Are We Having Fun, Richard?

There was a story told by Richard Petty about retirement. To hear him tell it, his wife wanted him to retire from auto racing. Richard told his wife "I'll retire when I stop having fun". Not too long after he told her this, he was involved in a high speed crash and had to be cut from the car. As he was being driven to the hospital, he said he came to, and saw his wife standing over him in the ambulance. She asked "are you having fun, Richard?"
Lawman retold this story to Cupcake when she would get on him about doing various things she deemed dangerous, and she would always say "wait until I have to drive you to the hospital, you'll hear that again".  Well, we all knew that day would come, this week it did.
Lawman went to let the chickens out one morning, and saw where a predator had grabbed one of our birds that were too stupid to go up in the coop at night. Lawman knew traps had to be set, probably the lone coyote was back. So off to the happy hunting grounds he went. Because of vegetation growth, some changes had to be made on placement, and there was a great big wild rose bush along a fence where the camera needed to go. Lawman broke out his handy dandy zombie machete and started hacking away at the bush. Then he missed the whole bush, and sliced his leg open. He managed to get to the truck where he keeps the first aide kit, and bandaged up the cut.
The cut was deep and got muscle, so he knew he would have to go to the ER for stitches. He made it back to the house and grabbed Cupcake. True to her word, as soon as she saw the injury she asked if he was still having fun.

He did it right

Combat medic training paid off

 

The saw bones did a good job sewing him up, but he's moving a little slower this week.
Prior to keeping emergency rooms in business, we did have a pretty busy week. We started it off with our favorite thing of spring. Morel mushrooms.

We hit the hunting spot after our five inches of rain fell, and we had a banner day. We celebrated with Pop over dinner one night.

And what's a fine meal without dessert? Lawman made a sea salt caramel cheesecake for the week.

We used home made caramel for the icing. It really made a difference.
We made another batch of laundry detergent.

And another batch of lye soap. We were almost out of the lavender soap bars.

And last but not least, we were still working on staining the house. For the north and south walls, we needed professional help to get the tall points. We called in "Uncle Tony" for help.

He did an excellent job on the tall walls, and the dormer windows where people who can't chop bushes without stitches probably shouldn't go. If anyone needs a painter, we suggest you call Tony, he will do ya right.
We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Rainbows and Unicorns

We were on the road to Nashville all this past week, and the topic on everyone's mind was "Unicorn" something or other from Starbucks. We are a "Deathwish" coffee family and avoid Starbucks like politicians avoid their oaths of office so we didn't see what all the hubub was about. We only mention it because it's a catchy title for this weeks update.
When we got back on Friday, it began to rain. We got a quick shower and then the sun came out. Pop called and said there was a beautiful rainbow over our house. It wasn't as bright since we were viewing it from almost underneath but we did snap a picture. Now where did they leave that pot of gold?

When Pop called we were discussing Fraidy Mutt. She had been acting a bit off while we were gone, and Lawman was of the opinion she was just being a woman and sulking because we had left her alone again. Cupcake was of the opinion there was something medically wrong with her. After we discussed it for a while, we noticed there was some sort of discharge coming from her when she walked across the deck, so to the vet she went. Turns out she had a kidney infection and the doc said if we had waited any longer to get her to a doctor, it would have probably killed her. A shot of antibiotics and a few pills to take this week, and she came home. Sunday morning she was back to her perky self, so we think we caught it in time and she's on the road to recovery. Lawman says he will differ all vet related topics to Cupcake from now on.
Saturday while the dog was getting checked out, Lawman was working on an old favorite, buttermilk pie. Jake had a bake sale for his fire company Saturday afternoon, and we donated a pie to the cause. We understand it was a quick seller.

Sunday morning after breakfast cleanup, Lawman went to work on this weeks cheesecake. He made a regular cheesecake, but Cupcake made a batch of homemade caramel to drizzle on top of it before we chill it.

Standard Oreo crust

The fresh from the chicken egg yolks really make the orange "POP"

Lawman almost got this one finished without cracking. Almost

After being gone for a week, everything seemed to have grown a foot. The first thing we noticed is how much bigger the strawberry plants are. We got a handful of ripe berries Friday afternoon, and another handful Sunday morning. We hope to be hauling in the berries soon.

The red apple trees we just planted started to leaf out, and while we were gone they actually started to bloom. As excited as we are at the thought of apples the first year, we're pretty sure these will not survive to maturity, we doubt the tree could stand the weight.

Another thing that ran out of control while we were gone was our rhubarb. We guess that being out in the yard every day, we stay on top of the blooms, and pick them off when we first spot them. Removing the bloom keeps the plant growing more stalks instead of putting it's energy into seeds. We have never had them get this big before, and this is year six for rhubarb at The Acre.

We also learned this week that Kim's big boss in Nashville is a huge fan of rhubarb, so it may behoove us to have a good harvest this year?
Our last picture is of a new product we're going to try out in the garden this year. Reviews say it really helps any plant absorb nutrients from the soil, and keeps the plants happy and healthy. We figured a half a teaspoon per gallon of water is worth a try.

To Cupcake's great joy, we ended the week with wings.
K&K

Holiday Chow

We ended the week on a holiday. We had the family over and made our usual big meal, the chirruns wore themselves out with all things chickens then Lawman and Cupcake grabbed a nap.

Henry seemed to really like the mac-n-cheese (and it's not the 'crazy granny' man-n-cheese either) he was working the spoon like a shovel, right out of the dish.
We started the big meal off with our first ever Smithfield Ham.

We opened it up and gave it a good scrub/soak. We might want to give it another couple of days soak next time? We learn as we go.

We fired up the smoker at 0500 Sunday morning and let it slow smoke until around noon.

To the untrained eye, you think it's burnt. But brother, it ain't burnt....

Having a few chickens around as we do, we had to make fresh deviled eggs, or as Henry calls them "half eggs".

Then Cupcake made banana pudding. We use nutter butters instead of wafers.

Early in the week, Cupcake wanted to try a white chocolate raspberry cheesecake. Lawman is on a cheesecake roll of late, so he whipped her one up.

We had the usual trimmings. Corn pudding, sweet potato casserole, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes and Henry's new favorite, mac-n-cheese.
Prior to the holiday, we had a couple of projects we got out of the way. For starters, cleaning the coop de ville out.
Anybody remember the make shift MOPP gear mask the Army used medical cravates to make? Lawman remembers

 We took two truckloads of straw and poop to the garden and dumped it out. We will work it in the soil as we plant this year

We did plant our beets, hot peppers, peas, cabbage and a row of early green beans this week too.
Next, we changed the oil in our trucks. Thanks again to "The Outlaw" who was always too sorry to change Cupcake's oil for her. Lawman takes care of it for her these days.

We have three birds that went broody in our first coop. We left them alone because the three have been staying in the woods for almost a year. We were glad to have them in a coop. This week the eggs they had been laying on began to hatch.

Which came in handy because the chirruns like to play with chicks, and it keeps them occupied.

Teaching chicks to dance ballet

After the dust settled, we grabbed a nap.
K&K

Sausage and Snow Flurries

We had a last gasp of winter at The Acre this past week. We figure everyone else did too, so we're not going to put too fine of a point on it. One of the first things we did this week was make our own sausage. Cupcake found a recipe for it and we found ground pork meat at the local (new and improved) Kroger store.
This is a trial run for making our own sausage full time, we have to tinker with the recipe and make it our own first. Maybe even have a hog of our very own, as soon as we get the smoke house off the "to-do" list and in the back yard. But first, back to the sausage.

We made patties and have it resting in the fridge. We will report on our progress.
The Flurries part of the update was a bit of a shock. We heard it was going to be cold toward the end of the week, but we never expected to wake up to snow. It didn't amount to anything but a photo op.

Just prior to the cold snap, Lawman got around to one of his "to do" list items, that was fencing off the blueberry bushes from the birds. Last year we lost every single berry to the girls, and Lawman vowed it would be their last. To combat weeds coming up inside the chicken wire, he gathered up a couple of wagon loads of pine needles. Pine needles are high in acid, and blueberry bushes love them some acidic soil. Win-Win.

We fenced off a total of four bushes, not counting the four we bought and planted this year. We figure those will not produce this year anyway.
Our rhubarb is up.

And so is our Purple Martin bird house.

We planted two fig trees, new to The Acre this year

And our big ongoing project, we stained some more on the decks this week.

Before

After

All this work requires food, and we sure do like to eat. One of the fun things we did this week was make mac-n-cheese, but we added some of Lawman's MRE cheese to the mix. This is definitely not crazy grannies mac-n-cheese.

Lawman made another batch of dinner rolls with his new favorite recipe.

We tried a new syrup with Saturday pancakes. We found this in Nashville.

And we always end the week with wings. This week is no exception, only we made a big batch of Lawman's scratch made chocolate chip cookies to chase them with.

K&K