Breakfast

For a moment this morning, I experience a deja vu. The Pooch stands on the sidewalk opposite the kitchen window, looking up at me making chilaques for my breakfast. I'm standing at the kitchen sink and motion to him with a sweeping right arm toward the deck door. He considers the movement and turns around for the steps and the deck door. He scoots in quickly. Outside the temperature is a brisk 30 degrees. I'm a bit surprised that the cat follows arm movements which the dog, in a show of smarts, has learned quickly. I mention a blog by an animal behaviorist at UW-Madison to Johann. Patricia McConnell writes an excerpt about dogs, hand signals and the inability of chimps and another animal which I can't recall, to follow basic hand signals. But the cat? It's why we call him the Pooch.

Anyway, back to deja vu. The dog's on the couch, paw draped over a small cushion watching me. The cat winds in and out my legs waiting for some raw ground pork. Earlier, as we head down the stairs for the first time out in the morning he has a coughing spell. That means Hairball. The package of hairball control treats we purchase for the Pooch are doled out according to the directions on the package, however, I hesitate to give him repeated amounts of 10 pieces because he'll barf up the protein rich morsels. The formula on the back of the package indicates that a 400mg treat contains 31 mg of petrolatum. Usually the hairball control formula treats are all the boy needs to keep from getting hairball plugged as opposed to our last kitty who needed the full dose of hairball med from the tube Dawn would get from a vet.

I reason that a little Amish butter on his ground pork will help speed a hairball on it's exit out the back door. With coffee perking in our Krups machine and both animals waiting patiently for food, I think back to the time when the kids were little and single parent Dad would be fixin' breakfast for the urchins. Twenty years later, it feels much the same.

Fine fall weather has me bustling to get work completed before the howling winds of winter lash at the place. Cleaning leaves from the gutters, I make a mental note to check flashing over the rear entryway. Dawn decides to clean the second floor windows without me. When I remind her that the job requires two people to get the outsides of the inside windows sparkling clean, she points out a large hole in the sill of the double hung window. This explains an occasional puddle of water on the hardwood floor in the living room near the rear addition. I call in the expert. Johann points out gaps in the flashing between the roof of the rear addition and the original sidewall of the house. This will require a trip to Irish Ridge and the Amish window dealer.

Checking my invoice from the previous window we purchased, I note that the brick molding for the outside trim of the new window is included in the price. Since I took the car up to Whispering Pines Sales, Titus and I struggle to get the 33X47 inch window in the back seat because the latch of the trunk will damage the new window even by lashing it securely with bungees. In the commotion which includes yet another ploy by the young Amish man for me to trade Mandy for one of his pug puppies, we forget the brick mold.

Johann and I wander through the pole barn looking for the right size windows to replace the old double hung. There's a couple with a Volkswagen camper struggling to get a door with an ugly leaded glass insert window in the van. In a little while a local Amish elder walks in with two women wearing the cowl headgear who cast their eyes downward when I glance at them. An older fellow in an old fedora ala Indiana Jones comes in looking lost. We find two thermopane windows at a good price, pick up some special silicone that Johann says is half the price of the same stuff in the hardware store in town, load our forgotten brick mold, add more mahogany brick mold for the new windows, some pine laminate trim molding for the inside of the entryway windows and a half gallon of lavender scented laundry detergent. Yes, laundry detergent Dawn. The label proclaims the stuff is especially formulated without certain noxious chemicals found in regular detergents, making it an eco-friendly product. The septic system in our front yard and eventually the ground water will appreciate the extra expense, but I'm wary of it's cleaning power. Today will be the test.

Johan and I drive off, not before Harvey comes out with my laundry detergent in hand that I spaced out. Mandy waits patiently in the cab of the truck. I can't let her out because I have no idea if the pug mother with the drooping huge teats is friendly. On the way back through the largest Amish settlement in the state, we slow several times for horse drawn wagons and black buggies as well as herds of well dressed kids on their way to school. Johann drapes his arm around Mandy who's the model of decorum, "Gee you're one nice dog, " he says.


The row cover over lettuce, spinach, arugula, kale and radishes has protected my late fall crop of greens from continual hard frosts. The radishes are sweet and the butter-crunch lettuce makes a tasty salami sandwich for my carpenter and I. Perhaps today as he works on the upstairs windows, I'll make a lunch salad extraordinaire.

Mountain Man

No time to compose. Grammar and punctuation may suffer.Tough. We survived two important fall markers. The first was the arrival of 10/10/10. My computer didn't freeze and the world didn't end. The second startled me. Under the kitchen window in the leaves and debris of the yet unfinished patio, two juncos search for seeds. I am not ready for winter.

I take a moment to check on the kids. The cat is perched on my car, already marked with muddy footprints. Mandy hides a piece of salty ham she scrounged from the outside of the live trap. I imagine that's like pork jerky to her. She gnaws at the leathery piece of home cured ham reject. At sixteen months she's come into her own as a working dog. Over the weekend she alerts me to yet another intruder. This time it's the neighbor's horses who have been grazing on our lush lawn. Somehow they found a break in a barb wire fence. On a pee break Mandy goes into full alert barking and growling. I see the fresh horse manure and hear hoof beats as the horses trot off to safety in the margin between cornfield and empty lane where soybeans were harvested.

Later the next day, a red truck pulls up and parks at the entrance to our road. I don't see the truck which belongs to a farmer who cuts hay off the police chief's place. Johann and I are eating lunch after a morning of intense bottling frenzy. Then I hear Mandy's gruff barking. I walk out the back door and see a bearded overall clad man walking down the road. As he approaches Mandy goes from watch dog to harmless pet, wagging her tail in anticipation of a new person to smell. The farmer's truck broke down just before he can turn onto the side road for another load of hay.

Johann and I listen to the farmer's life story, his attempts to reach his son-a mechanic in town and finally his wife. I inwardly grin when he signs off a telephone conversation to "the wife" with a "love ya". The farmer and Johann speak the same mechanic language, 3/8ths versus 7/16ths and twelve sided box wrenches, the evils of metrics yadda, yadda, yadda. They head off and I can get back to wusrt making.

The morning bottling activity included grape and raspberry wine. I work up a quick label for Johann's raspberry wine, calling it Mountain Man Vineyard 2010 Raspberry. The picture of Johann is the central feature of the label. As I suspected, we edge further into dark caves of wine making ordering plastic carboys made of PET, a specialized food grade plastic. The wine supplies company screws up the order sending the wrong size carboy which sets off a comedy of errors in which we hear the voice of God telling us, "Make your own beer!" when they inadvertently ship a complete supply of craft beer brew ingredients intended for someone in Virginia. The error is rectified. The correct carboys delivered and FedEx contacted with return authorizations for two unwanted boxes.

Unh Hunh

A good friend, the 88 year old santero in Arizona would utter unh hunh frequently in any conversation. It would speed things up and save a bit of side commentary. Pretend you're the santero and just do the unh hunh for the rest of this. I gotta get my ass in gear.

The last of five Boston Butt roasts is hiding in the back of the ice box. On Friday I went on a spending spree. I'd hoped that taking the kid along would keep me from power shopping, but in this case my list was short and sweet. The Village Market features a one day meat sale. Friday only. It's part of the culture at this time of year in the country. Called stocking up, it's a reaction to the economy but mostly a time honored tradition in poor, rural areas. Apples, grapes, cider, hickory nuts, walnuts, elderberries, mulberries, wild turkey, venison(if you're a bow hunter), squash, pumpkins, and the beginnings of the fall butchering season.

I walk out of the grocery store $100 poorer. The pork roasts I trim for the meat and grind for sausage. All weigh over 6 lbs so I reserve one for roasts in the future. A case of ground turkey, some premium beef re-cut into steaks that'll be slivered for stir fries and fajitas, a beef roast that I'll turn into jerky or slow cooked, cod loins, pork steak and to top it off fresh crullers.

I'm on a tight budget for time. Off to the cut stock sawmill for a load of cut off timbers. All around the white metal building which rumbles in its bowels from a Cummings diesel engine running all the pulleys and sawblades are pallets of 4X4's cut in eight foot lengths. The trimmed rough parts are sent by conveyor to a converted manure spreader on the shaded side of the building. It takes me the better part of an hour to hand toss oak, walnut and poplar blocks into the pick-up while Mandy sits patiently on the front seat watching two Amish five year-olds haul corn shocks with a buggy frame.

I cast a crooked eye at my tires under the weight of the load and hope I make it home before the state patrol spots me hauling over a half ton of wood with $75 plates for recreational trucking. On the back road to home the dog keep a keen eye on oncoming traffic while I marvel at the fall colors which are muted but still outstanding. I pull the truck into the wood shed and unload for 15 minutes. Then it's off to Muscoda for cheese with the Amish Patriarch.

I owed him big time for working on the chimney at our place and frequent little beggars items like birch molding, free pies and watermelon. Before we take the 40 minute drive to this town on the Wisconsin River, we stop off at Bent and Dent to deliver fresh pressed apple cider. The Mrs. and the youngest daughter are operating a gasoline engine powered crusher that feeds directly into a wooden hand operated press. They already been up since dawn butchering some of their chickens. "Some" can be anywhere from 50 to 85 fryers.

The cheese selection, that is the "cheap" cheese, is limited since a local business makes an agreement to buy all their cut ends and irregulars and markets them for a higher price outside the area. The Patriarch calls on my mobile phone to alert the cheese store of our arrival as we pull out of the heating contractor where I buy my yearly specialized, high efficiency furnace filter. The price has inched up another buck.

The parking lot for the cheese store in the industrail park of town has a truck and a Toyota hybrid with out-of-state plates. The counter person brings out two cases of five pound slabs of salsa cheese. 16 blocks cost just under $100. The Coleman cooler is jammed tight with cheese. There's no room for my homemade soda bottle ice. When we load the cheese in the truck, the Patriarch notes Mississippi plates on the car that pulls up next to us. "I don't think they have cows in Mississippi," he chortles. I chime in with experience that Wisconsin cheese is hard to get when you live in far away. Cows in Phoenix under triple digit summer temperatures don't milk the same.

The ride down County Road O will take us to the stockyard and auction barn. My Amish passenger notes the large scale farming along the way. Instead of the state highway we travel the back roads past postcard picture farms in rolling southwestern Wisconsin.

The auction barn parking lot is empty. "I guess I got my days wrong," my passenger says. Taking advantage of the Wal-Mart across the street, we stop for bleach and dog food. After a $4.65 lunch at the China Inn we start for home. Saturday is another institution in the country-Fall Clean-up. I need to unload the truck of firewood, to fill it with junk saved over the course of six months. Mandy's been penned up in her new improved dog kennel. The Pooch and her are good buddies, but she still greets me like I've been gone for months. The Pooch is small enough to fit between the four inch squares of hog panel to come and go as he pleases. No doubt it pisses the dog off. To add insult to injury he frequently will sit on the roof of the dog house out of reach of a slobbering dog.
Tossing drawers from an old dresser that was converted into a cold frame last April, I rehearse my lines for arrival at the dump. All the town officials as well as the regular dump employee, whose new Golden Retriever puppy is tied up in the shed and yipping at people pulling up with truck loads of construction debris, rusted metal and old lawn chairs. The new town chairman greets me cordially and I ask him, "Where do you want Grandma?" He gives me a puzzled look as I continue. " I've got Grandma in back. You know, lots of drawers and no chest." He chuckles as his Dad, a former town supervisor, says, "I gotta remember that one."

Today after a run to the big city for more supplies, I'll be finishing the day making Italian sausage. The kitchen floor is still sticky from the wine bottle of corked cider that blew across the ceiling and the front of all the cabinets. Johann is busy with last minute home repairs and painting jobs that people put off in the high heat and rainy summer. He barely has time to find a home for the new baby chicks that arrived by mail on Saturday. Even Mandy is into the fervor of the fall season getting ready for the winter season. She's been busy stock piling bones in the rocks of the silver maples out near the road. Nights I have to accompany her outside for her late night potty break as the wild animal population is busy, too. After a quick pee she'll race to the fence barking in her "this is my place" growl at whatever varmint is passing through. One night she gets kicked out to her dog pen for restlessness. Dawn brings her in after fifteen minutes of barking at an intruder just beyond her fence line. In the morning, I find a small feral cat caught in the live trap. The Pooch watches in amusement as I open the cage door and the cat streaks off for cover in the weeds by the east fence line.


Mandy watches birds flying overhead as the Pooch head off down the lane.

Pooch the cat comes into the office right on schedule. I've been fartin' around online for the better part of an hour. The apple sauce is turning to apple butter on the stove. I haven't stirred it since I finished breakfast and headed into the orifice to surf. I cringe thinking of the caramelized apple do on the bottom of my stainless steel cooker. Oh well, there's always the wire brush attachment on my DeWalt hand drill.

The cat stretches on my exposed leg sinking his claws into tender flesh, jumps on the counter and tries his cat dance across the keyboard. I pat my lap and he settles in for some rolling thunder purring as I scratch his jowls and neck. I'm backed up with work(again). The sky's clear blue and the sun shining. I wasn't going to putter in the blog garden, since I can't cram enough hours into the days as it is. Then, I check a blog singled out as noteworthy. A gal from St.Louis writes "Everything I like Causes Cancer". That piques my attention. She's witty, sarcastic and obviously very computer literate. The blog design is eye catching. I notice a blog on her blog list with the word Home brew in its title. More pique.

I'm having trouble with my hard cider. While the pear/apple brew is bubbling away and the concord grape wine is happily gurgling, the 9 gallons of fresh, unpasteurized apple cider has a long face. In the evening I consult with Number One son who's an advanced chemist and home brewer. He gives me a few tips noting that he's learned enough about home brew to create his own recipes. Wow. The island in our newly remodeled kitchen looks like science class in high school on the third floor of the old Englemann building.

I copy the blog address of the home brewing page and paste it into my "Blogs I follow" list. Scrolling through various posts about brew, the author tells about fixing a batch of beer. He says he has a mark on the carboy that indicates five gallons. Pouring the freshly cooked beer tea into his carboy, he notices the level in the bottle is beyond the five gallon mark. Puzzled, he tries to figure out how he started with five gallons and magically created more. I know the feeling. It's a WTF? situation.

Then, he realizes, duh, he forgot to dump out the sanitizing solution. I don't feel so bad for screwing up and adding yeast to my mix right after throwing in a crushed Campden tablet. The Campden tablet works to kill wild strains of yeast and other contaminates. It will also kill (duh) your newly added Pasteur Champagne yeast. Then there's the person who wrote in to the wine supplies company. She (it sounds like a 'she') asks the webmaster who maintains a FAQ's, questions and answers portion of the site , "How do I remove labels from bottles? I don't want to give friends brew with old labels." Yes, that would be home brew class 1A right after What i s your name and do you know where you live?

Dawn pounds the Pampered Chef vegetable chopper handle most of the afternoon fine chopping sweet green peppers and Jalapenos. Thanks to the NWS 's widespread frost warning Saturday and Sunday night, we have a bushel of peppers to process. On Sunday morning I pick some basil branches that miraculously made it through predicted 30 degree lows. The pepper plants-untouched. For no rhyme or reason only one vine of gourd plants appear to be killed by frost. It wasn't in a low spot. Nothing near the gourd vines was affected. Now I've got an eighty foot row cover over my tender lettuce and radishes wondering what to to with the row cover. Late Saturday Dawn and I stretch the white fabric over thirty or so metal hoops creating a miniature cold frame or greenhouse tunnel. The wind whipped the thing around as we looped it over the frames and then quietly retreated to bother other people stretching 80 foot long ten foot wide fabric. The quickest way to anchor the fabric is a shovelful of dry dirt. 160 shovel fulls later, the row cover is secure, but I need to water my late season garden. I'd better get moving.

Cadger, Coot, Codgers

Blogger has a feature called "Blogs of Note". On my dashboard it lists blogs that someone in the dark reaches of the sub-basement at Blogger decides to highlight as worthy of mention.

I enjoy reading new blogs singled out on Blogs of Note because it gives me contrast and comparison. One blog I most identify with is a recent pick-"Throw Grammar From The Train". The writer writes that she's a reformed nitpicker. At last someone's interested in the vagaries of the English language. There's a subtle sense of humor behind the musings of the nitpickers.

Our former town clerk prided herself as a kind of amateur editor. When I ponied up some friends to donate a few dollars and time to publish a town newsletter, she jumped in to nitpick. Trouble was, she had a nasty side, almost a literary form of terrorism. The newsletter was abandoned when the town chairman decided it was safer for him avoid the snarling menace who had a cubbyhole in the back of the steel shed that is the town hall. Rather than confront her about letting us use the town's donated laser printer, he offered several excuses. Making hand gestures of a snarling tiger, he says, "I don't want her to quit." In a curious turn of events, the next town clerk became the town chairman's real nemesis. In an argument at the town dump, the two elders get into a tussle and the town chairman throws the town clerk to the ground. "I lost my cool," he later tells the judge at a court hearing. I guess nitpicking can be dangerous.

All of the above is a reaction to a picture I wanted to take of myself and Mandy May. When I saw the picture, the word codger comes to mind. Before I get to the meaning of codger, I have to point out that Mandy is afraid of the camera. At least when I pick up my digital Canon, she shies away. It made it difficult to get the image I wanted. Remember the words to a song by Crosby Stills and Nash? I forget the exact title. It may have been "Almost Cut My Hair" . In the song David Crosby says he wonders why he's letting his "freak flag" fly. To protect my skin from the harmful effects of the summer sun, I grew a beard. On any given day I spend 75% of my time outdoors. Since last Dec. I've had a beard. In the middle of the summer the itching got to me. I shaved the beard to a goatee. Now the goatee is long enough to tie a ribbon around like some of the bikers I see parked in front of the corner bar. Part of the "freak flag" experience is competing with Johann who has a perennial mountain man look. When you have to haul water from a spring shaving is of lesser importance.

So, with a cat stretched out on the table next to me and the dog on the carpet chewing on her blankie and a reticence to get going to this morning, I mull over growing older. I think it's a form of stalling, since I'll hit the door running once I get out of the shower. Picking up a bushel of apples, more yard work, nasty wood stove maintenance in the basement-the usual. Yesterday I got hit with the realization that its been a long time since I've had a truly create moment that didn't involve carpentry, dirt, canning or animals.

Codger, my Oxford English etymology says, is a stingy old man. Since it's become a familiar appellation it has been abbreviated to just old man, fellow or chap. That's a bit nicer. At the end of the entry is the reference to cadger. Looking up cadger I find it to be of unknown origin, first used to mean carrier and later itinerant dealer. Dawn's sisty ugler, an opinionated and ill tempered bitch, questioned Dawn's choice of an English etymology book as a gift. So as a retort to the nasty beaacch I'll point out that the codger entry has a pressed mosquito between the pages. I left the back door open for the kids to come and go as they please. An inquisitive mosquito made it to my office where I slammed the book open to codger on his skinny little body. So there, Miss Nasty Donna. There's more than one way to research etymology.

The Horse and Colt show ends in a slow fizzle when I see a flatbed truck hauling porta-potties down the highway. Most of Sunday afternoon diesel semi's pulling horse trailers with AC, special windows and fancy detailing are followed by owners driving hundred thousand dollar portable living rooms which were parked early-on in Banker Park down by the river. A customer in the bank in Readstown tells the cashier behind the newly installed security window that the river is expected to crest over the weekend. Heavy rain upstream will have the RV's hub deep in water, judging by the pasture across the highway from us which is a small lake.

Johann drives off in his Isuzu which he restored to functioning after hitting a deer. After dropping off 13 pounds of concord grapes for juice and wine, he goes in search of four nearby loud shot gun blasts that send a flock of honking geese overhead. My cell phone rings. "Two crackers in waders crouching in the pasture," he reports. Beautiful fall weather has the leaves in full fall bloom. Mornings are shrouded in fog when cold air crashes into warm.

My late fall crop of radishes and greens in the old onion garden is doing nicely except for the spinach. The peppers work overtime. Dawn cans 21 pints of pepper onion relish from the Joy of Pickling book. The author remarks that this is a relish for cooking as opposed to traditional "on the table" sweet relishes. I get to sample the batch immediately because one jar doesn't seal. In my estimation there's too much vinegar. I consider cooking it down to reduce the volume of liquid which according to the recipe is four cups of cider vinegar for a double batch.

Thanks to my library angel I have eight tubs of raspberry freezer jam in the upright freezer. To show my appreciation I give her a sample of Amish butter. Her assistant likes it so much that she asks me to pick her up a tub of butter and a quart of milk. The price of sugar has been fluctuating like a bear/bull market. Despite the departure of the hummingbirds, we go through ten pounds of sugar at a phenomenal rate. I monitor the price between Wal-Mart and the Amish bulk store. The same is true for canning lids and spices. Usually the bulk store is less expensive than Wal-Mart. A typical freezer jam recipe calls for 5 1/2 cups of sugar for 3 pounds of crushed fruit. I spread it thinly on toast and bagels. The flavor is so intense it doesn't take much.

Now that Apple Fest is over and everyone has returned to Chicago, the Amish dicker for a crate of apples from a local orchard. Purchased in large quantities, the cost per bushel of Cortland apples is under $10. The Patriarch mentions getting a fifty gallon barrel of apple cider. They use it for making vinegar. I'm looking at hard cider and canned juice for the winter. I bring them a bottle of my strawberry wine which won't store for a long time because the wine maker put the cork in upside down. It leaks wine and more importantly will allow air into the bottle. They take it with a cautionary note saying, " We only use it for medical emergencies."

My girl spends her afternoons sleeping on the red easy chair in the garage. Busy with yard work and the usual home maintenance projects, I try to take out a few moments every now and then to toss the Tidy Cat lid which is our version of a Frisbee. All the potatoes have been moved to their winter quarters in the summer kitchen. The space in the basement is filled with kindling and fire starting materials. At this time of year the wood stove is used sporadically which means starting a new fire whenever I want to chase the morning chill out of the kitchen. The Pooch has several blankets on the folding table next to the drier. I move one out to a work table. The kids like to snooze in the shelter of the garage while keeping an eye on the grounds.

I'm on my last Charles Martin novel, Where The River Ends. His sometimes sad and often inspiring tales will be missed. Dawn reads Chasing Fireflies . I frequently think of the aphorisms of Unc, one of the main characters in that novel. Putting your boots in the oven doesn't make them biscuits is one of my favorites. Frequently the Amish Patriarch remarks about city people and their naive assumptions of country folk and life out here. I get caught up in enthusiastic and idealistic notions that I've learned to take time and reassess. When I found a wine making supplies business on line, it became obvious that it'd be easy to go overboard. Keeping in mind the original purpose of my wine making which was to take an inexpensive and readily available source of fruit and turn it into an enhancement of our do it yourself lifestyle, I avoid the $100 wine kit pitfalls.

Going from using instant bread yeast and hit and miss sanitizing solutions, I put in an order today which refines the process just enough to take the guess work out of making a quality beverage. The inexpensive corker replaces my whacking corks into the bottle with a rubber mallet. I have three specialized wine yeasts which will improve the flavor. Instead of bleach which can leave a residue which is difficult to rinse from a bulky glass carboy, the new no rinse sanitizers make the process more efficient as does a hygrometer for measuring specific gravity. Watching the fancy trucks, customized cars, antique and collectible cars and semis loaded with pointy nosed jet fuel tractors, I can see how easy it could be to let an idea take over your life to the exclusion of everything else.

Now, let's think about raising chickens, ducks, pigs and goats...

Pork Chop

I avoid the cliche, Bad To The Bone for not so obvious reasons. This is a story partially about a bone. The rest is just misfortune. Bones are all over the place. Mandy chews one, discards it on the lawn for me to run it over with the riding mower. They're rock hard hard. I jump from the noise the whirling, double set of blades on Fred, the mower, when he runs one over. The dog hides them in leaves, buries them in lawn clippings and under rocks by the silver maples. The pork chop bone had meat on it. Mandy chews fat and gristle until it gleams white.

The afternoon disappears in a wine making buzz. This is the stuff to keep you on the edge of your seat. The totally overcast afternoon will darken quickly at dusk. It throws the cat off balance. He comes in the house at five for an afternoon nap on the back of the couch. Taking advantage of a cornered cat, Dawn and I decide that we're too lazy to whip up a gourmet dinner. "Let's get Chinese food from Richland Center." The twenty minute ride down a newly repaved U.S. highway with a golden afternoon sun peeking through rain clouds is a marvel. Green fields, golden corn fall colors of red, brown and gold on expansive hillsides reminds me why I moved back to Wisconsin.
On the return trip the orange, mercury vapor yard lights next to farm houses are lit up. Recent rains bring the river up over it's banks. Two pastures directly to the north and east of our place are again small lakes. I hit the garage door opener over the visor of the car so we can see better. We unload our leftover Chinese food, a few items Dawn finds at the dollar store and the two tubes of caulk from Wal-Mart. Mandy wanders looking for new scents to discover. I flip on the yellow spot light in the breezeway and go back outside to monitor the dog. The bright light in the new addition blinds me temporarily. I don't see this bone standing on edge on the driveway. Who put that bone on edge? What are the chances the dog left it that way? OW! Something is stuck in my shoe. WTF!. I bend over and there's this bone sticking out of the sole of my leather shoe. Oh, that's painful. I pull it out and limp back into the house.

I untie my shoe, roll back the sock and rub the puncture wound with a gauze pad dripping with peroxide. Dawn offers maximum consolation with a sole question,"Did it bleed?" Like many things she says, I don't ask her the reasoning behind it. The answer will be convoluted and unnecessarily complicated. For some unknown reason she feels that I have an encyclopedia of knowledge tucked away in the far reaches of my brain. On the drive down to Richland Center she notes a field full of Black Angus cattle. "Look at all the calves, " she says. "How many calves can a cow have in a year?" she asks me. About all I know about cattle is the difference between the front and rear. I don't know what a heifer is. I can't tell you the difference between a Holstein and a Frisian or polled Hereford. I speak too quickly and botch a clever response. " Uh just a minute Dawn while I dial up my inner Wikipedia."

OW. OW. OW. It's been one of those days. Do they have a pre-set pattern or do I make them into a series of misfortunes?

I've got five pounds of rough looking pears and slightly bruised apples in a plastic sack in the garage from Bob my neighbor. There's not enough to make a new batch of wine. The pear wine on the kitchen island has a mass of fruit, raisins and must drifting on the top like the Sargasso Sea. The fermentation has slowed. I decide to add more juice to the existing carboy.

I grind quartered apples and sliced peas with my Champion juicer. The yield is approximately three quarts of juice. I add a quart of filtered water to top off the batch at one gallon and slowly heat the must.

When it warms up, I add a cup of sugar, dissolve a Campden tablet and add one teaspoon of yeast nutrient. Gone are the days of tossing crushed fruit into a bucket and tossing in bread yeast. While the sugar, the sodium metabisulfite and nutrient are dissolving, I strain the carboy containing the mass of gunk floating at the top of my existing pear wine. The glass jug is bulky and the strainer clogs instantly. I takes four pours and frequent whacking of the strainer into the side of the compost bucket. Only God knows how many micro-organisms I'm introducing into my partially fermented wine. I taste the wine dripping from the strainer and decide the new juice should have a cup more sugar. This half done wine is too tart.

I check the temperature of the juice cooling in the stainless steel pot on the stove. The package of wine yeast says the optimum temperature for culturing yeast is between 100 and 105 degrees. Remember now, this is Uncle Bob's wine making school. Uncle Bob knows better. Uncle Bob follows his own set of rules. Uncle Bob already has a name for his peach wine-Yellow Fever. Never mind that this is another episode of the "Stupids". Bob isn't going to culture his yeast in a separate container. Making bread Uncle Bob discovers that adding sugar to warm water and some bread yeast causes the yeast to foam over and out of the top of the Pyrex measuring cup. So U.B. adds the wine yeast directly to the cooled juice which the candy thermometer says is 105 degrees. Bob ignores the article about making hard cider he printed off from the Internet. After adding the Camden tablet, the sole purpose of which is to kill wild strains of yeast and other contaminants, one is supposed to wait two days before adding wine yeast. Duh.

The gallon of newly mixed apple/pear juice with all the fixins' goes into the filtered batch in the carboy. I cap the five gallon jug and run a plastic tube into a gallon jug of water. I figure after washing the dishes and cleaning up the spill wine on the floor, I'll be hearing plop, plop coming from the water bottle.

I go outside to do battle with the wasps who have built a nest in the carsiding near the eave of the garage. I check my caulk job on the thresholds of the breezeway so that subsequent rainstorms lashing the back entrance don't leak water into my new space. Inside on the island everything is quiet. The half filled carboy is dead quiet. Check on dog and cat. Walk out to garden and pick dried beans for next year's seed. Think about making pepper/onion relish on Saturday. Dawn has to work the quilt show in town. Apple Fest will be humming with tourists in Gays Mills and the highway will be busy with trucks hauling monster tractors for the Horse and Colt show tractor pull in Viola.

When Dawn pulls up at five the familiar sound of kerplunk begins in the water jug. I am so relieved. Dawn regales me with stories of making goodies for the bake sale and lunch on Saturday's quilt show. She's got five woman helping to peel and prepare fruit. She says the older they get the more these elders behave like children.