New Life

 We added to the crazy here at The Acre this week. "Ol Huff n Puff" sat on a dozen eggs for the past month, and this week they started to hatch. At publication time, two new ducks were alive and well. We expect the rest to trickle in as the week rolls out.

Other goings on this week, we added to the brush cover in the big pond. The brush we added earlier in the year as sank down under the water. Lawman had some more limbs that were knocking his new hat off when he mowed, so he killed two birds at one time. He trimmed the branches and added to the cover for the fish.

He still thinks he's able to military, so he spent the whole time explaining how what he was doing is "Australian Rappelling"

Then as luck would have it, the first branch stood straight up in the water. We thought maybe it would just take root, but it eventually fell over as intended.

Baby fish have more cover now.

Our shower head gave up the ghost this week. Cupcake picked out the new shower head and recalled how in her previous life, she would have to hose off in the yard for three weeks and then get "The Outlaw" to come fix her shower for her. No such drama today.

We had a few meal updates worth mentioning this week. A request for choco chip cookies.

Scratch made pizza one night.

Fresh from the garden cornbread.

While we were canning everything under the sun, Lawman hit on the idea to put some dried beans in a jar and cook it. We had a meatless meal Sunday night and this was a part of it.

We have been steady frying squash, but we still have way too much to squash, so we started getting creative. Parmesan crusted squash included in our Sunday dinner.

And of course, fried green tomatoes

We ended the week with a couple of naps and a full belly.

K&K

Big Week

 We had a visitor to The Acre last part of the week. JM is recently retired from Shawshank and took his youngest out for an RV adventure. The adventure brought them through our area, so he stopped in for an overnight on their way home. There is life after Shawshank.

Prior to the visit, we started the week off with part II of our jar barter with the Hall family. We fixed them up some more green beans and Lawman whipped up a pound cake.

We spent almost every evening after the sun went down below the tree line, picking berries. Blackberries are off the hook this year, we may get enough for an entire cooking of BB jelly.

We made our last batch of lime pickles this week. We've officially run out of storage space for pickle jars.

Squash came in, and in a big way. Lawman canned up 36 quarts over the week. We think we're all set in the squash department now.

Then we had beans. Just the beans from our little garden at The Acre yielded two bushel from the last picking. We still have the big patch at the barn to get to this coming week.

The garden is really the best we've done since we started. The corn and tomatoes are already over Cupcake's head.

Somewhere along the way, "The Girl" snuck a selfie in the camera roll, so we included it

Back in the spring, we bought some peaches from "The peach truck" outfit. They take orders then deliver to an area for you to meet them and pick up your fresh picked Georgia peaches. We got one bushel and a couple bags of pecans. They arrived Friday.

Since we were having guests, Lawman made a pecan crusted peach pound cake. It tasted as good as it sounds.

And as we usually do when company from The People's Republic come to visit, we smoked a brisket.

We ended the week sitting around with adult beverages, telling lies about women.

K&K

All Lime, All the Time

 Our silly season kicked off this week. Every day now until early fall we will be putting something in a Mason jar to store up for the coming winter. Lawman's school chum and neighbor and his family, the Halls, are fans of the site. They had some Mason jars they didn't use any longer and made a gift of them to us early on in the week. We swapped them some green beans for the empty jars, then we used them first when green beans started pouring in. But our pride and joy is lime pickles. Our first haul of cucumbers we made sweet pickles, just because we wanted to try the recipe. Our "go to" pickle is these green beauts.

They take almost a week to soak and prep, but there is nothing like them. At least we think so, you might not.

Crazy Granny, eat your heart out

Getting back to the green beans. Lawman picked the beans at The Acre early in the week. Then he strung and broke them, washed them and got them in the gift jars. The only way to get fresher beans is to eat them while they are still on the vine. We prefer this method.

Saturday morning we rolled on over to the barn garden and picked another bushel from that bean patch. We had those in jars by noon. We are a well oiled machine when it comes to canning.

We are almost up to 50 quarts of beans so far, and now we've started getting a little creative. We always add a bullion cube to our beans, this week we started adding a fresh clove of garlic to the jar. We will report our findings this winter.

Cupcake's favorite time of the year has arrived (until her next favorite time of the year arrives)

Fried squash.

We've been collecting blue berries, but this week they came in all at once. So we had enough to make both blueberry jelly and blueberry syrup. 

Jelly pot

Syrup pot

Twenty five jars of jelly and four pints of blueberry syrup. We tried both over the weekend, and it was well worth the effort. We don't understand people who don't make their own jelly.

Now that blueberry season is over, blackberry/raspberry and red raspberry season is rolling in. Sunday after breakfast we started collecting those berries.

And we did it sporting our new headgear.

We're less "cowboy" and more "gunslinger." Since society seems to be leaning toward the days without lawmen, we're going to embrace the old ways with open arms.

We harvested three heads of cabbage this week (four if you count the one that went toward the jar barter)

We have been dying to try out our new kraut crock. That day arrived.

Sealed with a water lip

And keeping with the all jars all week theme, Lawman started a new batch of laundry detergent. In Mason jars, of course.

We ended the week with a well deserved nap.

K&K