Lots of Helpers

Our family's life in New Zealand

You are here: Home / Archives for NZ Filbruns

NZ Filbruns

Random Pictures

by Leave a Comment

Here are a few random views of our life from the past few weeks.  Lots happens around here, but this can give you a tiny glimpse into our family!

We are still harvesting giant leeks and carrots from the garden. (This is James)

My big find at Recycling a couple of weeks ago–a cast-iron Dutch oven! It was very rusty, but I cleaned it up and seasoned it and it works beautifully!

Horsey-back ride!

A couple of Sundays ago, it was quite stormy when we went to church. That makes for a beautiful ocean!

This little fellow is so much fun!

The new truck.

Baby Seals at Ohau Falls

by Leave a Comment

Sunday after church we made our annual visit to the waterfall, north of Kaikoura, where baby seals play while their mothers are out at sea eating.  The baby seals swim and crawl about 1/4 mile up a creek to the pool at the base of a high waterfall.  Sometimes there will be 100 or so there; this time there weren’t nearly so many, but still a lot of fun to watch! It’s so dark back in there that it is hard to get good pictures.  If our videos turned out any good (I haven’t watched them yet) I’ll post one or more sometime soon.

Swimming in the pool at the base of the waterfall.

This is steeper than it looks! Those seals climbed about 10 feet, nearly straight up! The lower one climbed right over the other while we watched. After visiting the falls, we stopped at Ohau Point Lookout, a place where the mother seals come to feed their babies and rest after being out at sea fishing.  I had never seen a baby seal nursing before; that was fun!

Shags Aren’t those little pups cute?

Jed River Cemetary

by Leave a Comment

Last Saturday was a gorgeous, warm (for winter) day, so Gayle suggested that we take our lunch out to Gore Bay and have a picnic.  What a good idea!  Since it was high tide and therefore not good for beachcombing, we decided to try to find an old Maori graveyard that a local farmer pointed out to the boys last spring.  We didn’t find that, but we did find an early European cemetery, dating back to the earliest days of settlement in this area.  The most recent burial there was 19 years ago.  There are around 25-30 graves, only about 1/3 of which are marked.  It was a beautiful spot for a cemetery–on top of a hill overlooking the Jed Estuary and Gore Bay, and so peaceful.

Getting ready to go

To go to the cemetery, we had to cross the mouth of the Jed River/Buxton Creek. It was only an inch or two deep, but with it being high tide, there were often several inches of water. Seth ended up carrying the two youngest over by himself!The trail from the beach to the cemetery was fun!

The Jed Estuary, with an old woolshed on the far side, and Gore Bay in the distance.

This is all that marked one grave.

All that’s left of the gate to the cemetery.

After exploring the cemetery, the boys worked on punting their “raft”–a large forked log–around the lagoon at the place where the Jed River and Buxton Creek flow into the sea.  They had great fun learning to maneuver it around, and then pulled it out so it will hopefully still be there next time we go.

The boys reenacted Hone Heke, a Maori chief in the 1840s, who chopped down an English flagpole on a hill overlooking present-day Russell, four times.

A hut that someone built out of driftwood. Daddy helped pull the log to a deeper part of the lagoon. Pulling the log out

Truck is Out!

by Leave a Comment

I know it’s been awhile since I have posted.  I was without my computer for a week, since when I took it in for servicing they found that the hard drive was failing.  No wonder it was so slow and so many programs no longer worked!  It’s like having a new computer now.

The biggest event of the past two weeks was getting the truck out of the river last Saturday.  All the children except the baby went; I didn’t want to be there to see it happen so I stayed home and had a quiet hour.

First, he tried to hook the chain to the front.

The front bumper didn’t work, so they had to hook to the hitch at the back. Gayle took a hot shower as soon as he got home!

Out it comes! Just after this photo was taken, an eel slithered out of the engine compartment. The boys dug around inside for treasures!

Goodbye, little Nissan truck!We also bought a “new” truck nearly two weeks ago, but I don’t have a picture of it yet.  It’s a Ford, in case you wanted to know!  We also got a lamb since then–baby was quite fascinated the day he got to go outside when it was tied out!  We had a week of sunny, warm weather, with the north-west wind blowing almost constantly, but this week has been winter again, cold and wet.

Esther got out her singing doll and baby loved it!

Baby and the new lamb.

Boys diligently doing school.

Supermoon

by Leave a Comment

After a full week of rain, we figured there was no way we’d be able to see the full moon last weekend.  However, the skies cleared just in time!  We got to enjoy the brilliant moonlight as we drove home from a midwinter dinner Sunday night–we could even see it shining on the snow-capped mountains off in the distance!  When I went out to milk the next morning, the moon was about to set over the hills in the west and was so beautiful that I ran back in to grab the camera. Last glimpse of the super moon.

First rays of sunlight hitting the snow-covered hills to our west.

And, here are some random shots from the week. Sunset through the trees in our front yard.

New way to play piano: When your clothes are being changed, jump up and run away to big sister, lay down in her lap, and play the keys with your feet!

Elijah made a pinata this week, in honor of Daddy’s birthday.  We had great fun cracking it last night.

After the Storm

by Leave a Comment

We got 4 3/4 inches of rain in about 30 hours, a total of around 9 inches for the week.  The clay ground here was already saturated, meaning lots of flooding!  Esther got a few pictures of it, so I thought I’d let you see what we’ve been seeing.

One note about the post Monday, the day the truck washed away:  There are two pictures there of the ford.  One is from a slight distance and the other is from the edge of the water.  Both were taken the same time–the one shows how deceptive that ford is, how deeply it dips!

Water pouring off the oat field into one of our paddocks.

This is how deep the water was, flowing through our paddocks–it’s normally dry!

Poor cows are suffering from the wet. This was the only shelter they could find from the howling southerly, coming straight from Antarctica.

Several hours after the rain stopped, the children rode their bikes down to the ford where the truck still sits, and Esther got some beautiful pictures of a clean, waterlogged world with the sun peeking through for a few minutes! The Jed River has gone down some already.

More Rain!

by Leave a Comment

It’s raining more and more.  While we ate breakfast this morning, we watched the water rise in the paddock in front of the house.  It rose over 2 inches in about 20 minutes!

Our landlord going out to feed the cattle.

The lake out our kitchen window.

On our way home from Dead Boring Tuesday, we stopped to see the truck again. The water level had gone down enough that one boy was able to safely get on top of it and salvage a few things from inside–I was glad to get Gayle’s lunchbox out!  We were hoping to get a digger to pull the truck out of the river today, but it’s likely underwater completely again, since it rained all night.

Adventures Never Cease!

by Leave a Comment

Most of last week was pretty tame.  We did the normal stuff–school, working outside a few minutes a day, taking care of things in the house, doing laundry–all that good stuff.  Saturday night the second-youngest gave us an anxious time when he tripped and fell against a doorpost.  We were pretty worried about his head for awhile, but we prayed over him and watched him for a couple of hours, along with a naturopath friend who came over and checked his reflexes.  He showed no signs of swelling in the brain or concussion, so after a few hours we put him to bed and other than a large bruise he seems to be fine.

I made a couple of loaves of sourdough bread Saturday. Baby grabbed part of one and happily took off, chewing on it!

Baby loves to read, especially laying on his back!

Our 8-month-old steer, the Jersey/Belted Galloway cross.

I love those chubby, dirty legs!

This morning, Gayle drove into water flowing through the ford he crosses every morning on the way to work, not realizing that it was too deep, and we’re thankful he was able to get out of the truck!  It was washed downstream a ways.  The children went to look for it this afternoon, and found it 50-100 meters from the ford.  Next adventure–getting it out of there!  I think we’ll be looking for new transportation to work for Gayle.

This is what is left of the truck.

Up close, the ford is obviously very dangerous right now.

The ford doesn’t look too dangerous from this perspective!  And by the way, this pictures was taken at the same time as the one above.  That’s how much the road dips down!

Our waterlogged world today, after the storm.

 

Whale Watch

by Leave a Comment

We had a wonderful experience this morning on our way to church–so great that we decided it would be all right to be a few minutes late for church to enjoy it!  As we were driving along the coast, I suddenly noticed, not too far offshore, a small cloud of mist shooting up!  A whale!  We immediately pulled off and watched for awhile.  A couple of times a minute, the whale spouted, and we could see a bit of its back and occasionally some of its tail as it went back under.  There was a crowd of seagulls in the area where the whale was, so apparently there was a shoal of fish there, too.  We watched for several minutes, then started on our way, but just around the next curve we saw our friends from Cheviot who also go to Kaikoura to our church, pulled off and also watching.  We pulled off again beside them and all watched for awhile.  What a special experience!  We didn’t get any pictures, because it was just far enough offshore that it would have been very hard to pick up with the camera; this picture is from when we went on a WhaleWatch trip three years ago and shows what we saw this morning.

Monkey see, monkey do? This was yesterday.