Its a Miracile

 We added new life to The Acre this week. Three weeks ago we had two birds go broody, so we took that days egg supply and marked them and let the girls do their thing. Thorsday we found one bird hatched. We brought it up to the house and put it in the baby bird tub. The Boy came home from a 24 hour shift the next day and saw the bird, came in the house and asked "Rural King charging so much for chicks that you can only afford one at a time?" 

In other life related news, the miracle mushrooms popped up this week. We got two inches of rain the day after we got our garden plants planted, and the next day we found miracle mushrooms popping up everywhere. A normal harvest of mushrooms is one here, one there, but this time we found dozens at one spot. We only picked what we could eat and left the rest. We seeded them down around our ponds two years ago, this year they took off. We hope that if we leave some, they will come back next year even stronger. We will report our results.

Cupcake found a pint of super ripe local strawberries, so she bought a pint and made a batch of strawberry syrup for pancake Saturday.

And whats fresh syrup without fresh butter to go with it?

Cupcake requested another batch of whole wheat english muffins, and what Cupcake wants, Cupcake gets.

One thing we pride ourselves on is not wasting anything if we can help it. This week we had one leftover porkchop, two fried chicken thighs, a pint of sketti sauce and some fresh mushrooms that were getting close to not being so fresh. Lawman whipped up a "leftover pizza" for dinner one night, that fed us for two nights. 

We ended the week with a steak gifted from the neighbors, fried mushrooms and two really good naps.

K&K

So Much Promise

 Lawman always says "There's nothing like the promise of a new garden."

Our neighbor hooked us up with his tiller, so now we're ready to get the '23 garden season underway.

Acre garden

Expert supervision

Barn garden

It's calling for a hard freeze the next couple of nights, then rain for a few days. Our plan is one week away from planting.

Non planting stuff this week was kind of limited, but we did make a fresh batch of english muffins. This time around, we didn't pre make the dough, we went fresh dough to the griddle. We did let it rise in the oven for a bit before we cooked them up.

Scratch made wheat flour dough

The rise

The cook

These turned out right

We tried the new muffins as hamburger buns again, this is the way.

Saturday it rained, Sunday we mowed. We still managed a couple of naps.

K&K

Eggcellent

 Kind of a slow week news wise at The Acre. Starting off, we glassed a few dozen fresh eggs for storage.

We've been baking at least one loaf of fresh bread every week, but this week, Cupcake requested english muffins. And what Cupcake wants, Cupcake gets. A few years ago, we made them for a while, but it took over an hour to get them all cooked, because we could only do one or two at a time in a cast iron skillet. Since we've upgraded to the Blackstone, we've got a great big cast iron cook surface. Let the muffins roll.

Since we've been baking whole wheat bread, we decided to try whole wheat muffins. The recipe called for letting them rest in the fridge overnight before cooking. We followed the directions, and the dough turned out like sugar cookies. In appearance, anyway. 

They turned out OK, but next time we're going to go straight to the cook top. They also made great hamburger buns.

And you can't have fresh made, toasted muffins without home made whipped butter. 

We tell ourselves that our butter is healthier than store bought, so we use quite a bit of it.

On Sunday we took our first batch of marigolds that we started from seed, and ran them up to the family cemetery to spruce up the family stones.

We planted around the grandparents stone, and Aunt Clara and Louise's stone. It will look better when the flowers bloom.

We ended the week with a couple of naps.

K&K

Hoppy Easter

The Acre was geared toward Easter this week. Maybe yours was too? We don't know.

We started on Thorsday by making the angel biscuit dough. Friday, Lawman made an apple pie. 

Granny Smith and Ambrosia apples

No 'crazy granny' pie crust for us

Cupcake did the fancy cuttin

Cast iron pie plate for the win

While he had the pie crust stuff going, Lawman made a choco pie as well.

Cupcake wanted to make personal choco cakes for the chirruns in attendance.

Then she made her soon to be famous banana pudding

Then, if her pudding wasn't famous enough, she whipped up a batch of from scratch caramel topping.

Lawman made his from scratch dressing from leftover corn bread from earlier in the week.

Corn pudding, made with duck eggs.

And last but not least, mac-n-cheese. But not the store bought kind that crazy granny throws cheese slices on and calls "homemade" this is all from scratch. Right down to the block cheese.

And we righted a wrong from last month. We made 'The boy in law' a batch of banana nut cookies for his birthday, and in all the hubbub of the day, we sent him home without his cookies. So, Lawman made him another batch and made sure to send him home with them this time.

We had all the other trimmings of the holiday. Ham/mashed potato/gravy/biscuits/jello/deviled eggs/sweet potato casserole.

We got the house cleaned up, grabbed a nap, then woke up just in time to go to bed Sunday night.

K&K

Dying for Spring

 Another slow week around The Acre this week. Being as it is the first of the month, we threw a little pond dye in the little pond. As is tradition.

Towards the end of the week it warmed up a bit, so Lawman took advantage of the warm weather to change the oil in his mower.

Cupcake requested a fresh loaf of wheat bread, so Lawman caught a rainy day and did some baking.

And what's a nice warm loaf of bread without fresh whipped butter?

We ended the week with a couple of naps and Cupcake's soon to be famous baked pork chops.

K&K