Love Stinks

This week we had a visit from our nurdy pals, we try to catch all the big comic book movies together and we had a batch of foxgrape wine that we intended to share with them, which we finally got to do. One of the best things that came from the visit was, we found out the wine gets better with time. It tasted like fruit punch, so we plan on making another batch or two this year. Our foxgrape vines are weighted down, so with any luck we will have a lot to work with.
We start pictures off this week with on unwelcome visit to The Acre. Sunday we were all settled in after getting a belly full of chicken wings, and were waiting for sundown to lock the birds up. All of the sudden, Fraidy Mutt went nuts. There wasn't anyone outside so we went to check the porch, and we found a skunk staring back at us. Cupcake grabbed the sliding glass door and got it closed just in time for the skunk to let loose with a spray. The back porch still smells like skunk a week later, but back to the drama. Big Man grabbed up his trusty 1911 and went out to do battle with the beast, but by the time he made it to the back yard it had already grabbed one of our chicks. We guess they were too young to realize it was a predator, so they stood around like "hi there, fellow woodland creature".
As soon as the skunk got out of spray range, he put two hot ones in the base of the skunks skull. If you hit them between the skull and neck they can't spray, but it's a tiny target.
We got our porch stinky and lost a bird, but it will be the last time for this one so we call that a "forty degree day" (Followers of 'The Wire' will understand the reference).

Skunk De Pew

Victim of Skunk De Pew

The next day our pals came over. It was the 4th of July and we did a typical holiday cookout style dinner. Big Man smoked a whole brisket and made his soon to be world famous six cheese mac-n-cheese. It's not the from a box with cheese slices on top and passed off as "home made" like crazy granny does, this was the real deal. We got a picture of the cheese, we were too busy eating the brisket to stop and get a picture. Dr. Chuck almost lost a finger eating it, so we chalked it up as a win.

No Stoffer's for us, Sandra

Steph made a big bowl of potato salad and red/white/blue deviled eggs.

Big Man bought all the fixings for from scratch pina coladas, and made a couple, but the homemade wine was the headline of the night.

After we got our belly full, we retired to the man cave. We all took a round of billiards and learned a valuable tip: Don't play pool with a couple who has a PhD and geometry learning. We will have to bone up on our play before we rematch. We see the good doctor getting "The Hand"

After the festivities we got back to regular doings. First order of business was harvesting rhubarb. Our rhubarb was beginning to get pretty big and we didn't want it to go to waste. We picked ten pounds, cut the leaves off and put them in the compost bin. Then we chopped up the stalks and put them in bag, two and a half pounds each. We figure each bag will make a tasty pie this coming winter. We froze the bags right after picking the rhubarb, we did this last year and the rhubarb was crazy fresh when we used it.

Next out of the garden was our pickling cucumbers. We found several just walking by the vines after a rain one day. We picked the few we found, then went back and searched for more the next day. We found enough to make seven jars of dill pickles, along with fresh dill from the deck box. The one jalapeno pepper we chopped up in our Sunday morning eggs. Fresh from the garden.

We took a couple of pictures of the gem corn from Pop's garden. They are really starting to thrive.

One last garden picture is of our ground cherries. This is our second picking, which is more than we thought we would get this year, since the ground cherries were just tiny seeds six months ago. We will take what we can get. If you have never had a ground cherry, they taste like a little pop of pineapple. We cant wait to get enough for jelly or pie.

Usually we make a trek to town on Fridays and get an order or two of fried pickles, but this week we just didn't have it in us to make the trip, so we stayed in and made a homemade pizza. We canned up a batch of pizza sauce a couple of months ago, and it was delish.

Pizza crust from scratch, of course

Anyone know how to raise pepperoni?

Our last picture this week is our baby guinea birds. We turned them out with the chicks so they will learn how to chicken, and come back to the coop at night. So far they haven't managed to get the hang of going up at night. They really are 'cows with feathers' but we don't mind rounding them up each night. They eat ticks. It's a good trade.

We ended the week like we always do, with wings.
K&K