Garden Season

Garden season has kicked off here at The Acre. The weekend of "The Great American Race" is always start the tomato seed weekend tradition. The tomato plants are about ready to be planted.

We also started our seeds for "them yellow cucumbers", green cucumbers, and squash. We doubled down on squash this year since we found a recipe for squash relish. We only managed a few jars last year, we are going to corner the market this year (fingers crossed). We promised "Rhulenbarb" a couple sets of yellow cucumbers, and we might throw in a couple squash sets while we at it.

We also planted a batch of horseradish in an old whiskey barrel. We hear tell the leafs are good in salad, and since our salad fixings are up and growing, we added this to the mix.
You may notice a few apple cores drying in the sun near the seed sets? With all the apple pie baking going on, we have a lot of apples about the house. We have been saving seeds and planting them in pots. We did four last year on a whim, and they all came up. We set them out on the property and they have flourished, so now we are going to play "Johnny Appleseed" and plant as many as we can. Future generations may enjoy the orchard, at least the deer will.

The finishing touches on the hen house were completed over the week, the covered run is finished, and the big birds were successfully moved into the hen house.

We kept them locked in for two days while it rained, and now they know it is their home.

We dare you to find a fresher egg? Go on, try

We also moved the new egg ladies to their new home in the old coop. They seem to be doing well out there.

They are just small enough to fit through the wire on the covered run, so they will have to remain cooped up for another week or so, but the way they are eating, it wont be long.
We managed to get to "Dude's Drive In" Saturday night for a throwback date night, and we ended the weekend with "Chicken Wing Sunday" which remains our tradition.
K&K

Expansion Complete

We mentioned we were expanding our egg production this year. We hatched a dozen chicks to add to our flock, then we saw cute little black birds at Tractor Supply, they looked like penguins and we had to have some.

 So now we have 18 chicks to add to our flock, and only have a coop that holds a dozen birds at best. The pressure was on to finish the hen house under construction. We got out this weekend and worked from post breakfast cleanup to dinner cook.

We managed to get er done, Cupcake even had time to put two coats of stain on it. We still have a few finishing touches to put on the hen house, but it is move in ready.

We put an old barn style latch on the door. If we're going to have a hen house, it should be retro. Just our humble opinion. We still need to connect the run to the hen house, we hope to have that done by next weekend so we can transfer the chicks to the coop and the birds to the hen house.
We also had usual stuff going on. We got our first picking of herbs from Cupcake's window garden.

We smoked a chicken and a ham. It was Easter weekend after all.

Cupcake made her world famous corn pudding, and it lived up to the hype this year too.

We also had a visit by new birds this week. We dont know what kind of birds they are, but they sure are pretty, and we enjoy watching them come and go.

We ended the construction and weekend with "Chicken Wing Sunday" as is tradition.
K&K

T.Marc Colburn. Expert Witness

A man I worked with for many years passed away this week. I first met Marc when he transferred from Baltimore City PD to Anne Arundel County. He was assigned to "The Northern" shift three, and I was tasked with being his field training officer. The thought of having a "training officer" ruffled Marc's feathers to no end, I think the line at the time was "I have driven past more in progress felonies than you've made arrests for", but in government, nothing is right but the paperwork.
So off we went, dayshift in the hood. After a few hours of showing post boundaries and getting a lay of the land, we decided to have lunch. I stopped at the local Roy's ( 2@5th for you radio types).  We got about halfway through the meal, and caught a robbery call, so off we went. On the way to the call, lights and siren, wide open as we could go, T.Marc looks over at me and says "I've never paid for a meal, and I've never thrown one in the trash, and I just did both on my first day".
There is no end to the stories I could share. Marc was a cops cop. He talked trash to young guys to  try and motivate them ("Post Pride is not a fucking breakfast cereal"), but he walked the walk and lead by example. We spent many years working together, we investigated drug cases, did no telling how many search warrants together. We were hand picked to investigate violent crimes in The Western District as a two man team. Some of the best cases of my career came working along side Marc. And the tag "expert witness" came about when all his circuit court summonses gave him the distinction of an expert witness in  other people's drug cases. The title stuck with me.
T.Marc blew his knee out on a call when we stopped and arrested robbery suspects and an escaped prisoner all in the same car. Marc was medically retired, and where most cops long for retirement, it did not seem to suit him. The job kills cops, but it's not always a bullet, knife or car accident that kills us. Marc dealt with his issues as best he could, the only way he knew how. I hope he finds the peace he never seemed to know. This is how I remember my friend, and always will.

Spooning at a Gettysburg campground

Cooling off on a camping trip to Tennessee

T.Marc and his ex-wife Melanie

Fishing for monster trout, and caught a hail storm instead

Fishing off a lawyer friend's pier 2006ish

Fish with teeth, at his grandparents dock

Rest now brother. We have the watch
"Bubba"

Doing Chicks

Busy week here at The Acre. It was chicken hatch week, and we now have a dozen new additions to our flock. It's officially spring when the chicks arrive. Cousin Eddie brought the Chirruns over to see the new brood, and a big Sunday breakfast was enjoyed by all.

With new chicks comes construction. Over the winter we had quite a bit of snow, and the egg ladies are not down with the white stuff, so they would stay in the coop until someone shoveled out a path for them to get under the covered porch. You'd think having two teenagers in the house, who shovels the path would be a no brainer, but we couldn't seem to find a shovel that fit either ones hand, so Big Man and Cupcake had path duty (we said "duty").
This got the wheels turning over the winter that perhaps we should make a covered run for the birds, eliminating the need to shovel in the future. Designs were formulated, lumber was purchased, and construction began.

The plan was to cover the run from the little coop to a covered shed structure, giving the birds a wide area to stretch out when they are cooped up. As we got underway, Cupcake hit on the idea to turn the shed into a large coop, since we were adding to the flock. So now the plan is, keep the little coop for the fresh hatch birds, put the older birds in the big coop, and have the covered run for introducing the new birds to the older birds. Hope to be done by next weekend, stay tuned.
There was one meal big man was proud of this week, brisket pot pie. During a rib smoke last week, he put a half brisket in the smoker and kept it for this meal. He chopped up about half of the brisket, and made the filling, then let it marry up for a day before baking. While he was making from scratch pie crust, he went ahead and baked another apple pie.

We ended the week with "Chicken Wing Sunday" which is still our tradition here at The Acre.
K&K

Farm Living

Living on a farm is the greatest thing ever, but there is the occasional work goes in to it. It's not for lazy people. I made my rounds Monday on the fence, I found breaks in three spots, and insulators off in seven more. After a days work, we are putting 18 volts out, which is optimal.
Tuesday was check for down trees. YAY us, we found two.

The second one was down across the food plot where we have one of our archery stands. The first was  down along a small road below the house that runs along a Creek that the cows use to navigate around the house. The one across the road was a cedar tree. We hated to see that, there is no prettier wood on The Acre than a cedar tree.

Then the weekend came....
We trekked to town Saturday, and bought three more fruit trees. Two plum trees and a Bing Cherry tree. We have decided this is our last year in the current garden, we are going to let the strawberries take it over, and plant blueberry bushes along the rim, making the current garden our fruit garden, and moving the meat/potato garden further from the house. (More fence building).

Bing Cherry

Strawberries are taking off

We have eleven rhubarb plants this year

Cupcake was especially excited this weekend, because apparently in her previous life, the technology to dig a hole and plant a fruit tree in a vertical position did not exist. This befuddles the Big Man.
I guess it's the new generation who use power augers or call "the guy". Here at The Acre, we use old school post hole diggers, and get good service every time.

Solid iron digger/tamper and post hole tool. Old school digging

After we got the fruit orchard one step closer to being, we transplanted two blueberry bushes from the front flower garden to the new fruit section.

Blue Berry Bush

Pink Lemon-aide blueberry bush

Then we tilled out two short rows for more lettuce and a row of collards.

After that, we transplanted our tomato sets from peat pots to potting soil cups, planted a dozen or so pear seeds we saved from last fall, and cleaned out the garage, moving the Christmas totes to the barn and whatnot.
We ended the weekend with "Chicken Wing Sunday", which is our tradition.
K&K

First April Post

We made a great purchase here at the Acre today. This calculator will
make the little things in life more simple. We use it here to calculate
ballistics trajectories and convert from metric units to English units
for cooking. You can even use it to calculate the number of BTUs in a
chord of wood, which makes it easy to figure out how much wood to cut.

K