Mead Baby 2.0 is now tucked away in a corner of the living room. I cleared off one of the shelves that were in the house when we moved here – it used to be a TV, back when they made the boxes out of real wood – that is next to one of the extension cords coming up through the floor we’ve found throughout the house. It was being used being used more as a catchall space, so this was an excuse for me to do some organizing. :-)
Though the shelf is wood, I still put the rigid insulation down first. I used a crocheted book mark to hold the electric heating pad in place around the towel, set the heating pad to “warm”, and left it to shut off on its own in 2 hours.
I came back to it 3 or 4 hours later.
This was the ambient temperature of the room.
At 14C, it is just a touch cooler than the dining room we were set up in before.
This is the reading I got from the must.
Woo Hoo! At 18C, it’s now at the higher end of the temperature range it should be at.
The yeast also seems to like the new temperature. The CO2 “burps” in the air lock are now happening every 4 – 6 seconds. More 4 than 6. :-)
This evening, I’ll probably turn the heating pad on the warm setting again, for when the house temperature drops during the night. We’ll see what the temperature of the must is again, before we do.
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.
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 mustis 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.
In the middle of when our internet went wonky and I couldn’t upload photos, I was able to move on to the next step in making cider vinegar with our crab apples.
You can read the first part here. (link will open in a new tab)
Today turned out to be too cold and damp to do the mowing between the trees I cleared last year, that I hoped to do today. I thought I might be able to at least use my reciprocating saw to cut some of the smaller stumps of trees I took down last year to ground level, so I could mow over them. In the end, I decided it was just too damp to drag out the extension cords and use electric tools.
Instead, I worked on an area I left partly unfinished last year; a double row of elms leading to the garden gate at the west fence line.
Today started early for me, as I had to drive to my mother’s to take her for an appointment to get her CT scan. She had a requirement to drink a litre of water an hour before her appointment, then restrictions on going to the bathroom shortly before, so I wanted to make sure she got there early enough to not have to worry about the restriction. Given how long it takes to drive from her town to the city where her appointment was, that meant she had to start drinking her water while we were driving.
She also had to fast 4 hours before the scan, but my mother went a bit overboard and, aside from eating some crackers with her morning medications, she had fasted since the supper! So as soon as we were done, I made sure to take her to lunch somewhere fast.
By the time I got home, it was mid afternoon. The weather was holding, so I decided to break out the push mower and get as much done as I could. (I only got rained on a tiny bit! :-D ) I was going to start working in the trees, but then decided to do the old, overgrown garden, instead.
When my brother brought the mower back, he walked me through what he had done. It started fine when we tested it, but he mentioned that he felt the prime pump wasn’t doing its job. So, just in case it wouldn’t start, he showed me where to open up the side of the engine, where there is a filter and an opening behind it, and told me I could basically just splash some fuel into it, and that should be enough to start it.
I’m very glad he told me that, because it wouldn’t start. I ended up having to do it twice! The second time was after I ran out of gas, but I found that if I filled the tank before it was completely empty, I didn’t have to do it again. Except I didn’t just splash it. I tipped the mower onto its side and poured a tiny bit, using the cap of the jerry can spout to hold the tiny bit of fuel I needed. After that, it started just fine.
Mowing the old garden ended up taking about 4 hours.
It is not a small garden.
It was also incredibly rough. Plus, I had to look out for stuff like this.
Thankfully, it wasn’t sticking too far out of the ground, but that’s something we’re going to have to dig up at some point. Maybe. Depends on how big it is, underground!
Here are the before photos.
Right now, the garden area is split by the section we covered with straw to mulch it, used some RoundUp when things started to grow through the mulch, then covered with tarps, that I worked around. That is where we are hoping to be able to start planting something next year. I also tried to get into those trees my mother left growing when she transplanted her raspberry bushes, as much as I could.
Here is what it looks like now.
Did I mention it was rough in there?
This picture barely begins to show how rough it was! It’s hard to grasp from the photo, just how big that hill in the foreground is. When this area was last plowed, this is where the tractor turned, so there are huge ridges all over.
If the weather continues to hold tomorrow, I want to work on mowing between the trees in the maple grove, plus the area leading from the big garden to the gate. My mother said she planted elms in there, so the area had not been mowed, but I see no signs of them.
And now I have to try and get the burrs out of my pant legs.
I wasn’t able to get back to working on getting the tire planter out (I can wiggle it a bit more, though! :-D ), but yesterday evening I decided to deadhead the spirea by the storage house.
I also cut them back from the grapes they were starting to encroach on again.
As I was doing that, I noticed some dead branches and figured I may as well take them out, too.
The Re-Farmer 