Now We're Cooking

 Seems like all our pictures are food related this week. 

We started the week out by smoking a deer leg to appease the hunting gods. Seems like every week before deer season, we smoke deer meat. Might be coincidence, might be part of a larger plan. Either way, deer season opens next week and we ate well this week.

We sliced up the leftover meat and planned on having deer gravy on Sunday, but Cupcake had better ideas.

Now we probably think you're looking at these fine plates and thinking "human dinner?" But you'd be wrong, it's doggy breakfast.

We did have deer gravy on Sunday, with what was left.

Cupcake did whip us up breakfast too. We had 'frogs in the hole' a couple days this week.

Cupcake found a recipe for chocolate chip pumpkin bread and requested it be made, so Lawman made it for her.

And over the weekend, we pitched in together and made a couple dozen cupcakes with chocolate cream cheese frosting.

Funny story that's food related. Over the winter we would eat quite a bit of fruit, and we took the guts from the honeydew melons and toss them out in the yard for the birds. Turns out, some of them came up. We mowed around the vines all year, and this week we cracked one open. 

We tossed the seeds back out in the yard for next year.

Next we picked a bucket full of apples from our trees and made another crockpot full of apple butter.

And sort of food related, we cut the dried corn stalks for decorating this weekend and spruced the place up a little.

We also picked the gem corn. Well, some of it anyway. We might have overdone it just a little bit.

And once again, Cupcake wanted oysters for dinner. And once again, she told the story of how "The Outlaw" would ruin a whole jar of oysters when he cooked them, and she never thought she would want to eat them on purpose, but here we are.

We ended the week with a nap.

K&K

Grape Big Time

 We started the week out with more grapes. Cupcake picked a canning jar case full of grape clusters Sunday afternoon. Lawman took Monday morning and picked them off the clusters and sorted out the 'not quite ready' green ones.

Both of us had grandparents that would make grape juice in the fall, but all the recipes on the interwebs called for smashing/boiling the grapes and straining the juice. We both remember whole grapes in the jar down in cellars, so Lawman took quart canning jars and measured two cups of fresh grapes into each jar, then added 1/4 cup of sugar and boiling water to fill the jars. 15 minutes at 10lbs in the pressure canner, and we have home made grape juice.

We're going to let is set a few weeks before we crack one open. Maybe break out a couple in Gettysburg?

And prepping for our trip North, Lawman started working up the neighbor lady's broken tree for campfire wood.

Lawman says he sure does wish these were a thing when he was in his teens.

We think we are all set for campfire wood now. Miss Willow approved.

One other chore we had this week was measuring ranges for "The Boy-in-Law" 

He wants to take some of our deer with his bow this year, so we cleared a few brush limbs from lanes and measured distance from the top of the stand.

With any luck, he will remove a few of our garden wreckers for us?

Funny story from the tree stand. The DT's were running/jumping/playing when Lawman climbed up, so they didn't know where he got off to. While up in the stand, Lawman would call out to the dogs, who were really cute trying to find him. Willow finally spotted him and came unstuck. She whined and laid down on her belly to "pray" until Lawman climbed down. It's almost like she knew no good would come from him being up in the tree.

We spotted some leaves turning while we were down in the happy hunting grounds. We love fall.

Our big mum is showing off some color as well.

And the DT's still look pitiful when they're on the porch looking out.

We ended the week with a couple of naps, to make up for lost naps earlier. We like to balance our lives like that.

K&K

Mum's The Word

 Our neighbor lady gifted us a mum last week. She's the best.

We're going to put it next to our long time mum.

We had mums all along the garage, but the chickens ate all but the red one. We guess they don't like that color?

Other new stuff this week, we were gifted three new ducks from Lawman's first FTO, Martha. These guys are about the same age as our new ducks we hatched. 

We swapped her a pint of grape jelly and a quart of tomato soup, and she threw in a few pond flowers to make the new ducks feel at home.

We put the ducks in the coop so they would know where home was.

And while they were getting moved in, Lawman took the pond flowers down and "planted' them.

Augustus helped

The baby bass came up and checked out the goings on.

We did a little clean up around the ponds while we were down there.

Then we turned the new ducks loose and they fit right in.

A couple of non pond related updates this week. 

First, Lawman made some jack stands for Serendipity. We priced the plastic ones all the fancy folks use, and they go for $60 dollars a pop. That's $360 dollars for all six jacks. We thought we could do better, cheaper. Lawman saved a few timbers from the great room in the house. He found one about the right length and cut it into six pieces.

We added handles to them for maybe $3 bucks each. 

We look forward to the snooty campers comments, but they work.

The other new thing this week, Cupcake made apple butter. She used her two apples from the tree by the porch. We planted it four years ago, and it gave us two apples this year.

We added a few apples from our older trees and made two crockpots full.

Next day we canned it up.

Nature related things this week.

Cupcake found her first wooly worm.

The weather has been very nice all week, we managed to sleep with the windows open. One night we heard a coyote in the yard, and the next morning we found it killed one of our guineas.

The guineas go feral when they try to hatch eggs. Instead of using the coop, they go out into the world and try to hatch a nest on the ground. We usually lose one or two in the spring, but this gal tried to do a late nest and Wiley found her. 

We noticed we are down to three guineas and eight hens now, so this guy must have been around for a while. That'll give Lawman something to do this coming week.

We ended the week with naps.

K&K