Buzzards Gotta Eat, Same As Worms

Last week we mentioned we were helping a neighbor lady try and solve her predator problems. Lawman put out three sets of traps around her duck/chicken pen, and the first night we had the operation working, we caught three raccoons at once. The headline comes from "The Outlaw Josey Wales" because we attracted quite the buzzard crowd with the dead predators.

We've never seen the vulture dance before

After we caught the three masked bandits, there have been no further reports of lost birds, so we must have got the right three all at once. We were glad to help.
On a bird related topic, Lawman went back to his gadget roots this week. We have a kiddie pool we use for the ducks to do duck things in. The problem is it takes quite a bit of water, and "doing duck things" fouls up the water pretty quick. We hated the thought of dumping gallons of water out, it seemed like a waste. Gadget guy to the rescue.
He found a marine pump, bought some wire to make extensions and battery clips to clip the wires to the lawnmower battery, and bingo bango, we have a water transfer system. We drain the duck water into the mower wagon, haul the duck poop water to the garden, put the pump in the wagon, and pump the water into the garden. We water and fertilize all at once. Not a drop of water wasted.

Moving on to garden things, we picked our first veggies this week.

Cucumbers and peppers

Fresh kale

Tommy Toe tomato

On to food this week. Cupcake made a strawberry cake for our dessert last week. It rocked.

Our soon to be world famous cream cheese icing

Then she made a hot dog casserole for dinner one night.

We saw an ad for "Authentic Viking Cheese" on the interwebs and researched the stuff. It is made in the ancient tradition that the Vikings used, and the cheese travels well enough for raids across the ocean, we figured it would ship OK to the states. We ordered a batch of it and it came this week. It has a gritty consistency but it tastes like nothing we've ever tried before. Lawman loved it, Cupcake, not so much.

Friday night we stayed in and got caught up on some of our nurd shows. Cloak and Dagger and Luke Cage  were on the agenda, along with popcorn. And since we don't own a microwave oven, we went old school.

And then this past Sunday was the annual family reunion. Lawman made two chocolate pies, two buttermilk pies, and one cheese cake. Cupcake made two dozen deviled eggs. We saw some folks we don't gett to see very often and had a great meal. Cupcake says it's not a real family reunion, because nobody got into a fist fight and the police did not close the event down. Apparently the Price reunions are on a whole different level?

Only home made pie crusts will do

We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Have Traps, Will Travel

It's been a busy week for the Predator Punisher. Early in the week it was spring like, we had the windows open and enjoyed quite a bit of front porch therapy. Lawman had just came back into the house when he heard a commotion on the lawn, he sprang to the porch to see what was the matter. As it turned out, the guinea birds had cornered a fox as it approached the chicken coop. Foxy Foxx wasnt sure which way to go, and that gave Lawman time to grab the first rifle near the door, which turned out to be his cowboy .45LC.
Lawman put a bead on Foxxy and let loose with a big, slow, fat bullet that found it's mark. Foxxy turned a flip and we thought that was that. Until he jumped up and ran over the hill. Having a lever action rifle slowed down a follow up shot, plus Foxxy put himself between Lawman and a neighbor's house. Lawman is confident in his shot placements, but we wouldn't want anyone shooting towards our house so we extended that courtesy on to our neighbors and let the fox go.
Later in the week, said neighbor lady sent us a message that she had raccoons climbing into her wire pen at night killing her ducks. This sounded like a job for the PP. We took some traps up to her place and set them out around the pen. Updates will follow if we have any luck.

Lawman checked the spot where Foxxy Fox was and found signs of a good hit. So good in fact, the fox shit himself.

Big, fat and slow will get the job done

Lawman has been keeping a vigil since the shooting, but we've not seen the fox return. With any luck it's dead as a hammer somewhere nearby.
And on a hammer related note. There is an insurance commercial on TV where a couple is looking up at a broken water pipe, and the husband says "I can fix it" and the wife laughs. Well, Monday afternoon, Cupcake was walking through the basement, minding her own business, when she felt water dripping on her head. A close inspection of the sink in the kitchen found the faucet had sprung a leak when it was turned on. We have a plumber in the family, so a call was made and little brother was planning to come over Tuesday after work and make repairs.
Cupcake had wanted new faucets for some time, so Lawman went ahead and bought the new faucet Tuesday morning. When he got it home he read up on the directions for installing it, and it all seemed pretty straight forward, so he announced to Cupcake he would be replacing the faucet himself. There was the nervous laugh of doubt, then she went back to work.

Ol Leaky

Old lines

New faucet

Works like a champ. No leaks

We used the new water source for a daily jug of cucumber water. Cupcake had it on her last trip away, and wanted to keep some on hand at the house.
And we bought the proper fixings for the bang bang shrimp. Cupcake says this is the right recipe and it changed her life.

Then we had steak one night. Surf and turf, spread out over the week.

And as always, we end the week with wings. But, we ran out of wing sauce last week, so Lawman took Monday before the leak was discovered and made a fresh gallon of sauce then canned it up. Nothing like picking fresh herbs to give the sauce that fresh taste.

K&K

Duck!! My Deck is Limp

We've had a run of bad luck with mowers the past couple of weeks. Last week we had to take the deck off the Junk Deere to replace a belt.
This week, Lawman was out mowing the yard (minding his own business) when the zero turn mower started riding rough. Rougher than usual. Lawman thought one of the tires had gone flat, so he stopped and checked the tires. They were all good to go. He went back to mowing and trying to keep his teeth in his mouth. When he finished the yard he thought maybe one of the spindles had broken a bolt and was vibrating. When he wiggled the blade, he noticed the brace that connects the deck to the mower had snapped off.
The mower went to Pop's shop, where we took the deck off and he went to work with the welder. We hope to have the mower up and running before the next mow is due.

Pop needs a new piece of equipment to finish the weld.
There was duck drama this week too. One day mid week, Lawman was walking by the duck/guinea tub (minding his own business) when he noticed one of the ducks on it's back, dead as a hammer.
We brought the three remaining ducks inside and filled the sink with water and let them do what ducks do. They all seemed happy and healthy, splashing and playing like ducks will do, so we put them back out in the tub. A bit later, Lawman watched another duck fall over on it's back. It just dropped dead, and we don't know why. The other two ducks are still trucking right along, so we're going with the theory the ducks were sick when we bought them.

Other duck drama was less dramatic. We bought a kiddie pool for the grown ducks. The ducks checked it out, but had no interest in jumping in.

The next day they figured out they were supposed to swim in it and all is well with the world.
Not to be out done, the chickens went straight to the garden, and dug up a whole row of corn we had seeded. We went ahead and ran an electric line around the bottom two rails of fence. The next day the chickens learned their lesson about trespassing in the corn patch.

Food related notes this week. We stayed in and had meatlovers pizza Friday night. We had been itching to use the new batch of pizza sauce we made. We added sausage, hamburger, pepperoni,bacon and sauteed onions. We don't know why everyone wouldn't make their own pizza.

We had seafood night one night. Boil is our go to dish, but Cupcake had "Boom Boom shrimp" on her last work trip and wanted to add that to our menu. We found a recipe for it and cut out some of the shrimp for the new recipe.

We didn't have everything we needed for the sauce, so we substituted some stuff. It was good, but not exactly right. Saturday we went shopping and bought the correct sauce ingredients. We will try again.
We got back to our dessert making. We will be enjoying chocolate pie this coming week.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K