Good and the Bad

We like to do positive posts here at The Acre, and looking back you can see most of them are upbeat and positive. This week we have a "swing and a miss" post, well, part of it anyway. We made a big deal over our potato boxes this summer. All they hype said one hundred pounds of potatoes per box, and we did two boxes, so we planned on a starch fueled winter. Well, not so much.
We emptied out the red potato box a few weeks ago, and only got about six potatoes, all from the bottom of the box. It seemed like the vines did not produce the shoots as we added dirt. We thought maybe it was just a red potato trait, and had higher hopes for the white potato box. We found potatoes right on top as we started...

But as we went along, we only found one or two on each level. This was the whole box when we finished.

The thought on the failure seems to be that maybe we added the dirt too quick. Next year we will wait until the fines are bigger before we add dirt. 
On a potato related note, Cupcake had several pots of sweet potato vines around the house this summer, and the latest frost put an end to those. As we were pulling the vines out of the pots, we found sweet potatoes in the pots. We thought the vines were only decorative, so this was an unexpected surprise.

We may have better luck with sweet potatoes next year.
With it being Fall, we did outside Fall things this weekend. We gathered up about a half bushel of black walnuts. We have about a dozen walnut trees here on the property, but this is the first year we've picked any up. We started cracking a few of the dried ones, but most of these will have to wait a week or two before we start on them.

And as we get on to the food part of the blog, we start off with a walnut related item. Apple cake. Big Man is a pie making somebody, but for some reason we've never tried cake. Cupcake had an old high school friend and his family stop by The Acre this weekend, so we did a meal up right, with cake for dessert. Big Man made a batch of his soon to be world famous cream cheese icing, and it really turned out well, but next cake (probably this weekend) we are going to make another one using black walnuts instead of pecans. We think it will really make the cake "pop".

And of course, we smoked meat. Brisket

We were so focused on the meal prep, we didn't think about taking the usual step by step pics, these were more of an afterthought, as you can tell by the amount of food in the pics. We will do better next time.  We ended the week with chicken wing Sunday, because it's how we roll.
K&K

Really Big Update (Really Big)

You have to read that title in your Ed Sullivan voice for it to make sense. But actually, we fell behind a week on goings on around The Acre, so we have to play catch up.
We thought we would start off with a late garden entry, green beans. Pops planted a row of green beans after we pulled up the rows in the summer, and they have been producing beans the past couple of weeks. Last week we picked a grocery bag full, and got four quarts of beans.

This last weekend we had a hard frost, so we went ahead and pulled up the plants and took the beans that we had, figuring this would be the last of the plants. We did good.

We picked just shy of a full bushel, and it made 14 more quarts of beans. We hope we have enough to last the winter now.
Our next garden entry is strawberries and rhubarb. Because of the frost, we harvested all the rhubarb and picked the last of the berries, so Big Man made three pies. We ate one straight away, and we froze two more, figuring we can heat them up come Thanksgiving and Christmas.

We have enough rhubarb for a couple of more pies that we froze. We are going to try raspberry rhubarb pie with the frozen fruit. We will be sure to update on results.
Now we go from out of the garden, and into the kitchen. We had a couple of smokes over the past two weeks. Big man did a whole chicken, a pork shoulder, brisket tip, and a pork loin. Pigs live hard around The Acre.

Pulled pork BBQ, homemade bourbon BBQ sauce

We used the leftover chicken for a big ol pot of chicken and dumplings one night, because it's getting that time of year again.

And a special shout out to our pal "Rhulenbarb" who gave us the recipe for crock pot dip. We whipped up a batch of that last weekend, and snacked as we worked.

And what did we work on while we snacked, you may have asked yourselves? Home made cranberry sauce, of course. The cranberries have hit store shelves, and we have them in the pot just that quick.

We made 15 jars of cranberry sauce. We know, we hear everyone who just read that say "who eats 15 jars of cranberry sauce?" We do, that's who. We have had a jar open every Sunday morning breakfast since last winter, and it never seems to get old. We will probably make another batch, maybe two more, before the cranberries disappear from store shelves. We may need to start raising cranberries.
Last entry on this update is vehicle stuff.
Big Man changed the oil in both vehicles this past weekend. Since Jacob has started driving, neither one of us drive many miles, so we never hit the five thousand mile mark between oil changes, Big Man hardly drives 5K all year long, so we do a change in the spring, and one in the fall.

We mention the oil change every time, because Cupcake's father, Big Man's outlaw, told her when she first bought her truck, that the oil filter was impossible to reach, and that it couldn't be changed, except by a professional. The oil filter is behind the front bumper, you can reach it without crawling under the truck, so Big Man will continue to mention the oil change, because he hates stupid and lazy people.
We also had a dead battery incident after the hard frost.

We mention it, because in Cupcake's former life, nobody knew how to work a jumper cable, or in this case, a jump box. Stupid lazy people, again get mentioned.
And we washed and waxed the vehicles. A good coat of wax couldn't hurt over the winter.

Our last picture is a view from Pop's garden. Country living rocks.

You know how we end our week.
K&K

Things Change

It seems to be an unstoppable force. Change. We are currently going through the change of seasons, but there was another change noticed this week. Homecoming dances. As best Big Man can recall, the homecoming festivities consisted of a bonfire the night before the big game (Christiansburg always played Floyd, so they were sure to win) then there was a sock hop after the game.
Kattie Grace attended her first homecoming dance this week. There was no bonfire we were made aware of, but there was a formal dress needed, hair needed doing, and there was at least one limo seen at the event. The times, they are a changing.

And back to the seasons changing, we are predicting yet another harsh winter. Last post we showed our spring bushes blooming in the fall, much like last year. Again this year, spiders are building webs in the tops of trees, just like last year. You heard it here first folks.

So, to make ready for the winter to come, Big Man spent the week prepping comfort foods. A couple of weeks ago, we tried our first home made tomato soup. It was such a hit, Big Man made a single batch for dinner one night.

Onions, celery and carrots to start

A couple of fresh from the vine Tabasco peppers

Fresh from the garden tomatoes, a couple cloves of garlic. How healthy is that?

Peasant bread on the side. So simple, so, quick, and so good with homemade butter

We managed a whole meal, leftovers for Cupcake's lunch the next day, plus two quarts in jars for later. Rain kept Big Man in the house one day last week, along with about a quarter bushel of tomatoes left from the last of our supply on hand. So, rather than waste them, Big Man whipped up a combat batch of soup, and canned the whole lot of it.

In the Army this was a "Combat size" cook

In all it made a little over four gallons of soup. (18 quarts)
There was smoked meat again on Thor's day (Thor is a woman now, if you didn't see the headlines in the nerd publications). This week we skipped the ribs, and did a brisket.

There was home made pizza again this week too.

Pepperoni, Mushroom and Onion. Home made sauce

And for an extra special treat, Cupcake made preacher cookies. Or as Big Man's outlaw called them "them brown cookies".

And lastly, a batch of laundry detergent. You can't eat it, but we do need it every day, and we are proud to make our own. It's like a finger in the eye to corporate America.

We ended the week as we always do, with chicken wing Sunday (you can see the wings in the preacher cookie picture, if you're curious)
K&K