Strawberry Jelly

 The highlight of our week was making jelly. Cupcake found a bunch of really good looking berries and loaded the truck down. Saturday after pancakes, we broke out the juice steamer and rolled up our sleeves. And not like "Crazy Granny" homemade jelly, where we throw away Smuckers jars before we re-jar it and call it home made.

We made twenty one jars of jelly, and it tastes like spring time on a biscuit. Even if we did make it.

We tried a new recipe this week, an oats based veggie soup. We liked it.

And our last note from the week, crockpot shrimp spaghetti.

We ended the week with a couple of naps and chocolate donuts.

K&K

Need a Heat Pump?

We normally don't hawk goods or services, but we found one worth mentioning. Last year we found we had a leak in the pump during the summer. The outfit that installed the original equipment came out and said they put dye in the lines, and would be back to find the leak. They did not come back. We crossed our fingers and held our breath, and made it through summer. We knew that we had to replace it before it started getting warmer. We put out bids to local business, one was Eric Linkous out of Christiansburg. He came out and quoted us a price one half of another outfit in Cambria. We hired him on a Saturday, Monday morning his crew was on site and working. He gets the "Arlee's Acre" seal of approval.

Other than getting AC ready for summer, we did a few other summer prep things. A few weeks ago, Lawman cleared down branches from the ice storm, and trimmed up a few trees along fence lines so we can mow under them. Lawman hooked all the trimmed up trees and dragged them down to the ponds. He tossed them into corners of the pond as fish sanctuaries.

The Dudley Twins helped.

Three days after we put the branches in the water, we found frog eggs inside the cover.

We planted three more crab apple trees. 

The Dudley Twins helped.

We ended the week with baked donuts, the "Snyder Cut" Justice League movie, and a nap.

K&K

Breaking Ground

 We broke ground this week on the gardens. It's actually been dry for the first week since November. The weather says more rain in the coming week, so we figured this would be a good time to get everything plowed under.

While Pop was plowing, we took a moment and planted our peas. We cut out sod under a fence line at the barn and planted them so they climb the fence this summer.

After we got the barn garden squared away, Pop got the garden at the house plowed under.

And in the vein of gardens, we planned to make a mint garden right outside the garage door. Last year we didn't have enough mint to make our water as strong as we would like. This year we're going all out. We started out by dumping a big load of duck poop where we were going to make the bed.

Then Lawman loaded up some dirt into Deathstroke and brought it home, to cover up the duck poop.

We have the mint, we're waiting for a couple of weeks before we plant it just in case mom nature goes bi-polar again. We don't believe frost will hurt mint, but we're not going to risk it. 

We did a little food stuff this week. Starting out we did a seafood boil. It's been a while since we had one, we thought we would free up some real estate in the freezer.

Then, The Girl got into the act. She started going through her new cookbook and found a couple of recipes she wanted to try.

We had to bake the DT's a new batch of nite nite treats.

Then we ended the week with baked donuts. And a nap.

K&K

Aqua Dog

 We fooled around and didn't take many pictures this week. We really didn't cook anything that wowed us. It did stop raining toward the end of the week, so maybe this coming week we can get outside and do a little something. 

We had repairs made on the 4 wheeler, so we have all wheel drive capabilities again. We made use of it to run the dogs every couple of hours. We have to stop at the ponds each time out so Willow can swim with her new friend, white duck. They have a big time together.

We were almost ready to put the ducks in the freezer, we hadn't gotten an egg from them for almost six months. This week we started getting six a day, so we guess we will keep them around to keep Willow busy.

One thing we did get done this week pond related, we ran a small disc behind the wheeler and seeded the road with grass seed. 

One recipe caught Lawman's eye this week that he wanted to try. Homemade turtles. We have always made our own caramel, and we had plenty of pecans to roast. It seemed like a no brainer.

Cast iron skillet roasted pecans

Homemade caramel in the crockpot

Mix the two together

Drop on a cookie sheet

Melt some choco chips

And cover. They aint pretty, but they sure are tasty 

And as is our new tradition, we made fresh donuts for Sunday breakfast. It's The Boy's favorite.

We ended the week with wings. And a nap.

K&K