One day a week or two ago, I went into the living room and noticed our landlord on the hill above our house, on his motorbike (4-wheeler). He had one dog with him, and the dog went into the trees near the top of the hill and herded a small mob (maybe 50) of sheep out. He bunched them in a tight mob, then headed them across the hill below the trees. The dog took the sheep back and forth a couple of times, with no apparent purpose, but we found out later that he was just being trained. It was quite fascinating to watch!
Early May Pictures
We’ve had Welcome Swallows around lately. They act and sound a lot like the barn swallows we had in Michigan—I love them!
This is what our milk refrigerator looked like one Saturday evening, after we were given about a dozen ducks, a turkey, and six geese, plus butchered a large lamb! We breasted most of the birds, or there would have been no room for all of them!
Boy # 4 (James) in disguise!
This hen laid her eggs 3 meters (10 feet) up in a pine tree in the hedge! Her eggs hatched while we were on our Timaru trip, and the morning of the day we got home the lady who was doing our chores saw the last one jump out of the tree!
Oamaru
We went to Timaru over Easter weekend for a conference, and that Friday evening, Esther had an idea. We had most of the next day free, since the only meeting was at 3:30 in the afternoon. She had met a girl last June at a conference in Christchurch, and has since had some contact with her online. She was thinking this girl and her family lived near Timaru, and thought it would be nice to visit her on Saturday. I thought they lived in Oamaru (pronounced Ah-muh-roo), about an hour’s drive farther south. We knew their last name, but not her father’s first name. I knew what letter her mother’s name started with, but not her full name. Esther looked in the phone book and found about half a dozen listings with that last name. One of them had a wife with the first initial I remembered, and the street name sounded familiar to Esther from a video the girl and her brothers had made, but that was all we had to go by. I told Esther she could try calling them on my cell phone and see if that was the right people, and it was! We went to visit them Saturday, and were able to spend a couple of hours visiting with that wonderful family. They live in an old house in the Victorian section of Oamaru (the most Victorian city in New Zealand), and took us on a tour of the old downtown section. One of their boys is a volunteer helping to restore old steam engines and because of that we got to tour the place they do that. What a special day!
Look at that hill! I was impressed with the way it went up, and then up again, and up again! Oamaru is very hilly.
There are a lot of old grain warehouses in Oamaru, left over from the time immediately after the city’s founding about 130 years ago, when fortunes were made from wheat. The boom ended after only 20 years or so, when there was a world-wide depression, and the city has never recovered. That means, however, that the old buildings have been preserved, because no one has had money to tear them down and build new ones!
One of the steam engines that is being restored.
A glimpse of the scenery between Timaru and Oamaru:
Probably a plant for making milk powder.
One of many flooded rivers—not sure which one this is.
Water across the highway just north of Oamaru.
Timaru
Easter weekend, Gayle had four days off work. Good Friday and Easter Monday are both national holidays here. We made plans to go to Nelson to visit friends, but God had other plans for us. A cyclone hit New Zealand that week, and hit much harder than we expected! We had torrential rains for several days, culminating in a flood Thursday night. Friday morning, we were still trying to decide whether to leave for Nelson or not when we were told that both routes north were blocked by slips (landslides). That made up our minds—it was not time to go! Instead, we decided to go to a conference we had been invited to at a church in Timaru. The first meeting was to begin at 1:30 that afternoon, but there was no way we would make it for that by the time we made contact with someone at the church in Timaru Friday morning! We kept working away at getting ready to go, however, and finally had the pop-top camper we were borrowing packed, the van loaded, and everything ready by noon. We weren’t sure how the roads would be going south, but they turned out to be fine. All the rivers were full to the brim, though! The Waimakariri, just north of Christchurch. This one actually wasn’t quite as full as some of the others. I just didn’t get pictures of them!
We had a wonderful weekend of good preaching and fellowship with other believers. We had never met any of the people at the conference, except the one family from Hawarden who invited us, but we soon had a lot of new friends! We stayed at the home of one of the families from Timaru; it was funny how that man and his son argued about whose house we should stay at—they both wanted us! We really appreciated the hospitality we were shown. We set up our camper in their driveway, and they offered us a choice of a bedroom in the house or another man’s camper for most of the children. We chose the camper; the man moved into the house for the weekend. Five of the children slept in that camper, and the two youngest slept with us in the pop-top camper. The couple whose house we were at treated us like family; it felt like old times when we would go to meetings away from home! One of the speakers at the conference (they had two visiting speakers, from Australia) stayed there, also, and Gayle really appreciated visiting with him.
There were two meetings Friday afternoon, and then tea (dinner) was served. Saturday afternoon was another meeting, followed by a barbeque tea at the home of our host’s son. Sunday morning was a regular Sunday meeting, focusing on communion, and then everyone came for lunch at the place we stayed—quite a spread! We were the last ones to leave church that time, and shortly came up behind the person Gayle had been talking to, pulled over at the side of the road. He was driving a 1950 Buick, and had run out of gas because of a faulty gauge! It was good we were behind him and could take him to get some. After lunch, we went back to church for another meeting, followed by tea, and then one final meeting. After that, everyone went back to our host’s home for a singing! We sang, accompanied by piano and organ, for an hour and a half. After about an hour, I took our two youngest out to the camper to go to bed. The second-youngest realized he hadn’t had a snack yet, so I offered him bread. Well, there was a table-full of dessert waiting in the house for after the singing, so he wanted dessert. Thankfully, we had a few bananas in the van, so I offered him one and that satisfied the two of them and they went to sleep happy. After the singing, and dessert, we stayed up late visiting. It was so good to be there!
Monday morning we packed up and headed home. What a great weekend!
Moving Cows
One afternoon, we moved four of the cows to the roadside for grazing.
Left to right: Curry, Red, Checkers, Mrs. Moo.
Chessie was sad that she couldn’t go, but we reserved the good grazing in the paddock for her.
Gayle got home as we were putting the cows in their new spot.
The first thing they did was to go to the end of the strip and gaze longingly at the grass they couldn’t have!
One day, our neighbor took this mob of sheep down the road.
The next day, he took these cows down the road. That’s the kind of traffic jams we have to put up with.
Little Boy Having Fun
Our littlest, who recently turned two, loves playing outside. One evening, I looked out the kitchen window to see him hanging over this gate! His big sister grabbed the camera, then ran to his assistance. It turns out that he had climbed up, dropped a pen he was playing with, then couldn’t get it. Poor little fellow was quite distressed. After he got the pen back, though, he was fine. The next act was to try to stare down the calf—and then he pretended to shoot him with the pen!
Another day, I was hanging laundry and he came out and wandered over to the shed where a puddle forms instantly under a leaky rain gutter when it rains. At that time, we hadn’t had rain for a few weeks, and he sadly commented that there was no water there. Within a few hours, however, it started raining and he happily discovered the puddle again!
He somehow manages to lose his pants frequently, and we often don’t get them back on for awhile. He likes it better this way.
One day, Daddy was fixing a door and had to lay down to see what to do with it. He had helpers!
This little fellow’s favorite activity for a couple of days was “cooking”. He would get all the pots he could carry from the cupboard in the kitchen, then spread them out on the floor in the living room and “cook eggs”. Those pots were HOT! he said.
Birds
One morning we saw this kingfisher right outside!
Esther saw this Yellowhead another day.
And this little fellow lives in the house! He was alone for a few days, until more hatched. Now he has three friends to live with him in the corner of the kitchen.
We were all glad when some more hatched to keep him company, because he would set up such a racket when he wanted attention. He loves to ride on shoulders, but only one person likes it. He leaves “calling cards” behind!
He calls this chick his peregrine falcon!
Rain
This has been a very wet autumn. We live at the bottom of a valley, and it is WET here! One day was especially wet. It had rained all week (that was a Thursday), and poured all that day, too. I looked out in the afternoon and was shocked to see the creek from the living room window. Normally, it trickles along at the bottom of a ditch and there is no way to see it. The ducks were having fun, but within a few minutes even they gave up and went to find calmer water. The creek had already overflowed its banks just past our house, and was rapidly building up a river across the paddock beside us.
I went out soon after these pictures were taken, and went to check the stock. Normally I don’t do that, but we’re thankful I did that day. The creek upstream from the house, in the paddock our animals are in, was only a foot below the top of its banks; normally it is a good six feet down in a gully. I could see that if it would overflow, as seemed likely, it would flood the area where our chickens were. Gayle got home from work about that time, so we spent the next hour cleaning out a chicken house we had things stored in and putting all the chickens in there. By the time we got that done, the creek had risen another half a foot and was swirling more angrily than ever. Another hour and it overflowed! The boys came and told me that there were several inches of water in the shed where I milk, and that it was up to the buildings. I had no idea when the water would go down, so I went out to milk in the flood. By that time, there was half a foot of muddy water swirling around in that shed! We were thankful that we had put all the feed up on top of two pallets to keep it out of the water. One of the boys had to sit on the other side of the cow and hold the bucket to keep it from floating away while I milked. Meanwhile, there was a river flowing fast along the front of the buildings, and around and under the house. We moved the calf to higher ground so he wouldn’t be standing in the water. Unfortunately, between the dark and the rain that continued to pour down, we have no pictures to show you—and we weren’t sorry an hour later to realize that the water was gone already! It goes up and then down very fast, apparently. The road was a raging river, too; there are drifts of gravel in places on the roadsides, a foot or more thick!
A week later, there is still a lake in the paddock beside the house. It’s beautiful on a clear day!
New Calf
This is rather old news by now. It is another of those posts that disappeared. On the morning of March 21, when I went out to milk Mrs. Moo, I discovered a calf frisking around Chessie! I had gone out to check on her late the afternoon before, and thought she probably had another day to go—shows how much I know! As far as we can figure, she had the calf that evening yet; the boys saw her laying down in a funny way while they were choring but didn’t think anything of it. The calf was dried off and running already. In fact, a couple of hours after we found him, he spooked and ran away! He went across the road, through the neighbor’s fence, and across a very large paddock to the far corner! One of my boys chased him down and caught him, and then they brought the ride-on mower with a hand cart tied on behind to fetch him home. We trussed him up and tied him on so that he couldn’t move, and then tied him up when he got back to his mother. He’s still a fiesty little thing, a month later. We’re bottle-feeding him, but he doesn’t trust us an inch. He’ll come for his bottle, but very warily, as if we’re going to eat him! (Don’t tell him that’s his ultimate fate—it’s a couple of years down the road yet, but that is his destiny.) He is a Jersey/Angus cross, by the way.
For this first month, we kept him in this small chicken yard out the kitchen window. I tried a few times to get someone to get a video of him playing, but I don’t think we got it. It was awfully fun to watch, though! Once or twice a day, he would start racing around and around, sometimes butting the walls of the building or fighting an empty bucket. Usually he did it at dusk. Such a circus! He loved it when the chickens would be let out for a little while—company!
A Field Trip–On Sunday?!
I’ll try again with this one, too; it is one that vanished in the past week. Rather frustrating!
This story really starts back in January. We were on our way south and passed a big yellow railroad track fixing machine. We’ve seen those a lot of times, since we drive along the railway so much (it parallels Highway 1, which is the main highway on this island and we drive on it practically every time we go anywhere; the railway is visible from the highway probably half the distance from Christchurch to Kaikoura). That day, my 8-year-old asked me how those machines work. I told him I didn’t know, but that if we saw one sometime that was at a place we could pull off, and if there were workmen there who seemed to have time to talk, and if we had extra time, we would stop and ask. Well, one Sunday morning soon after we moved, all those things came together. As we were driving to church, we reached the coast after coming down out of the hills, and approached the first tunnel that the highway goes through. Ahead on the other side of the tunnel, we saw one of those track-fixing machines, and I told Gayle what I had told our son. As we came out of the tunnel, we saw that the machine was right at the end of a short passing lane, with a pull-off right there beside it, and there were two men standing behind it on the track, talking; one was obviously the operator of the machine! We had a rare extra 15 minutes, so Gayle pulled off and asked the man if he would tell us how it worked. Sure, he was glad to! He explained it all, and then took us up into the cab to show us the computerized controls. That machine clamped onto the rails and pulled them in or pushed them out to make them exactly the right distance apart. There were two or three other machines that traveled in a unit with that one, which did other jobs, leveling the track and I’m not sure what else, but they were ahead, through another tunnel. We thanked him and went back to the van as he started moving ahead again. When he came out of the next tunnel, we got to watch as they coupled that machine to the next one. What a great field trip! It was especially meaningful to me because a man in the church I grew up in, someone I knew all my life and who died just about six months ago, had spent a lot of his life building that type of machines. He didn’t build this one; it’s Austrian-built; but it was the same basic idea.
