It's Moist

We finally got some much needed rain at The Acre this week. The garden and the pumpkin patch was looking a little wilted but everything seemed to perk back up after an inch of rain over three days. With the ground nice and soft this weekend, we went out and picked the rest of our onion patch to make way for a row of late green beans.

We dumped these out on the sweet potato screen to let them dry a while. Our plan is to slice these and use pickle juice to can them.

Earlier in the week we made use of our peas. We got a few pods at a time, so we put them in a ziplock bag and froze them until we got a bag full. Monday morning, Lawman made a bowl of pea salad for us to have with dinner all week.

And we've been getting a half dozen or so tomatoes at a time, which is good and bad. We don't waste any, but it's hard to do much with just a few tomatoes at a time. This week we decided to start making tomato soup with what we had on hand. We picked some fresh jalapenos, onions, and basil from the herb pots.

And there is always room on the table for a fresh from the vine tomato with any meal.

Since it cooled off with the rain, we made use of the break in the heat to pick a big jug of blackberries for jelly.

We used the juicer, and it separated the seeds and stems from the juice.

This is a huge time saver for us, and it makes jelly a snap.

We also got our first few ears of corn early in the week. We had them for dinner, along with fried chicken legs.

Then later in the week we picked nearly a full clothes basket of corn. We will be canning this up first of next week.

We are still enjoying the hummingbirds on the front porch every day. There is something very soothing about them humming about while we enjoy quality time on the front porch.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Baby, It's Hot Outside

We've had quite the run of heat this past week. But as they say, "It's not the heat, it's the humidity" and it's been plenty muggy out as well. When it gets like this we try to stay inside during the day. We bought some zero gravity chairs that we put on the front porch, we've spending a lot of time on the porch with the hummingbirds.
In the afternoons we get out in the garden and pumpkin patch. We've had something new this year with deer eating the pumpkin plants. We didn't think anything would eat a pumpkin plant, but we've had to sprinkle ground cayenne pepper on the plants to foil the deer, but we lost five or six plants before we noticed.
We picked enough tomatoes this week to make a batch of tomato soup.

Or maybe some salsa, the plans are fluid right now.
We picked a couple more heads of cabbage and had fried cabbage with dinner one night

We also picked our first few ears of okra. We don't have enough to cook yet, so we will probably freeze these until we get enough for a meal.

The two or three people who follow the updates may remember, we had the well guy out last month to shorten the pump in the well. We've been getting silt since the house was built. The well guy said the silt would settle after a year or so, but it never did. We finally got him out here and after he shortened the pump it stirred up the silt even more. We waited until this weekend for the silt to settle down a little, then changed the house water filter again.

The filter usually is caked from top to bottom, but this one only had a small ring around the bottom of the filter, so we hope we are finally on top of the water situation now.
The one new meal we had this week was chicken salad we fixed early the week for lunch. We grilled a pack of chicken breasts and we used two for the salad.
We used fresh onions, fresh jalapeno peppers and our homemade pickles.

It was a big hit, we may do it again this week.
We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Light Sabers

We have been feeding hummingbirds on the front porch for about a month now. Word of mouth seems to have spread and we have around six or seven showing up at one time and we only had one feeder. Instead of sharing the one feeder's four feeding holes, they would all fight over the one hole they all seemed to favor. If you close your eyes and listen to them, it sounds like an epic light saber duel. It really doesn't take much to amuse us.

We bought a second feeder over the weekend, this one has a landing perch. Now there are only two or three fighting over one hole on each feeder. Everything on our farm is crazy.
It was a usual week for us. The heat kept us inside except for early in the mornings and late of the evenings. The good thing about being inside all day is being able to can. We are still getting cucumbers every other day so we keep the pickle factory at full capacity. This week we made all dill pickles.

We don't know why everyone wouldn't raise fresh dill

As you can see, we also keep the green beans going. We just pulled a row of onions and planted a row of late green beans in their place.

We are going to try to let these dry a bit, then hang them to store them old school. The next row we pull we are going to try to pickle them with leftover pickle juice. We think they will be tasty in deviled eggs and on hamburgers and whatnot. The white onions are still growing strong, so we're going to leave them be until the greens fall over.
Another inside canning project this week was cherry jelly again. We bought a few pounds of store bought cherries when they went on sale, thinking they would be a tasty snack. Turns out we have been spoiled on our fresh from the tree cherries, and we didn't eat hardly any of the store bought. Since we hate to waste food, Lawman juiced them and made another batch of jelly.

We tried a new recipe for cookies this week. We found one for butterscotch butterfinger chocolate chip cookie and thought it would be neat to try. It changed Cupcake's life.

And we started adding cheddar cheese to our morning biscuits.

The only good part about all the heat is summer squash. We picked our first one and sent it straight to the batter/oil. It's one of Cupcake's favorite summer meals.

And for Lawman, summer means slaw with pinto beans. He could make a whole meal off this combination.

It's a good thing we have started a late batch of cabbage. We will be planting these next week.

And we're waiting for our third round of stawberries from strawberry row.

We ended the week by going to see the new Spiderman movie, and polishing off a batch of wings.
K&K

I'm Batman

We had a bit of excitement this week. Lawman woke up to let the mutt out and was doing the change the water, fill the food bowl thing when he found this in the sink.

Back when Lawman was on the job, he actually was a "Batman". He was one of the first people assigned to a newly formed specialized unit named "Beat Officers Against Trafficers" or BAT for short. He wore a silver pin that spelled out BAT and had a rubber ink stamp with the Batman symbol he stamped all his arrests with. One has nothing to do with the other, it's just a tidbit we thought we'd share. The above bat got shown the door, the only thing we can figure is it flew into the garage and laid low until somebody left through the garage door and slipped in.
We had a busy week in the garden. We made three batches of pickles, every other day or so we would get enough cucumbers to make a few jars of pickles. We slice them minutes after we pick them and put them in the crock with lime powder. The next day we rinse them and pack them in jars with which ever sauce we are making that day. This week was all bread and butter pickles. Last week it was all dill.

We picked the first two heads of cabbage and cut them in half. We made fried cabbage with one half and slaw with the second half.

We picked our first half bushel of green beans for canning this week.

 The dog loves raw green beans. She worried us to death while we were stringing/breaking them for canning.

We are quite pleased with the progress of the garden this year, our black tomatoes are starting to produce fruit, and the corn is taller than lawman already.

The jalapeno peppers and sweet potatoes are also doing well. We even noticed our first okra on the bushes Sunday morning.

Sunday morning after breakfast, we picked a five gallon bucket full of beets. We had a batch of pickles already in the crock, so we did pickles all morning. Pickled beets and bread and butters.

Last from the garden report is lettuce and banana peppers.

There was some cooking this week, if you can imagine that? We had our pals Doctor and Mrs. Carfagna out for our annual 4th of July visit. We smoked a brisket and made a skillet full of potatoes with deviled eggs, slaw and a cheesecake.

Doctor Chuck tried to make friends with Fraidy Mutt, we're not sure if it was because he's a new face, or because he had "Chewbacca" on his feet at the time, but Lily wasn't having any part of it. Until later in the night after Chuck shared some food then rubbed her butt. They're inseparable now.

Lawman pulled an oldie but goodie from the playbook and made Cupcake a dinner of baked burritos one night.

And we went old school with fried chicken one night.

And we ended the week with wings. After a nap.
K&K