Christmas '16

This week ended with Christmas day and we have a whole bunch of pictures from the week. We had the family over, which is our tradition.

And when the family comes over for a holiday, we pull out the bone. With this ham, we mean that literally.

Rubbed down ham

Cold and rain makes the smoker work just right

We had a few frills and dressings with the ham.

"Half Eggs" with home made dill pickles

Our farm raised sweet potatoes with candied pecans (see below)

Smashed potatoes

Fried oysters in the batter stage

Finished product. Cupcake would never eat 'the outlaws' oysters, but she loves these

We made a few goodies. Some for us, some we gifted.

Cupcake's snack mix

Fruitcake

Kattie Grace made Oreo balls, she was thrilled

From scratch pies

Boiled custard, fruitcake and buttermilk pie for The Walters clan

Candied pecans. The fluff

The pecans

Spread to bake

Bake

Finished product. They rock

After we got the food squared away, we opened presents.

Jake wanted a target pistol

Lets cook something

We ended the week with a nap.
We hope you all had a great Christmas as well.
K&K

Boiled Custard Time

As we approach Christmas, we have been gearing up for the usual suspects on the table. Fruitcake, pie and boiled custard. First off, we made a gallon of boiled custard.

And we made a couple of fruitcakes. One without nuts for brother Kevin, one for our snacking. Orders have started rolling in for next week, so it looks like we will be busy beavers next week.

And last week we shared our peppermint patties. We snapped a picture of the finished product after we published last week.

A couple of other things going on this past week, we made another batch of laundry detergent.

We put our celery start in a pot of dirt

We made a meal of paprika chicken for dinner

And this week instead of linguini, we put the gravy over mashed potatoes

We smoked a brisket, and while we had the fire going we got a brainstorm to put the trap boiling pot on the firebox, killing two birds with one stone. We tried to think of a way to show the trap line, but when you do it right, all the pictures show is dirt. Pictures of caught critters would probably enrage the foo foo crowd. We will work on trap pictures.

It was all of nine degrees outside when we smoked the brisket, so standing over a hot smoker was a good idea. We got a mess of collards from the garden. They were froze solid, but we just broke them off the stalk and cooked them like normal.

And the girls have picked up the egg production. We managed to put ten dozen eggs out for sale this week, and we still have enough for boiled custard and all the baking we're doing. The Marans have started giving us about six eggs per day, we love the color of their eggs.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Beating our Meat III

Wade's had whole sirloins on sale again this week, so we picked up a couple of them and worked them up for Thor's red meat offering nights. We will let these sit in the fridge for the next ten days until they are happy, then it's off to the freezer and wait their turn.

Other food related stuff this week, we had turnips for dinner with steaks last week. Not just regular turnips, we had half of one HUGE turnip. This was without a doubt, the largest turnip we've ever seen. Pop gets full credit for this one, we picked it from his garden. We still have the other half for dinner this week.

And Cupcake found a recipe for home made peppermint patties. They were really simple to make, and they turned out really well. We will be keeping these in the rotation for a while.

We probably should have taken pictures of the finished product, but we were kind of busy eating them, so....
Projects this week were trap line related. Back in the day, Lawman's grandfather was a master trapper who took the craft very seriously. One thing he did was boil his traps in a large cast iron pot. He used black walnut hulls. Lack of planning this fall kept Lawman from using them this late in the year, so he checked out Amazon. We found the going thing is dye and wax, so an order was placed and arrived. When it arrived, it was a big ol mess. The dye opened up, and spilled everywhere. We're sure the UPS man was thrilled to find this in the back of his truck.

But we fired up the pot and mixture.

It's getting nice and cold out, Cupcake got a picture of the frost on the windshield on our way to check the line one morning.

We also got our order of fruit from the AHS FFA fruit sale this week.

And a project for next week will be repotting one of our lemon trees. We potted one over the summer but ran out of potting soil. We put it on our list of things to buy, but didn't get around to it until this week. You can see the difference room for roots makes below. These were the same size trees in the spring.

Tune in next week for updates.
We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Fire Fighters and Fruitcakes

This past week we attended the Floyd County Christmas parade where Jake got to drive one of the pieces of equipment this year.

And since Lawman was a band nerd when he was in high school.....

Somebody had a Fraidy Mutt in the parade

We ran out of wing sauce a while back, so we made another gallon and canned it up.

It was time to prep for another gallon of laundry detergent. As soon as we use up two quarts, we dice up the soap and let it soak in water until we use up the last two quarts. It makes the soap nice and soft when it's time to mix it up.

Our chocolate Maran's started laying eggs this week.

Our first Maran that left us an egg got two eggs to us, and was picked off by a fox. We figured it was just our luck, the fox couldn't kill the girls who stopped laying, had to grab the new bird that just started laying. The rest of the Maran's started laying a few days later. We are starting to get over a half dozen eggs per day again.

The one bird we hatched and kept alive rewards us by delivering her egg to the garage every day. We can't get her to lay in the coop, so we leave the garage door open for her every morning, and she lays her egg at the foot of the chest of drawers we keep the eggs on before we put them out for sale.

And in the same thread of crazy animals, Fraidy Mutt has taken to laying in front of the fireplace during the day. We bet she wishes we would fire it up for her.

There was a couple of pork related pictures this week. Pork chops

And our first batch of sausage balls.

Fruitcakes were made this week

We got a few snow flurries and sleet on Sunday morning

Which helps make it feel like Christmas

We ended the week with wings.
K&K