Dry Week

 We had our first week without rain since early spring, so Lawman got caught up on his mowing most of the week. Almost all of our goings on involved food this week, but our lead off picture is our girl Willow. She had an ear infection, so says the vet from our last visit. We think this may be one of the reasons she hasn't been swimming in the pond much this summer? Anyway, being a dog is exhausting. 

Cupcake went to the the freezer for some deer tenderloin to have for Sunday breakfast, and was shocked to learn there was only one pack left. Good thing deer season opens next weekend. We managed to stretch last winters kills out right up to opening weekend. 

We've still got plenty of ground burger meat, which is good, because we love some sketti up in here. We also found a new dinner roll recipe. Overnight sour cream dinner rolls. You make the dough 24 hours before dinner, let it rest in the fridge until it's time to bake. Then you proof it and bake. We like this one too, it has an almost brioche flavor. The DT's also enjoyed them, as the leftovers are nite nite treats. And they love their nite nite treats.

Lawman dusted off his recipe for pumpkin rolls, and made the first one of the season this week. 

We had grilled chicken for dinner one night, and Cupcake said a batch of chicken salad with grapes sure would hit the spot for her lunch. And as we all know,what Cupcake wants, Cupcake gets.

And last for the week, our chestnut tree opened up and we got a handful of chestnuts. We grabbed them up before the deer found them. We picked a bunch from Pop's trees too, so we were thinking we might try to plant these and get a mall grove going? We'll see.

We ended the week with a couple of naps.

K&K

Apples

 It was apple week here at The Acre. We were going to use our home grown apples, but Yogi had other ideas. We lost every apple/pear/yellow peach we had on the tree. Yogi left plenty of poo behind, but fear not. In two weeks, bow season opens up and Lawman plans on getting all the fruit and pumpkins back.

But, back to apple week. We stopped at Riner Food Center and picked up a bushel of apples.

Cupcake went to work on her apple pie filling. We canned up 25 jars, and would probably have done more, but we had to make an unscheduled trip to town for lemon juice, because we ran out of lemon juice.

We still had half a bushel left over, so we've been making a crockpot full of apple butter every day, and canning it up, then doing a new batch. We will use up the rest of the apples soon.

We had left over salmon from dinner this week, and Lawman loves Cupcake's salmon patties, so we treated ourselves with leftovers one night. Along with dinner rolls, because leftover dinner rolls go for a weeks worth of DT night night treats.

By the end of the week, we planned a hoot-n-anny, or maybe a wing-ding? The Boy has been working weekends until this week, and we wanted to celebrate his graduation. Plus, The Girl snagged a new job with benefits this week, so it was an all kids celebration. We picked one of our watermelons for the occasion.

We did burgers, dogs, and to keep with the theme of the week, an apple spice cake. That's three cakes "The Outlaw" could be enjoying, but he's batshit crazy.

We made a jar of home made apple cider vinegar with the scraps

We didn't get our naps this weekend, so if you encounter us in the wild this week, steer clear.

K&K

The Beamer Approved

 We had planned on throwing a wing ding for The Boy to celebrate his graduation this week, but we just couldn't get all the ducks in a row to make that happen. We're going to try again next week. 

The big thing around The Acre this week was spiders. And we know "The Beamer" would approve, we? Not so much.

We first started noticing an abundance of spiders on our daily runs with the DTs. We would drive through several webs that had been built across our trail, causing both of us to freak out. Then Cupcake started to notice spiders building webs all over the house.

Back door

Lime tree, back porch

Front porch deck

Garage door

Second floor window

This is also a sign of a hard winter to come. We're ready, bring it on.

It rained all week, so getting outside to do things was limited. Lawman had to weed wack the cemetery in the rain so he could mow Friday. But, like cousin Tommy says "The trimmer don't know it's raining."

Lawman did whip up another apple spice cake this week.

This week he topped it with his soon to be world famous cream cheese icing.

Cupcake made a Chic-Fil-A version of chicken tenders that turned out very well. We had them on biscuits with a little honey drizzle.

Our first pumpkin spice pancakes rolled out Saturday morning.

And for steak and tater night, Lawman made another batch of dinner rolls.

We would have shown the 'after' pictures, but we kinda ruined the picture by digging in to them as soon as they came out of the oven.

One last picture for the week, we have a Cupcake sized ear of corn growing in the planter box.

We ended the week with a couple of naps.

K&K

Congradulations!

 This week brought to an end "The Boy's" academy training, and the start of his lifelong dream. Jake did 17 weeks of fire training in 100ish degree heat, but it was all worth it come Sept. 1.

We are most proud of the fact that he found the job opening on his own, applied, passed and worked his butt off to achieve his goal. 

There was a big 'ta-do' in Rocky Mount Thursday, celebrating the group's graduation. Lots of chiefs, politicians and whatnot. 

Class 002, marching in

Swearing their oath

Receiving his certification

He asked "The Girl In-Law" to do the honors of pinning his badge on him during the ceremony.

And he got some neat stuff after to remember his days at the academy.

All his family gathered to celebrate his achievement. Well, all the family that mattered, anyway.

We had some bear drama this week. It came rolling through The Acre one night this week, and wandered over to the barn garden. Cupcake had several pumpkins she was waiting to turn before she harvested, but Yogi had other ideas. He took a big bite out of one, and we figured we should probably go ahead and bring the rest of them to the house, before he made a buffet out of the rest of them.

We brought a watermelon with them. It wasn't quite ripe yet. We ate about half of it and gave the rest to the birds as a treat.

And on the birds front, we thought we'd share a weeks worth of shopping for the 'hobby' we have.

That is five hundred pounds of chicken/duck supplies, and that's every week. Every other week, if we hit a lucky patch. Another reason we kill predators, that's a lot of wasted product for a foxxy to eat.

And we found the nest of our guineas. They go feral a couple of times a year, in the spring and in the fall. During the spring we had the foxxy problem, so we lost half our birds to him/her. We counted 32 eggs on this nest, and the little white bird is steady trying to hatch them. Fingers crossed.

We harvested a bunch of grapes this week, and first order of business was grape juice, because Cupcake loves her some home made grape juice. And what Cupcake wants, Cupcake gets,

Two gallons, it's a good start

It rained Sunday, so we made a big pot of soup, then took a nap. 

We got up from our nap, made a batch of dinner rolls, and took another nap.

Then we ate soup and rolls, and went to bed early.

K&K