Acre be Wilding

 We had a couple of visitors this week at The Acre. The DTs were really excited about it.

She didn't have any little ones with her like normal, we wonder if our stray foxxy foxx may have done them in?

We took the twins over to the barn this week while we hoed and tilled, and the morning after this visit, they were bonkers. More bonkers than usual. Now we know why.

While Cupcake was out visiting with some of her local doctors, Lawman was rained in one day. He thought that would be a perfect time to get caught up on his soap making. 

The good thing (one of them, anyway) about having a back yard full of mint is fresh mint everything. In this case, fresh mint soap.

He made a second batch to help deter ticks out of camphor and geranium oil. It smells like old people.

Our berries are steady coming in now, so every couple of nights we pick a handful or two. Goose berries, goji berries, blue berries, and before long. Plums.

We kind of ran short of documentation for the week, so we're going to wind down this update with brag on the garden pictures. This is The Acre Garden.

We ended the week with no naps, but plan on making up for it next weekend by doubling down.

K&K

Blue Bayou

We took Serendipity out for a spin this past week. Cupcake took the week off so she could enjoy the trip. But before we left, Lawman treated the ponds with a blue dye to help beat down the summer crud. We did it Monday before we left so Willow wouldn't be the only blue lab at the campground. It settled in the ponds while we were gone, which is good, because the first thing Willow did when her feet hit The Acre was go swimming in the pond.

 

We rolled out Monday afternoon and got set up. 

The best part about camping is cooking. For us, anyway.

Besides whipping up meals on the Blackstone, we also did some campfire cooking. We made campfire pizzas. Cupcake went with the Canadian bacon/pineapple pizza.

Lawman went with more traditional pepperoni/onion/mushroom.

The next day, The Boy jumped on board.

His only complaint was, it needed more pepperoni.

Then we had sloppy joes, and decided to make sloppy joe pizzas.

And you have to have baked beans with sloppy joes.

We had the place to ourselves until our last night at the campground. The sites are a little close together.

Other than eating, we enjoyed some local shopping. The Girl found a country store not far from the campground and we made several trips during the week. Our first trip we bought canning lids. Then we went back and bought a genuine kraut crock.

Our next trip we picked up a huge cast iron skillet. We took a picture with our regular size skillet for scale. Now we can do the entire weekend breakfast in one cook.

We loaded up our bounty and made it back to The Acre. Right after we unhooked the truck, Cupcake saw weeds in the garden, and had to do something about it.

When we got everything unpacked, we found our new coffee arrived while we were gone.

After we tilled and hoed a weeks worth of weeds, we took a nap.

K&K

Barnyard Shenannigans

 Nature is a funny thing. Around The Acre anyway. Below is a still frame story of nature working together, recently filmed at the barn garden.

First, a possum blunders in to our groundhog trap and gets caught.

Then he spends a couple hours trying to figure out where it all went wrong.

Later, a couple of trash pandas arrive and make fun of the possum for getting caught.

But, after making a bit of sport of him they work together to open the trap and free the possum.

Lawman arrived at the scene the next morning, wondering just how something tripped the trap, stole the bait and didn't stay caught? Teamwork is why. We cool with it, possums eat ticks. And we hate us some ticks.

Other goings on this week. We found a new glob of something eggs in the ponds. We know the frogs already mated, so we're thinking salamander or maybe a late breeding frog group? Anyone?

Lawman did a little work on the wood pile down by the ponds this week. Gave the splitter a workout just to see if it still ran. It does.

Food related things this week. "The Boy" came in one night with a recipe off of a calendar for raspberry tarts. Cupcake rolled up her sleeves and made it happen.

The Dudley Twins reaped rewards of living in a bakers house. Every night they actually look forward to going to their cages. If we're running a little late getting them to bed, they let us know about it. It's almost like they have watches. Training them as pups paid off, but the trick is Lawman's homemade buttermilk cornbread muffins. Augustus goes to his cage and checks to make sure it's waiting for him before he will go outside for his last potty break. We're pretty sure he would take hostages if it wasn't there.

And it's harvest time. We love our cherry trees, because its one more fruit in the Christmas jam for this season.

We ended the week with a nap.

K&K

Bear Necessities

 We've got a new visitor around The Acre these days. The neighborhood grape vine has been reporting bear sightings for a while now, and in the evenings when we run the DTs before bed, we've noticed something has been going for a swim in the ponds. Something big.

So we were not surprised when this guy popped out in the front yard. The DT's didn't notice him, the guineas didn't alert us to him, if it hadn't been for "The Boy" spotting him we wouldn't have noticed. 

We've seen him about every night since, so we're guessing he's gonna be around for a while?

And since we mentioned the ponds, we have a couple of pond related items this week. 

First, we added more minnows. Bass Reeves needs a food chain to keep him growing, and we're just the kind of people to hook him up.

We had an unwelcome sight while we were unloading the minnows. A dead water snake.

The DT's took turns trying to grab it, so we pulled it out and tossed it up into a brush pile. Buzzards gotta eat, same as worms.

The last pond related thing this week is garden water.

Last year, Lawman picked up a 250 gallon tank. The plan was to haul water to the gardens from the ponds and save well water. That was a good plan. Broken tail gates and broken 4 wheelers ensured that didn't happen last year. This year we were ready.

Using an old car battery and a submersible bilge pump, we rigged up a line to pump water from the pond to Deathstroke, and the tank located therein.

First garden water is in the book. Bring on hot weather.

And this weekend we put the hog wire up for the tomato plants. Last year we planted 125ish tomato plants. This year? Double that number. That's a lot of water haulin.

We are very pleased with the barn garden this year. Last year it was full of sod and rock, but this year it's starting to shape up.

Nothing a little elbow grease wont fix.

We got the last of our bush cherries this week, and two or three sour cherries from our new cherry tree.

We have high hopes for this years Christmas jam. We have little baby kiwi's we hope we can add to it this year.

Before we move inside to the food portion of our update, we thought we would answer the most asked question for the past month.

"Why do you need a camper that big?"

We bought it for the outside shower. Now the DT's get groomed with warm shower water, anytime they need a grooming.

For the past couple of weeks, Cupcake has been obsessed with "Smash burgers" that we've seen on one of our camping/campfire cooking Faceplace pages. Apparently, they are all the rage. And for good reason. These really are good eatin, they come with a special homemade sauce (that we tweak to our taste) and she made hand cut, homemade onion rings to go with them. 

We ended this week with a nap, and a fist full of ibuprofen.

K&K