Kraut and Krazy Outlaws

This week we poke fun at the branch of the family who choose not to be a part of our life, and celebrate the ones that do. It's our blog, we have that ability.
First, the celebration half of the family. Pops has been busy this week, and we start off the report with his doings. As our regular three or four followers know, we care take our family cemetery. We have a shed in the cemetery that has been needing repairs for a while now. This week, Pop and Cousin Tommy took the old door off the shed, and built a new door and rehung it. For a couple of guys with no proper wood working tools, it looks like a professional job.
"The Outlaw" has all kinds of wood working tools, but he's not an option.

Pop also had a row of potatoes that needed plowing out, so after a huge family breakfast we took care of that little project.

Two fifty pound bags full

And some really big ones in the mix

And our favorite poke at the bear happened this week too. "The Outlaw" always said the oil filter in Cupcake's truck was impossible to get to, and she would have to pay to have her oil changed because he wasn't about to try to do it. Big Man changes her oil twice a year, because the oil filter is right behind the front bumper. Big Man can unscrew it with his bare hands, it's so easy to reach.
We will continue to poke this bear, as long as Cupcake has her truck. Our blog, our rules.
We also changed Big Man's oil while we were at it.

Now on to the cabbage portion of this week. We tried a new recipe with the last head of our cabbage we grew on the deck. We sliced it up and roasted it in a cast iron skillet with some seasoning and oil. We really liked it.

Our sauerkraut has been fermenting for six weeks now, so we took it back upstairs and drained off the brine, then pressure cooked the cabbage in pint jars. The kraut is a bit salty, we may cut down on the salt next year, but we look forward to putting this on dogs and brats this winter.

We kept up the cooking. For our big meal of the week, we used a couple of jars of our home made chicken stock and a jar of carrots that we saved, and leftover smoked chicken, and make a big pot of chicken and dumplings for dinner.

We recently started getting enough eggs that we had leftovers stacking up. We put a couple of signs out along Huffville Road advertising eggs for sale. We also made a couple of buttermilk pies and pumpkin bread to put out with the eggs while our "shop" was open. If you find yourself out this way, stop in and load up on fresh baked goodies or free range brown eggs.

After the big haul of potatoes from Pop's house, we are going to start including shopping bags full of blue potatoes. We can only eat so many blue potatoes, but we are trying.

Our last couple of pictures are the changing trees in the area that we photographed. Sometimes you have to stop and take a moment to enjoy the beauty around you.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Homecoming Week

This week, Auburn had it's Homecoming events. We seem to remember back in our day, there was a bone fire, a pep rally, then a sock hop? Anyway, it's a big to do now, and Kattie Grace participated to the fullest.

Saturday morning, Jake and his cousin went deer hunting at the crack of dawn. While we were up fixing the hunting men's breakfast we say this visitor in the yard. We laughed and laughed......

The visitor walked down the road toward them, so we figured it was hunting them?
Jake got his deer meat from the butcher from his big deer kill last week, so there will be deer chili on the menu very soon.
Speaking of the menu, we did a little cooking this week, if you can imagine that?

From scratch pizza crust

Grown up pizza

Jake's personal pan pizza

Smoked brisket. We love us some brisket

Beef potroast with blue potatoes

Both of us caught a nasty bug toward the end of the week, so we kind of took it easy and got some rest, which makes for a short update, but we do have one project related picture. Cupcake's fetish of the fall, marigold seeds.
We planted two plants in the spring, it's one of the few flowers the chickens will leave alone. One wild flower came up in the driveway from a small pile of chicken poop, and it grew larger than any we planted. So now the plan is to save all the seeds we can from this years flowers, and add them to the chicken feed this winter. Now, if we could only teach them to poop in rows?  We will probably save a bunch for us to plant in the regular way too. We will be sure to update in the spring.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Getting The Band Together

This week we had visitors to The Acre for chicken wing Sunday. "The Beamer" and "Rhulenbarb" stopped by while The Beamer was in town, and we all broke bread. Literally, we made schoolhouse rolls.
But before we get to the visit, there was big doings around The Acre this week. Jacob killed a very large eight point buck, he rolled out before dawn and it paid off. Deer chili is on the way.

It was also a big garden week. We know we said we've put the garden to bed for the year, and planted the hairy vagina (which is really doing well so far BTW), but we took a walk through the fruit garden early in the week and found four large watermelons and a bunch of cucumbers we didn't know were there. We went to check on the rhubarb, and harvested all we had before we stumbled upon the surprise.

We picked the cucumbers, and put them straight away as dill pickles.

The one thing we did leave in the main garden was turnips. We picked three turnips, and Cupcake made her world famous turnips and taters one night.

The next night we used the greens, and made a big pot of turnip greens along with October beans and smoked pork loin.

We did a little decorating for fall over the weekend. We cut the gem corn stalks and a couple of sunflowers, and we came up with this for the front of the house.

Then we made a decoration for the front door.

And we did a little bit of baking. Buttermilk pie and pumpkin bread are the flavors of the week.

And getting back to getting the band back together...
The plan was to gather the Alphageek family and The Beamer for a grand gathering, but the stars just would not align this time around, so we had The Beamer and Rhulenbarb out for Sunday wings and a short trip down memory lane about all things nurd. Bugs Bunny and band and whatnot.
Since not everyone likes wings like we do, Big Man smoked a half brisket to have on hand as a side dish. Judging from the leftovers, it was a hit. We also had a buttermilk pie and pumpkin bread fresh baked, and again, must have been a hit.

We fixed the boys up with a goody box as a parting gift, which was theirs to keep. A good time was had by all, and we ended the week with wings. So there was that.
K&K

A Little Rain

Over the past week, we got a little bit of rain here at The Acre. Eggheads reported just prior to this week that we were in a dry trend, we bet they can't say that anymore.

A little over ten inches of rain in one week, it's good for the well, but it sure was hard on roadways and homes.
There was a small break in the rain last Monday, so Big Man took to his power tools and used left over fence wood to whip up a make shift table. We've been gathering quite a few eggs over the past couple of weeks, and may have to start offering them for sale soon.

And speaking of eggs, the AG family hooked us up with an egg apron this week. It was put in to service as soon as we got it home. We made out on the deal, because we traded them a buttermilk pie, which Big Man managed to drop on the way to the local AG headquarters, resulting in only half a pie actually getting there. But like we said, it only had half the calories.

And speaking of pie.....

Chocolate pie

Buttermilk pie

Pumpkin bread, on the mix

We don't know why everyone doesn't use cast iron for baking

And we made a batch of tapioca pudding and a batch of home made caramel for apples.

There was a bit of left over cooking too. We made a pot roast the week before, and used our fresh blue potatoes. We took the leftover pot roast, added a can of our garden corn and tomatoes, and made a nights worth of veggie beef soup. The potatoes kept their color when they were roasted. We think it's kind of neat.

One of our last meals this week was pork chops roasted in cast iron. We cut one of the cabbage heads on the back deck, and made fried cabbage to go with them.

One of our simple pleasures is cabbage stalks. And when it's only been cut five minutes before eating, it don't get any better.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K