Bee Ready

We are in full blown bee keeping mode around The Acre this week. We have been reading everything we can get our hands on to prep for next spring. We've planted our clover patches, but the lack of rain is slowing it down. We will probably have to replant again later this fall or maybe catch a big snow on the way and get the seeds down over the winter for spring.
Lawman is in the planning stages for the bee stands, we've chosen our locations based on sunrise and evening shade. We are really looking forward to adding crazy bees to our crazy farm.

Speaking of construction, Lawman has been planning a new clothes line for a while now. We bought a folding clothes line in the spring, and it worked OK, but every other week or so the plastic lines would sag. We would tighten them up, and a couple weeks later they would sag. Lawman decided to go ahead and sink another hole in concrete and run heavy line that wouldn't sag. We have all this high tensile line equipment for fencing, we thought it would work for clothes line. We were right.
Lawman pulled up the folding line, then measured off fourteen feet for the second hole, that gave us three lines of twelve feet.

We might not win any prize for the prettiest clothesline, but we can hang our laundry out, and we have plenty of laundry during our day to day.
Saturday we acted like high school kids, we washed and waxed the truck before we went to town.

We got the new MP stickers for the back glass.

After we got the truck all shined up, we picked our grapes. The guinea birds have been trying to get at the grapes all week, but we had them covered with mesh. We scored a five gallon bucket full.

Sunday after family breakfast, we cleaned up the kitchen then made grape jelly.
We found this little gem when we got started, a grape inside a grape.

Then we got started.

We made 26 cups of jelly, so that should hold us over the winter.
And we're still getting the occasional strawberry.

We tried to snap a picture of the eclipse on Monday, like everyone else did. It didn't work out all that well. Our focus was on how the animals would react during the eclipse, and they didn't skip a beat. Best we can tell, they didn't pay any attention at all to it.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Not So Cute

We've had a herd of deer hanging out in the yard all week. At first we thought they were all cute and stuff. Then we noticed they always ended up in the pumpkin patch. When we whistled for this one to raise up it's head, it had a mouth full of pumpkin vine.

Lawman has gotten out of the habit of bow hunting because of his knees, but he may have to make an exception this year. Some thinning of the herd is called for we thinks.
We started the week off by canning the silverqueen corn.

We canned nine more pints of corn. That makes plenty of corn for corn pudding this coming year. After we got the corn up, we picked the last of the spring cabbage. We made ten pounds of kraut in the wine bucket so we could use the airlock. Tip of the hat to "Kniskern Knoll" for the idea.

We made use of a big picking of tomatoes and jalapeno peppers by canning up lucky thirteen pints of our salsa.

Lawman chopped a few peppers, then Cupcake said "Aww hell no, we need more than that" and chopped more.

a couple of food related things this week. We made a boil for dinner one night and used some new sausage we found. We like it.

Then Cupcake was so smitten with last week's meat lovers pizza she wanted it again, so Lawman whipped her one up for dinner Friday night.

Then she wanted wings for Sunday. So we ended the week with wings.
K&K

Fear the Turtle

We had a couple of animal related visits this week at The Acre. First we had a turtle greet us at the chicken coop one morning. Lawman had to hear the phrase "Fear the Turtle" the whole time he was in the greater Baltimore area, although he's not sure why one would fear a turtle.

Then we had a hummingbird come inside the house one evening. We keep the front door open on cool days for a cross breeze. Lil hummer got inside and forgot where the door was. He buzzed around the rafters all evening, and we figured he would come down when he got tired/hungry. Next morning he was sitting on top of a box of plastic forks, patiently waiting for us to let him back outside. We carried him to one of the feeders and let him drink up. A little while later, he buzzed off.
And a follow up on the Deathstroke Mobile from last week. We forgot to mention it's a biodiesel engine, so we like to think we're doing our part to stick a thumb in big oil's eye. Maybe someday they will have so much surplus gasoline they have to pour it over their breakfast cereal. Fingers crossed.
We started the week off by planting the clover seeds for the bees next year.

Fraidy Mutt kept a close eye on Lawman while he was working out front. She worries about him.

One day Pop scored a large bag of green beans from Cousin Tommy, and gifted them to us. We canned them up and added them to the storage shelves.

And on garden related notes, we roasted our first round of okra for dinner one night. We've never had orka for a meal, and it turned out really well. Cupcake says we can plant an entire row next season.

Lawman had a good idea this week, and instead of making a whole cheesecake he quartered the recipe for a whole cheesecake, and made cheesecake cupcakes. Less waste and individual servings take up less real estate in the fridge.

Cupcake had a late night one night this week, so we decided to heat up a jar of our tomato soup and some grilled cheese sandwiches to go with it.

The soup was such a hit, Cupcake ordered a double batch be made the next day. We picked all the tomatoes we had on hand and tomato soup was made, as directed.

This batch made another six quarts of soup. We doubt this is the last batch of the season.
Friday night we decided to stay in, and Cupcake wanted a meat lovers style pizza. Lawman made a fresh crust and fried up hot Italian sausage, hamburger and bacon. We added pepperoni and garden onions along with our home made pizza sauce.

Cupcake says it changed her life. And an order for more pizza sauce was placed. 
Saturday morning we had our usual pancake breakfast and realized we had nothing planned to do. We foolishly went to the front porch and decided to take the day off. That lasted about fifteen minutes until Cupcake got the urge to make applesauce.
The Japanese beetles wrecked our apple trees this season, we had all kinds of apples on the trees this spring, but we lost nearly all of them by last month. So we drove to Fralin's produce stand on Bent Mountain and bought a bushel of fresh apples, and a dozen bales of straw.
We came home and cleaned out the coop de ville, put down a fresh bale of straw, then we started slicing apples.

Saturday we made a dozen jars of applesauce, and had half of one more that we left out for breakfast Sunday morning. After breakfast Sunday morning, we cooked up the rest of the apples. Half of the leftover apples went to more applesauce, and half went to apple jelly.

We are all set now for applesauce and apple jelly, and we will never again say we have nothing to do today. Those seem to be our busiest days.
We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Heavy Duty F350 "Deathstroke"

We bought new wheels this week. Actually, we started last week with looking, test driving and whatnot. We tried to get the deal in last weekend but we got too late of a start. Cupcake wanted to check out the selection, so we did. Then she wanted to test drive one, so we did. Then she wanted to see one in black, so we did. When Michael brought the truck around the corner of the building we both said "that's our new truck".

It had all the bells and whistles, and when you punch the gas peddle, you can feel the power of the truck in your heart. So says Kattie Grace.
The black truck we bought had some dealer prep to go through, so they let us bring home a silver truck like the one we bought. We drove it for three days until ours was ready. We thought that was a very nice thing.

 

Once we brought the truck home, we posted a picture to the Faceplace and asked public opinion on whether to name the truck after "The Punisher" (since Lawman is the Predator Punisher) or "Deathstroke" who is a Batman/Green Arrow villain. Powerstroke/Deathstroke won the poll, so it will forever be our Deathstroke mobile.

After all the new truck hoopla wore off, we got back to doing what we do around The Acre. We finished up mowing off the little food plot in front of the house. We bought a few bags of clover seed because it's calling for rain all this coming week. We are going to seed the mowed areas with clover and get the patch ready for our bees next spring. We very much look forward to some clover honey.
The small patch in the upper left corner of the picture is being saved. When Lawman was out mowing the field with his scythe, he found dozens and dozens of praying mantis and their eggs. We decided to not mow down that area in hopes the mantis thrive next year. We even talked about trying to catch a few and relocate them to the garden.

The weekend rolled around and we got busy putting food into jars. We shucked our corn and cut it from the cob. We canned nine pints off of this picking, and probably have that many more in another row.

We picked the rest of the beets in the early row, and made pickled beets. This round made 18 quarts, so we should be set for the winter now. We also have a late row of beets still growing.

Then we picked all the tomatoes we had along with onions, okra, peppers and basil. We slow cooked the veggies all day and made five quarts of spaghetti sauce. If you have never tasted from the vine to the jar spaghetti sauce, you're missing out.

Then we sliced up a few of our bigger onions and pickled them. We used up our leftover pickle sauce and got eleven quarts. We are going to use these for recipes and burgers and whatnot.

After we finished canning all our goodies, we put the leftovers to use. We used the juice that came off of the beets to boost our strawberry plants.

It wasn't all canning this week. We made a fresh batch of laundry detergent, because somebody has a problem.

And Cupcake has gotten hooked on cheese/jalapeno snacks. We love these things for a quick lunch when we are busy.

And we ended the week with wings.
K&K