It's all Lyes

We had another busy week at The Acre this week. It started off like any other week, we puttered around doing busy work. Mid week we had an appointment for new tires on the Big Blue Bus so we drove to Roanoke but Sam's had no tires in stock. So we had to go back on Friday, and Friday morning as we were leaving the house we got a call from the post office to let us know that we had a package that was "chirping".
We had special ordered forty chicks in late February, but they never came so we requested our money back the first of June. We figured that would have been the end of this years chicken raising, until the phone rang. We picked the package up and sure enough, forty new hatched chicks. These birds all lay chocolate brown eggs, so we're excited to have them added to the family.
Then on Sunday afternoon we popped in the coop deville to check on our broody girls, and we found our first guinea egg had hatched under our lavender amerucana "Boomer".

Baby guinea and Oswald

And we noticed one of the birds had curled feet. We checked with the interwebs, and found it is a common problem for new hatched chicks with a simple fix. We took band-aids and cut the pad out of the middle then used the two sticky sides and put them on the opened feet of the bird. The band-aid kept the toes pointed out straight. After one full day we took the band-aid off and the bird was running and jumping and playing like little birds do.

Say hello to Oswald Cobblepot

Prior to all the bird excitement we made two more batches of homemade lye soap. We used lavender from Cupcake's herb garden to flavor the soap, and it really smells great. We made a second batch and used store bought eucalyptus oil. We understand it's good to use when one has a cold. So we are all set for about six months worth of soap bars now.

Fresh lavender for soap scent

We got fancy and bought soap bar molds

Basket full of soap

Another project this week was a new batch of dill pickles. We found pickle cucumbers at Sam's while we were waiting for our tires, so we bought enough for a batch. We did chips and spears.

Fresh dill from the herb garden

Huge fresh garlic, thin sliced and added to each jar

We use the low heat long can method. Extra crispy

 We picked another batch of bush cherries and made a few more jars of jelly

And one food related picture, we smoked a pork shoulder and made pulled pork BBQ.

Our last picture this week is courtesy of the Alphageek family. We got a message there was a riding mower they needed gone. We swapped a few dozen eggs for the mower, and with a little TLC and a couple of hours on a battery charger, we got the mower running like a top. Now Cupcake has a mower of her very own.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K