Pumpkin Pickin

We had Denises and Denephew out to The Acre to pick out their pumpkins from the patch. Everyone had a great big time.

After the chirruns picked out their pumpkins, we made a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies.

And while we were making cookies, little Katie found she enjoyed home made biscuits and home made applesauce. We had just made a fresh batch of applesauce before everyone arrived. Katie ate one pint and asked to take a second one home.

And while the kids were in the kitchen, we all made a cooking of home made ketchup. We picked what will probably be the last large picking of tomatoes from the garden, and we figured we had enough salsa. We can always use some more ketchup.

Henry found that he loved the home made apple jelly. We tried to get Katie to try some on her biscuit, but that didn't work out at all. Henry was more than willing to try the jelly, and took the jar home with him. We understand there are plans for an apple jelly sandwich in his school lunch.

Prior to all the Sunday goings on, we had usual stuff going on around The Acre. First off we picked a watermelon and diced it up. We snacked on that all week. We don't know why everyone doesn't grow their own watermelons.

We made our first potroast this week. We went to the garden for the fresh ingredients.

We dug carrots and blue potatoes, a few jalapeno peppers and some onions to slow cook in cast iron. We're ready for fall. And speaking of fall, Cupcake did quite a bit of decorating this week. We cut down the gem corn stalks and made decorations out of them. We picked a couple of pumpkins and placed in strategic locations.

We have had an old milk container that we've been meaning to put to use, we got around to bringing it out and getting it ready for the front porch.

And decorations seemed to be the theme this week. We posted a picture last week of a pumpkin in the whiskey barrel. This week the chickens decided to carve it out and make it their own. We can only assume it's supposed to be a Deathstar from Star Wars?

The only other option we can come up with is they were eating the pumpkin. But if that's the case, we will be having fresh wings, so we're going with Deathstar.
We did chop up a fresh pumpkin and made our first pie of the season.

We also picked a fresh mess of collards for dinner one night. Collards were a big hit with our family physician, so we're going to keep them in the rotation.

We hit the half way mark on the batch of wine. We opened it up, skimmed off the crud on top and added some more sugar. We wait another nine days now.

And as usual, we ended the week with wings

K&K

Mo Pumpkin

This week was all over the map here at The Acre. We picked pumpkins, we made salsa, we baked pies. As Bugs Bunny would say "Might as well got to climbing this beanstalk, or we won't have any story".
We noticed a couple of the pumpkin vines had started to die off, so we picked pie pumpkins and a couple giants for decorating. We still have a whole patch full of pumpkins. We may have a problem?

The pie pumpkins we diced and canned. One pumpkin made four quarts, and we figure one quart per pie, we may have all the pumpkin we will need from a single picking. The second smaller one we split and baked. We scooped the pumpkin out and we will make our first pie this week.  We also saved the seeds, because next year we are going to have an even bigger patch. OK, we have a problem.

And one last pumpkin related picture, we must be on the new coffee company e-mail list. We've gotten offers from a half dozen companies this week to try their coffee. This one had pumpkin spice, so we picked up a couple of pounds.

We've been making salsa all week long. Two big batches canned up. Now we're making salsa just to give away.

Some salsa we sent to far away lands this week. We boxed it up and shipped it out. Two boxes went to Kansas, and apparently the person who drove the truck from Roanoke to Kansas didn't like salsa. Both boxes were smashed and the jars inside didn't make the trip.

Still picking stuff from our garden, we had squash again this week.

And our first peaches came in this week.

Our two or three regular readers know we hate to waste anything around The Acre, so this next picture makes us sick. We had way too many yellow cucumbers, so many we couldn't give them away.

The Beamer came to town this week and paid us a visit. He requested we hook him up with a couple of our buttermilk pies. We were honored to think someone drove from Cincinnati to The Acre for pie, but he was also going to some local sporting event.

We hooked him up with some goodies and sent a box of salsa and gem corn to our pal JJ who was also attending the local sporting event. She in return hooked us up with some SC grits and local flavor from her neck of the woods. We dig the barter system.
Speaking of gem corn, Cupcake started her fall decorating this week.

We had one project this week. We noticed the camper had sprung a leak when it rains. Lawman climbed up to check out the roof and found a few cracks. We used a bed liner spray rubber to patch the cracks until we can resurface the whole thing.

We were out and about one day and happened upon a yard sale. We hardly ever stop at yard sales but for some reason we hit this one. Cupcake found two old jars with the swing lids for fifty cents each. Ebay sells the exact same jars for fifty dollars each, so we made out like bandits. I guess it was meant to be that we stopped.

A couple of food related posts. We had a boil Monday, Pop missed the last two boils we did, so we made sure he was going to be around when we did this one. We had enough left over for shrimp cocktails the next afternoon for lunch.

And on Thor's day we made red meat offerings. This is our sirloin steaks we hand cut and treated. We sear the steaks in a cast iron skillet before we grill them.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Gem of a Week

Busy week around The Acre this week once again. We were in harvest mode this week, picking grapes, squash, salsa fixings and gem corn. Our regular two or three followers know that two years ago we bought a pack of twelve seeds off the interwebs of gem corn. We planted them in a pot on our deck to keep it from cross pollination with our eating corn and we managed two small ears of corn to show for our troubles. On the plus side, the two small ears we got yielded enough seed corn for a whole row of gem corn this year. Pop donated a row in his garden, to avoid eating corn cross pollination again. It made it's self this week, so now we have it drying on the porch.

We picked about three or four dozen ears, so we will have plenty of decorations this year and will probably use the prettiest of the bunch for seed next year. We may have to plant two rows if space will allow.
During the shucking frenzy that went on when we got back to the house, Fraidy Mutt had to be in the middle of the action. Here she is looking less than impressed at the mess we made.

And on the decoration front, we bought a few mums to plant soon. It's beginning to look a lot like fall.

And our pumpkins are getting huge. The anti blight spray is keeping the vines alive, most of our neighbors plants have long died off, ours are still going strong. We count over two dozen pumpkins so far, but we figure that number should double once we can see under the foliage later in the season.

Our second harvest item this week was butternut squash. This is a new item here at The Acre. We only planted three vines but we picked over a dozen squash from them. We plan on using some to decorate with and keeping about a half dozen or so in the basement. Word is they will keep six months if kept cool and dark. We will advise on shelf life.
The rest we cubed up and canned.

We considered this a trial run. Depending on flavor and recipes we try this winter, we will add to the count next year or move on to something new. Again, we will keep y'all in the loop.
Next was salsa. We still get a picking of tomatoes about once a week, and the hot peppers are steady coming in. We have already made two strings of red peppers to decorate with, and still put a bunch of them into the salsa. It's a bit warm, but Cupcake has taken to eating the jalapeno peppers straight from the jar now. She has been ruined.

We are keeping our yellow squash alive with the anti blight spray. we are into September now and still getting squash at least once a week. The tender ones we fry up for Cupcake, the older tougher squash we boil and make casserole with. We are very pleased to have kept squash around this long into the season. Not many people still have it this late, we know we are blessed.

We managed to pick about a half of a basket of grapes from our vine this year. The guinea birds got most of the grapes just as they were turning. Lawman picked a couple here, a couple there and managed enough for a cooking of jelly. Just barely.

And after we mentioned on the Faceplace that we had struck out with grapes this year, Mom Sowers came to our rescue. Brother Kevin and his wife Susan inquired if she had any extra grapes at her house, and it turns out she did. We were invited out to get as many as we wanted, and learned the vine was more than likely in the one hundred year old age bracket. On top of that, they were dead ripe and sweet as sugar. We picked one bucket full and about a half of another bucket. It would have been more, but we ate a healthy number as we went along, and more the next day as we prepped them for the wine kit.

We got three gallons of mash out of these, so maybe we can manage a couple of gallons of finished product? We are three weeks away from knowing for sure, so stay tuned for that. It seems like something we would update.
On Friday we usually go to town for a bite to eat, but we had been on the go all week and decided to take a breather. We stayed in and made a pizza from scratch and had Pop over for a family pizza night. We're really getting this pizza making thing down pat.

And last on our list of things to share this week. We have a pee pee light. Living in the country is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but one of the side perks is it's all kinds of dark at night time. Cupcake can't sleep with a night light visible to the bedroom, so the master bath is dark as "the blackest night" in the Green Lantern's oath. This makes for an eventful standing pee trip. Cupcake found a motion sensor toilet light on the interwebs, and we could even set the color of the light. Of course we settled on "lawman blue" and have a thirty second window to make the bladder gladder in the darkest of nights.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K