Memorial Day Weekend

First, a short rant. I mean why have a blog if you can't rant?  Many people seem to confuse Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Veterans Day is the day to thank a vet (November 11th). Memorial Day is for the fallen, the brothers and sisters who gave the last full measure for their country. Please make a note.  Here at The Acre, we switch flags on Memorial Day. Big Man flies a 3X5 flag from the day after Veterans Day to Memorial Day. Memorial Day weekend to Veterans Day, we fly the 5X8 flag.

Now, on to the Sit-Rep at The Acre this past week.
Our first order of business was livestock. The cows were delivered this week, and we had a small hatching of guineas to add to our flock.

We found another apple with sprouted seeds in it, so we cut them out and planted them in another bucket of dirt.

While we were planting things, we scratched out a spot for our mushroom garden. We found an apple tree near the house that's well shaded, and had a rotten log underneath it. We raked out a nice spot and spread our mushroom spores about.

There was a small picking of miracle mushrooms early in the week. We have had them fried in batter, fried in eggs, so this last batch we tried something a little different, we put em on a homemade pizza pie. It rocked

We also noticed the blackberry bushes were busting with blooms this year, we have our fingers crossed for a good crop come summer.

Speaking of good crops, we found little bunches of grapes on our grape vines while we were out and about

And on a crop related thread, we added a plank to our potato boxes, and added dirt to the vines

And last but not least, fresh pie. Our rhubarb has been coming on strong, and we got our first picking of strawberries this weekend, so we made a fresh from the garden strawberry rhubarb pie.

If you've never had it, you just don't know. We speculate the rhubarb and strawberries will not grow fast enough this year, so we are adding to the patch for next year.  We ended the weekend with Chicken Wing Sunday, because that's how we roll.
K&K

Police Memorial Week

It was Police Memorial week this past week. We observed the event with our new thin blue line flag. Our old flag lasted 20 years, but the sun finally faded it out. We also have Project Blue Light, but it's every night.
Mowing took up most of the week, but the weekend picked up with cooking and planting and whatnot.
We dropped off Rhulenbarb's yellow cucumber sets and a few eggs, the girls have been stepping up the production the past couple of weeks. I guess they understand when we tell them their replacements are here, and we enjoy fresh chicken wings?
On the garden front, the potatoes have sprouted.

We also had some luck finding a few straggler mushrooms over the week.

Rather than frying them up this week, we decided to soak them in salt water then chop them up for an omelet on both Saturday and Sunday morning breakfast.

Mushrooms, sweet peppers, chopped onions and a little smoked ham for Saturday eggs, then smoked brisket in Sunday's eggs. Oh that's right, we smoked a brisket Saturday.

While the brisket was on, we whipped up a fresh batch of butter....

To go on our from scratch, honey rolls...

After about eight hours of slow smoking over sweet maple wood, we arrived at the magic number

We took the brisket off and foiled it, then wrapped it in towels until dinner time, then came time to slice it. When we say slice it, it was more like use the knife to pull it apart, because this one fell apart. There was actually juice squirting from the meat when we cut in to it. By far, the best brisket we've fixed to date.

We tossed in a cast iron pot of greens with rib meat, and we had a pretty good meal on our hands. We ended the week with Chicken Wing Sunday, which is our tradition.
K&K

Mother's Day Miracle

We update on Mother's Day this week, and it was a good day. Morel mushrooms, AKA "Miracles" came up this week, and we just happened to scrounge a few up.

We first fried up a few of these last spring, and we loved them. They only grow for about a week, and only after a rain, and only after the second week of May. They taste like fried oysters (So says the Big Man).

Cast iron cooking

Fried Miracle mushrooms, once a year treat

We had a pretty good week for eating, we smoked some chicken, fried some squash, baked some dinner rolls, and a couple of strawberry rhubarb pies.

Fried squash and one lone miracle mushroom

After our rain that brought the mushrooms to be, we had a very calm morning. Cupcake captured the mist rising at daybreak.

We also planted our squash plants we started a few weeks ago, and we planted our cucumbers and tomato plants. We had to put chicken wire around our tomato plants, because the little birds discovered worms, and fresh tilled dirt is a buffet for chicks. They wasted no time wrecking the plants.

They also took over the hen house.

Coops are for Suckas

One other thing we planted this week was a muscadine grape vine.

Cupcake says she wants to feed grapes to the Big Man while he lays in her lap on the couch. Sounds like a plan. 

We had a Mother's Day meal of chicken wings, if you can imagine that?
K&K

May the 4th Be With You!!

Yes, we update on the holy of all nerd holidays, Star Wars Day. It was a busy week down on planet Earth this week, we got quite a bit of work done around the house on top of mowing just about every day, which will be the norm until November probably.
First off, we have our chicks. They spent their first week in their new coop, and they seem to be thriving.

Sup???

We opened the run door for them mid week, and this is the first landing of the first bird brave enough to exit out...

Nope!!

Cupcake adding hanging baskets to each stud, work in progress

We planted the majority of our garden this weekend. We still have tomatoes, squash and cucumbers to set out later to miss the frost, but the beans and corn are in the ground.

Rocking some 4th Infantry love

We also have lettuce, peas and onions doing well so far

Our rhubarb has bloomed, so now it's time to rip the bloom off and start harvesting the stalks. We are gonna be up to our ears in rhubarb this year, it appears.

Rhubarb bloom, tearing it away makes the plant spring to life

And you cant have rhubarb without strawberries, and ours are looking fab so far

And we also tried a new thing this year, which is kind of our thing anyway. We built potato boxes. The theory is you plant the seed taters and when they come up, you add a six inch plank and more dirt, and wait for the vines to grow, then add a six inch plank and add dirt, repeat until you have a box full of potatoes. We will be sharing our progress

We transplanted three more cherry trees that have sprung up in the back yard, we moved them to the front yard to double as shade trees, then we changed the oil in our cars.

Funny thing. Big man has been wearing his boony hat ever since he caught the Lymes, and the first song to come on the radio when he crawled under Cupcake's car was "Send lawyers, guns and money" which has a line about "I'm hiding in Honduras, I'm a desperate man". Big man got his boony hat in Honduras, during a little whirlwind tour of the tropical jungles of Central America, back in the day.

It's probably not so much funny ha ha as funny coincidence. Anyway, we share the oil change pics for two reasons. In Cupcakes former life, nobody would buy her a Fram oil filter for her vehicle, and Big Man's father out-law told her the oil filter was too hard to get to for a self change. (Father in-law, but he don't like the Big Man, and they don't speak, hence, out-law. It ain't funny if we have to spell it out).

Out-law said what now??

We ended the holiest of nerd holidays with "Chicken Wing Sunday" which is out tradition.
K&K