Plum Tired

Busy week to report from The Acre.
Early in the week, our plums started coming in. They were really small, but we got a whole lot of them so we decided to give a batch of jelly a try.

We tossed them in to the steam juicer. This thing changed our lives.

It made lucky thirteen jars of jelly for us. We are very happy with the results. We also had enough come in after this picking to add to our Christmas jam this fall.
It was so good, Cupcake made French toast the next morning so we could sample it.

Next came pickles. We had been getting one or two cucumbers at a time, but this week we got enough for a crock full of pickles. Lime pickles.

Lime pickles take three days to soak in lime, then brine. By the time we got our pickles in the jars we picked another batch. Pickles in, pickles out. It's how we roll.

The garden is coming along nicely.

Later in the week, we began construction on our big project. We needed a dock for our pond since Augustus wont swim, we thought it would be easier to get him in and out of inner tubes from a dock. Not many dogs get their own dock, so color ours lucky.

About half way through construction, The Boy came home from work and rolled up his sleeves to help. Things really got rolling then.

After we got the dock boards down on the frame, we tried to pick it up and flip it over so we could attach the barrels to the bottom. That was a big ol NOPE. So, we hooked Deathstroke up to it and drove some rebar into the ground on the other side, thinking we could flip it that way. Nope.
We had no choice but to ask our neighbor Zach to help. He has a loader, which made quick work of flipping the dock over.

And he was kind enough to stick around and haul the dock down to the pond for us.

Zach got it in the water, no fuss, no muss.

The next morning we went down to tie the dock off, but found it out in the middle of the pond.

So Lawman took one of the kayak paddles and scaled down the bank onto the dock, and rowed it over to base camp.

Willow swam out to help, then Augustus got all jelly, so Lawman paddled over and got Gus while Willow swam around us.

Not long after, Willow got tired of swimming around us and wanted her own dock time.

The ducks didn't pay much attention to us, we were just in their way.

And a sneak peek at our next big project.

Stay tuned.
We ended the week with hot dogs roasted over a campfire while we floated on our new dock.
K&K