Smoke and Fire

It rained most of the week, so our doings was limited to indoors most of the time. We did have two sunny days mid week, Big Man did his mowing. The hairy vagina sprouted, and this gentle rain is just what the doctor ordered to establish it before winter.
But on to the weekly report in pictures.
First thing was apple butter and jalapeno jelly. Last week we left with saying we picked all the peppers in the garden. This week we made use of them. Cupcake also had a bunch of left over apples, so she got started on a batch of apple butter at 0600 one morning. We cooked the apple butter in the crock pot all day Monday, and we canned it up on Tuesday.

Our first real shot of fall happened this past week. Cool, damp, lite rain days make us want to smoke ribs, so that's exactly what we did. Our first rack of the season, and they turned out as expected.

This is what a well used smoker looks like

While we were stuck inside towards the end of the week, we took the down time and made a fresh batch of deodorant and a fresh batch of laundry detergent.

And a special fall treat this week, we made our first caramel in the crock pot.

And we end the report with Jacob's salute to breast cancer awareness this month.

We ended the week like we always do. Wings
K&K

Hairy Vagina

We may have spelled the name of the title wrong, but since you clicked on the link, you might as well see where this is going?
The correct spelling is Hairy Vetch. It's a ground cover we are going to use on our garden this winter, and it's garden stuff we are talking about this week.
In the past, we have always harvested our garden in the fall, and pretty much let the grass and weeds take it over. By October or November, we get Pops to plow the garden under, then till the sod come spring time, replant. Rinse, repeat.
We have been doing some reading up on the subject, and the hippie websites we check out all say that what we do is the worst thing we can do for a garden. The prevailing opinion is a cover crop for winter, then plow in spring just before planting. We did more research on cover crops, and we decided on the Hairy Vetch plant. Apparently from all reports, it can live through -10 degree temps, and adds natural nitrogen to the soil, which would eliminate the need for store bought fertilizer next spring. Plus we use cow and chicken manure on the garden anyway, so this plant should be added gravy on our grits, so to speak.
We started the fall preparations this week by digging our potatoes. We only had one row of potatoes this year, all of them blue. We planted half a row from potato seed, and half a row from the sprouts off of the potato seeds. Both did well all summer, and we harvested a full 50lb bag of taters. Normally we can our potatoes, but this year Cupcake wanted to keep them in the basement and use off of them like they did back in the day, so that's the plan. Plus we are going to cut out the ones that go to sprout, for next years crop.

After we dug and harvested the potatoes, we dug up our carrots, and picked the last of our peppers. We kind of drove overtop of them when we were digging the potatoes, so we really had no choice.

We have a small patch of turnips. We planted them in a row, but a hard rain came right after we planted them, and they washed into a cluster, so we tilled the garden around the turnips. We also left a half row of beans that we planted late, they are blooming now, and we left our cabbage stalks and tomato plants in place. We are going to plant Hairy Vetch around them and let it grow up around it. We understand when the cabbage plants come back in the spring, they attract cutter worms, and when the worms eat the cabbage plants, it kills them. Between chickens, guineas and cabbage plants, we are living large without pesticides.

Before

After

All we need now is a good soaking rain. We have our fingers crossed, and will probably update the progress.
We used the sunflowers and corn stalks for decorating, after we got the garden squared away.

Regular post stuff for the week.  We picked two small cabbage heads earlier in the week, and Cupcake fried it up with horseradish one night.

We saw the only woolly worm of the season, and it was solid brown. We're pretty sure this is another sign of a hard winter on the way.

Our regular visitor to The Acre is harshing the chickens routine, they seem spooked by the deer for some reason, and stand around waiting for them to leave before they will go into the woods to do their bug hunt.

We had a little food this week as well. Our latest obsession, pizza. We made one for grownups, and one for chirruns.

Dinner rolls are still looking better and better.

And we also had a buttermilk pie. We make one early in the week and eat on it for a few days. In theory anyway.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Applesauce Cake

This week we got a real shot of cool air around The Acre, and it made it feel like fall. And when it's fall, it's time to can apples. We made a batch of applesauce and apple butter. We will be all set for applesauce cake this winter.

Made lucky 13 pints

And because we are busy little ants when we get started, we also made another attempt at sauerkraut.

We pretty much have our basement full of food now, we are ready for cold weather.

This past week we made a couple of pizzas. In the past, when we make pizza we always put the toppings on top of the sauce, then cover with cheese and bake. We take it out when the cheese turns brown, but we never could get the crust as crispy as we would like. This time we tried it with cheese on the sauce, then toppings over the cheese. We baked it longer before the cheese turned, and the crust was crispy as could be. Even the next day, we had leftovers.

And sometimes when Big Man works with flour, he forgets to wipe his hands

A couple of decoration posts this week. Cupcake made a wreath with ribbon and some of our small sunflowers, we hung it right out front.

We picked a few of our gem corn ears. They were smaller than we expected, so we will probably use these for seed next year. We still have a couple of big ears we have not picked yet, so we are hopping for better results.

We ended the week with wings.

K&K

Little Helpers

This week we had two special helpers in the kitchen at The Acre. First off, Kattie Grace announced inside the grocery store that she wanted to cook us dinner that night. We were proud the cooking bug seems to have worn off on the next generation. Taco Tuesday is what we had.

Taco...Burrito.....it was yummy

Then we had a special guest at The Acre this week, DeNephew Henry stayed with Pops over the weekend while the family was on a soccer trip. He stopped by for dinner Friday night, and again for breakfast on Saturday and Sunday.

Henry with a dill pickle and lettuce hotdog

Sunday breakfast is a big event

Sunday morning, after we got the dishes squared away (with DeNephew's help) Henry helped bake his father a buttermilk pie.

DeNephew rolling the dough for the crust

Adding the buttermilk for the pie

He did good!

A couple of regular things going on this past week. Jalapeno jelly for starters.

Cupcake cut some of her broom corn and small sunflowers, and made a display for our fireplace.

And speaking of sunflowers, we cut one of our giants this weekend. It was over seven feet tall, and as you can see from the picture, it's about 16 inches across. We only have about twenty more of these giants. We will have sunflower seeds on hand next year.

We smoked a turkey breast for dinner one night. We have kind of gotten off track from smoking meat, so we're making an effort to get back on the horse, so to speak.

We had a visit from our "on the hoof" smoker meat. It seems to enjoy our apples.

And the last picture for this update is also nature related. A couple of years ago we predicted a hard winter/large snow by the way our spring trees began to bloom in the fall. Once again, we have spring bushes beginning to flower in September. Everyone might want to prepare for another round of snowed in.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K