Love Stinks

This week we had a visit from our nurdy pals, we try to catch all the big comic book movies together and we had a batch of foxgrape wine that we intended to share with them, which we finally got to do. One of the best things that came from the visit was, we found out the wine gets better with time. It tasted like fruit punch, so we plan on making another batch or two this year. Our foxgrape vines are weighted down, so with any luck we will have a lot to work with.
We start pictures off this week with on unwelcome visit to The Acre. Sunday we were all settled in after getting a belly full of chicken wings, and were waiting for sundown to lock the birds up. All of the sudden, Fraidy Mutt went nuts. There wasn't anyone outside so we went to check the porch, and we found a skunk staring back at us. Cupcake grabbed the sliding glass door and got it closed just in time for the skunk to let loose with a spray. The back porch still smells like skunk a week later, but back to the drama. Big Man grabbed up his trusty 1911 and went out to do battle with the beast, but by the time he made it to the back yard it had already grabbed one of our chicks. We guess they were too young to realize it was a predator, so they stood around like "hi there, fellow woodland creature".
As soon as the skunk got out of spray range, he put two hot ones in the base of the skunks skull. If you hit them between the skull and neck they can't spray, but it's a tiny target.
We got our porch stinky and lost a bird, but it will be the last time for this one so we call that a "forty degree day" (Followers of 'The Wire' will understand the reference).

Skunk De Pew

Victim of Skunk De Pew

The next day our pals came over. It was the 4th of July and we did a typical holiday cookout style dinner. Big Man smoked a whole brisket and made his soon to be world famous six cheese mac-n-cheese. It's not the from a box with cheese slices on top and passed off as "home made" like crazy granny does, this was the real deal. We got a picture of the cheese, we were too busy eating the brisket to stop and get a picture. Dr. Chuck almost lost a finger eating it, so we chalked it up as a win.

No Stoffer's for us, Sandra

Steph made a big bowl of potato salad and red/white/blue deviled eggs.

Big Man bought all the fixings for from scratch pina coladas, and made a couple, but the homemade wine was the headline of the night.

After we got our belly full, we retired to the man cave. We all took a round of billiards and learned a valuable tip: Don't play pool with a couple who has a PhD and geometry learning. We will have to bone up on our play before we rematch. We see the good doctor getting "The Hand"

After the festivities we got back to regular doings. First order of business was harvesting rhubarb. Our rhubarb was beginning to get pretty big and we didn't want it to go to waste. We picked ten pounds, cut the leaves off and put them in the compost bin. Then we chopped up the stalks and put them in bag, two and a half pounds each. We figure each bag will make a tasty pie this coming winter. We froze the bags right after picking the rhubarb, we did this last year and the rhubarb was crazy fresh when we used it.

Next out of the garden was our pickling cucumbers. We found several just walking by the vines after a rain one day. We picked the few we found, then went back and searched for more the next day. We found enough to make seven jars of dill pickles, along with fresh dill from the deck box. The one jalapeno pepper we chopped up in our Sunday morning eggs. Fresh from the garden.

We took a couple of pictures of the gem corn from Pop's garden. They are really starting to thrive.

One last garden picture is of our ground cherries. This is our second picking, which is more than we thought we would get this year, since the ground cherries were just tiny seeds six months ago. We will take what we can get. If you have never had a ground cherry, they taste like a little pop of pineapple. We cant wait to get enough for jelly or pie.

Usually we make a trek to town on Fridays and get an order or two of fried pickles, but this week we just didn't have it in us to make the trip, so we stayed in and made a homemade pizza. We canned up a batch of pizza sauce a couple of months ago, and it was delish.

Pizza crust from scratch, of course

Anyone know how to raise pepperoni?

Our last picture this week is our baby guinea birds. We turned them out with the chicks so they will learn how to chicken, and come back to the coop at night. So far they haven't managed to get the hang of going up at night. They really are 'cows with feathers' but we don't mind rounding them up each night. They eat ticks. It's a good trade.

We ended the week like we always do, with wings.
K&K

Dill Fruit

This week we were recovering from the reunion and gearing up for the 4th of July. We did a lot of brisket prep and did yard work. We expect our first visit from our nurd pals so tune in next week for the pictures.
This week we start off with a surprise picture from The Dutchess.....

Then we have our very first tomato of the year. We're early

Plus, Cupcake started picking her green tomatoes for BM to fry up for her

Our garden is doing well, and our pumpkin patch has really started to take off. All of our vines have runners on them, and they are big enough to see from the front porch.

And our herb garden is producing dill. We've started cutting and drying it to prep for pickles

Moving on to our July 4th prep, we start off with arts/crafts. Cupcake made Mason jar light holders

We made a couple of pies for the holidays. Chocolate and buttermilk.

Our first ever buttermilk pie crust

Baked for choco pie

Finished product

Buttermilk Pie with a buttermilk crust

We end this week with an OCD item. Big Man went through basic training for the US Army over thirty years ago. One of the first things he learned was that toilet paper's proper display is over the top. People who hang TP backwards are Russian agents and communist spies. That's probably not the case inside The Acre, but this scene will stop BM in his tracks until it's corrected.

After the roll was correctly displayed, we ended the week with wings.
K&K

Reunion Week Again

This week snuck up on us. We did our usual stuff, had a boil for dinner, Thor's red meat day offerings and usual chicken drama. The picture portion of this weeks update is mostly reunion stuff. Every year we try to think of new things to take, some are hits, some are misses. We are narrowing down what the people want, and this year we decided what the people want is buttermilk pie. We experimented this week with three pies, buttermilk, strawberry rhubarb and chocolate. The only pie that didn't come home with us was buttermilk. Next year we will be the buttermilk pie people.
We start the pictures with strawberry rhubarb. We have quite the rhubarb patch this year and we picked a handful Saturday. We diced it up with just enough strawberries from the garden to make a pie.

Cupcake did the chopping

Fresh from the garden

Adding the sugar/flour mix

Egg white wash

Then we made a chocolate pie. And it's not any of the "crazy granny" jello from a box chocolate pie either, this is from scratch all the way.

And then the big hit, buttermilk pie.

The reunion is always a big time, lots of great food and everyone leaves with a full belly. Unlike Cupcake's family reunions, there are no fistfights and the arrival of police does not signal the end of the reunion.

Our cousins Bill and Francis, Bill Jr and Betty stopped by the house on their way home, we loaded them up with a pie of their very own, some pickles and soap. We always look forward to a visit from our family from the big city.
Other than the fresh rhubarb we picked this week, we did pick a mess of collards from the garden and had them on Thor's day.

And we're trying a new thing with our Thor's day red meat offerings. We spotted a whole sirloin at the local Wade's store and it was under thirty dollars. We bought said sirloin, and brought it home. Big Man sliced it up into eight steaks, then we prepped it up with the baking soda and garlic powder, packaged them up and have them in the fridge. We figure we saved around fifty dollars by doing the steaks this way. We look forward to reporting on how they turn out.

We still had our belly full after the reunion, so we skipped wings this week. Chickens breathe a sigh of relief.
K&K

Foiling Preditors

This week we had births and deaths in the farm game. We had two more guinea birds hatch, thanks to Boomer, and we had a racoon kill about half of our new birds. Boomer has been on the nest for over a month now and has managed to hatch three guinea eggs. We had a guinea bird on the nest and she managed to hatch three eggs, but as soon as the eggs hatched she kicked the keets out of the nest. Big Man found two dead, and found one newly hatched keet that had just been kicked out of the nest. He got it to the heat lamp in time and appears to be doing fine. Our lead off picture this week is Boomers last hatch. Big Man stopped in the coop deville mid day and found one of the last of Boomers eggs cracked. BM carried it to the heat lamp cage and ran to grab the camera, but by the time he got back to the cage the keet had already broke free.

We also have been hand feeding the keets sugar water, they came up with a case of pasty butt, and this helps keep things moving in the right direction.

We put the new arrival birds into the starter coop this week. We've been using it for almost four years now and never had a problem with woodland creatures interfering with the birds. That streak ended Thursday. A racoon dug under a plywood cover between the two coops and killed about half of our young chicks. We figured it would come back Friday night for the second half so we scrambled for a solution. Our usual go to response would have been foot traps to catch the critter, but Jake had not brought the traps back to the house yet, so we rigged up a deterrent instead. We screwed in plastic insulators and ran a hot wire around the base of the two coops. We placed a cinder block in front of the hole so the racoon would have to get on top of the wire to re dig the hole, then we ran a line from the electric fence to the hot wire. We've had no more digging under the coop, so we're chalking this up as a win.

We got the two hog wire pieces up for the cucumbers to run up.

And we have a before and after picture of the sucker tomatoes that we pulled off and replanted. We are very pleased with this technique.

Cupcake got to use her new lawn mower this week when she helped BM mow the lawn. We didn't get a picture of it because Cupcake is the usual photog. Just visualize her mowing here.....
One food related updates, we start off with last week's wings. Just as we got the wings fried up the power went out. We didn't let that slow us down any, we lit the oil lamps and chowed down.

Cupcake wanted a soon to be world famous buttermilk pie this week, so BM whipped one up. This week instead of using the rolling pin to roll out the crust, BM used just his fingers to spread the crust until it got to the right size to fill the pie plate.

We raided pop's garden one night and made a huge batch of scalded lettuce for Thor's night of red meat offerings.

We got one last picking of cherries, this time from the tree in the back yard. We made another batch of jelly.

And we made another batch of laundry detergent.

We end the weeks update with a hijacked picture from The Dutchess. A picture of the happy couple

We ended the week with wings.
K&K