Our Life Together

Thursday, June 29, 2023

We've moved.

If you missed the update on the faceplace, we've moved hosting sites. Click the link to see the new updates.

Sunday, June 18, 2023

Welcome

We welcomed a bunch of new faces to The Acre this week. Starting off with this little guy.

His name is "Case" and he's the new dog at the newlywed's home. They stopped by for pancakes over the weekend and brought Case to make the introductions.

After a tour of The Acre, Cupcake bonded with him.

And speaking of bonding with critters, on our weekly visit to Rural King we found a bin full of Americana chicks reduced to a dollar each. We brought the entire bin home with us.

The last batch of birds we found at a reduced price have been set free at the slanty shanty, and now they are out chasing bugs and eating worms and whatnot.

And last but not least, Willow's little swim buddy hatched a new batch of fluffy butts.

An hour after we opened the coop up, she had them down to the pond, learning how to duck.

We had an unwelcome visitor this week as well. Early in the week we saw our first newborn deer below the house. The next day, we found this.

We're not sure if it was a fox, coyote, dog?

We have not found any signs of a predator. other than the half eaten deer, so we're on yellow alert until we get to the bottom of what did it.

On non critter related news this week, Lawman put up a new screen door.

We needed a new frame and hinges for the existing storm door after the wind caught it over the winter and ripped it off. Lawman made the call and found the Anderson door had a lifetime warranty on it, and they hooked us up for free.

The new frame fit perfectly, the old screw holes even matched up with the new ones. Lawman had it up in no time without blood shed.

While Lawman was putting away his tools, there was a loud crash in the kitchen. Upon further investigation it was discovered Cupcake had taken the cardboard tube to the garage, but it caught the light fixture in the kitchen.

Both of us were shocked that something was broken, and Lawman wasn't the cause. It took a while for both to process the scene.

While Lawman had his tools out, he got started on the "skulls of our enemies" display out front.

And garden related news, we pulled our first onion this week.

And our cabbage is about to come in, and we wanted to make a trial run for a new recipe for freezer slaw. We found a roadside produce stand this week, and bought a head of cabbage.

We're excited about the recipe and we can't wait to use our fresh from the garden cabbage. Lawman is already starting another batch of seeds to replace the cabbage in the garden.

We ended the week with a couple of naps.

K&K

Sunday, June 11, 2023

Cherry Thief

The DT's have been on edge all week, and we have been at a loss as to why. This weekend we pieced together why the dogs have been so goofy.

The squirrel was only about one foot from the deck railing as he helped himself to the free cherries. He paid no mind to the DT's threats of violence as he went about his day.

Cupcake wasn't too thrilled with the little tree rat either. She's been working all week to collect enough cherries for a jelly cooking. She did good.

Grabbing a basket every day, we collected a pot full for Sunday jelly day.

Brother Kevin recently helped to clean out our grandmother's home, and came across a mint in box case of jelly jars. He gifted them to us and we put them to good use.

So this batch of jelly probably won't be gifted outside of the house. But there was more than one case made.

Eighteen jars and three pints. Not bad for a couple hours of work. We are a well oiled machine.

Other goings on this week. We got all caught up on our mowing. Cupcake pitched in and helped out at the cemetery.

We added fresh dye to the ponds. We also learned that petting the DT's after adding dye to the ponds should only be done after removing gloves.

Our favorite part of the garden began this week, actually getting to pick a fresh meal. The collards are doing so well, we started the harvest. We look forward to fresh collards at least once a week now.

We found a recipe for rhubarb banana bread, and thought to ourselves "if only we had rhubarb" then we remembered we do, in fact, have rhubarb.

We cooked a deer leg in the crockpot for dinner one night, and had a bit of meat left over. As Melquita always says, "if it feeds you twice, it's worth the price."

We shredded the meat and made homemade tortillias.

We are in no way affiliated with the Blackstone griddle company

We took a couple of well earned naps to round out our week.

K&K

Sunday, June 4, 2023

Where the stars and stripes, and eagles fly

We got back to normal around The Acre this week. The newlyweds took a short honeymoon to Gatlinburg, then settled in to their new life. We like to say it's a matter of life and death around here, this week we experienced both. But before we get in to all that, we wanted to share a first for us. We were taking a load off to the green boxes and drove past a field of hay that had just been mowed. We saw our first bald eagle. Hawks, we have in abundance. This was our first eagle. We turned around to get a picture of it on the ground, but it wasn't having any part of that. This was the best we could do.

Now we get on to the life part of our week. We put over 40 eggs in the incubator three weeks ago, this week one hatched. We think we might have slipped up somewhere? But then again, we put three dozen under broody hens last month, and only two hatched, so.....

Anyway, the one that hatched was distressed, and Cupcake sprung in to action nursing it back to health.

We named this one "Lazarus" and hope it makes it to adulthood.

Cupcake also brought some Arlee into the Acre this week. It's peonies season. We transplanted some of Arlee's peonies across the road, and they were in full bloom.

A few weeks ago when the boys from the People's Republic were in, we opened up Serendipity. We found we had a water leak somewhere behind the workings of the basement. This week, Lawman took the basement wall off and searched for the leak. We think this is it?

Lucky for us, it was a simple to replace part. In theory. We took the part with us to Camping World down Big Lick way. We searched the shelves in the fixit department, but had no luck. Lawman approached a couple of CW employees who were shooting the breeze, and asked for help finding the part. He was directed to the "parts" department. So we walk over to the parts department, and there is a guy sitting behind a computer, doing his best to ignore us. Lawman gets his attention, and asks for help with the part. The guy points to the sign over his head that reads "Service" and says I need the parts guy, who sits in the chair next to his, but wasn't in the chair at the time. So we ask if maybe, just maybe, he could find us the "Parts" guy. And he did. It was the original employee we approached for help to start with. Lawman was just about out of patience by this time. The "time expired" clicked up when the "Parts" guy said it would be easier to get the part on Amazon, he didn't have one in stock.

So we did. And will probably never darken CW's doorstep again.

While Lawman was in a fixit mode, he replaced the pull starter on the tiller. Again. China sure don't make stuff that lasts.

After he got it started, we both went to work on the barn garden. We are a well oiled machine when we work together.

We've gotten over four inches of rain in the past week, so we had to wait until Saturday to get in the garden to work it up. There was still a couple of spots that were a little moist, but we had to get on top of the weeds before the next round of rain comes.

Cupcake gets the weeds in between

Lawman gets the ones in the rows

We are pleased with the results.

While we were doing our thing in the sun, the DT's took a break in the shade.

And speaking of shade, the cherry trees are just about ready to give us some fruit next week.

Now, on to the "death" part of the week. If dead predators offend your delicate nature, please stop reading here. You've been warned.

For almost a month now, Lawman has been doing a battle of wits with a red fox. And it's not just any red fox, this one has street smarts. Every other fox, red or gray, that comes around always had a predictable pattern. Lawman would set up a camera, get said pattern identified, occupy the sniper nest, then eliminate the problem. This foxxy fox had no set pattern, and it became personal. One thing Lawman can't abide, is a disruption of his sleep pattern, and this guy was keeping him up at nights.

So when Lawman would get up in the middle of the night for a potty break, he would scan the lower acres. Just as luck would have it, a 0400 potty break coincided with Foxxy Fox passing through the front yard. Badda Bing, his luck ran out.

Lawman left him in the yard as a warning to the other chicken killing bastards, but when we woke up, it was gone. So we turned the DT's loose and told them to find him. They ran straight to the spot where Lawman shot him, then made a bee-line for the woods. Augustus stopped at the woodline and pointed. Lawman walked in the woods, and there he was. We're not sure if it drug it's self to the woodline, or if something carried it off, but we were kind of impressed with the dogs. It's almost like they had a plan. And we certainly have never trained them to point.

Anywho, until we can get the "skulls of our enemies" display up and running, we used this method to signal the neighbors of our victory.

Sunday rolled around, and it was a nice, cloudy, drizzly day.

So we took a nap.

K&K

Sunday, May 28, 2023

Introducing: Mr. and Mrs. JB Walters

As promised, our big announcement this week!

Jacob and Dallas made it official and became husband and wife this week. Now she really is "The Girl-in-Law."

The weather was calling for rain, but it held off long enough for the knot to get tied and nobody got soaked. The event was held in a working horse barn.