Jan. 29-Feb. 4, 2023

Weather | 1/29, light snow, 14°, 19° | 1/30, 6°, 19° | 1/31, 0°, 21° | 2/1, 7°, 37° | 2/2, 17°, 46° | 2/3, 0°, 21° | 2/4, 14°, 54° |

• Sunday, 1/29: Racking 2 Wines
  
  • Mary made a midday meal of venison stew and biscuits. It was very good.
    
  • Bill and I walked dogs on an eastern loop. We visited the south shore of Wood Duck Pond. Then, we walked to the Cedar East Woods Deer Blind that Bill helped me start, but didn't see as a finished blind. We returned home.
  • I caught trumpeter swans flying overhead in two videos (see below) in the evening.
    
  • Bill and I racked the persimmon wine for the second time, since there was a little over an inch of fines in the bottom of the carboy. I used up more than 1.5 liters of must that was thrown out with the fines. We added a gram of Kmeta to approximately 5 gallons of must. The specific gravity is 0.991 and the pH is 3.3. Bill tasted it and said it had a strong yeast flavor. We added 2 cups of distilled water to top it up.
    
  • Next we racked the garlic wine for the third time. The must was very clear, with about half an inch of fines on the bottom of the carboy. The specific gravity is the same as last month at 0.994. We didn't add Kmeta or check the pH. It should be ready to bottle in a month.
    
  • While Bill and I worked on wine, Mary cross stitched and we all listened to the AFC playoff game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Cincinnati Bengals. The Chiefs won 23-20. They play the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl in two weeks.
    
  • We watched an episode of Young Indiana Jones.
    
    
  Two quiet trumpeter swans flying over our house.
  

Noisy trumpeter swans flying northeast to southwest.

• Monday, 1/30: Swans in Corn Field
  
  • I made waffles for breakfast.
    
  • Mary, Bill, and I talked for quite awhile.
    
  • Bill left for his home in St. Charles around 2 p.m.
    
  • As he was driving down the gravel road to the east of us, he spotted several trumpeter swans in the neighbor's corn field, took photos, and texted them to us (see below). This is where they fly to every morning and fly away from every evening.
  • Mary and I walked the dogs on the east loop.
    
  • Tonight's low is predicted to be 3°. Pets sleeping around the base of the woodstove speaks volumes for the penetration of warm wood heat.

Trumpeter swans in neighbor's corn field east of us.

More swans where there's plenty of spilled corn.

• Tuesday, 1/31: Food Processor Find
  
  • Today was a cold day for this neck of the woods.
    
  • Last night I spotted a Hamilton Beach food processor for $20, similar to our current one. The one for sale has been used 5 times. I want a food processor I can use to crunch up apples for apple cider production. It's in Warrenton, MO, about 30 miles west of St. Louis. I left a message last night with the person selling it. I texted Bill this morning to see if I could overnight with him and pick up the plywood he has saved out for us that his work place was throwing out. He's extra busy, because several employees didn't show yesterday, and he will have to work after hours tonight and maybe tomorrow. I suggested I overnight on Thursday after getting the food processor, then picking up the plywood early Friday morning, before work begins for him. That's what we'll try. Hopefully, the food processor doesn't sell before Thursday. I relayed my plans to the woman selling the processor.
    
  • I worked on our 2022 tax return, but didn't finish.
  • I walked the dogs on the south loop trail.
    
  • Mary made a venison General Tso dish for our main meal and finished her cross stitch Halloween Season of the Witches pattern (see photo, below).
  • More waterfowl flew over at dusk. I saw about a thousand snow geese fly southeast. I think they were heading for the Mississippi River.
    
  • We watched two episodes and finished Ken Burns' The Civil War.
  • While walking dogs on their final walk at night, we saw a rare treat. Large frost crystals formed on the ground and looked like diamonds in the flashlight, but showed rainbow colors when the flashlight was off and the moon lit them up. It was magical!
    

  

  Mary's Halloween Season of Witches cross stitch project.

• Wednesday, 2/1: Tax Returns Finished
  
  • I finished federal and state taxes and electronically filed them. It took a big chunk of time in the afternoon. The Missouri tax return form is insanely long and stupid.
  • Mary and I tried to view the green comet that's supposed to be between the North Star and the Big Dipper, but clouds blocked the view when we looked. Instead, there was a large blue halo around the moon, the biggest we've ever seen. When I let the dogs out for the last outing, the sky was clear, but the moon was too bright to see much.
  • Bill and I texted about my overnight visit at his place tomorrow. I'll meet him at his apartment at 6:30 p.m. He has ideas on a place to eat.
    
  • I figured out a list of fly tying items I'd like to get so that I know what I want in case I visit a Bass Pro or Cabelas store in St. Louis tomorrow.
    
  • We watched an episode of Downton Abbey.
    
    
• Thursday, 2/2: A Trip South
  
  • I sent a message first thing this morning to the seller of the food processor and learned it was still available. I got her address and told her I'd be there by 2 p.m. Then, I asked Bill if it was till fine for me to stay overnight at his apartment. He said yes and suggested meeting at his place at 6:30 p.m.
  • After breakfast, cleaning up, and packing, I left at 11 a.m. I stopped by our bank's branch at Palmyra, MO, and picked up cash. At Troy, MO, I bought and ate lunch...3 burgers. From there it took 30 minutes, driving narrow, paved back roads to get where I was going. I showed up at 2:02. They are a very nice couple who raise bees and sell honey from their country home near Warrenton, MO. She got the food processor as a wedding gift in 1991 and only used it about 5 times, because she finds it easier to pull out a cutting board and a knife, instead of the machine. It's in good shape.
  • From there, I drove about 5 miles south, then took I-70 west to the Bass Pro shop in St. Charles (St. Louis suburb).
  • I wandered through the store. Prices are high. Fishing lures start at $7.95. They were out of most fly tying tools and basic materials are too expensive. I wasn't impressed. I'll get my materials online, where they're much less expensive and available.
  • I went to a Sam's Club two miles from there and fueled up. The price was $2.98 a gallon. Fuel economy was 19.12 mpg, which is good for a pickup. I strolled through Sam's Club to eat up time.
  • After meeting Bill, we went to a brew pub near his apartment that he likes. It's called Third Wheel Brewing. I had a stout called Riot Girl and Bill had an IPA called Gotta Have It. He ate buffalo chicken nachos and I had quesadillas.
  • We went to Bill's apartment and watched a DVD called Vantage Point.
  • Back home, Mary vacuumed a lot of bugs, maybe 800 to 1,000 flies just in our bedroom windows. She also took the dogs for a walk (see photo, below) and watched a movie, A Bridge Too Far.
  • Katie sent a text to her mother that the University of Alaska, Anchorage sent her a letter that she was accepted in the construction management program in her pursuit of a bachelor of science degree.
    

  

  Amber (foreground) & Plato (background).
  The edge of east woods is behind Plato.

• Friday, 2/3: Drive Back Home
  
  • Bill and I woke at 6:30 a.m. I packed as Bill made a nice breakfast. After eating, I followed Bill to his place of work. We loaded seven 4'x5' sheets of 1/2" plywood into the back of my pickup and I left for home. I stopped at Aldi in Troy, MO, and bought a few items, then proceeded home, arriving around noon.
  • Mary baked, then took the meat out of three New England Long Pie Pumpkins, and froze four quarts of pumpkin meat.
    
  • After lunch, I put a bunch of winemaking items away in the west room's closet.
  • Mary and I did chores, had a tea, ate some grapes, then I fixed waffles for an evening meal.
    
    
• Saturday, 2/4: Windy Day
  
  • We experienced strong southwest wind gusts.
  • The woman I bought the food processor from sent a message thanking me for purchasing it. I asked her for the name of their honey business. It's Royal Bee Apiary.
    
  • Mary did a load of towels. They dried fast in the wind.
    
  • She also worked up and paid the bills.
    
  • Mary vacuumed dust off all of the Christmas cross stitch ornaments and stored them away.
  • Mary and I both took turns vacuuming bugs and flies. This is one of the worst bug winters in this house.
    
  • I moved the seven sheets of plywood I got from Bill from the pickup bed to the machine shed. They're actual size is 3'3" x 4'.
    
  • I pumped up the driver's side front tire of the Buick. It has a slow leak. I also charged the Buick's battery.
  • We saw several types of waterfowl at dusk...mallard ducks, trumpeter swans, Canada geese, snow geese, and cackling geese. There were a lot of solo birds, like they were scared off of some nearby pond.
    
  • Mary baked two pans of cinnamon rolls, which we enjoyed, along with two pots of Yunan loose leaf tea while watching four episodes of Downton Abbey.
    

Jan. 22-28, 2023

Weather | 1/22, skiff snow, 0.11" moisture, 29°, 33° | 1/23, 19°, 30° | 1/24, 25°, 41° | 1/25, 2.5" snow or 0.33" moisture, 28°, 34° | 1/26, 13°, 24° | 1/27, 17°, 43° | 1/28, 25°, 39° |

• Sunday, 1/22: Chicken Noodle Soup Day
  
  • We woke to a tiny bit of snow on the ground and on all of the trees. Most of the snow was melted by evening.
  • Mary made a big batch of chicken noodle soup. It seemed like a good choice for the day...comfort food.
    
  • Mary and I walked both dogs around the south loop trail.
    
  • We watched a flock of snow geese collecting themselves as they headed east, overhead.
  • We watched 2 episodes of Ken Burns' The Civil War.
  • The persimmon wine fizzed all day in the pantry. I squeezed the mesh bag before bedtime and the specific gravity is 1.065.
    
    
• Monday, 1/23: Firewood Gathering Day 1
  
  • Mary and I took the tractor/trailer to the woods surrounding Bluegill Pond and cut up several smaller trees for firewood. We hauled home a wagon full of wood. We left the tractor/trailer parked in front of the west end of the machine shed. We'll unload it tomorrow. This wood is standing or laying above ground, so it's mostly dry.
  • The U.S. Weather Service predicts snow and colder weather for us in the future, so that's driving us to get more firewood fuel in the coffers. A CBC article predicts subzero temps for the prairie provinces of Canada. It mentioned that a Siberian town recorded a -80° F temperature this month, the coldest in 20 years, and that system is dropping into mid-Canada this week. It will probably go further south into the U.S.
    
  • After evening chores, we heard and watched several trumpeter swans flying west to the south of our property. We also heard coyotes howling from around Bass Pond, northeast of the house. Finally, as darkness fell, I heard ducks, looked up and saw about 100-200 mallards fly westerly.
    
  • The persimmon wine is fizzing enough to create an inch of foam (see video, below). The specific gravity is 1.054. It's putting a very pleasant aroma into the house.
    
  Fermentation in persimmon wine brew bucket.
  

• Tuesday, 1/24: Firewood Gathering Day 2
  
  • Our day was filled with firewood gathering and stacking. First, Mary looked for and found some dry, above ground trees on the east side of the woods were we cut wood yesterday. Trees laying right on the ground are often wet, but standing trees or wood laying horizontal, yet extending above the ground, is usually dry. She showed me where it was, then we unloaded yesterday's wood. Mary stacked splittable wood next to the wood splitter in the machine shed and tossed smaller pieces in wheelbarrows that I took to the woodshed and stacked. Then we cut up another wagon load of firewood and put it away in the same fashion. We're now set well with wood fuel to heat the home if cold weather arrives in the next couple weeks.
  • While I ran the chainsaw cutting firewood, Mary raked up pecan leaves and put them on top of the compost pile.
  • She also took a wheelbarrow load of hay to the chicken coop.
    
  • Waterfowl filled our skies today. We heard and saw snow geese all day. During evening twilight, we heard and saw snow and Canada geese, trumpeter swans, a big flock of mallards, and one single cackling goose that was flying as hard as it could muster and yelling like crazy, just behind the big batch of mallards.
  • We watched 3 Downton Abbey episodes.
  • A large blob of foam covered the top of the persimmon wine brew bucket (see photo, below). Winemaking initially creates such hideous stuff that later settles out to good tasting, clear material. Specific gravity is 1.044.
    
  • If Dad was alive, today would have been his 89th birthday.

  

  Foam & mesh bag floats at top of brew bucket of persimmon wine.

• Wednesday, 1/25: First Substantial Snow
  
  • We woke to our first major snow. About 2.5 inches covered the ground and all of the trees. Even wires had a nice coating on them. This was real wet snow. School was canceled. Folks up north would laugh at 2.5 inches of snow cancelling school.
    
  • Asian ladybugs keep marching through out walls. We vacuumed several times throughout the day to slow down these little creepy buggers!
    
  • I washed 14 wine bottles while Mary did some cross stitching. We listened to more of the Third Reich audio book.
    
  • A check of the persimmon wine resulted in a specific gravity of 1.034. It will be due for racking into a carboy tomorrow.
    
  • We watched two episodes of The Civil War.
  • Katie texted that she signed up at the University of Alaska-Anchorage (UAA) for the fall semester. We called her. She'll be a part-time student, majoring in construction management. She was sick with the flu for a couple weeks. Katie recently attended military training in Florida for a week. She and several other more northern residents woke to bright sunshine like a bunch of vampires, surprised by the morning sun. When she returned from Florida to Anchorage, news was that several people gave their notices where she works, resulting in more duties for Katie. She did drill this weekend at Elmendorf Airforce Base in Anchorage and a leader is leaving, transferring some duties to her. She just completed three days of training at work for new project management software called Primavera P6. The trainer teaches at UAA. Katie subscribes to Arctic Harvest, where she gets a weekly box of produce, eggs, and meat. It comes from both Alaska and Washington State. Weather in Anchorage is unusually warm right now. She wonders if a cross-country ski class for tomorrow and the next day are still on with the current mushy snow conditions.
    
    
• Thursday, 1/26: Racking Persimmon Wine
  
  • Mary cleaned the house.
  • I looked online for a 5-point wrench to remove the cover of the water meter box. They're ridiculously expensive. I'll keep using an ill-fitting Crescent wrench.
  • At noon the persimmon wine's specific gravity was 1.024. At 6 p.m., it was 1.016, so I racked it into the 5-gallon big mouth carboy and two 750-ml wine bottles after squeezing the nylon mesh bag. I put too much liquid in the carboy. After moving it into the pantry, liquid started surging into the airlock. So, I opened the top and removed enough liquid to fill 2" in the bottom of a wine bottle. There is a 5-gallon mark. I initially drew liquid to the top that line. The liquid level needs to be an eighth of an inch below that line. I didn't add Kmeta and I forgot to check the pH. We tasted a bit of it. This wine has a unique taste all of its own...like drinking a dessert...a yeasty, citrus taste, with brown sugar undertones.
  • Trumpeter swans and snow geese flew over at dusk. A huge flight of several hundred snow geese went over just above the treetops. Then, a smaller V of snow geese flew over that I caught on the below video.
  Snow geese flying west at dusk.
  

• Friday, 1/27: Warmer Temperatures
  
  • I hauled a sack of garbage down to the garbage can at the end of the lane in a plastic toboggan, since there was just enough snow showing to do the job. By afternoon, most all of the snow disappeared with warm temperatures.
    
  • Mary washed two loads of laundry, made 4 loaves of bread, and cross stitched while waiting for bread dough to rise.
  • I split two wheelbarrow loads of firewood and stacked them in the woodshed. I stacked another wheelbarrow load of split wet wood in the machine shed.
  • We had an interesting evening meal of squash, fried eggs, turkey bacon, and fresh bread. It tasted great. It's a very cheap meal, for us...thank goodness for haying hens. Afterwards, we shared a bottle of pumpkin wine, which tastes wonderful on ice.
  • We watched three episodes of Downton Abbey.
  • On the last dog walk, we heard yipping to the northeast, followed by coyote howling. It sounded like they were hunting something.
    
    
• Saturday, 1/28: Bill Visits
  
  • Bill showed up around 11:30 a.m. for a weekend, plus Monday, visit. He gave us four halogen work lights, two per telescoping stand, that were being thrown away while cleaning out a warehouse area at his workplace. He also gave us a super long power strip that was in the toss pile. Bill is tired and happy to be here where he can forget about work stuff.
  • He washed a load of clothes, hung them to dry, then took a nap.
  • Mom texted that she woke Wednesday with blurred vision and was staggering. She called her friend, Patti Schipman, who called an ambulance that took Mom to the emergency room. They found nothing wrong and she was fine after a couple hours. Hank arrived Wednesday afternoon to help out. Mom is due to receive a CT head scan. Everyone thinks it was a mini-stroke. She's been fine since Wednesday. Hank plans to return to his Glasgow, MT apartment tomorrow.
  • Mary and I split the remaining firewood next to the splitter and stacked it. We now have a second ring of firewood that is head high. The wood we split was mainly hickory and cherry. It heats exceptionally well.
  • Bill started three pizzas while Mary and I did chores. Mary finished the pizzas. I also put more leaves on the compost pile, since I could smell persimmon wine residue that I threw into the compost. I put mothball bottles under Bill's car and in his car's engine compartment.
  • Mary, Bill, and I played a board game of Atlas Adventures while we ate pizza and enjoyed a big bottle (1.5 liter) of 2021 pear wine. Bill won the game. The wine tasted divine, with a strong fruity, pear flavor.
  • We also watched two episodes of Young Indiana Jones, Volume 2, a Christmas gift we gave Bill.
  • We heard snow geese and trumpeter swans all day to the east of us. Several flew over at dusk.
    

Jan. 15-21, 2023

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

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

Moss at base of an oak tree in north woods.

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

Jan. 8-14, 2023

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

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

This is Mary's cross stitch project, today.

Wine bottles heating up for label removal.

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

The 1st fly I tied, a zebra midge.

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

The 3rd fly is a crackle back woolly worm.

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

Jan. 1-7, 2023

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

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

  

  A view from Katie's apartment in Anchorage.

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

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

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

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

Dec. 25-31, 2022

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

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

  

  A honey locust thorn in split firewood.

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

  

  Homemade pear wine to celebrate 32 years of marriage.

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

Dec. 18-24, 2022

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

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

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

33 bottles of freshly corked jalapeño wine.

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

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