For Real This Time

The boys finished up the pond this week. We should say "ponds" since we have two now. When we went to dig out the old cow hole we found a new spring, or at least a spring we didn't know we had. Every time we moved the dam, we hit another spring. So by the time we got to the end of the new springs, the drop of the creek was too low. If we had put a dam for the pond as is, it would have been over 50 feet deep. The boys hit on the idea of putting a dam at the bottom of the springs, then one about middle way. The top pond feeding the bottom pond, keeping each around 12 feet deep. This is optimal for fish, and works into our plans. We wanted crappie, yellow perch, catfish and largemouth bass. But the bass would feed on the smaller game fish. Now we can have bass and catfish in the larger of the two ponds, and crappie with yellow perch in the smaller pond. Lemonade is what we made. Saturday we spread grass seed around the dams and roadway. Things are starting to shape up.
We are thinking about naming them "Golden Ponds" since there are test shafts from a gold mine search just below the ponds. Lawman has done an extensive sweep of the creekbed and all the dirt with his metal detector, but so far, no nuggets have been recovered.

We promised the boys we would make them a smoked brisket toward the end of the job, and we did. We threw in a whole chicken for our dinner that night too.

And since we dusted off the smoker, we went ahead and did a rack of ribs for Thor's red meat offering.

Cupcake has become addicted to grilled sea bass, so every Wednesday is grilled sea bass night.

And Sunday breakfast has been Army SOS gravy on biscuits, along with fried potatoes. Or as we like to say, "fried onions with a few potatoes thrown in"

 A couple of projects this week were laundry detergent and another batch of spaghetti sauce. We take the tomatoes straight from the vine to the pot. Pot to the jar. You can't get any sauce fresher. Throw in fresh from the pot herbs and kale, you have some good eating in a jar.

Last project was putting three new slabs of pork belly into the hopper for homemade bacon. This will cure for two weeks before we smoke it and slice it.

We ended the week with a nap and wings.
K&K