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Sunday, November 7, 2021

Our Christmas Jam

 Actually, it's Christmas jelly, but thats a secret so keep it to ya self.

We made sixty jars of jelly this week. To tell the truth we made it in a few hours. Some of you may remember we take bits and pieces of fruit over the summer and freeze it then make a hodgepodge of jelly every holiday season, we call it "Christmas jelly." This was the week. We pulled out probably ten gallons of frozen fruit and dumped it in the juice steamer. This thing has changed our lives.

This years fruit includes:

Apple

Grape

Pear

Peaches 

Persimmons

Rhubarb

Cherry

Ground cherry

Blackberry

Blueberry

Raspberry

Strawberry 

Plum

Cranberry

Goji berry

Viking berry

Crab apples

Black Arkansas apples

And everything except the cranberries came from our own farm. We are blessed and we know it.




We had eight packs of sure-gel saved up, but it wasn't nearly enough for all the juice we had. So we decided to go ahead and juice all the fruit and save the leftover juice for next weekend. We think we have enough for another sixty jars.
Before we started on the jelly, we butchered up the deer from last weekend. We ground up another fifteen pounds of burger and added twenty more packs of backstrap and tenderloin to the freezer. 

Lawman has this backstrap fillet thing down pat

We don't know why people eat pig when they could be eating deer
We left out one batch of tenderloin, because tenderloin gravy is Cupcake's favorite 

We think a couple more deer, and we will be all set for meat this coming year. 
If you tuned in last week, you know we cut up the deer leg bones and made bone broth out of them. The broth wasn't dark enough to suit Cupcake, so we slow cooked it another 24 hours and Lawman canned it up Monday morning.


A full canner, 14 quarts
Before our hard freeze, we got our last fresh garden salad from the garden salad patch outside the garage.
We've still got a pretty good stand of spinach out there, frost won't hurt that, so we may have a few spinach salads left this year?
Getting into the spirit of the season, Lawman began his baking practice. This week, he made a from scratch sweet potato pie. He added pecans, because he knows Cupcake loves her some pecans.
Go ahead, say it's store bought crust

First use of our home made vanilla 



A little mouse sampled the pie before we could snap a pic
We ended the week with Cupcake wrapping Christmas presents, sweet potato pie, and naps. 
K&K








Sunday, October 31, 2021

Thanks for the Sour Persimmons, Cousin

Thank Daffy Duck for the title this week. Lawman has always wanted to use that in a conversation. 

Anyway, this week we harvested the persimmons from our tree. Over the past years, six was the most we ever got. Just enough for a taste and to add to our Christmas jelly. This year, we got three dozen. Lawman had enough for a whole batch of jelly and still had enough left over to add to the Christmas jelly later this year.



It made twelve jars, three pints, and a jelly jar not quite full that we are using on now. 

Other goings on this week, we added dye to the ponds again. We read the reviews where people said they used the dye in the winter, and when the ponds froze with snow around them the picture was one of beauty. We enjoy beautiful things, so we went ahead and pulled the trigger.





We kid about "The Outlaw" a lot, just because he choose poorly. But this week we give all props and a shout out to him. One of the few fond memories Cupcake shares when her family comes up in conversation is her father making egg bread for breakfast. It seems it was the only thing he had a handle on in the kitchen. We searched the interwebs and found a recipe. The online recipe called for yeast, but no proofing the yeast or letting it rise before baking. Lawman called an audible, and switched up to baking powder and baking soda. We figured "The Outlaw" used self rising flour? We're just speculating.
Anywho, Lawman whipped up and batch and it met with Cupcake approval.

One night around bedtime, Augustus was making a fuss. We went in to check on what all the drama was and we saw Willow making fun of him. Usually, Augustus sleeps on his back. We could only assume she was making fun of him, and he didn't appreciate it? Our dogs are goofy sometimes.
That smile tho


The big goings on follow below, but involved the harvesting of wild game and the butchering of said game. If you snowflake at the sight of such things, or think meat should be bought humanly from Wal-Mart, please stop reading here. 
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"The Boy" drew first blood. He took to the trees and dropped the ol biggun that has been spotted around all summer long.



We all pitched in and it only took us about thirty minutes to work it up and get it in the cooler. We iced it down and let the blood soak out until Saturday. Lawman and Cupcake sliced the backstrap and tenderloin up for gravy, then ground the leg meat to burger, and packaged it in one pound packs.

Fillet like a fish





We put twenty pounds of burger and twenty five packs of backstrap/tenderloin in the freezer. The whole operation took about an hour. 



After we cut the meat off the leg bones, we cut the bones in to smaller pieces and boiled the bones to make broth.

After we got the boy's deer worked up, we went out on the porch to play with a new toy. Lawman bought a coyote call off the interwebs and we went out on the front porch to try it out. The call makes the sound of a wounded fawn deer, and we didn't really expect it to work. We had the DT's out there with us and it started getting dark, which is prime coyote calling time. Lawman gave it a couple tries, and a doe came out of the woods and stood looking toward the house. He went in the house and grabbed his bow, and came back outside to keep using the call. We called the doe up to the house, almost close enough we could have thrown a rock and killed it, but Lawman used an arrow. By this time it was dark dark, so we decided to wait until the next morning to track it down. Then we hit on the idea to let the DT's loose and see if they would track it. 
They got to the wood line and wandered around, it seemed like they had no interest in the deer at all. Cupcake noticed Augustus had stopped and was pointing. She walked up to him and he found the down deer and stopped near it. He didn't know what to do next, and we didn't know he was on a track. We have much to learn. But....we added another stack of meat to the cooler with plans to grind it up next weekend.


Liver and onions? Anyone?

We ended the week with several much deserved naps. And Halloweenies
K&K





 

Sunday, October 24, 2021

BAYONETS!!

 This week we took Serendipity out for her longest run yet. We loaded up the Dudley Twins and headed for the hallowed ground of Gettysburg. Lawman has a favorite campground (Drummer Boy) and we made reservations the day after we brought Serendipity home. 

We've been gearing up for the trip all summer, we would buy a little at a time. By last weekend we had everything we needed all loaded up and ready to go. We hooked up and got underway. 


The DT's travel very well, they slept most of the way. We stopped every couple of hours to let them stretch their legs and potty. 


The trip took almost five hours, we hit quite a bit of traffic in Harper's Ferry, but it gave Cupcake a chance to snap some pics.


We arrived and set up camp. We are a well oiled machine 


Our pal JM came up and grabbed the site next to ours, so we had a friendly face next door. We tried to show him a good time.
After a couple of campfire meals, we split the battlefield up into two days. We did the Union side on day one.

Big Roundtop


"Place your colors here"




View of Devil's Den from Little Roundtop

Valley of death
Day two, the confederate side
Lee's Headquarters

Virginia's memorial

"The Angle"


Lawman's people were in the 24th Va


Peach Orchard
In between visits to the park, we enjoyed campfire cooking. We kept a pot of cowboy coffee on at all times, and did a couple of meals in the cast iron pot.



"Get this man a tent....and a cigar"

After a week of getting our camp on, we came back home to a tree full of persimmons. We're looking forward to making a batch of jelly this coming week.
We ended the week with unpacking, laundry, and naps. A bunch of naps.
K&K