Squirrels and Birds

This week is a mostly picture update. The end of the month is a busy time for Cupcake so we don't get to do much together. We took pictures of our garden items in the grow operation and progress of our planted stuff.
We start off with the "Squirrels" part of the title. Jake ordered a brand new set of lights for his truck. Officers who tricked out their patrol cars with lights were referred to as 'squirrels' and we're pretty sure it carries over to other emergency services as well.
Here we have a picture of Jake in his dress uniform. He attended a funeral for a family member of one of the firefighters.

And for the "Birds" part, our guinea birds have started laying eggs. Everyone told us when they did lay, they would hide the eggs in the woods someplace and we would have to search for them. Our guinea birds think they are chickens, because they are laying in the nest boxes. We're OK with it too.

We put the first six eggs in the incubator, and next Saturday we will add whatever they leave us. We will do a double hatch a week apart. Guinea birds are wonderful bug removers so more is better.
Our garden update starts off with strawberries.

Collards

We planted nine of our rhubarb plants that we started from seeds.

And our regular followers may remember we started two celery plants in pots last fall? We planted them in the garden this week.

Our planter boxes are doing well. Here we have the peas and onions

And the lettuce box.

And the grow operation

Ending the update, we had a request for a recipe this week so we thought we would share it with everybody. Seven day pickles:
Four pounds of small cucumbers
Water to cover in a crock
One quart of white vinegar
Eight cups of sugar
2 Tbs of salt
2 Tbs of mixed pickle spice

Wash cucumbers and drain well, place them into a large crock. Pour boiling water over the cucumbers to cover. Let stand at room temperature for twenty four hours. Place a dinner plate on top to help keep cucumbers submerged. Next day, drain and rinse, place back in the crock, and repeat this step each day for four days. On day five, drain and rinse then cut in to slices, put them back into the crock. In a large pot, combine the vinegar, sugar salt and spices (spices wrapped in cheese cloth) bring mixture to a boil, then pour over cut cucumbers. Let stand for twenty four hours, on day six, drain syrup into a pot, bring syrup to a boil, then return boiling syrup to the cucumbers in the crock. On the last day, repeat the drain and boil step, remove cucumbers from the crock, add to the pot with syrup, bring to a boil once again. When syrup/cucumbers begin to boil, remove from heat, place cucumbers into jars, and place in refrigerator.
We got back to ending the week with wings.
K&K