Bear Necessities

 We've got a new visitor around The Acre these days. The neighborhood grape vine has been reporting bear sightings for a while now, and in the evenings when we run the DTs before bed, we've noticed something has been going for a swim in the ponds. Something big.

So we were not surprised when this guy popped out in the front yard. The DT's didn't notice him, the guineas didn't alert us to him, if it hadn't been for "The Boy" spotting him we wouldn't have noticed. 

We've seen him about every night since, so we're guessing he's gonna be around for a while?

And since we mentioned the ponds, we have a couple of pond related items this week. 

First, we added more minnows. Bass Reeves needs a food chain to keep him growing, and we're just the kind of people to hook him up.

We had an unwelcome sight while we were unloading the minnows. A dead water snake.

The DT's took turns trying to grab it, so we pulled it out and tossed it up into a brush pile. Buzzards gotta eat, same as worms.

The last pond related thing this week is garden water.

Last year, Lawman picked up a 250 gallon tank. The plan was to haul water to the gardens from the ponds and save well water. That was a good plan. Broken tail gates and broken 4 wheelers ensured that didn't happen last year. This year we were ready.

Using an old car battery and a submersible bilge pump, we rigged up a line to pump water from the pond to Deathstroke, and the tank located therein.

First garden water is in the book. Bring on hot weather.

And this weekend we put the hog wire up for the tomato plants. Last year we planted 125ish tomato plants. This year? Double that number. That's a lot of water haulin.

We are very pleased with the barn garden this year. Last year it was full of sod and rock, but this year it's starting to shape up.

Nothing a little elbow grease wont fix.

We got the last of our bush cherries this week, and two or three sour cherries from our new cherry tree.

We have high hopes for this years Christmas jam. We have little baby kiwi's we hope we can add to it this year.

Before we move inside to the food portion of our update, we thought we would answer the most asked question for the past month.

"Why do you need a camper that big?"

We bought it for the outside shower. Now the DT's get groomed with warm shower water, anytime they need a grooming.

For the past couple of weeks, Cupcake has been obsessed with "Smash burgers" that we've seen on one of our camping/campfire cooking Faceplace pages. Apparently, they are all the rage. And for good reason. These really are good eatin, they come with a special homemade sauce (that we tweak to our taste) and she made hand cut, homemade onion rings to go with them. 

We ended this week with a nap, and a fist full of ibuprofen.

K&K