Our family's life in New Zealand
A few weeks ago, I remembered a funny video Esther took in September 2010, so we found and watched it. It made me laugh again, just as in the past! The baby is Mr. Sweetie. Seth is in the yellow shirt on the bike. Simon has a yellow and brown striped shirt, Elijah has a blue striped shirt, and Mr. Diligence is the cute little fellow in the maroon shirt. They sure have grown up since then!
This was yesterday, with Little Miss and Miss Joy starring. Puddles were made for children!
I took this picture one afternoon to send to a friend who had left here a few hours earlier. The entire weekend they were with us, it was dry, and the morning of this day, the children played outside on dry ground while she and I worked on potting my tomato seedlings. As they left, it started to rain, and soon we had this again!
Mr. Imagination adopted this baby blackbird after a cat knocked it out of the nest. He diligently dug up earthworms and fed it, a couple hundred a day, for a week. We were trying to teach this baby to be independent when it suddenly died one morning. It took a while to work out what happened, but he thinks it may have choked on a large kernel of corn. That was a sad day. Then, a week later, the cat bit his budgie when someone opened the door while he was letting the budgie exercise, and that bird died. Not a good week for birds in our house. We’re missing the budgie.
Mr. Sweetie made this arrangement for Elijah’s birthday!
For science one day this week, we mixed cornstarch and water, and played with it. What fun the children had! We were learning about the three states of matter (solid, liquid, gas), and this was to demonstrate a non-Newtonian fluid.
Inside the tiny house. It’s crowded—but we can sleep a lot of people in there now!
I think I should be taking more pictures! I’m running out of fodder for posts. It doesn’t help that my camera doesn’t work very well, so I forget to take it along when we go places. Mr. Sweetie let me use his last week when we did a fun science experiment, and I got a good video of what we did…and then he deleted it without thinking. Sigh. Anyway, here are the rest of what we took in September.
This is Mr. Imagination with his pet budgie, Tammie (short for Tamarillo). The budgie isn’t very tame, but he keeps working on it.
We killed a beef and dressed it out ourselves, for the first time! That was pretty exciting. We had never done an animal bigger than a sheep before. We got a friend to kill the animal, and the boys and Gayle got it skinned and gutted. We hung it here, in the woodshed, for a few days, wrapped in clean, old sheets to keep flies off. As soon as I could get to it after the weekend, I found videos on YouTube about boning out quarters of beef, and went back and forth, watching a bit, then doing that step. It wasn’t too hard. Gayle boned out one back quarter, but I mostly did the other three. I wouldn’t mind doing this job again.
This was the pile of steaks. Yum! This is some of the tastiest, most tender beef we’ve ever eaten.
The day I finished putting the beef in the freezers, Elijah brought home four deer legs! We decided to make venison sausage. The whole family got into it, and Gayle got to share his expertise in linking sausages. He did that for many years at his last job. These sausages are delicious!
Elijah got to lay the carpet in the tiny house. It looks good! Mr. Diligence and Mr. Sweetie now sleep in there. We have two sets of bunkbeds now in that house, and can sleep five people in there when we have company (the boys move to the container then). I need to get some pictures of it now that it’s finished.
She’s licking out the pavlova from the mixer!
Sitting in a dishpan to suck her thumb!
Reading to her baby. 
This is a craft project we did for our study of England. These are guards at Buckingham Palace, made from clothespins.
The boys’ old sleepout, which is slated for demolition. They are enjoying having more space.
One sunny afternoon, our little girls went outside to play. Little Miss packed a snack for the two of them, and took out a sheet, and they had a picnic together. I got the camera up just too late to catch the cat who wanted to join them!
After their picnic, the girls went to the empty section in front of our house, which had just been mowed, and raked up the grass. First, Little Miss buried herself in it.
Then, Mr. Imagination joined them, and they organized the grass clippings into walls to make rooms of a house! They spent at least 2 1/2 hours playing outside that evening, having lots of fun. It was getting pretty chilly before they came in. The cat liked having them out there, too!
Here are the last photos from August!
This cow took us by surprise on her due date. She had bagged up a little, but not much, and sure didn’t look like she was ready to calve, as far as I was concerned, when I looked at her the night before. In the morning, there was evidence that she had calved—but no calf! We searched around the area, and down the cliff which she was at the top of, and couldn’t find anything. Several hours later, Mr. Diligence went back out and searched more. The calf was at the bottom of the cliff, way back in a blackberry patch! He pulled it out, and he and Mr. Sweetie carried it up the steep cliff to reunite it with its mother. That calf is fine, but we know now—this cow doesn’t bag up much, and we can’t go by the way she looks!
During lockdown, Esther and Elijah got the tiny house painted. We were sure thankful we had bought the paint a month before that!
Gayle spent one afternoon helping get the chicks outside. One of our cats is a hunter extraordinaire, and had pulled one chick out of the coop through a crack under the door (I discovered the crime when I went outside and found her eating it on the step of the house). Therefore, we decided we had better electrify the top of the fence around the run, since that cat likes to perch on top of it. Here, Gayle is stringing up the wires.
The tulip magnolia bloomed—so gorgeous! See Little Miss swinging in it?
This is what is left of my winter garden—broccoli, cabbage that didn’t head, and leeks.
Inside the greenhouse. This is a patch of peppers we wintered over; I think two of them have made it through two winters now. Gayle transplanted the aloe plants into that area, as well, and there are two or three Cape Gooseberries.
Because lockdown caught us unprepared (I planned to buy enough potting soil for the year, but couldn’t because we were locked down so fast), I started my tomato seeds in the ground in the greenhouse, and then put them in punnets after I was able to get some potting soil. Here are the tiny baby tomatoes, starting to come up.
Most of the greenhouse is full of lettuce and spinach.
See how wet it is? This is a common sight. Any time it rains, we have surface flooding in the yard.
The garden on a rainy winter day.
The chicks are cosy and warm! This was a month ago, when they still needed heat from the lights.
About the end of August, they were big enough to go out into the run. 
Simon replaced the head gasket on this car. It was Esther’s car, till the head gasket blew, and now he uses it for hunting.
A lockdown Sunday afternoon. We played an entire game of Chicken Foot dominoes—from Double 15 down to Double 0!
Gayle played games with the younger ones.
Esther saw this funny sight one day! They sure do enjoy the sun.
Simon’s birthday presents. We each gave him a bag of salt and vinegar chips, his favorite kind, wrapped in all sorts of wild and wonderful packages. By the third one, he had figured out the joke. The last one included monetary gifts from several of us.
We saw this out the window one morning. Our cows were at the top of the hill as the sun came up.
One Sunday afternoon, our little girls decided to play the piano in the home in which we had church that morning. Gayle grabbed a couple of pictures with his phone.
Our younger children had fun digging holes in the sand down by the river with some other children. This is an area that frequently floods; the sand is deposited during the floods. There are several acres of it!
Tug-of-war another Sunday after church.
The first day of lockdown, Gayle took the younger children down to the creek in the paddock in which we keep our cows, and they tested out a boat they had just built.
They tried going through the culvert with it, but that didn’t work so well!
Little Miss was thrilled to be allowed to paddle the boat by herself!
Mr. Imagination made cookies one day, and made one of them very big! He didn’t eat it all at one go, though.
Birthday girl! Esther made her a cheesecake for her special dessert. She loved it!
She loves sitting in the dishpan! She says she’s taking a bath.
A quiet Sunday afternoon.
Mr. Imagination, who is my nature-loving, scientific sort of child, spent a couple of weeks recently taking photos of all the birds he could see around here. This wood pigeon posed for him on top of the electric pole.
One morning he was very excited to see a baby plover in front of the house! I could hardly believe it, since it was a month earlier than they hatched last year, but he was right!
A couple of thrushes of some sort.
A blackbird on the neighbor’s rooftop.
One of the adult plovers.
The thrush again.
There’s the baby plover again!
And a picture of it with one of the parents. That baby was the star of the show that day! It was a bit difficult to keep attention focused on school books.
Finally, the last few photos from July!
Two little girls reading. Miss Joy is sitting on a bag of little bits of firewood.
I’m not sure what Simon was doing here! It was bedtime.
Our backyard most of the winter. I was glad when the boys dug in and tidied up that pile of wood.
I went out “shopping” one evening and brought all this in. It made two meals.
The blocks got used for a few days, as the younger ones enjoyed building towers.
I was delighted one evening when Simon and Elijah, both in their upper teens, played a game with Little Miss, age 6, for an hour or more.
What is he holding? Spider webs! We read a science lessons about spiders and their webs, so he went around the house collecting silk to see how strong it is.
Some time in July, Miss Joy and her big sister collided on a trampoline, and Miss Joy ended up with a broken leg. It was just a greenstick fracture, so not very serious, but she had her leg in a cast for a little over three weeks. She was walking on it only about nine days after the accident, and getting around pretty much normally, but the first few days were a bit challenging. It’s a good thing she has a naturally sunny disposition! The other hard part was near the end; I think the cast must have been irritating her, because little things that normally wouldn’t bother her at all made her scream. Maybe her leg was itchy, and she couldn’t figure out how to tell us? Anyway, here are some of the things she did during the time she had her cast on.
This first picture was a few days before she broke her leg. I had a bowl of beans on the counter, soaking, and when she needed something to, I gave her a sieve and a bowl and let her scoop beans and water. You’ll see down a little ways why I included this!
The morning after the accident, Miss Joy couldn’t move below the waist at all. The only thing she could do was sit; she couldn’t even figure out how to roll over. She was sitting on the couch with her books, and asked me for a “Bible.” I figured out she wanted a songbook, so I gave it to her and she sang for us. You can hear her in this video clip.
The next day, she figured out how to crawl, and she was off! That evening, Esther gave her a permanent marker and showed her how to draw on her cast. You can see in this video how focused she was.
Right around that time, she caught sight of another bowl of beans I was soaking when I carried her through the kitchen. “Beans!” she exclaimed. She couldn’t stand up, so I put her on the floor with the beans, making sure there wasn’t too much water in them. I didn’t want the plaster cast to get wet! She happily played with the beans for a long time.
One evening, she wanted more beans, but I didn’t have any soaking. Instead, I put rice on a tray and gave it to her. She spent an hour or so playing with that! We had to sweep it up a couple of times, but it was sure worth it.
She spent a lot of time looking at her books.
It didn’t end up being too hard an experience, after all. I sure wouldn’t want this to happen again, but we made it through, and she is as good as new again.
I like to make soap once a year, and make enough for at least a year. It’s a very satisfying thing to do; I can make enough for our family for a year or more and only spend about $15 and a little time.
I start by rendering fat from either sheep or cattle, whichever I can easily source. I put it in a roaster in the oven and bake it at about 150°C for several hours. As the tallow melts out of the fat, I ladle it out of a corner, then put it back in the oven. Eventually, I take a pancake turner and cut through the fat to help melt more of it out. When it’s still very hot, it needs to be in a metal bowl, and then when it cools down a bit I put it in a plastic carton and, after it’s cool, put it in the freezer until I’m ready to use it.
To make the soap, I melt 13 cups of fat in a large pot. 
Then, I measure out 12 ounces of lye (caustic soda) into a dry bowl. 
Put 4 cups of cold water in a large glass dish. I always take it outside for the next step. Carefully pour the lye into the cold water, and stir with a plastic or stainless spoon (not wooden or aluminum) until the lye is dissolved. 
Now, check the temperature of the melted fat and the lye. They need to be within 10-20 degrees Fahrenheit (I can’t remember the exact number, but it isn’t too crucial) of each other. 
Once they are a similar temperature, carefully pour the lye water into the fat and stir. If you use a stick blender or hand mixer for this, you’ll reach the next step more quickly. 
What you watch for now is called “tracing.” Tracing is simply being able to see a dribble of soap on top when you lift your spoon or the blender out and let it fall back in. Basically, as far as I can tell, it means the soap is thickening enough that it takes an instant to disappear inside again, if that makes sense. When you see tracing, it’s time to pour the soap into the molds—and with cow or sheep fat, you have to work fast, since it hardens quickly at this point! I use plastic Tupperware containers for molds. I made a double batch this year, and filled three 9”x13” containers.
Now, keep the soap as warm as possible for a couple of days, so the chemical reaction between the lye and the fat will keep going. I wrap the containers up in blankets and put them close to the fire. 
Two days later, I cut the soap. At this point, it’s still pretty soft. I used a butter knife to cut it into the size blocks we like, and then lifted them out of the containers. If I had left the soap in them for a week or two, the soap would have likely hardened enough that I could pop the whole slab out, and then cut on a cutting board.
I stack the bars of soap in a cardboard box, with newspaper between the layers. This will hopefully keep it drier in our damp house. We keep it in the warmest, driest place we have. We leave it sit to cure for two months to completely finish the saponification process (the chemical reaction). 
This is the way I make soap; there are other methods. Do some research for yourself if you are interested in making soap—you’ll probably come up with a lot of tips I don’t know! If you want to make goat’s milk soap, which I do when I have goat’s milk, use it in place of the water. Just be sure to freeze it first, and then let it thaw just till slushy before adding the lye.