It's That Time of Year

 We started loosing birds a few weeks ago. Scrolling back through our camera rolls, every year around the end of May and beginning of June, we get a Foxxy Foxx picking off birds and then get too big for their britches and does something stupid in the middle of the day, just like this gal did.

We are down to about a dozen chickens, six guineas and a dozen ducks now thanks to Foxxy and her family. We made out better than some, word through the grape vine is, our neighbors lost all their birds recently. 

Speaking of eating, we've been lucky enough to walk outside our back door and pick our dinner.

We use an old pallet for our lettuce/spinach garden. We learned last year to spread out the planting. We did the whole thing at once and it all came in at one time. We couldn't eat all of it at once, and lost some to seed. This year we started the first two rows on Easter Sunday, then plant a new row one month later. This way when we exhaust the first row, the second is up and ready, then the third, and we have fresh lettuce all summer long.

We worked in the garden most of the week, and it's hard to make pulling weeds sound sexy. And taking pictures of pulling weeds is even less sexy, so just use your imagination here.

At the end of the week, Cupcake called an audible and requested an apple pie. The great thing about being married to a shack bitch is, it only takes a few minutes to whip up a fancy dessert. We like apples in our salads, so we have plenty of apples on hand. 

No "crazy granny" store bought pie crust here

We ended this week with apple pie. And a nap.

K&K

Garden Stuff

 This week we unpacked Serendipity and worked in the garden all week. We planted close to 100 tomato plants so far, but we have room for a couple more rows, so that number may double? We use some tomatoes around The Acre. We used the yard rake to rake up grass clippings and mulch the tomato plants.

Our beans have started coming up. We use just as many green beans. We may need more canning jars.

Corn. Silver Queen. We want to can a couple dozen quarts this year.

We also planted two dozen red sweet potato starts and a dozen or so cucumber plants. These are deer crack, so we had to deer proof them with Irish Spring soap and hot pepper powder.

Making lemonade out of lemons, we tilled up the spot where the old car was sitting, and planted more pumpkins and a few melon seeds. We had to cover it with chicken wire because, chickens.

One non garden item this week, we made a fresh gallon of laundry detergent.

We got our first strawberry. Christmas jam is officially underway.

We added another picture of Serendipity, because we're still excited to be camper owners again.

We ended the week with a nap.

K&K

Serendipity on Wheels

 This week we took Serendipity out for her first shake down cruise. We went to Lake Ridge campground in Hillsville, it's about an hour from The Acre and has several things to do. We hooked up and took the back way in, through the town of Floyd. Lawman got some experience hauling her through tight curvy roads. All went well and we arrived on time. We checked in and got to our campsite. We told them we had a 46 foot camper, but yet we ended up in a 50 foot camp site right next to the bath house. 

We had never had the Dudley twins away from home before, so we were concerned about being the "site with barking dogs" that every campground seems to have. As we sat up the twins wandered around smelling all the smells and doing what dogs do. When they wandered too far we called them back, and by the time we got settled in, they knew how far they could go and didn't stray. 

The bath house was more of a challenge. Everyone who walked up got a bark the first day, but eventually they learned. By day two we would get compliments from passers by how we kept the dogs off leash in the camp site. 

Since we were in Hillsville, we invited Mike down for dinner one night. He's an old school lawman who joined the ranks of the retired some time ago. Brisket and brats were on the menu for his visit.

"The Girl" and her boyfriend came up and spent the night with us. Lawman and the boy-in-law did a bit of fishing, and The Girl took him around in style on a golf cart.

Next day, "The Boy" came up and spent the night with us. We did a bit more fishing.

We're not sure what other people do when camping, but we are geared toward food. We set up the new Blackstone and wonder why it took us so long to get one. We managed to whip up a huge meal in no time flat. Even The Boy got into the act.

All in all, we had a great big time. We spent a lot of time in the arcade, playing put put golf and fishing. The not so great parts were, the cable didn't work and the wi-fi didn't work. We didn't go to watch TV or interwebs anyway, but it would have been nice.

Other down sides were the site. We had one of the largest campers there, and they had us in the smallest site we could find. The site right across from us was about 80 feet long and had a 12 foot camper in it. We had to back out of the site and turn to get back on the road. The other downer was karaoke night. Saturday night everyone who couldn't sing, did. Until 2300hrs. Very loudly. We all got home and needed to end the week with a nap.

K&K

Long, Strange Trip

 The Boys from Maryland made their annual trek to The Acre this weekend. Most of the week was geared toward cleaning the house and food prep, because Cupcake is the hostess with the mostess. But to start off this weeks update, we found this on the camera roll and had to add it.

The usual food fare for a visit from the People's Republic is brisket. Lawman had a brisket in the pipe, almost ready to smoke. He rolled the dice and smoked it before the ten day marinate period was complete. It did OK.

Another big hit is carrot cake. Lawman whipped one up from scratch and used four primo duck eggs in the mix. We're telling you, it makes a difference.

He topped it with his soon to be world famous cream cheese/pineapple icing.

After a brief period of dinner, beer and swapping war stories along with several lies about women, the boys spent a chilly night inside Serendipity, but we fed them a big ol country breakfast that we whipped up on our brand new Blackstone griddle. Cupcake says now we need one for the house. 

After this shot, we realized Steve was not wearing his official travel bear, so we grabbed the official travel bear picture.

Of all the People's Republic people Lawman has invited to The Acre, Steve and JBMC are the only two that have made the trek. 

The only thing non visit related this week was the starting of a fresh batch of laundry detergent. The bar soap has to soak a week before we add the other ingredients.

We ended the week with a nap, as soon as the boys rolled out of the driveway.

K&K

It's That Time of Year

 Summer officially jumps off when Cupcake gets the ferns for the front porch. This week was that time. 

We know everyone has been waiting, patiently, for us to name the new 5th wheel. This week we settled on a name. "Serendipity"

People who are in the know, know that we met when Lawman pulled Cupcake over on a traffic stop when she was 16 years old. Lawman's little voice told him "you're going to marry this girl." What not a lot of people know is, a couple of years after the meeting, we both attended a George Straight concert in Roanoke. Both bought tickets at different times from totally different locations, but as fate would have it, the seats were side by side. How is that not the universe telling us something?

Anywho, we named the 5th wheel, and added a Jetpack to the inside so we will have Wifi where ever we roam. Lawman also had to make an upgrade. 

As fancy and well built as Serendipity is, the bathroom vent cover was a made from a very thin piece of plastic that cracked the first wind storm that came along. Lawman ordered a new high speed vent cover and installed it.

It was a pretty quick fix, now we're ready to roll. Our first trip is in a couple of weeks. 

This time of year is also garden season. We knew it was time to start getting seeds in the ground, so Lawman brought the tiller to the house to get it ready. We seemed to have a problem with running over the lines we use to lay off our rows?

After clearing the tines, we got it out in the dirt.

We already had onions and cabbage in, now it was time for beans and corn. After we got the seeds in at the house, we went over to the garden by the barn to do even more corn and beans. While we were working up the rows, the tiller stopped pulling. We found a pin had come out of the tire/axle. Three generations of great minds went to work to fix it.

Lawman identified the problem, Pop did the machine work on the pin to make it fit back into the axle, and The Boy got the pin back in place, so we could not only finish the beans and corn, but we also got three rows of potatoes in. The Boy was instrumental in laying off the rows so the old people could plant and cover.

Old school

While Jake was laying off the rows, Lawman and Pop took turns with the tiller. Many hands make quick work.

After five hours of gardening, we put away all the tools and headed back to The Acre. Lawman made a home made pizza for dinner.

The boy is a cheese and pepperoni kind of guy, Lawman and Cupcake like onions and garlic and whatnot, so we did a half and half. Lawman experimented with whole wheat flour for the crust. It was different but not bad at all. While Lawman was doing the pie, Cupcake made a batch of blueberry muffins.

We're afraid our weekend naps may have come to an end for a while, but we enjoy the garden, so it's a good trade off. 

K&K