Come And Get It!

Food related stuff this week. But the lead off pictures are of The Boy and Augustus, because they are too cute not to.

Our neighbor lady across the street gifted us an old timey dinner triangle. She's the bestest. And we put it on the porch with Cupcake's new lanterns. They are on a timer and look like old style candle lanterns. It really adds to the country porch vibe we have going on.

So from calling the neighborhood to dinner to actual dinners. It was nice this weekend after ten inches of rain over the past week, so we made some hobo dinners and took them down to the pond. We built a campfire and hung out with the Dudley Twins while our dinner cooked, then whipped up some S'mores for dessert.

Food related drama, we have a groundhog in the garden over by the barn. We found it's hole while we were mowing. Pop broke out his box traps and baited them with apple, set them out in hopes we rid ourselves of it before it gets into the three rows of beans that just came up. So far, it's only found the cabbage, but we've lost half of our row to it.

And SOMEBODY started cooking the Dudley Twins a couple of eggs for breakfast every morning. It's not like we don't have a yard full of free eggs, but now they get all needy when we're late with them.

We got to mow the yard this weekend, and we had plenty of grass clippings to mulch the garden with. We got both rows of tomatoes mulched and our row of cabbage here at The Acre. We hope in a few weeks to have the whole garden mulched in so we can start at the barn.

Beating down weeds where we didn't mulch

And one last plant note this week. We bought/planted a whole flat of orange mint down by the ponds. We kept a couple plants up by the house to put in our water every day. We found that a little mint and a couple of lemon tree leaves in the dispenser will keep fresh for three days. When we add fruit we have to change the water out after 48 hours. Plus, it's really a fresh change to plain ol water.

We ended the week with hobo meals and frog songs.
K&K

New Arrivals

We have a couple of new arrivals at The Acre this week.
First off, "The Girl" recently took a new job at the new Food City in Radford. She's been getting her training on in Pulaski and decided to upgrade her wheels.

We like her taste in vehicles and are quite proud of her.
The other new arrivals at The Acre this week are game fish. We ordered crappie and catfish back in the winter months and the order came in this week. We drove to Bonsack to meet the fish truck and bring our new critters to the ponds. We also ordered yellow perch, but they wont be ready until October. Lawman enjoyed fishing for them in The People's Republic and look forward to doing battle in his very own fishing hole.

Lawman and "The Boy" walked them down and set them free right around dark Saturday night. Fingers crossed they do well.
Critter related news this week includes bears. We assume it was a bear that got in to our bee compound this week and killed off one of our new colonies. We found the top pulled off the hive and the bees were gone. There was a gap in the electric fence where we think it got in. We are thinking that with the week of rain, the solar charger didn't have enough juice to repel it. Country drama.

Before the rain hit, we got out in to the garden and ran the small tiller through the onion rows to beat down the weeds before the rain hit.

We picked our first lettuce for dinner one night.

Cupcake took a few pictures of our fruit while Lawman was doing his thing.

Grapes were set back a little

Viking berries

Plums

Pears

Goji berries

Cherries

It's looking like a pretty good jelly year is about to happen?
Food related stuff this week, Lawman made one of his cheese cakes from scratch. None of that from the box premix that "Crazy Granny" tries to pass off as home made.

You know it's home made when you get the official Klingon Empire stamp of approval in each attempt.

Cupcake got artsy with the weekend breakfast, eggs in onions was on the menu.

And we round out the week with the Dudley twins. Being cooped up in the house for three days during the rain event means a LOT of energy to burn off afterwards. We took them down to the ponds every day, several times a day, and they did not waste the opportunity to run and jump and play.

We ended the week with chili beans and replacing the small flag with the big flag, because Memorial Day.
K&K

Short Week

Not really, it had seven days like all the other weeks do. This week we just didn't take the camera along with us as much.
The big mention this week is the little birds. We managed to keep 32 of the 36 alive to the point of release. They are out and milling around the coop, chasing bugs and scratching like chickens do. The rogue baby ducks that wandered off have decided to stay with the chicks, so neighbor involvement is back to zero when it comes to raising them.

The Dudley twins have learned to leave the little birds alone, and even cut out the bigger birds for play when they try to hide among the littles. After a long day of chasing guineas, there's nothing like taking a nap in the shade of fresh washed laundry.

We got to use the yard rake again this week and got enough clippings to do our first mulching. We did the sweet potatoes and tomatoes this week, and look forward to an entire garden finished before long. We bought 100 tomato plants over the past couple of weeks, and now that the freeze drama is behind us, we went ahead and got them in the ground. Weather is calling for a solid week of soaking rain, so we planted all 100, plus the ones we started from seeds. We also started collards, kale and egg plant we got in before the rain. We added an extra row of purple bush beans and sweet corn. The sweet corn we planted a couple of weeks ago is already up.

After we get our garden mulched in, we move on to the barn garden. It has the big tiller, so we can keep the weeds beat down over there until we catch up on clippings.
One food related picture we managed this week is homemade pizza with our homemade, fresh from the garden to the jar pizza sauce. We are coming to the end of our supply, hence the 100 tomato plants.

We ended the week with pork chop casserole and strawberry short cakes. And a nap.
K&K

Puppies No More

This week the Dudley Twins started waking up at 0500 to start their day. We would let them out to do their business then try to recage them until at least 7, but they didn't play along. So we would put them out on the porch so they could run and jump and play while we tried to get a nap in before the coffee pot kicked on.
One particular morning they were extra wound up, running up and down the porch like horses, and then BAM! and everything went quiet. We thought maybe they were just stunned from the tackle one put on the other, until we heard the guinea birds doing their "something is after us" squawk. We rolled out of bed to find the twins out in the yard chasing birds with wild abandon and then we noticed the baby gate we use to keep them on the porch had been destroyed in the big bang.

Lawman had been planning on building a gate for the front porch for some time, he just needed motivation to get started. The twins took matters into their own paws and lit that fire for him.

The finished project turned out better than we thought it would, and now Cupcake wants one on the back porch as well. We have neighbor dogs that roam the yard at night, and we've lost many a chew toy to them. That should prevent dog toy thievery in the future.
The twins were quite pleased with their handywork, and were given yak cheese chews to celebrate their new gate.

"The Boy" went fishing one day this week and brought home a few crappie for Lawman to clean.

There was a cold snap that hit The Acre this week. We had to cover up the plants in the garden. Lucky for us we had a couple piles of lawn clippings from the last time we mowed. We covered all the peppers, cucumbers and sweet potatoes and are glad to report they all survived. The smaller plants we moved inside, and noticed a lime on our lime tree.

And the basil is doing well

One food related picture to round out this weeks update is an homage to Lawman's grandmother Ruby.
She would make biscuits for every meal when Lawman was a wee lad, and he tried to tag along and help, but he was probably just in the way. But every batch she made there was always a little left over dough, and she would let him make a snake out of it and bake it up with the biscuits. Sunday breakfast Lawman made biscuits and had a little dough left over, so he made a snake for old times sake.

We ended the week by planting another row of cabbage plants, eating chili beans and going to bed early, because we finished "Swamp Thing" and had nothing to keep us up late.
K&K

Barn Finds

We know, you hear "Barn Find" and you're thinking about Steve McQueen's Bullitt Mustang in factory condition. We live a little slower here at The Acre, but we still get excited over barn treasure. Ours is an old soda bottle. The bottle has been in front of the door of the barn for probably longer than Lawman has been alive, but this week the straw and poop parted just enough we could see the side of the bottle. We dug it out and cleaned it up. It's a keepsake for us, we just wonder who the person was that drank the soda and left it for us to find. We have mad time like that.

We had a slight storm come through this week. It didn't amount to much, but we did get almost three inches of rain from it. The wind did blow just enough with the rain to down a tree at the family cemetery. So Pop met us up there and we we sprang in to action and cleared the roadway.

The rain did some good as well. Mushroom season is upon us, and the big rain gave us a snack one night.

We went ahead and planted our corn, beans and pepper plants. We also threw in some squash and cucumber seeds at The Acre. Over at the barn we planted four rows of gem corn we saved from last year's harvest. After we mowed the yard, we shelled out the corn. We now have over 300 feet of gem corn planted, and 200 of silver queen. Fingers crossed for a good year.

We got to use the new yard rake for the first time. Cupcake took the first lap this week and we are pleased with the results. Looking forward to getting it in the garden rows soon.

And this week we released the baby ducks from the run. They usually take two days before they leave the coop and then a couple of weeks before they leave sight of the coop. This batch hit the ground running and didn't look back. Literally. Our neighbor Zach called us while we were sitting in line at Starlight Drive In waiting for our hot dogs and said he caught five in his yard and was bringing them back to the house. Next day our neighbor up the street had to herd them down from her driveway. We drove them down to the ponds and after they found the water, we figured they would stay close to home. We were so very wrong. So we gathered up the ones that we could find and put them back in the run until they get their minds right. And we do mean...RIGHT.

"Wait! Teach us how to be ducks!!"

A Dudley update to round out the week. Augustus finally took a swim this week. He was following Willow around the pond when the bank gave way and Gus fell in, so he had to swim back to the shore. He sat and pondered what happened for about five minutes before he went back to running and jumping and playing. Next day "The Boy" and "The Girl In-Law" took them back to the pond, and Augustus wasn't having anything to do with water. We hope when the family starts swimming, he will join us. Again, fingers crossed.
We ended the week with fried pork chops, and went to bed early. Because...Damn
K&K