I have transferred the small batch of wine I made into its secondary fermenter to sit for a few months. It’s only about a gallon and a half, but what I tasted after the main fermentation tasted like a yeasty red wine. Which is to be expected since the yeast is still in suspension, but at least it didn’t taste sour or anything like that. It has a nice red color to it, but I’ve read that it will fade over time.

The blackberries, however, do not stop coming. I took the 12 pounds of berries I collected and made a larger batch of (according to the recipe, anyways) what will be a sweeter wine. After mashing and letting them soak overnight, I strained them and added the sugar and yeast, and have ended up with about 4 1/2 gallons this time. Hopefully it will not foam so much that the top blows off the fermenter!

This is what 12 pounds of berries looks like:

Blackberries

Today I picked approximately six quarts of blackberries, mostly off the patch along the road. That many berries would probably cost us $45-50 at the market.

My arms look like I was in a fight with Buddy. It’s a little freaky when you hit a vine and a blob of a dozen or more Japanese Beetles falls on you, buzzing angrily. Or you discover a berry covered with tiny ants. I don’t like ants.

I’d estimate there is still at least another six quarts waiting to ripen on the vines, although I’m not sure if the hot dry weather will cause them to turn black slower or quicker than if it is raining. I hope it’s quicker, because I’d like to make another batch of wine, and I think Cabol wants to make jam…

Cabol told me this morning one of the ducks got three inches (that’s a thousand or so decalitres for you metric folk) off the ground. Is that considered flying?

Feeding grain to the sheep in the morning is even more fun than watching bunnies eat. They both shove their little faces into the bucket and make happy snuffling sounds while scarfing it all down. Then they make sad sounds in the evening when I go in the barn and they realize they won’t be getting more until the next day.

This afternoon I was sitting on the porch watching sheets of rain come down (while at the same time incredibly sunny), and I glanced over at the duck tractor. Today it seems the ducks have learned that they can get out of the rain if they sit under the little roof I put up for them. But then one duck would run out into the rain, and alllll the other ducks would follow, they’d make a big circle and realize they are getting wet, so they would runnnnnnnn back under the shelter. After waiting 30 seconds, this would repeat. Again, and again, and again…