Congradulations!

 This week brought to an end "The Boy's" academy training, and the start of his lifelong dream. Jake did 17 weeks of fire training in 100ish degree heat, but it was all worth it come Sept. 1.

We are most proud of the fact that he found the job opening on his own, applied, passed and worked his butt off to achieve his goal. 

There was a big 'ta-do' in Rocky Mount Thursday, celebrating the group's graduation. Lots of chiefs, politicians and whatnot. 

Class 002, marching in

Swearing their oath

Receiving his certification

He asked "The Girl In-Law" to do the honors of pinning his badge on him during the ceremony.

And he got some neat stuff after to remember his days at the academy.

All his family gathered to celebrate his achievement. Well, all the family that mattered, anyway.

We had some bear drama this week. It came rolling through The Acre one night this week, and wandered over to the barn garden. Cupcake had several pumpkins she was waiting to turn before she harvested, but Yogi had other ideas. He took a big bite out of one, and we figured we should probably go ahead and bring the rest of them to the house, before he made a buffet out of the rest of them.

We brought a watermelon with them. It wasn't quite ripe yet. We ate about half of it and gave the rest to the birds as a treat.

And on the birds front, we thought we'd share a weeks worth of shopping for the 'hobby' we have.

That is five hundred pounds of chicken/duck supplies, and that's every week. Every other week, if we hit a lucky patch. Another reason we kill predators, that's a lot of wasted product for a foxxy to eat.

And we found the nest of our guineas. They go feral a couple of times a year, in the spring and in the fall. During the spring we had the foxxy problem, so we lost half our birds to him/her. We counted 32 eggs on this nest, and the little white bird is steady trying to hatch them. Fingers crossed.

We harvested a bunch of grapes this week, and first order of business was grape juice, because Cupcake loves her some home made grape juice. And what Cupcake wants, Cupcake gets,

Two gallons, it's a good start

It rained Sunday, so we made a big pot of soup, then took a nap. 

We got up from our nap, made a batch of dinner rolls, and took another nap.

Then we ate soup and rolls, and went to bed early.

K&K