Predators must Die

We've been at war here at The Acre this week. We started noticing birds missing from the flock. Our blue rooster "Helo" was the first bird we noticed gone. He never strayed too far from the coop and he was always with "Boomer". Boomer is still around. Then we noticed the "twin hen" was gone, but her twin was still around.
Last Sunday we were sitting out on the front porch, minding our own business, when we saw a bobcat run out of the woods and try to grab a hen in the yard. Lucky for us, the guinea birds were on scene and stunned the bobcat long enough for Lawman to grab the M-4 and get a shot off. The round landed low/left of the bobcat, and it made good it's escape. Lawman took to the range Monday morning and zero'd the red dot.

Shoutout to Pop's for keeping M-14 targets from the 60's

After the red dot got right, we spent the week on the front porch doing "overwatch" for the birds. We had no sightings until Saturday. Cupcake had gone to town to do some trading with the girl, Lawman and the mutt were camped out on the porch. The bobcat snatched another bird, but this time it waited until the bird wandered away from the group and into the woods by it's self.
We've got the birds locked up in the coop this week. We've ordered traps and lure for bobcats, so we're going all jihad on the cat. Pictures next week when we get set up.
Prior to locking the birds up, we cleaned out the coop deville and spread out three bales of fresh straw. We found a nice lady who was selling straw that lived not too far from us. We drove out and picked up ten bales. As we were chatting with the nice lady, we learned that she too was an "Uncle Billy" victim of log home thievery. What were the chances? We compared notes, we laughed, we plotted. Good times.
Anyway, after we got back with the straw we had to dispose of the old straw. We had a bunch of it in a compost bin, we emptied that into the garden first. Then we took three wagon loads of it out to add to the garden.

Then we spread out the new. This new straw rocks, there was little to no dust in it. We will so be going back to UBV (Uncle Billy Victim) for our straw needs.

We still have hot peppers thriving in the garden.

We took down the fence that held the cucumbers this week. We loaded up about a half of a wagon full of yellow cucumbers and dumped them along the creek for the cows. At least they got eaten. Our plan is to have the garden taken down and ready to plow under the day we dig our potatoes.
And speaking of taking things down, Cupcake ordered the pumpkin patch be cleaned out. We had quite a few pumpkins left over. We had enough to decorate everywhere we wanted pumpkins, and the rest were spoken for/already promised. We did have two or three eating pumpkins left over, so?

Watermelons. We found a bunch of watermelons.

Now we can focus on Cupcake's fetish. Marigold seeds. Last year we had a shipping box full of seeds that we picked all fall long and kept over the winter. We sprinkled them all around the house, and now we have hundreds of them to pick. Every evening we pick a bucket full and dry them in the sun. We are planning to add them to everything we plant next year to foil bugs in the garden.

On food related things, we only have one standout. Well, two if you count breakfast? Either way we shout out to our "Poultry Pride" pal JJ. We swapped her some salsa and whatnots for a big ol box of local flavor from South Carolina. This week we worked grits into the rotation for breakfast, and sauce for dinner.

We didn't get a picture of it, but there was a bottle of cocktail sauce in the box that we used on a fried fish platter on Tuesday night. But anyway, all the goodies rocked out loud. Many thanks JJ!!
Our last set of pictures is three weeks in the making. Wine.
The wine has been under air lock for three weeks. It stopped 'working' a couple days ago but we stuck to the schedule and waited until this weekend to bottle it up.

Working wine, drying peppers

Smells like wine.....

Leftover schmutz

Three gallons. That'll do Donkey

It's still a little green, but with a little luck, after it ages it will be as good as the last batch we made. We look forward to reporting on results down the road.
We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Pumpkin Pickin

We had Denises and Denephew out to The Acre to pick out their pumpkins from the patch. Everyone had a great big time.

After the chirruns picked out their pumpkins, we made a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies.

And while we were making cookies, little Katie found she enjoyed home made biscuits and home made applesauce. We had just made a fresh batch of applesauce before everyone arrived. Katie ate one pint and asked to take a second one home.

And while the kids were in the kitchen, we all made a cooking of home made ketchup. We picked what will probably be the last large picking of tomatoes from the garden, and we figured we had enough salsa. We can always use some more ketchup.

Henry found that he loved the home made apple jelly. We tried to get Katie to try some on her biscuit, but that didn't work out at all. Henry was more than willing to try the jelly, and took the jar home with him. We understand there are plans for an apple jelly sandwich in his school lunch.

Prior to all the Sunday goings on, we had usual stuff going on around The Acre. First off we picked a watermelon and diced it up. We snacked on that all week. We don't know why everyone doesn't grow their own watermelons.

We made our first potroast this week. We went to the garden for the fresh ingredients.

We dug carrots and blue potatoes, a few jalapeno peppers and some onions to slow cook in cast iron. We're ready for fall. And speaking of fall, Cupcake did quite a bit of decorating this week. We cut down the gem corn stalks and made decorations out of them. We picked a couple of pumpkins and placed in strategic locations.

We have had an old milk container that we've been meaning to put to use, we got around to bringing it out and getting it ready for the front porch.

And decorations seemed to be the theme this week. We posted a picture last week of a pumpkin in the whiskey barrel. This week the chickens decided to carve it out and make it their own. We can only assume it's supposed to be a Deathstar from Star Wars?

The only other option we can come up with is they were eating the pumpkin. But if that's the case, we will be having fresh wings, so we're going with Deathstar.
We did chop up a fresh pumpkin and made our first pie of the season.

We also picked a fresh mess of collards for dinner one night. Collards were a big hit with our family physician, so we're going to keep them in the rotation.

We hit the half way mark on the batch of wine. We opened it up, skimmed off the crud on top and added some more sugar. We wait another nine days now.

And as usual, we ended the week with wings

K&K

Mo Pumpkin

This week was all over the map here at The Acre. We picked pumpkins, we made salsa, we baked pies. As Bugs Bunny would say "Might as well got to climbing this beanstalk, or we won't have any story".
We noticed a couple of the pumpkin vines had started to die off, so we picked pie pumpkins and a couple giants for decorating. We still have a whole patch full of pumpkins. We may have a problem?

The pie pumpkins we diced and canned. One pumpkin made four quarts, and we figure one quart per pie, we may have all the pumpkin we will need from a single picking. The second smaller one we split and baked. We scooped the pumpkin out and we will make our first pie this week.  We also saved the seeds, because next year we are going to have an even bigger patch. OK, we have a problem.

And one last pumpkin related picture, we must be on the new coffee company e-mail list. We've gotten offers from a half dozen companies this week to try their coffee. This one had pumpkin spice, so we picked up a couple of pounds.

We've been making salsa all week long. Two big batches canned up. Now we're making salsa just to give away.

Some salsa we sent to far away lands this week. We boxed it up and shipped it out. Two boxes went to Kansas, and apparently the person who drove the truck from Roanoke to Kansas didn't like salsa. Both boxes were smashed and the jars inside didn't make the trip.

Still picking stuff from our garden, we had squash again this week.

And our first peaches came in this week.

Our two or three regular readers know we hate to waste anything around The Acre, so this next picture makes us sick. We had way too many yellow cucumbers, so many we couldn't give them away.

The Beamer came to town this week and paid us a visit. He requested we hook him up with a couple of our buttermilk pies. We were honored to think someone drove from Cincinnati to The Acre for pie, but he was also going to some local sporting event.

We hooked him up with some goodies and sent a box of salsa and gem corn to our pal JJ who was also attending the local sporting event. She in return hooked us up with some SC grits and local flavor from her neck of the woods. We dig the barter system.
Speaking of gem corn, Cupcake started her fall decorating this week.

We had one project this week. We noticed the camper had sprung a leak when it rains. Lawman climbed up to check out the roof and found a few cracks. We used a bed liner spray rubber to patch the cracks until we can resurface the whole thing.

We were out and about one day and happened upon a yard sale. We hardly ever stop at yard sales but for some reason we hit this one. Cupcake found two old jars with the swing lids for fifty cents each. Ebay sells the exact same jars for fifty dollars each, so we made out like bandits. I guess it was meant to be that we stopped.

A couple of food related posts. We had a boil Monday, Pop missed the last two boils we did, so we made sure he was going to be around when we did this one. We had enough left over for shrimp cocktails the next afternoon for lunch.

And on Thor's day we made red meat offerings. This is our sirloin steaks we hand cut and treated. We sear the steaks in a cast iron skillet before we grill them.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K