Reunion Time Again

This past week ended with our family reunion, which is always the last Sunday in June. Cupcake was disappointed again this year, because the Price family reunion always ends in drunken brawls, the arrival of law enforcement, and someone getting stitches. Apparently ours is bland by comparison. This year our cousins, Bill and Francis attended. They are regular followers of the blog, and it was a real treat to get to hang out with them for a while. We made sure we sent them, and their friend Joyce,  home with a few canned goodies from the stockpile.

Joyce, Bill and Francis (L-R)

The food table is filling up

Dessert table

Big Man making one of his two pies for dessert 

We smoked a Boston Butt roast and made pulled pork BBQ, and two pies for the reunion. A strawberry rhubarb, and a peach pie. Big Man had never made a peach pie before, so he used the reunion attendee's for guinea pigs. We think it will be added to the rotation, reviews were good.

Boston Butt

A couple of projects from the past week. One was the deck. Our deck has started to show some weathering, so we decided it was about time to give it a treatment. We looked at several store bought deck cleaners, but nothing cheap was found, and we like a bargain, so we did some checking on the internet. We found the best rated cleaner was Oxyclean. And we just happened to have a jug of it on hand. We mixed it up with some boiling water and Borax, and sprayed it on the deck. The water treatment will follow next blog, since it's supposed to be rain free the first couple of days of the week. Stay tuned for updates.

The second project was an Acre tradition, canning peaches. Every year we put up as many peaches as we can get our hands on. Cupcake likes her some peach cobblers, and now we've added peach pie to the rotation, so there's that.

And we added a new twist to the peach canning, peach jam. We did a double batch of that while we were at it. And have a dozen jars for our effort, that should get us through the year.

And of course there was food.
We were expecting "The Beamer" to show up for chicken wing Sunday, but we got stood up. It's a shame, because we had a special treat to add to the wings. Crawfish. Big Man steamed up a dozen or so, just to add a little zig to our zag.

Other food related items were salmon. We grilled a slab of salmon one night, and used the leftover meat to make salmon patties. We froze the patties for a quick meal down the road.

Chicken fajita roll ups. We had some chicken left over from a fajita meal, and used it up for this neat trick. It really turned out great.

We rolled it up, baked it until the crust was crispy brown. This one fed us twice, so it was worth the price.
And steak, we seem to be having seared steak at least once a week these days.

And we got our first picking of green beans from the garden. That means green bean canning is just around the corner.

We added a few chicken pictures, just because they are cute, and it's kind of our thing.

We have about forty birds now, so it's hard to name them all, but the white on is "chirp"

And on a chicken related note, we added a new sign to the kitchen. We love chickens, and we love coffee.

And we leave you this week with a sight Big Man is used to seeing on a regular basis, "The Hand"

Our belly was full after the reunion, so we put off wings until Monday.
K&K

Father's Day and A Little Head

This week ended with Father's Day. We had Pop over for breakfast, as is our routine, then we took the rest of the day off. It was a pretty busy week around The Acre.
First off, we had cherries, and a lot of them. Big Man took Monday and devoted it to all things cherry. He made five homemade cherry pies, and 12 jars of cherry jelly. The pies we froze, and will reheat and enjoy this winter. The jelly? Well it's already open and in use.

And while Big Man was working on pies, he had a pork shoulder in the smoker. Kattie Grace had a softball banquet, and we decided on BBQ for our dish.

Then after we smoked the BBQ, the banquet was canceled.
Here is a shot of Kattie Grace rolling out of bed shortly after the crack of noon.

 We used our last jar of homemade sauce on this roast, so Tuesday, Big Man dipped in to the canned tomato stash, and we made more sauce.

Another two and a half gallons of sauce at the ready. Bring on summer BBQ. We're thinking we will smoke one for our family reunion, and the annual trip to get our vehicles inspected.
In preparation of the family reunion, we picked and diced up some rhubarb for pies.

And we made a dozen pickled eggs. We know what you're thinking, "where did we get eggs?"

We took a few shots of our garden stuff to round out this week.

The "Little Head" part of the title. Ya bunch of pervs

Kimmie's favorite, green tomatoes

Cupcake rolled up her sleeves and put a fresh coat of stain on our hen house this week. We are quite a team around here.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Birds and Berries

This week, we were bird and berry oriented. First off last week, we started losing young chicks. They have been in our small plastic coop for a week, and there was still two older birds (by a couple of weeks) that stayed in there with them. We thought it might be good to have older birds show the new girls "the ropes".
When the first bird died overnight, we thought it had been crushed by the mob. The chicks slept in a huge pile, because they are goofy. We figured this bird was just the unlucky one on the bottom. The next two days, we lost a bird a night, and we began to worry we had a virus in the birds. Tuesday, Big Man found a fourth bird on it's back, and it's breathing was labored, eyes closed. He was going to put the bird down, but decided to wait until he cleaned the coop. On a hunch, he forced a little water down the bird's throat while he was cleaning the coop, and the bird tried to stand up a short time later. Big Man took the bird to the big bird water bowl and let it drink for a few minutes, and left it next to the bowl while he worked, and the bird tried to climb up and get more water.
He took the bird into the garage, and put it in the new hatch cage, turned on the heat lamp and fixed a water nipple for her. By the end of the evening, the bird had started drinking on it's own, and even began to eat. The next morning we found a hole in the back of her head, and being a retired detective, pieced together that the older birds were picking on the younger girls. They were evicted from the coop, and we have not lost another bird. So, live and learn.

Her name is "Lazarus" now

And since we have twenty new birds on the way to laying status, we added some sleeping roosts to the hen house.

And we let the little birds out to start free ranging. They are good for endless hours of watching them chase bugs.

And we had a bigger bird visit us this week. Every morning Big Man can hear a gobbler come off the roost, this morning he was in the front yard.

And our last bird related post, we ran out of wing sauce last week. So we made another gallon of sauce, canned up and ready for the next few weeks.

And another canning related item, we made a new thing. Rhubarb orange marmalade. We added two pounds of chopped rhubarb to our orange marmalade recipe, and it really turned out well.

Marmalade on the left, sauce on the right

For the berry part of the week, or blueberry bushes started turning ripe, and we are still getting strawberries too.

Big blueberries

And the cherry trees all turned ripe this week. We picked a small bucket of cherries from our tree in the back yard, just piddling around one day. We decided to try using them for our pancakes on Saturday. Fresh from the tree to the griddle, there's just no living like country living.

Then after breakfast, we got serious about picking cherries. We picked thirty pounds of cherries, sweet red, black heart and sour cherries. We spent Sunday pitting the cherries. Cupcake says "The Outlaw" would love the pickings. It's a shame he's batshit crazy, he and the Big Man have more in common than not.
We ended the week with wings.
Look for cherry pie pics next week.

K&K

Family Gathering

Our regular followers know Jacob graduated high school two weeks ago. For a graduation party, Jake wanted a blowout party, as graduates do. For the followers who don't know Jake, that was sarcasm. Jake asked for a low key family get together at the fire house he works out of. All the family (except for the ones who chose a path that did not include Jacob or Kattie Grace) attended. There was pizza for the kids, fruit trays, graduation cakes, and Big Man whipped up two smoked pork shoulders for pulled pork BBQ, and an extra large baking of school house rolls.

This is Jake's "excited" face

Henry said "YUMMY!!" when he tried the BBQ, then tried to cram the whole sandwich in his mouth

A good time was had by all. And we even gave up "Chicken Wing Sunday" so you know it was a special day.
There was the usual goings on this week as well. While Big Man had the smoker fine tuned, he smoked a pork loin one night. Pork loin is probably the most simple meat to smoke, you don't have to smoke it all day, and it's crazy tender and juicy when it's done. We saved half of this one for sandwiches and flavoring other dishes down the road.

And speaking of old school simple, we grilled chicken breasts one night. We chopped them up and put them on a bed of fresh from the garden lettuce for a grilled chicken salad. Perfect on a warm night to keep the kitchen from heating up.

And a little home made ice cream with fresh baked cookies for dessert.

We had a pizza crust frozen that we used. When we make our own crust, it makes enough dough for two pizzas. And unless we have company, we freeze the extra dough, and thaw it out for a quick home made pizza when we want pizza, but are pressed on time.

Home Made sauce too

Our strawberry plants are still producing berries, we pick a bag full every evening. Here are some of Cupcake's hanging baskets with fruit.

And speaking of fruit, the cherry tree is about to unleash some fresh cherries for us in the next week or so.

There was shenanigans that made the photo list this week. Wednesday is wash the bed day around The Acre. And while we were waiting for the comforter to dry in the sunshine, Cupcake balled herself up in a flannel blanket and looked like a plaid burrito. Big Man tired to get a clear photo, but was foiled at every turn.

And last this week, pesticide free gardening. We got a picture of our free range chickens doing their police call line through our potato rows. We dare anyone to find a bug in our garden. Ya can't do it, because we recycle potato bugs into brown eggs. We are green like that.

Plus we have 18 more birds up and coming. We just started letting them free range. They don't stray far from the coop just yet, but every bug they eat is one less we find in the house.

K&K