In which there is farmin' stuff and more puppy boot camp for the new kid

Lisa has had a lot of new experiences in her first week (can it be only a week?) in America.

We've resumed "pizza and movie Fridays", in which everyone makes a personal pizza using homemade pizza dough and the pizza builder's choice of toppings.

I'm a pesto/sundried tomato/artichoke heart pizza maker. Jim prefers pepperoni/sundried tomatoes/olives and lots of cheese. Willy likes pineapple, ham, and pepperoni. And Lisa
chose pineapple and breakfast cereal with cheese. It certainly looks...beautiful.

Willy was eager to teach Lisa to drive the riding mower ...but he says she drives in wavy lines. He takes a lot of pride in "his" lawn, and let her practice with the mower for a while before he took it back and re-did all the mowing in the back yard.

Today Lisa and I did a ton of weeding and de-gnoming in the garden, and as of this moment (8:45pm) she's fast asleep. Between jet lag and farm work, we are making our new puppy tired!

The blackberries are ripe now, and it's been a good year for them.

I've made several blackberry pies, Jim made a batch of blackberry ice cream, and also

6 gallons of sweet blackberry dessert wine.
(the blackberry wine will for ready by Xmas, just in case you were thinking of visiting this winter.)

(the ice cream will be long gone by then, though!)

It's cucumber -harvesting time, and that means it's pickle-making time again. As they did last year, our friends Megan and Henry came out to the farm to lead the pickle team.

The kids cheerfully peeled the garlic and prepped the jars and then we sent the menfolk out to do some advanced geometry on the site of the new barn in preparation for digging anchor holes. Henry was in charge of the hole-measuring stick
as well as some fabulous fashion statements.

Up at the house, Megan and Lisa and I crammed cukes into jars and continued the pickling process

with quality control supervision provided by Minerva Louise XII.
The finished product:

42 jars of garlic pickles! (the bread-and-butter sliced pickles are made from our own garden cukes! I'm so proud.)

When the work is done, we build a fire and enjoy some hot dogs.

Chicken Twelve enjoys stalking Lisa, who hasn't learned yet to not drop her hot dog when she screams.

Willy demonstrates how chickens should be handled.

Mimsy hopes that Willy will do a scream-and-drop too, but alas, in vain. He is a farm kid now, for sure.

Mim and Twelve have to do tricks to get bits of hot dog away from Willy.

Life is good.