Problem Solved, Problem Staying Solved

Cupcake was gone on yet another whirlwind adventure for HCA this week. Lawman has become concerned that dangerous activity without adult supervision is probably a recipe for bleeding out and becoming buzzard chow before she gets back, so he keeps a low profile in her absence. But, trapping season opened up recently, and The Boy schlepped a few traps down to the happy hunting grounds. Three days into his trap line, he snagged the fox that made it personal last week.

The pressure is off the birds for a while. The Boy has gone from Kit Carson scout to Jeremiah Johnson mountain man/trapper. He's handy to have around.
In wild food related events this week, we still have deer in the yard every night eating our chicken food. We may have to do something about that soon.

We ate some deer this weekend. To celebrate Cupcakes triumphant return home, Lawman made deer chili and scratch made cornbread for dinner Saturday night.

Sunday morning, Lawman made deer tenderloin gravy.

And in between naps, we went ahead and smoked the bacon we had curing. Then we sliced it up and filled the freezer. This should hold us a couple more weeks?

After we got the bacon squared away, we wrapped up all the Christmas presents.

And as is tradition, we hung all the outside lights and yard decorations to be turned on Thanksgiving night.

We ended the weekend with baked spaghetti and a batch of home made eggnog.

K&K

The Fox is Back. It's Personal This Time

Lawman has been getting pictures of the fox on and off for a couple of weeks. He's kept vigil over the girls since the first one, but so far he's not come around the birds. But, when Lawman put out a second camera to track his comings and goings, he let us know what he thought about all the attention.

We were kind of lite on the update pictures this week. Cupcake has been working night and day for HCA (see what we did there?) and Lawman has been keeping an eye to the girls. Foxxy wont be getting a Thanksgiving duck from us.
Another reason we were remiss in pictures was a cold snap. The blizzard of '19 hit this week and kept us inside for a few days. It wasn't really a blizzard, it really wasn't even a snow to amount to anything, but people still lost their minds anyway.

While we were snowed in, Lawman ushered in the holiday season as he always does. With the first chocolate cake and boiled custard of the year. It's Cupcake's favorite. It changed her life.

One day while Lawman was keeping his eye on the girls, he noticed a group of does in the front yard. They were looking toward the coop so Lawman, being highly trained and naturally curious, went to check on the coop. There was a small five point buck helping himself to the chicken feed we had out. We already go through over 100 pounds of food per week, so the thought of deer taking a portion of that didn't go over well. Lawman took up the bow and took a shot at him.
"The Boy" just happened to be walking by when the drama went down, and he went to check for a blood trail, and found one. He went all "Kit Carson" on the blood trail, following it over hill and dale until we reached a fence running between us and the neighbors. The trail just stopped.

We checked up, down, side to side, never saw another drop of blood. We chalked it up to a bad hit. Neighbor Zach told us the deer was shot by another neighbor the next day. So at least the deer wasn't wasted.
Next day, The Boy went hunting and bagged another deer. So we're well set for winter.

Lastly, we celebrated our wedding anniversary last week. Cupcake reached for the stars, literally. She found a poster of how the stars looked on the night we married from the farm. The stars finally lined up for us, and it only took 25 years.

We ended the week with grilled hamburgers with sauteed onions and lime pickles.

K&K

Traditional Update

Seems like every year around Veterans Day, Pop and Lawman find their way to the lake to do a little fishing before the cold sets in. This year was no exception. Cupcake was on another whirlwind adventure for HCA so the men folk had free time. They loaded up and spent the day looking for crappie, but all they found was bass 😛

The water was down five or six feet on the lake, so the whole day was a challenge, but a bad day fishing still beats a good day at work.

Cupcake came home by the weekend, and we had a special treat. Pop made a big pot of soup Friday night and cut us out a batch that we enjoyed Saturday night.

We did a couple of regular things over the weekend. We prepped three slabs of pork belly for bacon.

BJ's had cranberries on sale, so we bought a bag that was big enough for two batches of cranberry sauce. We canned it to save for Christmas.

And one morning we were out in the porch enjoying a cup of coffee and noticed an orange doo dad on the persimmon tree. Apparently we both missed one back when we picked the fruit for our Christmas jam, so we sliced it up and had a special treat with our coffee.

We ended the week with a deer meat loaf and smashed potatoes. And a nap.
K&K

Before and After

Lot of before and after pictures this week. We started off with Deathstroke.
A while back the truck started skipping starts when we pressed the button. Lawman took it to the evil empire, thinking it was a rolling computer, plug in a thing, read what's wrong with it and bingo bango, we'd be back on the road. There was no bingo, nor bango.
When we arrived to have it checked, we were told there was a lengthy diagnostic process to electrical systems. Starting with leaving it overnight to have the diagnostic start before there is any driving to charge the batteries. So we figured drop it a day, one day tinkering, one day to order and get whatever knibbler pin was broken, we would need a rental for at least three days.
So we took the truck home and put the Lawman's battery tester on the truck. It was the battery. There are two batteries in Deathstroke, and we figured we might as well replace them both while we were at it.
We went to BJ's and bought replacement batteries. We then found out BJ's does not install the batteries they sell. Lawman went to work and got them both swapped out. Cupcake was upset when she learned we would have to do it ourselves, because her previous life there was no such thing as a simple car repair. "The Outlaw" liked to take a whole day and had Cupcake retrieving tools from the yard and driveway after throwing them. She was amazed two batteries got replaced in under thirty minutes and she didn't have to pick up a single tool.

Another before and after we documented this week was the ponds. Both ponds were almost full, and the word came down we had a flash flood warning coming our way. We drove The Silver Hornet down to check the water levels just before the storm hit.

Then after almost two inches of rain, we went back and found both ponds were full and draining.

So now we are ready to stock. There may be fishing trips planned soon, we will see.
A couple of usual things we did this week included a fresh pumpkin roll.

We made a fresh tub of toothpaste

It's the first weekend of the month, so we cleaned out the coop de ville

We ended the week with a new recipe Cupcake wanted to try, a crockpot hamburger/potato dish. And a nap.
K&K