figuring things out

Mead Baby 2.0: it’s a temperature thing

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It’s been pretty cold lately, which means the house is pretty chilly, despite the thermostat setting (and I’m not about to crank it because bits and pieces of the house don’t get heat). The carboy is set up near an interior wall in the dining room, which has one heat vent across the room, under the window. The only other heat vent in this part of the house is in the living room, also under a window.

Not the idea environment for fermenting Mead Baby 2.0

The must should be in a temperature range of 15C – 20C. We don’t have a temperature strip, but thanks to a gift from a thoughtful friend, I am still able to get a reading.

16.7C This is encouraging. It’s at least in the range is should be, if on the low side.

This was the ambient temperature of the room, taken right after I checked the must.

The room is only 14.6C

This means the must is generating some of its own heat, and the towel wrapped around it as a sweater is helping keep that heat in.

The fermentation activity is slowing down faster than I am comfortable with, though. Watching the airlock, the “burp” of CO2 went from about every 6 seconds (which was already slow for this early in the ferment, based on what I’ve been reading) to about 8 1/2 seconds, at the time I took these temperature readings.

I’ve read a number of suggestions on how to keep things warm enough, and I’ve already implemented one of them. I took a scrap piece of rigid insulation (that stuff is coming in so handy!!!) to put under the carboy. This way, it won’t lose warmth into the table top, and we don’t have to try and keep the towel bunched under it, making it more stable.

I’m also thinking of running a towel through the dryer when we’re doing laundry, and then switching towels while it is still warm. We don’t need to do laundry all that often, though. Another recommendation that is practical for us is to use the little electric heating pad I recently picked up for my daughter, since our two old ones are no longer working. There are actually special versions of these, made specifically to wrap around carboys, but we’re not at a point to invest in anything like that right now. What we have will do. It has a low temperature setting, and turns itself off after two hours. We wouldn’t wrap it directly around the carboy, but around the towel, so as not to warm it too much or too quickly. We’ll have to move the carboy to somewhere we can plug it in.

Ooh. I think I just thought of a place, too!

The Re-Farmer

Bonus critters, and a kitty gate

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We had some new, furry visitors to our feeding station this morning!

This is a first for us to see raccoons! :-)

They are so fuzzy!!! Like round little bears. :-D

This morning, I also figured out a way to let the mama cats out of the sun room, while keeping the babies in.

I noticed a whiteboard I had in storage, and gave it a try. The whiteboard is too slippery for the kittens to climb, and even if they managed to climb up the jugs I shoved against it to keep it from tipping, the marker ledge should keep them from being able to climb over. The remaining question was whether or not the moms would jump over it, and if they would knock it down when jumping back.

As my daughter and I were heading out to go to town, I heard a noise and saw that Beep Beep had jumped it, without knocking it down. When I came back later, however, it seemed the Butterscotch hadn’t figured it out yet. So I just lifted her over. You can actually see her in the photo, at the old dog house, where she promptly went to eat some grass! She has since returned to the sun room, and the kitten gate is still up, so it seems to be working.

The kittens, meanwhile, were content to ignore the set up.

They had all been sprawled on that blanket until they saw me moving around. A few came to check things out, then stayed to play.

This one, however, just luxuriated…

Cutest.

Thing.

Ever!!!!

In other things, we have not been able to work on painting the gate again, yet. We had a good rain during the night, so it was still wet when we went into town. I’m hoping to get some more done this evening, once it starts to cool down a bit. At least the area that’s already painted is no longer tacky to the touch! Tomorrow, I’ll be driving my mother to a medical appointment, so if I get some painting done today, that’ll give it plenty of time to cure tomorrow. No rain is predicted overnight, so that should help, too. We’ll see how it works out.

For now, we’re just staying out of the heat!

The Re-Farmer

Seasonal things

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I’ve been able to spend more time outside in the last few days. Aside from cleaning up the downed branches in the yard and burning them in the fire pit, this has mostly been assessing things and making decisions.

I was checking around the garden area and could clearly see where the deer were coming in at the corner.

20190420.deer.path

Even with the snow gone, the path the deer made through the ditch and over the fence is clearly visible!

I was also noticing some changes. Like this.

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A light at the end of the tunnel?

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After I wrote about our foggy morning, yesterday, my daughter and I headed to town for her shift.

Locally, we had a light, moody fog. By the time we left, it was pretty much gone.

On the way to town, we drove into a wall of fog, that just kept getting denser as we got closer to the lake!

I took this picture in the grocery store parking lot.

20190407.fog

Keep in mind that my phone’s camera cleans visibility up quite a bit with smoke or fog, so in real life, the visibility was actually much less. Even so, I would normally be able to see several buildings, including the hospital my husband is in, from here!

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