Random Update

A couple quick updates from the homestead. First, I siphoned the wine off the sediment. The wine has been fermenting in the glass bottle at the bottom of the picture below. I siphoned it into the plastic container, cleaned out the glass container, and put it back into the glass container. I'll let it settle again and in a month or so I'll siphon it off any further sediment. I checked the specific gravity of the wine and it has fermented to moderately dry. It should be about 11.5% alcohol. I also took a sip of it, but I wasn't too impressed. It tasted somewhat too fruity, and it also has some chemically type flavors. Hopefully it will improve as it ages.

We had a recent heat wave that melted the accumulated snow in the garden. You can see the Brussel's Sprouts in the lower left corner. It looks like a couple of the plants are still somewhat alive, but I'm not sure what kind of shape they'll be in come spring.

My parents also got us a grow light setup that I expect will be a big help when it comes time to start vegetables indoors in the spring. Speaking of which.....I've started planning the 2011 garden layout, but I'm not at the point of buying any seeds yet. The biggest difference is that I likely won't be doing Zucchini or Spaghetting Squash nest year. They just took up way too much space in the garden last year. They produced well, but what do we need 35lbs of Spaghetti Squash for? Just too much production and too much space taken up by single plants. Not having those should allow for a more reasonable amount of several different types of veggies.