23: Happenings:
  
  • Mary made a turkey pot pie and washed 2 loads of laundry.
  • She also picked an ice cream bucket of green/wax beans. They're coming on strong.
  • We watered the gardens. We're very dry, now. Several trees in the woods are losing yellow leaves.
  • Mary's garden death count: 19 worm eggs and 1 horn worm.
  • I did another wall calendar, Styrofoam job, this time on the pickup's windows.


• Monday, 8/24: We did the following:
  • I called McKenzie Auto about them looking at a few things on the Cadillac. They can get to it Thursday morning.
  • I sharpened my mower's blade and mowed the trail to the north side of the far garden and the outside of that garden's electric fence.
  • Mary did laundry, picked green beans and cucumbers, and cut beans into processed size.
  • We watered the gardens. Mary found 27 worm eggs and 8 horn worms.


• Tuesday, 8/25: Events:
  
  • We dropped the Cadillac off at McKenzie Auto in Lewistown, MO.
  • I mowed the inside of the far garden. Grass was knee-high, so the going was tough.
  • Mary did house cleaning and picked more beans.
  • We watered the gardens. Mary found 34 worm eggs and 3 horn worms.


• Wednesday, 8/26: The lack of supplies in grocery stores is forcing us to do a better job at stocking up this year. We like tea. We drink a lot of iced tea and we prefer Red Rose Tea, which we only found at the Quincy Walmart store. When this store quit selling it, we went directly to the Red Rose Tea website and purchased 12 boxes, each containing 100 teabags (see below). This should keep us in tea for a year. It's nice to be able to find what you want online.
  

  

  When they quit selling what you want, buy it from the source!

  In other news:
  
  • I removed the 3 metal fence posts of the NW corner of the far garden, notched them with a handheld grinder, then pounded them into the ground, complete with gravel punched down the side of the posts with a spud bar and a tension wire crisscross put between them (see photo below). I find this system stays put in clay ground after heavy rains.
  • Mary washed and dried towels, made flour tortillas and chimichangas, and froze 30 servings of green/wax beans. She also turned the hay laying down in the south lawn.
  • Mary started to water gardens and I joined in later. She found 27 worm eggs, 9 horn worms, and an army worm. Without daily watering and worm detection, our garden plants would be gone.

  

  Garden electric corner post, with Plato puppy in the background.
• Thursday, 8/27: Happenings:
  
  • Mary picked 2 ice cream buckets full of beans and two 4-gallon buckets. She then made a batch of pickles. It was going to be 12 quart jars. Unfortunately, one of the jars broke at the base, so we got 11 jars of pickles (see photos below).
  • I ran 2 tanks of gas through the grass trimmer, cleaning out knee-high grass and weeds under the electric fence wires around the far garden (a continuation of grass trimming that I did yesterday). It's tricky, with loose wires and thick vegetation.
  • We watered both gardens...together on the far garden, then I watered the near garden while Mary killed things on plants in far garden. Her count was 23 worm eggs, 8 horn worms, and 1 cucumber beetle.
  • We could see Hurricane Laura's clouds on the southern horizon all day. The edge of high clouds eventually were right overhead, but the sun still scorched through. We are hot and crispy, here.

  

  Washing cucumbers in the sink.

  

  Eleven quart jars of processed pickles.

  
  
• Friday, 8/28: Today's activities:
  
  • I called McKenzie Auto, was put on hold for 10 minutes, so I hung up. Mary and I drove the pickup to Lewistown. Our car was in their garage with nobody around for a couple minutes, then a mechanic walked in. They were essentially done with our car...they found nothing wrong with the front end and fixed chewed wiring that resulted in the dash message of "Service Power Steering." We drove home after paying the bill, Mary in the pickup and me in Cadillac. Mary said the pickup was the nicest to drive of any pickup-related vehicle we've owned.
  • I weedwhacked the rest of the grass/weeds under the far garden's electric fence wires.
  • Mary picked the last of the green beans that she wants to freeze.
  • She also picked up dry hay and put it in the second bin.
  • Mary watered the far garden and I watered the near garden. She killed the normal amount of worm eggs and horn worms.
  • We watched the 2000 movie, Finding Forrester.


• Saturday, 8/29: According to WGEM in Quincy, we're in a drought. Open this WGEM Weather page, scroll down to the drought map, and we're the county NW of the word "Quincy." It's no surprise. Any bare ground is cracked. Leaves are falling out of trees. The gallons of water we pour on the gardens every day keep our plants alive. Our location defies rain development when we get in a dry spell. Hurricane Laura waved wispy high clouds at us as it dumped rain on Arkansas. This morning a weather front marched out of Kansas, then dived south. A massive derecho storm swept across Iowa on 8/10, which was our last rain of half an inch. We live on a rain-repellent hill, where we watch weather go close by, all around us, and we don't get a drop. On the happy side, we also watch tornadoes go by us that never come through our property. It's an odd phenomenon.
  
  In other news:
  
  • Mary processed the beans she most recently picked, yielding 22 additional servings, plus 2 quart bags for a Thanksgiving bean casserole. The grand total is 65 servings. Mary is beaned out! It's time to pull the bean plants.
  • I strung the electric fence wires on the NW corner of the far garden, then reset the metal posts on the NE corner and started stringing those wires. I'm pressing close to the raccoon corn ripping and slashing day for our sweet corn. We keep seeing what I call white raccoon corn cheese, aka poop, all along our gravel lane, so I've got to keep plugging on the far garden electric fence.
  • Katie texted photos of a visiting musk ox to the construction site where she's working at Nuiqsut, Alaska (see photo below). 
  • We did our normal garden watering and worm picking dance...Mary's count was 22 worm eggs and 12 worms of various types.

  

  A musk ox at Katie's worksite in Nuiqsut, AK.

  
  

August 16-22, 2020

Weather | 8/16, 57°, 83° | 8/17, 62°, 82° | 8/18, 57°, 83° | 8/19, 56°, 79° | 8/20, 53°, 79° | 8/21, 57°, 83° | 8/22, 62°, 87° |

• Sunday, 8/16: Happenings today:
  
  • Mom texted that she's tired after attending Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) rodeos 4 nights in a row. She said, "The PRCA rodeos here in Circle were very good. There were a huge number of well-known riders from all over the U.S. and Canada, due to the fact that many rodeos have been cancelled everywhere."
  • Mom also texted that Ernie Carlson, who Katie once worked for, died of a stroke 10 days ago. He was 66.
  • Mary planted 12 strawberry runners into potting soil in Styrofoam cups.
  • We planted strawberries in buckets this spring. I got "sand" from a creek NE of the chicken yard, but about half of it, unbeknownst to me at the time, was mainly clay, which killed 2/3 of the strawberry plants. I took 2 of these buckets, dumped them out, salvaged the non-clay layers of soil, added better sandy soil, topsoil, wood ashes, leaves, grass, and topped it off with 3" of potting soil and an inch of grass mulch. When they're ready, we'll plant each strawberry runner into 1 of these buckets with better soil.
  • Mary used her scythe and cut a section of long grass south of the house that we'll use for hay on the floor of the chicken coop this winter.
  • Mary's death count from the gardens includes 29 worm eggs, 4 army worms, 4 cabbage worms, 1 tomato worm, and 1 cucumber beetle.
  • We listened to the last few minutes of the St. Louis Blues/Vancouver Canucks playoff game 3 that ended regulation play in a 2-2 tie. It was after midnight, so we went to bed. Noticed the next morning that the Blues won 3-2. The Canucks lead the series 2-1. Hopefully, the Blues kick it on, now. They always play the last game of the day in Edmonton, Alberta, where half of the NHL teams are playing in isolation, due to the coronavirus. GO BLUES!


• Monday, 8/17: During our "weenie roast" last night, where we used metal weenie roasting sticks to cook slices of pork loin over an outdoor fire, Mary and I discussed house plans. I tossed out the idea that maybe building a new house is wrong for someone my age. She disagreed, saying that her Uncle Herman was in his 70s and 80s when he put in new floors and built the north addition to our existing home. It's really never too late to do whatever one's heart desires. Onward...CHARGE!
  
  Today's happenings:
  
  • I called our insurance company, took the Buick off insurance, and added the GMC pickup. The change cost us absolutely nothing, and I was able sign paperwork enabling the change online. That's neat.
  • Called McKenzie Auto. They don't do state vehicle inspections, now, and they said to see Travis Fleer. Called Fleer Tire. Travis is the only one at his garage who can do inspections and he's on the county board, so he's not in today, due to a county board meeting. His employee said to try Joe Howse in LaBelle. I drove back roads to LaBelle. Howse's door was locked, no one was there, and there wasn't even a sign on this place of business. I'll have to get the pickup licensed tomorrow.
  • Mary did a deep water to both gardens, which took all afternoon. Her garden death toll was 31 worm eggs, 6 cabbage worms, 4 army worms, 1 horn worm, and 2 cucumber beetles.
  • After finishing eating next to the outdoor fire, it started raining. We took items inside, walked dogs, then after two spittles of rain, the skies broke to crystal clear and we went back to the fire.
  • Checked online prior to bedtime, and the Blues beat the Canucks 3-1 and tied the series 2-2. GO BLUES!


• Tuesday, 8/18: Events:
  
  • I drove the pickup to Lewistown and got it inspected. I shouldn't have been concerned about ABS light. Inspection involved, left turn, right turn, high beam, horn, brake lights, sticker in window, you're done.
  • Travis Fleer, who did the vehicle inspection, puts out-of-state deer hunters in stands in properties adjoining us. He said someone recently bought the land west of us. He thinks it's someone who bought the land to hunt on. Travis lost the lease on the land north of us, because the owner's grandson wants to hunt there. That explains why it was quieter to the north last hunting season.
  • I drove to Monticello, our county seat, and got license plates for the pickup. It's now legal.
  • Katie messaged me that I have a daughter who can help build a house. That's nice of her.
  • Mary made a big batch of vegetable soup and dusted more books.
  • Her garden worm killing list is 13 worm eggs, 2 cabbage worms, 2 horn worms, and 2 cucumber beetles. She saw 1 corn tassel and the start of some corn ears...flashing red lights for me to finish electric fence around far garden before raccoons attack!


• Wednesday, 8/19: Some nights, we're reminded how close we are to the wild here on our property. Such was the case today. We walked the dogs south, partway down our quarter-mile gravel lane. Right next to Bluegill Pond (it once had bluegill fish in it), ears went up on both of our dogs as they peered intently in the pond's direction, westerly. After a couple minutes, Mary and I walked back north. The dogs followed, with ears laid back and intensity in their trot home. A barred owl called from the edge of our west lawn as we followed the fast-moving dogs to the house. Immediately after getting inside, Mary heard coyotes yipping. They sounded like they were between the woodshed and the machine shed, about 100 feet from the house. It's a wild place. We like it that way.
  
  In other news:
  
  • I found stainless steel screws, removed the rusty bolts, and attached the new Missouri license plates on the GMC pickup.
  • Mary picked a possible "pickle batch" of cucumbers. She also picked a handful of wax beans, with more coming.
  • She made biscuits to go with the vegetable soup...yum!
  • Mary watered gardens and picked 7 worm eggs, no worms, 2 cucumber beetles.
  • I racked the watermelon wine and the blackberry wine. I might be tossing the watermelon wine. It smells terrible and tastes just as bad. Mary says it tastes like you sucked on the rear end of a polecat. She never wants to taste it, again. We tasted the blackberry fines, or leftovers, which usually leave you with a strong yeasty suggestion, and they tasted wonderful. Mary says it tastes like alcoholic Kool-Aid. The 2 wines, after racking, are pictured below.
  • I reviewed pickup wheel pricing online. I'll order new ones, since they are only $25 more a piece than used rims from a junkyard in Monroe City, 38 miles south of us.

Blackberry (left) & watermelon (right) wine.

• Thursday, 8/20: I went shopping in Quincy. Traffic was high. Employees guard some store entrances requiring face mask usage. People who once didn't wear masks, now wear them as chin straps. I'm amazed at how completely ignorant some people are about working to curtail this pandemic. Covid-19 numbers are skyrocketing here and yet, several people still act like it's all a hoax. Quincy's Adams County has 692 cases, 52 in Lewis, our county, and 307 in Marion County, south of us where Hannibal is. This is no ruse and I only hope those of us who are trying to curtail it don't succumb to the disease, due to the incompetency of the mentally midgets, of which there seems to be vast abundance, locally.
  
  In other news:
  
  • I texted with Karen for several minutes.
  • Mary picked a half of a grocery bag of cucumbers and a handful of green beans. She also picked 100 persimmon leaves and laid them out to dry.
  • She watered both gardens, taking about 2 hours. She found 7 worm eggs and 2 army worms.
  • After I got home, and while I was unloading and putting items away, Katie called, asking for 401K advice. We talked for several minutes. 
  • We had nachos and watched the 3rd Hobbit movie.


• Friday, 8/21: Waffle Day! Earlier this year, we decided to make Friday morning the time when we eat waffles for breakfast. I took a waffle recipe that I got from Mom and altered it. Instead of egg whites and melted margarine, I use ground flax meal. It's a simple recipe...1/2 cup white flour, 2 cups wheat flour (we like King Arthur wheat flour), 1 teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon baking powder, 4 heaping tablespoons ground flax mixed with hot water in a bowl, and enough hot water to turn the mix into a semi-thick liquid soup. This makes 4 waffle squares. I cook them up in a Nordic Ware waffle iron my parents gave us for Christmas in 1991. When I can get them, we add strawberries with margarine spread and honey. Waffles make our Friday mornings a real treat.
  
  In other news:
  
  • Mary turned over the hay she cut a few days ago and cut another small patch in the south lawn, laying it out to dry.
  • I spread out a canvas tarp and surveyed under the pickup's rear end. A paper stamp stuck on the driveshaft confirmed that it's relatively new. It's aluminum and there's no hanging bearing, which is something that always wears out. The spare tire is flat and on an extremely rusty rim. Even though the previous owner said he replaced some brake lines, those running to the back need replacing. The muffler is good. The right rear shock is badly dinged and both brake backing plates, referred to as dust covers on disc brakes, are rusted through and need immediate replacement. It looks like axle shafts must be removed to get the brake dust covers on...a major job. Hey, the pickup was cheap for a reason. I knew that when I bought it.
  • I wrote a list of items that need fixing on the pickup, and ranked them from 1 to 10 in priority.
  • We ate scrambled eggs cooked on a small outside fire. We call it smoked eggs, because the smoke from the hardwood fire gives them a smokey flavor.
  • I helped Mary water gardens. With me hauling water and Mary pouring out the watering cans, it greatly reduces garden watering time. I picked 3 strawberries and stomped down mole borrowings under the bottom wires of the near garden's electric fence. 
  • Mary picked more cucumbers and beans.
  • Mary found and killed 33 worm eggs and 2 horn worms. She showed me a snowy tree cricket that we always hear every night in our trees.
  • Two of our five pumpkins are turning orange. I pointed at growing squash and Mary realized that they weren't acorn squash, but summer scalloped squash. The seed accidentally got into our acorn squash seed packet. Oh well, we'll shred them up to make yummy chocolate/summer squash cake.


• Saturday, 8/22: Happenings:
  
  • Oops...forgot in yesterday's waffle recipe that I also add a cup of milk to the batter.
  • Mom and I texted for several minutes. Her garden is productive. Temperatures have been in the 90s and over 100 for several days in Circle, MT.
  • Mary picked another bunch of cucumbers and beans.
  • After processing, she froze 13 meal-sized packages of beans. She also froze 12 meal-sized packages of blueberries that I recently bought at Aldi.
  • Mary stored 3 oversized wheelbarrow loads of hay into the second grain bin. Each load was stacked up to her head in height.
  • I heard electric snapping about 15 feet from the electric fencer unit, carefully dug down and determined it emanated from where I soldiered a spice together. Apparently, the heat shrink covering was faulty. I covered it with several layers of electrical tape, buried it, then checked at the fence and had no electric fence pulse at all. Obviously, my old soldered connection was bad and wrapping it with electrical tape separated the union completely. I did a quick fix of swapping wires, to put the hot charge through what once was the ground wire from the fencer to the fence. I'll fix the bad connection later.
  • We watered both gardens. Mary nailed 19 worm eggs, 6 small horn worms, an army worm, and an unidentified worm.
  • I priced out pickup rims and rear brake dust covers at RockAuto.
  • I applied redneck sun protection to the inside of the windows of the Cadillac...old Mid-Rivers wall calendars cut to size and propped into place with pieces of Styrofoam that came with fish and animal shipments into Petco.
  • The blackberry wine is down to just a couple tiny bubbles of fermentation every few seconds...almost done fermenting.