For Real This Time

The boys finished up the pond this week. We should say "ponds" since we have two now. When we went to dig out the old cow hole we found a new spring, or at least a spring we didn't know we had. Every time we moved the dam, we hit another spring. So by the time we got to the end of the new springs, the drop of the creek was too low. If we had put a dam for the pond as is, it would have been over 50 feet deep. The boys hit on the idea of putting a dam at the bottom of the springs, then one about middle way. The top pond feeding the bottom pond, keeping each around 12 feet deep. This is optimal for fish, and works into our plans. We wanted crappie, yellow perch, catfish and largemouth bass. But the bass would feed on the smaller game fish. Now we can have bass and catfish in the larger of the two ponds, and crappie with yellow perch in the smaller pond. Lemonade is what we made. Saturday we spread grass seed around the dams and roadway. Things are starting to shape up.
We are thinking about naming them "Golden Ponds" since there are test shafts from a gold mine search just below the ponds. Lawman has done an extensive sweep of the creekbed and all the dirt with his metal detector, but so far, no nuggets have been recovered.

We promised the boys we would make them a smoked brisket toward the end of the job, and we did. We threw in a whole chicken for our dinner that night too.

And since we dusted off the smoker, we went ahead and did a rack of ribs for Thor's red meat offering.

Cupcake has become addicted to grilled sea bass, so every Wednesday is grilled sea bass night.

And Sunday breakfast has been Army SOS gravy on biscuits, along with fried potatoes. Or as we like to say, "fried onions with a few potatoes thrown in"

 A couple of projects this week were laundry detergent and another batch of spaghetti sauce. We take the tomatoes straight from the vine to the pot. Pot to the jar. You can't get any sauce fresher. Throw in fresh from the pot herbs and kale, you have some good eating in a jar.

Last project was putting three new slabs of pork belly into the hopper for homemade bacon. This will cure for two weeks before we smoke it and slice it.

We ended the week with a nap and wings.
K&K

All Done

Nah, we're just kidding. This was just a temporary dam set up to stop the spring water until they boys could get some digging done.

And the boys got serious about digging this past week. Thanks to our pal Link at Total Car Care, he hauled out some serious shovel power.

The boys got the stumps out and most of the dam work started. Then they hit three new springs we didn't even know were there. When the zombies come, we will be well fixed for water.

Cupcake was gone on another whirlwind adventure for HCA this past week, so there was no cooking to speak of. Lawman survives on combat meals and coffee while she's gone, but she made it back by the weekend, and rolled up her sleeves to help with Lawman's new tree stand.

Lawman chose the name for the new wheeler, nurds will get it.
We have almost run out of our supply of deer chili we put away the past couple of years, and Cupcake loves her some deer chili. Lawman can't drag deer any more, so a new wheeler was essential for harvesting deer this year. Cupcake drives it the most, so she is "Cato" while she chauffeurs Lawman around the farm.

 We ended the week with a nap and wings.
K&K

A Little Work

If you tuned in last week, you saw we promised a big announcement. We figured we had better get the word out before the neighbors broke their necks driving past the house, trying to figure out what's going on.
Since Lawman was a lad, there has always been an old cow pond on the property. It has fallen into disrepair over the years and filled with silt and cow poop and whatnot. We decided we would go ahead and clean the pond out, and clear away the trees and brush from the sides so we could use it for people.

First day, equipment arrives

Deer stand, or rope swing launcher?

Marine Corps equipment on The Acre?

The only sad part about the whole ordeal was losing two oak trees that were probably 150-200 years old. But they will make plenty of smoker wood, so we're looking on the positive side of it. Plus, we plan on planting a fruit tree orchard near by next spring, so we lost a couple of big trees but we're gaining a hundred or so new ones. Fruit makes us happy, and the bees will have something to do for years to come.
Speaking of bees, we've had a hot dry spell around The Acre for over a month. This means we've had to feed the bees quite a bit of syrup to keep them going. The little boogers were going through two quarts of syrup a day, which is about four pounds each. We hope they reward us in a couple of months. Right now, they're kind of testy.

Needy baby, greedy baby

You really cant tell, but the bees swarmed Lawman 

Because it's been so dry, the garden has really slowed down. Except for jalapeno peppers. They seem to thrive during the heat. We've already got our jalapeno jelly squared away for the year, so we've been making Lawman candy with the ones that come in now.

Since we took a year off from the updates, we have gotten out of the habit of carrying around a camera to document our day to day. We started to on Monday when Lawman sliced up a ribeye for steaks in the coming weeks. But apparently a shiny squirrel distracted him from finishing up the job of documentation.

We missed our usual "Hey Grandpa, whats for supper?" pictures, so we will work on doing better in the coming weeks. One thing we did get a shot of was our fried potatoes on Sunday morning. For "Thor's red meat Thursday" we usually dig a hill of potatoes and grill them alongside our steaks. We do extras and keep them for Sunday morning. This we remembered to get a shot of.

And our latest biscuit recipe. We bake these in butter. We've served these for Easter and when a few of the boys from The People's Republic of Maryland came to visit. We've gotten really good feedback, so this will be our go to biscuits for a while.

As always, we ended the week with wings.
K&K

In Case You Missed It

In case you missed it, we have brought back the updates from The Acre. We're sure the three to four regular readers will be thrilled. Or not, we're cool either way.
We start off the triumphant return with some serious "Bestest Husband Ever" points. A few weeks ago, Cupcake was on another whirlwind business trip, this time in Richmond. One evening after she did her thing, she walked across the parking lot of her hotel to a little knick knack shop, and found the storage cabinet of her dreams. She took a picture of it, and sent it to the Lawman, who was on the front porch with the dog, standing by to punish predators. When he got the picture and the story, he dropped everything, threw a change of clothing and his toothbrush into a Wades shopping bag, and drove to Richmond to get the cabinet. A ten hour drive was totally worth making Cupcake happy.

Now we have a spot to put all our canned goodies from this season. As you can see, we almost have it full.
We did a short update a while back about our bees, but that is pretty much our claim to fame this year. We've managed to keep them alive and in one spot. We're really hoping for a jar or two of honey this fall. This time of year we seem to be feeding syrup every other day. It's been very dry this summer and nectar has left the flowers it seems.

Representing the 4th ID 

But the dry weather has not slowed down the butterflies any. We've never noticed so many butterflies before, but we're not complaining.

The last few pictures are a little mystery. Big announcement coming next week, but until then, here are your clues....

It's been a year since last we confirmed it, but we still end the week with wings.
K&K

Haulin Pollen

We thought we would try posting an update from the smart phone, but it probably won't be a regular thing. Lawman has "King Kong" fingers and a "Hello Kitty" size keyboard. But, we had a big day today.
We have two hives of bees working in the top bar hives Lawman built last winter. Both hives are flourishing so far. Today was a cloudy and cool day so we didn't want to open the hives up. It's one of the reasons we went top bar over the square box types. Top bars give you a viewing window that you can open to see inside without a bee suit or disturbing the colony. Before we checked in, we found this little guy hauling in pollen, and had to take a break before he delivered the goods.

Then we looked inside, and the girls are steady working.

The last time we opened the hive up, we found one full bar of capped honey and there was plenty of brood cells, so we know the queen is doing her thing. We are already half full on bars. 

Another perk to the top bar system is the custom feeder. We drilled a large hole in the bottom and nailed a Mason jar lid to the outside of the hole. Now we can screw in a two quart jar of syrup, again without opening the hive or suiting up, and only the hive has access. 

The last perk is Lawman made the hives tall enough that he didn't have to bend over to work in the hive, and it keeps skunks and other larceny minded critters away from the inside. 

And to add gravy to our grits, we found our very first duck egg hatched this morning. 

We are pretty excited about the whole thing.
K&K

Comedy of Errors

This past week, we made sure to take pictures as we went along our day to day. Sunday we sent Cupcake off on another whirlwind adventure, this time to Texas.
Lawman came home from the airport to write the blog, and that's where the fun began.

Our laptop took forever to load, and once it did, it said it had to restart to update. So we jumped through the hoops and after another thirty minutes or so, Lawman inserted the camera card to upload this week's pictures. No pictures found, it says. So Lawman rebooted the computer once again and tried once more. No pictures found. Next step was take the card out and back in the camera. No pictures found.
OK, so the card took a crap. Lawman goes to the laptop to write the update scans pictures, and the laptop won't connect to the interwebs.
By now, Lawman has 90 minutes or so invested in writing the blog and has not a single line to show for it.
This is from the cell.
While Cupcake is away, Lawman may be checking local establishments for new laptops. But that's a secret. Don't tell Cupcake.
The one picture came from the phone. Nothing like finding a brand new family of barn cats in your chicken coop straw. Go team us.
Just K this week.