Thanksgiving Week updates

Apples are DONE!

We finally got the rest of the apples canned tonight (Tuesday).  We got almost exactly 7 quarts.  All told, we canned 20 quarts of "stewed apples" - they are really just apples in light syrup - I didn't stew them.  These can be used in apple crisp, apple pie, or just eaten as is (they are pretty good with some whipped cream on them!)

The last 7 quarts!

Last of the PA Kale

I gathered the last of the PA Kale last weekend and I brought it back to give to Chris Murray, but I forgot that Chris was leaving early for Thanksgiving, so we just cooked them up with some bacon, onions and chicken broth - delicious (although not the best of the season!).  The kale is covered with snow now!

Trip through the snow

We left for the farm around mid-day Wednesday.  It was snowing and ugly.  Katherine thinks she has a cold - she is definitely moving slow.  She drove all the way.  We did a detour and didn't go through Hancock like usual, Google Maps warned us of several accidents on 70.  We ended up coming up through McConnellsburg where we stopped and got some groceries at the Save-a-Lot and some chinese food at Main Moon (its actually a decent restaurant!).  It was getting pretty bad by the time we got here, but the snow slowed an I think its done for now.  We had some trouble getting parked in the driveway, but nothing serious.  We got some good deals on meat at Save-a-lot.  We got a farm-ham (with the skin)  and a huge pork roast and some chicken thighs and steak for smokey.

Pectic HAZE!

My first batch of pear wine was treated with the HC finings last Saturday.  I checked it today and there is no clearing what-so-ever!  This is a pretty good indiactor that its pectin causing the problem.  Now what do i do to get rid of the pectic haze?  Sparkoloid?  I am going to research on the internet.

Odds and Ends

Canning apples

We did some more canning of the York apples yesterday.  Katherine and I peeled and sliced up a little more than 13 quarts worth of apples and canned them in a light syrup.   We have another 1/3rd of a bushel left, I think.  Probably enough for another 6 quarts.  They were going bad, an we lost about 24+ apples to rot and damage.  The apples that are left are in somewhat better shape so maybe they will produce more.  I decided to can in syrup as opposed to apple pie filling because 1)  I don't trust the apple pie filling recipe (although non-one has reported any issues and the ones I did make seem to be fine), and 2) this lets us use the apples for other purposes rather than just pies.

Winter Wheat status

I removed the row covers from the winter wheat.  All that I can say is that I must not have planted enough - it is pretty sparse.  I am thinking maybe on planting some more and just letting it come up in the early spring.  I don't want to plant it in the spring because the weather usually won't cooperate (snow on the ground or garden soil too wet, etc).

Here's some pictures:

Deer Damage to Trees

The deer have been wreaking havoc on the unprotected trees!  They damn near totally destroyed the "wild" elderberry bush over by the big patch.  They evidently use them to clear their antlers.  Here are some pictures of my poor spruce trees:

Kale Survives!

Wow!  This kale survived the 18F temperatures last week!  I was going to harvest it last week to give some to Chris Murray, but I ran out of time (we were rushing home to avoid getting caught in a snow storm that never showed up!).  I hope it tastes ok!

Wine Updates

I got a filter and a bunch of wine finings (clarifying agents) to try to get the pear wine cleaned up a bit.  I got 4 of these 2-stage SuperKleer K.C. (SKKC) "kits" - 1 pouch of Kieselsol and 1 pouch of Chitosan - enough for 6 gallons on wine per kit.  I followed the directions on the kit:  1 pouch Kiesesol mix in gently, then wait 1 hour and mix the Chitosan with 1 oz warm water then combine into the wine.  The kit directions indicate that it should work within 48 hours, so I won't see anything until I come back later this week.  It's Thanksgiving week, so I will be back Wednesday (I hope)!   I also got a 1lb package of Sparkolloid powder.  If these two fail to clear the wine I will try the filter (actually, I will probably filter it regardless!)

Super-kleer K.C.  Sorry the picture just won't rotate for me!

Sparkolloid.  Same issue with picture!  Weird

I won't use this until later - I nee to give the finings time to work.   Arg!  I really want to try it now!

The two bottles of pear wine in which I doubled the pectic enzyme

The bottle of pear wine with half the pectic enzyme added after fermentation (it has SKKC in it now, as well - but its not been 24 hours yet)

The remaining concord.  I am thinking of fining this and the filtering - just to compared with previous batch that I didn't fine or filter.

Busy weekend - cold snap here

Leaf gathering

I finished my duty as acting TA for the division on Thursday.  I had Friday off for CWS.  I got up a bit early on Friday and ate a good breakfast of leftover Chinese food - lol.  I was sitting on the couch either playing video games or watching tv when I notice the sound of a large truck in the neighborhood.  They have been doing some water-main repairs a couple of streets over so at first I didn't think anything of it.  Then it got louder - like it was getting close - within a block.  So i got up and it suddenly struck me that maybe it was the leaf gathering crew.  I check out the front door and sure enough - they were VERY close - going down the other side of the street!  I rush to get my rake and started raking up the front lawn to try to get my leaves out before the truck got to my side of the street.  I worked furiously and did it!  The workers actually helped me finish raking a small part of the lawn on the far side of the driveway.  Whew!

Anyway, we got out the door and up to the farm around 12-1pm-ish.  I soon started vacuuming up the leaves in the front lawn of the farm.  Unfortunately I had to stop and take care of some mechanical issues. The blade on one side keeps coming loose for some reason,  I tightened the blade and continued vacuuming a bit too aggressive into the woods - up the trail down by the persimmons.  Well, i got the mower stuck - stuck real good!  I eventually had to go get the UTV and pull it out.  in the course of pulling out the mower I bent the front mower mount so much that the front of the mower deck was dragging the ground.  So I had to stop and re-adjust the mower deck.  I finally got everything back up and running.  I vacuumed the leaves so late that I had to use the headlights on the mower, but I got the front lawn done!

Cleaning the chimney

I gt up the next day and decided I had better get the wood stove chimney clean - they were calling for very cold weather!  I got up on the ladder and used my "new" chimney brush to clean from the top side.  It doesn't reach all the way down, but I did what I could.  The top of the chimney didn't look too sooty.  Then I went inside and started cleaning the horizontal pipe that leads up to the chimney.  That was filthy.  I had to use the wet/dry vac to vacuum-up the soot.  There was a lot of dangerous soot that I needed to get out of there.   Once the soot was cleaned up I reassembled the stove pipe (making sure that the flue vent was working right this time!)   I think everything is in good shape now.  I didn't start a fire though because my sinuses were in rough shape from all those leaves from the day before.

Digging out the Taproot radishes

Mom had expressed interest in trying the tap-root radishes last weekend, but I forgot to get some for her until it was too late.  So this weekend I made a point to dig some up for her!  I dug up about 5 nice ones.  I tasted them again - not great, but not horrible either.  I am just not a big radish fan.  We did end up dropping them off for her late Sunday.  I have no idea what she is going to do with them

Shelling the sunflowers

While I had the leaf vacuum set up, I decided to shell the sunflowers out using the cyclone rake.  It worked, but not as well as I had hoped.  All of the stuff pretty much stayed together - i was hoping that the seeds would separated from the chaff more clearly.  Also, I noticed that some of the seeds were shelled out - separating the kernel from the seed!  I will have to winnow the mess out later.  I just put it all in a tarp and stored it in the garage for now.

Digging out the shop wall

I decided to risk damage to the shop wall by using the backhoe to dig out the mass of dirt there,  I just didn't have the time to do it by hand.   I dug down until I hit a gravel layer.  I accidentally bumped the bucket into the concrete block wall and the wall flexed a bit!  I went inside to check to see if there was any damage and found none.  In fact, it looks like that bumped caused the wall to re-normalize - there is no longer any offset where the wall had pushed in some last year!  There is still some cleanup to do by hand, but that can wait.  the most important thing right now was getting that weight off the wall before water got behind it again and pushed it even further in!  It should be safe from that now.

Re-attaching the satellite cable

I got the co-ax cable out and started the process of re-attaching the satellite dish to the house.  It took awhile but I finally figured out how the co-ax plug-tool worked.  I got it all connected and ran the line up to the house after marking a "safe route" to bury the cable.  I started digging the cable in but I ran out of daylight.  I was, however, able to finish the in-house work and re-attached the satellite dish to the modem.  I called Hughes Net and had them re-activate my service.  After the service was restored I did some speed checking and found everything worked as well as it did before!  Whew!  I still need to finish burying the remainder of the cable but that will have to wait until next time.  I had an appointment Sunday to help Chris get some walnut wood off John's property.  

Walnut Wood

Chris Murray and I headed up to John Mahaffey's farm near State College PA on Sunday morning.  We got there and I sawed down the tree while John and Chris pulled on the rope.  I had to leave the saw when I noticed that the tree was pinching the chain - it was leaning the wrong way!  I ran to help them pull the tree toward them - whew - it worked!  The tree came down where John wanted it.  We trimmed off the stuff we wanted.  John helped us load it into the van using his front loader.  We zipped back to my farm as quick as we could - we were afraid the weather was going to be uncooperative!  We got back to my farm and ate a delicious lunch that Katherine had prepared for us.  Werested only a little before I took Chris on a whirlwind tour of the farm on the UTV.  Of course, the UTV ran out of gas on the FAR side of the big field - ARGH.  Anyway, we finished the tour and got back to work unloading the walnut wood from the van.  The  damn stuff was leaking sap all over the place and had soaked into Chris and my coats!  I used my tractor to unload the logs and stack them on the locust wood pile next to the garage.  They need to lose some of their liquid before we can doing anything else.  I would like to saw them into boards ASAP - but I am still waiting on the sawmill from the guy in Michigan!

Funeral and lots of work

Funeral

Aunt Reva passed away Wednesday.  She was 90 years old.   We took mom to the funeral on Monday and stayed for the wake.  I already had Tuesday off, but I did make arrangements at work (since I am still acting TA) to take Monday off for the funeral.  Was good to see some of my cousins again.  Some of them I don't think I had ever met before.  Joe Smith was there, I don't recall ever seeing him before.  He lives in Colorado now.  He came in Saturday for viewing and funeral.  The funeral and afterword pretty much ate up my Monday.

Front drainage tile installed!

I finally got the front drainage tile installed!  I have had the front yard dug up for almost a year now, so it was about time to finish it!  I really needed the backhoe for this job.  As you saw in a previous post, I dug the rest of the drain line a couple weekends ago, but this weekend (Sunday) I dug out the line from the house to the drain line (there are 2 connections from the downspouts and sump pumps to the drain line - one at each end of the house).   I put the tile in and placed some fittings to try to work out if I needed anything else - I did!  I needed more tile!  I wanted to get 2x20 ft lengths, but TSC only had 100ft lengths.  I also bought some work gloves, an outdoor thermometer, and 9 fiberglass electric fence posts.  More on the fence later.   So here are the pictures of the project:

After using the backhoe to dig the ditch for the far end of the house.

Connecting up the sump and the downspout

All set up to start backfill!  

Looking out toward the far end of the house

Looking down from the corner toward the "Y"

The "Y" joining the two sides of  the drains

Looking toward the end of the drain line

After back-filling on Monday morning

Looking up toward the house.

After Monday morning - looking down to the end of the drain

Finally all done!  Looking down to the drain end

Smokey is checking it all out!

Last of the Veggies?

I got down to the paw-paw patch before I left and harvested some Brussels sprouts!

Only 2 of the 4 plants seemed to have any on them

This is cool - this and one other came off of an early plant that had sprouted out!

And still more broccoli!  Fantastic!  I think I might have harvested a couple pounds.  They are smallish heads, but they seem tender and I ate one and they taste good!

Sauerkraut canning

We got up to the farm afternoon on Saturday (I had to be in at work Friday because I am acting TA so I wasn't able to head out early - and its too dark now to head out afterwork Friday!)   The ground was a bit wet so I didn't think it would be a good idea to start work in the drainage project.  I did see some electric fence down due to deer damage, but there is really nothing for the deer to harm inside the fences so i let the fence repair wait until later.  I checked the kraut and found a scum on the top and I freaked a little bit - BUT... it was fine, not mold, I think, but smelled like the kraut.   I cleaned off the scum and proceeded to can the kraut!  Woohoo - 19 quarts of kraut from 41 lbs of cabbage!  Nice!

Deer fencing issues

I found the fence around the elderberries torn up a bit, but not too bad.  Had to replace a couple of posts, but all in all a quick and complete repair.  However, the fence over by the grapes and orchard was in bad shape.  The wire was actually broken!  I bet some deer got caught in it and freaked out when he got shocked.   Bedsides the broken wire, there were several posts broken and the new fiberglass posts that I had just installed a couple weeks ago had the insulators/wire holders torn off!  The fiberglass posts fared better than the original posts though.   I decided to change the outline of the fence a little bit to surround the grape vines as well (and maybe make it a little easier to mow).  I needed more electric fence posts which I picked up Sunday morning on our trip to TSC.  I had to re-arrange the wires a bit so they wouldn't short out on the metal parts, but it is working now.  All the fences are back on.  I do, however, need more deer-pops now!  Sorry. I didn't get pictures, but its really not that exciting. :)

Missing weekend explained

Missed a weekend due to some health issues.   

On Wednesday I didn't eat anything from about 11:30 am on until about 7 (?) pm.  Ken was over to the house and I broke out the wine.  We ate a delicious dinner that Katherine prepared.   We had Kale and some cheese ravioli in our own home canned tomato sauce - it was all very good!    Too good.  I ate double portion of the kale and drank the entire liter of wine all by myself!  We went to bed around midnight.  Then around 4:30am, Smokey needed to go out and started barking.  Kathrine took him out and about that time I decided I needed to pee.  I went into the bathroom and noticed that my stomach hurt and I was feeling nauseated.   I felt like I was going to vomit so I knelt in front of the bowl.  Next thing I know I was waking up and Katherine was on the phone with 911!  She said that I had passed out and was having seizures!  I felt like I had simply blacked out and tried to convince her of that, but no go.  The paramedics arrived and checked me out quick, but to be safe they suggested that I go in with them.  So I did.  2 CAT scans, bloods test and hours later it was determined that I had only passed out and that I had no signs of having had a seizure.  Evidently it is not uncommon to "spazz" a bit when you have blacked out and that is what Katherine mistook for a seizure.  Whew.  None-the-less, I went into see Dr. Li Thursday and he wants me to see a cardiologist.  Also gave me blood test prescription for damn near everything I think,  I got home and made blood test "reservations" and went to them the next day, Friday.  The cardiologist office actually called me to make the appointment!  I made it for Nov 11, but they called later and had me move it until Nov 24th at 11:15am (which works perfectly since I have a dental cleaning that morning).

Anyway, Katherine wanted me to stay this weekend and since I needed to be back early (Monday starts my acting TA duty) I decided to stay.  Also, Friday was Halloween and Katherine would have her hands full of taking care of Smokey and doling out candies to the weenies.   Although, as it turned out, we got NO weenies at all!  I think that is the first time that's happened.  Maybe it was because Halloween fell on a Friday this year and there were parties being held that absorbed all of the kids?  I was able to start on making some shelving for the canned goods for downstairs and I worked on trying to get our toilets back in shape.  I finally got the hall bathroom toilet to stop leaking around the bowl-to-tank bolts by using some silicone grease between the rubber washers and the tank surface.  The master bathroom toilet got a new fill-valve and new water fill line.  That stopped the leak from tank but then the flapper valve started leaking pretty bad, so I replaced that.  It still leaked!  All I can think of at this point is that the overflow pipe and the tank-to-bowl seal should be replaced so that I can get a decent flapper valve seat installed.  I am pretty sure its leaking BELOW the new seat.  Anyway, that's not critical so I am letting that sit until winter when I will probably get stuck down here in town.  I also replaced a bunch of the fluorescent tube light bulbs out in the shop and downstairs.  They were all burned out.  I bought an 8 pack and used all but 2.