Agra Fabulous

We added a new piece of equipment to The Acre this week. An Agrafab yard sweeper. For the past few years we've often wondered if there was a way to use the grass clippings from the yard to our benefit, then we saw this advertised. Lawman did a winters worth of research and settled on the 52 inch model, it had the best reviews and seemed to be of a more sturdy construction. Anyone who knows Lawman knows he is hard on his equipment, so this one seemed worthy. Our plan is to rake the yard this summer and use the clippings in the rows of our five gardens as mulch to keep the weeds beat down and keep moisture in the soil (we said "moist").

Augustus inspecting the work

We managed to put it together without a single "Die Motherf@cker Die!!" or slinging of tools. The Outlaw would be impressed. Or not, he's kinda nuts, so it's hard to judge a reaction.
On the dog front this week, it warmed up over the weekend enough for the twins to get in a lot of pond time. Willow is going to be our swimmer, she walked out into the water, then walked along the shore before jumping in whole hog and going swimming. Augustus is more of a passive observer so far, but we hope he joins the fam when we all go in this summer.

We bought 15 fruit trees to plant down by the ponds, and used the warm weekend to get those in the ground. Our pond orchard is underway.

And one last puppy pic this week. We came back from the ponds to relax on the front porch, but found our chairs had been occupied from a couple of worn out pooches.

On the food front, we have an entry from "The Girl" this week. She found a recipe for cookies she wanted to try making from scratch. And did. No "Crazy Granny" box mix at The Acre.

They lasted about two days, so she's a chip off the old baking block.
Cupcake made a batch of chili beans for dinner one night, it was Lawman's first home made chili bean dinner, and it shot straight to the top of the rotation for meals.

Since it had been so warm this week, we took a trip past the old mushroom hunting grounds and found four small morel mushrooms. Not enough for a meal, but we sure do love the start of mushroom season around here.

And one evening down by the water with the pups, we made a couple of s'mores to snack on while they ran and jumped and played.

We ended the week with chili beans over sketti noodles. We're not sure if it's a true "three way" or not, but we sure did enjoy it.
K&K

On our Own

This week we managed to confirm that both wonder twins are Dudley labs. We took the question to the undisputed authority on all things. Facebook.
There is a group for Dudley labs on the Face Place where we posted pictures of the twins, and after nearly 400 reactions and comments there were no dissenting votes, all agreed we have a couple of rare pups on our hands. After a long day down by the ponds, we see the twins begging for a bath.

We did the brisket and cabbage thing like everyone else did. We guess, we dont know.
Our twist on Irish meals is Irish oatmeal bread. Once again, nothing store bought like "Crazy Granny" would do. It's all scratch made with real Irish oatmeal.

Proofing the yeast

Soaking the oatmeal in cream

We have started our garden seeds and have a few to share this week.

Pear trees started from seed

Our giant cabbage plants

Below are a few tomato seeds that have just started to come up. This is not nearly all the tomato plants we will use this year. Lawman likes to start his Cherokee Purples from seed, but Cupcake likes to go on a buying spree every single time she sees a tomato plant out someplace. And we have five gardens this year, so lots of spree room.

Its a good thing we have five gardens, because it's looking more and more like only the people with gardens will be eating.
We've watched with some wonder as the world falls apart because toilet paper and cleaning supplies have vanished from shelves. Local stores have sold out of every kind of meat and canned veggie you can think of. Bread is gone, even flour. Once the trucks stop rolling and everything closes, we will all see just how the government will not be there to support us and we will each be responsible for taking care of ourselves.
This past week we had a minor incident here at The Acre that goes to that point. Lawman was doing a passive sweep for threats, and noticed a man standing at the end of the road. There was no car near him so he got a second look. The man seemed to be talking to himself and practicing judo moves while he walked around in circles. This in it's self is not illegal and Lawman always said he would never be "that guy" that bothers the local law enforcement over nothing, but when the judo guy pulled his pee pee out and took a whiz for all to see, we figured we would go ahead and jingle the Sheriff.
We called around 0915 in the morning, gave dispatch the description and kept an eye on judo guy. He tried to cross our fence and walk down by the ponds, but stopped and sat down for a while. The S.O. called back about thirty minutes later and asked if the guy was still there, and he was. At 1000hrs, the deputy showed up just as Judo guy was walking away toward the county line. We drove to the end of the road to keep an eye out for the deputy because he appeared to be alone, but when we got there a back-up from the Montgomery side had arrived, so we came on back home.
The point of the story for us is, had judo guy had evil intent, we would have been waiting for government help for 45 minutes.

We are not being critical of the Floyd boys at all. We know it's a large county and staffing is minimal at best and we live in BFE. We are very aware that we will have to take care of real threats ourselves, and based on the lines at the local Rural King to purchase a firearm, many others are coming to that same conclusion?
Anywho, we are prepared if we do face danger. We are prepared for a couple of months not leaving the crib. Lets do this thing.
K&K

Farm Dogs

This week we have been taking the wonder twins down to the ponds a couple of times per day to give them some outside time. We like that they wear themselves out before bed time, they have been sleeping through the night and only waking up when the coffee machine kicks on. We learned this week that both of the twins may be what is called "Dudley" Labs. They are quite rare and the chances that we got two at the same time thrill us. We are still looking into it, but apparently the eyes, pink nose and pink gums indicate we have a couple of very rare dogs in the family.

The guinea birds seem to enjoy it as well. They follow us down and take turns flying in front of the twins, and let the pups chase them around.

The first few times we took them down we had them on leash then let them go while we were down there, then back on leash to go up to the house. Now we've got our routine down so they follow the ATV down off leash and follow us back home when we go up. OCD is a good thing sometimes.
We had a couple of projects this week. First, we made a fresh batch of lye soap. No danger of Corona up in The Acre.

Two batches made 46 bars of soap, that should last us through the summer. Lavender flavor for the summer months to repel ticks.
Saturday was Pi day so we celebrated by using up the last two pints of canned apples from our trees last year and made a from scratch apple pie. And none of that store bought pie crust that "Crazy Granny" tries to pass off as home made. This all all scratch, all the time.

It wasn't pretty, but we enjoyed it and enjoyed the spirit of the day. Win/win.
We started the fruity water this week. We look forward to using our own herbs and fruit soon enough, but for now it's store bought pineapple.

And speaking of fruit, mother nature seems to think it's spring? Our bush cherries and plum trees are in full bloom already. We hope she knows what she's doing.

A couple of baking items were Sunday biscuits. They just keep getting better each week.

And Sunday we had baked sketti for dinner, so Lawman whipped up a loaf of Italian bread to go with.

We ended the week wishing for the days of a nap.
K&K

Beat the Meat

We made a run to BJ's this week. We picked up another sirloin and sliced it out into steaks, then Lawman worked his magic marinade. In ten days we will be ready to put the heat to some meat.

Other food related items this week included home made chicken tenders. Lawman used the recipe for fried chicken legs and then sliced up a couple of breasts into strips. It rocked, and the home grown honey to dip them in didn't hurt even a little bit.

We made a small batch of nachos for dinner one night

We promised we would keep the new recipe for Sunday biscuits in the rotation, so we did. This time we allowed them to raise for about thirty minutes before we baked them, it made all the difference in the world.

Cupcake likes to tag Lawman in recipes she finds on the face place during the week, then he usually picks one or two and tries them out for her during the week. This week was a pecan pie topped brownie. The recipe called for boxed brownie mix, but only "Crazy Granny" thinks boxed mix is home made because she makes it at home. So, Lawman broke out his tried and true brownie recipe (from scratch) then made the pecan pie topping to put on it. This thing should be illegal it's so good. Of course, if Democrats in the Virginia government see this, they may try to make it illegal next session. They've been kinda goofy this year.

Starting with the brownie from scratch

Then start the pecan pie sauce

Sauce is ready, pour it on the brownie and bake

For non eating related updates this week, we start off with a fresh gallon of laundry detergent. Because somebody has a problem.

Then we gave the wonder twins a bath. They are so accustomed to doing everything together, Augustus actually begged to have his turn in the tub. Sink. Whatever

And the piece de resistance this week is our 5th garden getting underway. When Lawman was a wee lad, the family garden was out by the barn, and we raised all the food we ate for the year off of that garden. But for the past 40 or so years it's just been a large lawn next to the barn. This year we decided it was time to do a family garden and get serious about raising our own food again. We still have the three gardens at The Acre proper and Pop's garden across the street, so we hope to have a few cans of goodies stored up by fall. Plus, the media seems to think the sky is falling with this Corona thing going around, it probably would't hurt to have some supplies just in case.
Pop hooked us up and the ground was broken.

We are very excited for planting season to jump off this year. We are about to be very busy this summer.
We ended the week with burgers and dogs on the grill.
K&K