Week of Firsts

The garden over by the barn is attracting some wildlife. Some good, some not so much.

We wondered why the turkey kept hanging around the garden, now we see she had a nest near by. Then the hawk started hunting around the garden. It's a shame hawks are protected by the man. Just sayin.
We got our first cucumber out of the garden this week. We couldn't decide if we wanted cucumber water or cucumber and onions. We went with the onions, but now that they are coming in, we will have to cut back on the mint.

We picked our first plums this week too. We've had plum trees for almost ten years and this is the first year we've got fruit. They are not very big, but the flesh is purple all the way to the pit and have a wonderful taste. We can't wait to add these to our Christmas jelly. If we get all that's on the tree this year, we will have enough for a couple of batches of plum jelly as well.
"The Outlaw" sided with the wrong side, because plum jelly is a favorite of his. Sucks to be him this year.

In a shoutout to that side of the family, one for "Crazy Granny" this week. We stopped in The Girls place of employment after the grand opening to check things out. We found a five pound bag of buttermilk biscuit mix. We picked up a bag and were happy with the results. Crazy Granny would approve.

On our food related updates this week, we tried a pork dish in the crock pot. Cupcake loves her some South West chow. We probably should have kept up with the pictures, but we did get a before shot.

The recipe calls for two pounds of pork shoulder, this was a little over six pounds, so we have three meals from one purchase. We consider this an absolute win.
We have been taking the Dudley twins down to the ponds every day so they can burn off energy, and they do. After a long day of running/jumping/playing, they need a nap.

We ended the week with wings

K&K

Wet Week

We got a lot of rain again this week. Total for the month of June we are pretty close to twenty inches of rain. Seven more inches this week over four days, which means not a lot of outside activity. We did catch two more groundhogs over by the barn garden, so the cabbage is still looking pretty strong. The larger plants have started to head up.
By the weekend the rain had held off long enough to mow the yard, and the Dudley twins were ready to get down to the ponds.

We took them down a couple of times before Sunday, but after we mowed the yard we wanted to take a cool dip. Willow jumped right in, Augustus waited to be picked up by Cupcake on an inner tube. While Willow made laps, Gus took a nap. Swimming is for succkas.
While Lawman was stuck inside this week, he took advantage of the down time to try a new cookie recipe. Orange creamcicle cookies.

They rocked.
We moved the new hatched ducks to the coop while it was raining, and the little Hudinies managed to escape Saturday afternoon. They fell in with the next youngest ducks and went up with all the other birds at night. We love it when a plan comes together.

Sunday while we were down by the ponds, we noticed the orange mint has taken off. We are excited about letting it spread.

Wrapping up this weeks update, Willow making laps

We ended the week with porkchops and blackberry cobbler.
K&K

Pond Paddle

The Girl didn't get to go with us to the ponds last week, apparently adulting sucks. So Monday on her day off she wanted to try kayaking around the big pond. She got all the gear down and gave it a try.

It didn't work out so well

So she went with the inner tubes, but kept the paddle to get around with.

More or less. We are all on a steep learning curve at the ponds.
We got a little work done in the gardens this week. First off, Lawman broke out the Troy-built tiller and gave all the rows a good going through.

Then we mowed the yard and raked up the clippings. We mulched the beans and cabbage at the house, then the tomatoes and beans at the barn.

Our cucumbers started to bloom. We're excited about adding fresh from the garden cucumbers to our water. And pickles. Lots and lots of pickles.

Thanks to the hoard of cicadas this year, the birds are leaving all the fruit trees alone. We've managed several gallons of cherries this year. An added bonus is a tree out front. We thought we were buying a weeping cherry tree for decoration, but it turns out it was an actual cherry tree and it produced cherries this year. Rainier cherries is what we got.

Bush cherries too

New additions this week. Four of our duck eggs hatched. We put six under a broody chicken, and four of them hatched. We added ten more the next day, so fingers crossed for more home made quackers.

We ended the week with Salisbury Steak, and a real long nap.

K&K

Chillin the Most

We broke in the ponds this week. The humidity was up, along with the heat. We have had a box full of inner tubes since winter and we broke them out.

We took them over to Pops house since he has the floor air compressor. That made quick work of them.

We took the Dudley Twins down with us, and we jumped in on the tubes. The twins made a few laps around the pond, trying to figure out how there were going to get to us.

After a few laps, Lawman floated over to the bank and grabbed up Augustus. Apparently "swimming is for suckkas"

Jealousy got the better of Willow, so she started swimming around us. For hours.

After a couple of hours of swimming, she made it clear it was time to float with her brother, which was our leadoff picture this week. Before all the Dudley drama though, we got a little quiet time together.

We hear tell the governor has decided pools and waterparks are just too dangerous to open up this year?
Other things going on this week, we have some garden pictures. The rain and heat really popped them off this week.
Gem corn is really taking off. If we get one ear from each plant, we will have gem corn coming out of our ears this year.

The garden at The Acre is really doing well.

We have an example of mulch vs not yet mulched. The purple beans in this picture were planted two weeks after the next picture.

Next yard clippings will go to the older bean row. We love us some green beans over the winter.
We caught two rabbits this week by the barn. After we eliminated them, nothing has bothered the cabbage.

We had to cull a few chickens this week too. Lawman found a nest of chicken eggs under a cover near the coop. He was planning on letting the girl hatch them out since she put all the effort into making the nest and hiding them from the group. But when Lawman came back a few minutes later, there were four birds steading chowing down on the nest.
We have been getting zero duck eggs every morning, and with 18 ducks that didn't seem right. We figured either the ducks had a nest out in the brush, or chickens were eating the eggs before we opened up the coop in the mornings. So Lawman put down the four birds eating the eggs, and the next morning we had six duck eggs. We are pretty sure we still have a few chickens eating eggs so we're going to cull most of the adult birds and let the fresh flock of chicks take over egg duty.
We made a new gallon of laundry detergent, because somebody has a problem.

We ended the week with baked spaghetti and a nap.
K&K