Super Genius? We thinks not

Big doings around The Acre this week. Our first cookout on the deck, plowing gardens and some predator drama.
First off, the drama.
Last week we mentioned we got a picture of another foxxy fox down below the chicken coop, so we went back into trapping mode. The traps were set and we attracted the fox in.

We had his curiosity up so we figured it was just a matter of time before we had another pelt to add to our growing collection. Then it just stopped coming around. A few days later, we figured out why the fox stopped coming around.

One of the two coyotes we got on video a while back came around. Fraidy Mutt was not impressed at all. The night we caught the coyote, the guinea birds were going nuts in the coop around 10:30 at night. They never make a peep after lights out so we knew something was up. Wile must have "yipped" and got them all wound up. We set the traps back knowing her mate will show up looking for her very soon. Updates as they become available.
We had quite the warm spell this week so we found a couple of things to do outside. We hate to waste a warm day. One day, we changed the blade/plow set up on Pop's tractor so he could plow under his garden.

One day we trimmed all of our fruit trees back, including the wild apple tree in the back yard. Denephew Henry likes our apple jelly, so maybe this will improve our harvest?

While we had the saw out, we trimmed up a few trees behind the coop to open up the chicken area a bit, and cut back on tick ambush ability.

And while we were down at the coop, we opened it up to let it air out a bit and to put down some fresh straw for our girls.

That brings us around to the food portion of the week. Early on, our cousins Bill and Francis posted a recipe on the Faceplace for a cream cheese chocolate pound cake. Lawman saw this recipe and decided to make it, because we had cream cheese, chocolate and free time.

It was pretty good, but not as good as the mayonnaise chocolate cake Lawman is soon to be famous for. We might dust this one off for the holidays, it would be good with boiled custard.
We did a cookout with our grill, the first grilled burgers of the season really hit the spot that night.

Later in the week, Lawman fired up the wood smoker and smoked a brisket half. We were so excited about it, we didn't take time to snap a picture of the finished product. We did remember to photograph the replacement brisket that has been treated and is now getting happy in the fridge.

And a real pretty cornbread we had with it

We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Starting Seeds

It's Daytona week and folks may remember last year we said we start our tomato seeds the weekend of Daytona. Last year when we did, the plants got to be too big and didn't do as well as we normally like. This year we decided we would start our pepper seeds, since they take longer to mature and wait until maybe mid March to start our tomatoes.
We found some starter pods we wanted to try this year. They are wrapped in a coconut wrapper that is more biodegradable than the Jiffy pods we have been using. But to start off, we got our shipment of seeds from Bakers Creek this week.

We soaked our starter pods and then planted one dozen of each type of hot pepper.

Last year we had a meeting with our financial advisor Steve Leitess. During the meeting we had a cheese platter with peppers on it. We really enjoyed the red peppers and inquired as to what kind of peppers they were. On the trip home we stopped at a roadside produce stand who just happened to be selling those peppers. We bought a few and saved them for the seeds. We have since forgotten the name, so they are just "Baltimore peppers." We also planted some fish peppers. They were introduced in Baltimore from the Caribbean or so the story goes. We're looking forward to adding them to our salsa this year. We planted citrus hots and jalapeno peppers so we should be well stocked on spice this season.
An unexpected project this week came about after a wind storm Monday night. We always get a good breeze here at The Acre, but Monday night mother nature tried her best to blow the house off the ridge. The only damage was our flagpole. The wind shredded our flag and bent the pole.

 It also broke the halyard. The top clip was stuck in the pulley up top so we had to improvise a way to pull it down for repairs.

So we took our fish net with an extendable pole, and taped the awning hook from the camper to the end of it for a hook, and hooked the clip to pull down. Worked like a charm.

We had some predator drama this week. We left our trail cameras out and last weekend we caught another fox messing around below the chicken coop.

So we've gone back to trapping mode. We will report on our progress, it's what we do.
Our last pictures are food related. Sunday breakfast. Sausage gravy, homemade scratch biscuits, and "The Outlaw's" favorite, fried kielbasa sausage with cheese melted. It's a shame he chose not to participate, he misses out on a whole lot of great eating.

Our canned apples are always a welcome treat

And we ended the week with wings.
K&K

One of Those Weeks

Have you ever had one of those weeks where you wake up one morning and it's Friday and you realize you've done absolutely nothing all week? We did. When we say we didn't do anything, we did our daily routine but nothing worth mentioning in blog form.
Early in the week we made another batch of cloud bread, thinking we would have a bunch of food pictures this week. Turns out we did not.

We did start a couple of projects this weekend. Cupcake saw a post of the Faceplace for using burlap sacks and laundry baskets for strawberry planters. It looks like something we needed in our lives, so we ordered some burlap sacks.

The second project we started was for the garden. We started sweet potato slips Sunday. Apparently they take almost three months to mature, so we are right on schedule.

We also ordered our seeds for the coming year from Bakers Creek. We have our garden and pumpkin patch all planned out. It's almost time to start our seeds.
One last project was egg related. We sell our extra eggs out along the roadway, and we have a sweet elderly couple that comes along every so often for eggs. They pay with change most times, and we've been keeping the loose change in a jar. This week the jar filled up and we could not close the lid, so we picked up some coin wrappers on our last trip to town for trading.

We ended up with $80+ after we got the jar wrapped up. That is almost enough for half an order of egg cartons. We always order egg cartons in the spring, so that worked out really well for us.
We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Super Birthday

This week ended with some sort of much hyped sporting event that we don't watch. We do enjoy cooking for such an event, but we'd rather watch mating rabbits eat growing grass. This week we also celebrated Cupcake's birthday. We also had a visitor that we're all excited about.
First, we have the visitor. Lawman caught the two marauding foxxxes last week, but he left the cameras out to see if we had any stragglers. We got this footage early in the week.

That was two coyotes, for non predator folks. Something spooked them before they got up to the area we have trapped and they have not yet come back. But we are ready if they do.
The rest of the update is pretty much food related. Cupcake wanted to go out to celebrate her birthday, so there wasn't a special meal to show, but we did buy a new waffle maker and we had Saturday waffles instead of Saturday pancakes, as it tradition.

Homemade butter pecan syrup

But "Fraidy Mutt" still got her pancakes. We're not sure she can play catch with waffles or not.

Someone spoils the dog

And we added some foo foo to our coffee during waffle day.

Sunday we made a couple of tailgate related dishes. First off, Buffalo Chicken dip.

Recipe called for ranch dressing, but we don't open a bottle we make it

Sour cream and hotsauce

Shredded chicken

And then we made the Philly Cheesesteak pinwheel that we had for Christmas.

And while we were cooking, we had to have some of our homemade salsa

We end the week with a solved mystery. At least once a week we hear the question "Where's the sodas?" We buy the chirruns sodas for the week when we go to town on Saturday. Sometimes they last the week, sometimes they dont. This turns up more often than not.

Investigation revealed that sodas are opened overnight, one sip is taken, then the remaining soda is left out on the kitchen table to be poured out the next day. Mystery solved.
K&K