Slow Week

It was a slow week around The Acre. School is out, so the chirruns are not up at the crack of dawn anymore. The garden is in the nothing to do part of it's progress. Big Man runs a tiller through it once a week or so, and hoes out weeds as they pop up, but nothing really worthy of mentioning.
We have been getting quite a few strawberries, and we pulled a few stalks of rhubarb to make a fresh pie.

Fresh berries, fresh rhubarb, and home made crust, it's really tough to beat.
A few family mentions this week. First, Pop offered up some lettuce from his garden. The one down side to having free range chickens is, they eat every green thing they can find. This year it was our lettuce. They wrecked it as soon as it sprouted, then came back and ate the seeds when we replanted. Same for our sugar snap peas and spinach. But we digress.
Scalded lettuce one night for dinner.

And our cousins, Bill and Francis, sent a case of canning jars by Pop for us to use, and trust us when we tell ya, we use some jars around The Acre. So a big "Thank you" to them.
The one power tool project that came up this week was a downed tree. We have dozens of wild cherry trees around The Acre, and Pop has quite a few behind his house as well. Wild cherry trees are toxic to cattle if they eat wilted leaves from the wild cherry. One storm ago, a wild cherry snapped off behind Pop's house, and he has cattle in the field. We caught Pop gone one afternoon, and sawed up the tree, and hauled off all the limbs. We brought them to The Acre and piled them up in a trash hole to burn next wet day we catch. Crisis averted.

And about two weeks ago, we planted a half dozen American Chestnut trees around the house. Apparently these are blight resistant versions of the long dead American Chestnut trees. We have tried for several years to start trees from the English Chestnuts Pop has in his yard, but we have been foiled at every turn, except for one sprout we found and dug a couple of winters ago. We transplanted it, and it's still coming back each year.
But the point of this last entry is, while we were unloading the limbs from the cherry tree, we noticed one of the American trees started putting out leaves, so we were a little excited about it.

We ended the week like we always do. Wings.
And a fresh round of home made chocolate ice cream.
K&K

The Big Step

Jacob took the big step this weekend, graduation from high school. It makes us reflect on our own graduation, the hopes and dreams we carried from the event, and we're excited for Jake to make all his come true. Here's to ya, lad.

Getting ready to go

The graduation started on time, but there was a snafu with the order of the diplomas, so we took a break while they got them straight.

Once they were back in order, the event went off without a hitch.

About now is when the batteries in the camera went dead, so you'll have to take our word for it, it was a great time. We wish the class of 2015 all the best.
In non graduation related news, Kattie Grace had her last softball game of the season, Monday. Auburn has won all but one game this year, and most were won by the "slaughter rule". Monday was a double header against Giles. Knowing it would be a late night, we prepped a picnic dinner. We were the envy of all the softball families with fried salmon cakes on home made schoolhouse rolls.

Kattie Grace won both games, which was just gravy on our grits.
One day this past week was a washout, so Big Man took advantage of not being able to get outside, and whipped up a batch of pizza sauce and home made ketchup. It's not like we don't have 96 pints of canned tomatoes stored up or anything.

Fresh lemon basil, straight to the pot

Ketchup on the left, pizza on the right

And there was a big development on the dessert front, well, two actually. First, home made ice cream. We picked up a ice cream maker, and put it to good use.

Fresh ingredients

Vanilla first

Choco for Cupcake

Then, while we were moving stuff around in the freezer, we found two packs of rhubarb that we chopped up and froze last fall, along with a couple of bags of raspberries. So, we made a raspberry rhubarb pie.

This is how we make pie crust, no store bought. Ever

We have another bag of each, so we will be in sweets all week, with fresh rhubarb and strawberries coming in by next week. We're really excited.
We ended the week with wings.
K&K

More than Affordable, Fencing

Regular followers (both of you) know we've been dealing with fence drama for about a month, and that we decided to do it ourselves. This week we finished the job. It might not win any contest for prettiest fence, but it didn't cost four grand either, so there's that.

We used old farm style hidden gates, that blend in with the rest of the fence. We thought steel gates would take away from the curb appeal. We worked a little each afternoon until we got the job done. Along with a second job. Grape vine run.
As we ride along the country roads, we see people who have grape vines running along this or that, and they all seem to sag or be in dis-repair. We thought we would do a sturdy one, so we used 4X4's and concrete, along with several braces and chicken wire. We hope it lasts us a lifetime.

And after all that construction, we celebrated with a big meal.

Have we mentioned, Cupcake loves fried green tomatoes?

And, a fresh made apple pie for dessert. Big Man is back in pie mode

No store bought pie filling at The Acre

And a couple of side projects to report on this week. First, morel mushroom seeding. We left you last week with our plan to seed morel mushrooms. We ground up the remaining few we had, and let the mash work for two days. After it got all happy (and stinky) we mixed it with fresh wood ash from the smoker box (to simulate a forest fire, which morels love, apparently) and sprayed the mix in various spots along The Acre and Pop's house. Now we wait to see if it worked. Tune in next year.

A second project was indian corn. We have been seeing people selling glass gem corn here and there, so we decided to try and grow some of our own this year. The seeds are almost one dollar apiece, but look like glass beads on a cob when they mature, and they fetch a hefty sum online. We're not sure we would ever go into the corn selling business, but we sure would like to have a few ears to decorate with this fall. To avoid cross pollination with the garden corn, Big Man put our test seeds in pots on the deck. Corn does not need that much soil for the roots, so we hope this works out.

Our last project of the week, new additions to the flock. We may have a slight problem with adding chickens. Just a hint?

 Two dozen more Easter eggers. If they survive to next year, everyone come out and get your dozen of colored eggs.
We ended it like we always do. Wings.  But we added a new twist for dessert. Tune in next week.
K&K

Mushrooms and Post Holes

This week at The Acre, it was all about mushrooms and digging holes. We spent every morning before Cupcake signed on to work, searching for morel mushrooms. We found a few early in the week after it rained a bit. Then Sunday, we found eight. We had different ends to means for our hunting efforts.
First, we fried the ones we found early in the week. They are a welcome addition to any meal.

The batch we found later in the week, we decided to try making a morel slurry, in an attempt to raise as many as we can eat. Because we can eat a truck load of them.

The directions say to blend four mushrooms with flour and wood chips, then add molasses and salt, and let the slurry work for two days. Then dilute the mixture in up to twenty buckets, and spread around wood piles and dark shady areas. We will be sure to update next week the results.
Moving on to hole digging.
If any of you read the last post, you know we decided to build our own fence around our garden. Digging the holes was the only thing slowing down the plans, but lucky for us, Pop's came through with his post hole digger on the tractor. Talk about a time and back saver.

After we got our holes measured off and marked, we got busy digging. Then the order from Wills Ridge arrived, and we got busy setting posts.

We got all the post set and in place on Saturday. Next week we will start putting the planks on, and construction of the gates.
And all this work, means good eating (shocking, right?)
One of Big Man's weak links in the kitchen is dinner rolls. He's tried several recipes and they turn out OK, but nothing to brag about. Well, this week all that changed. We found a recipe for "schoolhouse rolls" and the recipe calls for powdered milk. We had to try it.

The recipe said to roll the dough, then cut with a biscuit cutter, let rise and bake. We thought the original poster may have been smoking crack, but we followed the instructions. All we can say about these is "Holy crap on a cracker" they are good. The even better part is, we had extra ones that we froze. Talk about a quick dinner roll, thaw, rise, bake.

We will need a few more tries before they are share with people approved, but it sure is sweet work until then. Taste testing at it's finest. Throw in a seared steak, fried onions, and we got a fence building meal right there.

We ended the week as is our tradition.
K&K