Lavender Love

Folks that know us, know we've wanted lavender amerucauna chickens for a while now. In the spring we ordered a batch of hatching eggs, but none of them hatched. After we hatched the guinea birds, we thought we would try to hatch another batch, to give the guineas someone to grow up with, and maybe show them how to come back to the coop at night. Ricky Raccoon took care of trying to train guinea birds, but we had already ordered another set of hatching eggs. We put them on three weeks ago, and this week three out of nine hatched.

First out

Three of nine made it. They are our special forces birds

They lay blue eggs, so we are excited to have them added to our flock. We have had a few visitors to The Acre as well.

Jerky or smoker meat, we have plans for you

Deer have been grazing in the yard, it seems earlier than they usually come around, we are thinking there may be far too many deer around this year. We guess Big Man will have to do something about that.
There was a special event this week too. Every July we have to have our vehicles inspected, and we always go to see Derrick Lancaster's outfit on Radford Road. Each time we do, Big Man smokes a pork shoulder and makes a pulled pork BBQ treat for the guys at Total Car Care. It is well received each year.

Eight hours of slow smoke over maple wood

Then soaked in home made bourbon BBQ sauce

We canned a few things, if you can imagine that.

Another batch of bread and butter pickles

Six more pints of collards

Another picking of green beans from Pop's garden

Fourteen quarts later, not a bad day

And our garden started to come in. We've been living off Pop's garden (see above green beans) but now we started getting squash and beans.
Pop's shared a picking of corn that became ripe this week, so we had corn on the cob with the smoked ribs Thursday.

First corn of the year

First squash from our garden. Fried for Cupcake

Saturday night we fried up some Kimmie Crack (fried squash) and we made a special treat, a fresh red raspberry cobbler.

And on a berry note, we are still getting a few straggler strawberries from time to time.

And last but not least, we tried something new this weekend. Home made ketchup.

First picking of tomatoes, mostly from Pop's garden again

Sliced and cooked down in cast iron

Hand blender, smooths them up nice

Store bought? Not in The Acre

We know, we know, you're tired of hearing "it's better than store bought". But it really is. We canned our ketchup in pint and a half jars, so we have six pints of ketchup ready for whatever we wanna put it on.
We ended the week with chicken wing Sunday.
K&K