Garden Season

Mother nature gave us a break this week and we got to plow the gardens. 

While we were all about the garden, we planted four more fruit trees. Two apple, two more plums.

Not wasting anything, including sod. We used the sod to work on fixing the road down to the ponds. You may remember, the road we paid Cody to fix for us.

Cupcakes lilac started to bloom this week.

Speaking of things blooming, the cherry tree behind the house is covered in blooms. Fingers crossed for a good cherry season this year.

We had a checkup scheduled for both of us this week so Lawman whipped up a batch of banana nut bread cookies for the staff. They were a big hit.

For the nature loving folks who are repulsed by killing predators, stop reading here. You've been warned.

We started losing chickens last week. Cupcake was at the window and saw a red fox grab one of our girls right out in broad daylight. Lawman has tried trapping, calling, hunting, but has had no luck and still, chickens came up missing. Early one morning, it's luck ran out. Lawman just happened to be by the door when it came back for an early meal.

It grabbed one of our hens, but didn't make it out of the yard.

The guinea birds spent an hour circling it and pecking at it. They are not to be toyed with

We ended the week with an early Easter dinner, and a nap.

K&K

 

Happy Birthday Pops!

 Today is Pop's 80th birthday, the family all got together last night to celebrate over a meal, and we made sure to have the staff give a Latino version of "Happy Birthday"

The rest of the week seemed to involve trees one way or another. Early in the week it was warm, so Lawman got started on cleaning up the branches from our helicopter trim job we reported on last year. It was neat to watch, but they left the limbs for the land owner to clean up. Lucky for us, the brush pile in the pond had settled, so it needed fresh brush. We killed two birds with one stone.

Then it got cold and windy, which brought down a tree at the family cemetery. The down tree blocked the road leading in, so we had to get that cleaned up ASAP.

The trunk was so heavy it broke our tow strap. But Lawman said he's had it for 30 years, he figures he got his money's worth out of it before it gave up the ghost. 

Non tree related things for the week involved egg preserving. 

If you've never had ducks, allow us to give you a crash course in duck egg 101. If you need eggs, they won't lay. If you have too many eggs, they go nuts laying eggs. Over the holidays we needed eggs, and the rotten birds stopped laying, so our baking suffered. Now that baking season is over, we've got duck eggs coming out of our ears. We found a solution that we are giving a try. Lime water. 

The interwebs say if you cover fresh eggs with lime water, they will keep in a jar for two years. So we've started doing a two quart jar every week of duck eggs for use this coming holiday season. We look forward to reporting our results.

Mother nature threw her last (we hope) temper tantrum this week, going from hot to cold to snow to warm again. Maybe you had crazy weather too? We don't know.

Since we got snow on Saturday, Cupcake called an audible on 'steak and tater night' and made a big pot of chili beans instead. Lawman will never turn down a bowl of her chili beans.

And that brings us back to ending the week by celebrating Pop's birthday Sunday night.

K&K

Walking Wounded

 It was a slow news week around The Acre this week. Lawman went out of his way to bang himself up, and it's not even springtime injuries. Last week he sliced his hand open at Rural King lifting chicken feed out of a flat wagon that had a wire in just the right spot to catch his right hand. It was warm that day, so we had the windows open and ceiling fan going to get a little fresh air flowing. When he came home, he pulled his shirt off and jammed his hand into the spinning ceiling fan, busting the knuckles on his left hand. Just missing the vibranium wedding ring on his hand that could have probably saved him. Then while washing dishes, he reached into the sink and sliced his finger on a very sharp knife. Which would have never happened in Cupcake's previous life because nobody knew how to sharpen a knife for her. And over the weekend, Lawman managed to bang his right hand on the barrel of a shotgun, busing open the scab on his right hand. So a slow paced week unfolded. 

But it was first of the month, so that means a fresh bottle of pond dye.

We have signs of spring, our fruit trees are coming out.

The pond area is starting to come together

On a pond related note, Augustus finally jumped in the pond to swim with Willow. We think he got all excited about swimming with ducks and forgot he was afraid of water. Of course we didn't have a camera with us when he did it, but he made it half way across the pond before he turned around and came back to the spot he jumped in. He was super excited and ran around for about thirty minutes before he ran out of gas and we came home. 

A couple of food related items this week. 

We fixed a slab of salmon for dinner one night.

Lawman whipped up an apple bunt cake for dessert this week.

Cupcake made scratch made Au Gratin potatoes for steak and tater night.

And we had Denephew and brother Kevin over for Sunday breakfast.

The Boy scored an antique rabbit trap this week. Brought back memories of Lawman catching over fifty skunks one year with one just like it.

And the cousins gifted us a couple of bags of Mason jars last week, but we had already posted the update and wanted to give a shout out to Wayne and Betsy for thinking of us. We look forward to putting them to good use soon.

We ended the week with a couple of naps.

K&K