Our Life Together: Pumpkins and Compost

This week seemed to fly by at The Acre. Thor's Day of red meat offerings got here before we knew it. We guessed it's the difference between being able to get out and work on projects and being stuck in the house watching it rain?
Speaking of projects, we were project heavy this week. We started off trying to beat a cool front passing through. We wanted to get the pumpkin patch up and running so we could get some rain on the plants we started. Pop came over on Monday and we got it done. We planted the two dozen pumpkins that we started inside, and another two dozen watermelon and cantaloupe plants. If we don't have pumpkins, watermelons or cantaloupe, it won't be from lack of patch.

So of course as soon as we got the ground squared away and the pumpkins in the ground, the feathered wrecking crew paid a visit.

We have been putting scratch grain out around the old deer stand because it's cool, shaded, has a constant source of water and it's in the opposite direction from neighbors houses. We figure if they have a better forage area they will stay there and away from our planted things. Training chickens is harder than you might think.

They are staying down in the woods, but we guess bird curiosity will keep them coming to our garden and pumpkin patch.
On a bird related thread, we finally got around to building our compost box this week. We had several ideas on where to place the box, all of them involved moving the poop from the coop deville to the box, then dumping the poop. Inspiration hit us Saturday morning, why not just build the box under the coop? So we did. It took us about ten minutes to sweep the poop straight out of the double doors and into the compost box. We plan to leave the box uncovered so the girls can get in and scratch around, which will save us the trouble of turning the compost as often.

The guinea birds were none too pleased that we were in the coop, much less that we were moving out the old straw. One girl has a nest on the floor, and the bird that is nesting in the nest box came down to help protect the nest. Big Man was sure he was gonna get an ass whoopin, but Fraidy Mutt came to the rescue. She stood between BM and the birds and didn't back down. She may be a bad ass bird dog after all?

The girls have been working overtime in the nest box, and egg sales have dropped off a bit so we had a stockpile of eggs. Lucky for us our pal "Rhulenbarb" has an egg network. He takes them off our hands and makes sure they find good homes. It's a win/win for both of us. This week when we dropped off the extras to Dave and Brother Danny at The Corner, we got to pop in and visit his mother and father. It's been over thirty years since BM has seen them. They haven't changed a bit. It was great catching up with the whole Hall crew.
It wouldn't be an update without at least one food picture.
We start off with Thor's Day red meat offerings. We returned the cast iron griddle to service, so we can sear all three steaks at one time.

We also got our first picking of fresh collards from the garden this week. That's always a welcome treat.

And because we were outside working most of the week, we needed a quick lunch. Big Man whipped up a chicken salad that we ate on most of the week. We used fresh dill from the herb garden, and fresh onions/scallions from the deck box. We also used "them yellow pickles" that we have a stockpile of.