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Activities at Home

Milking Time!

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We decided to set up our milking machine down in the paddock where the cows live, at least for now. We’re only milking one cow at the moment, and she walks so slowly that it’s hardly worthwhile to bring her up here to milk with the machine–but my arms can’t hold up to handmilking. So, right now, I’m walking down there twice a day. It’s a lovely walk most of the time (except when it rains). I took my camera along yesterday morning when I went down at 7:00 for the morning milking.

This cherry tree is in bloom along the roadside. I have been thoroughly enjoying the beautiful flowers and the fragrant aroma!

This is the view from the gate into the paddock. I love seeing the range of mountains to the west of us–the Paparoa Range.

There’s Poppy, waiting for me. Behind her are the young stock. The one in the middle is Bluebell, who will have her first calf in the next few weeks, and the two yearling steers are on either side of her. Bluebell is Poppy’s daughter. Notice the nice roof James built for the hay, to keep it from spoiling so fast?

We moved the old milking shed up from the low spot where we had first placed it, to this place on the stopbank, where it never gets mucky. James built a shed up against it to house the milking machine.

Meanwhile, the calves wait for their bottles. The brown one is Rosie, Poppy’s latest calf, and the other is a beefy that Simon brought home from the farm he works on. They are best friends, and Rosie gives the bull calf a good scrubbing with her tongue every day.

Explanation

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In case you are wondering why so many posts are coming through this week that look familiar… there is a reason. And a good one.

Last week, the day after I posted the second of the two reviews I had due for the week, my blog went down. So did Esther’s website and blog. After a couple of days, we learned that the problem was with our hosting service. A hacker had gotten in to their website and completely wiped all 12 of their servers. They immediately started restoring websites from their backup, but it took until today to get our blog back up. Most of it came back; I need to redo two months’ worth of posts. That means that you will be getting more emails than normal. I apologize for that; just delete them.

We will be switching to another hosting service as soon as possible. However, Esther can’t get into the back end of the back end of all three websites. Her username and password didn’t transfer over. She is trying hard to get that back, but we don’t know when we’ll be able to get that. Until then, we can still post as normal, but we can’t move to a different host that is (hopefully) more reliable–this one has had problems in the last few months–and we can’t back up the blogs. Esther is wishing she had been able to back them up, but until a couple of months ago, we didn’t have enough data to be able to do it, and then she didn’t think about it when we changed internet providers. Lesson learned–we’ll be backing up frequently after this! It’s not a nice feeling to wonder whether the blog is gone for good.

Ancient Egypt

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A little over a year ago, we started working through a Project Passport study from Home School in the Woods, about Ancient Egypt. We worked on it off and on until about April, when we finally finished it (we were alternating one of these stops with a science lesson, a geography lesson, and a few writing lessons–one “extra” a day). I’ve been intending ever since we finished to share some photos of the final products, and finally got them taken today.

This was one of our biggest projects. We all worked together to build this temple. It was quite interesting to see the different parts of it!

Each of the children made their own model of the step pyramid, and wrote a paragraph about it. Interestingly, there is a theory that Imhotep was actually Joseph! (This was Little Miss’s model.)

After we finished the study, we assembled lap books with all the mini books we had been making through the entire study. These lap books are made from a file folder with card stock taped inside to make more pages. Can you guess whose this book is? Clue: the boys don’t like the color pink!

These are the mini books we put inside–aren’t they creative! I love using the things that Home School in the Woods comes up with.

We also wrote a newspaper. We added a couple of articles or pictures to it with each lesson. This was a good way to review what we had learned.

We also did other projects that didn’t go into the lap book. We stored these in 2- or 3-ring binders.

We didn’t end up doing most of these projects. We just cut out the cards and put them in our books. One was to make a reed boat; someone did get around to doing that, but I forgot to get a picture of it.

We added to a timeline all the way through the study, too. It was quite easy to see where to put the figures, and quite interesting to look at how historical events fit together.

We added a postcard to our rack for each lesson. Some had funny stories–the most memorable was the one about the pharoah being annoyed by the hippos roaring hundreds of miles away!

We also added places to our map as we went. We put glue on the Nile River, and added black pepper to represent the silt that overflowed from the Nile each year during the Inundation.

We thoroughly enjoyed doing this project, so much so that, even though we didn’t get a project from Home School in the Woods for review this year (instead, we got the timeline set I reviewed a few weeks ago), the school children wanted to do something and I bought a lap book set about the Wonders of the World. We’re enjoying working through that, and I’ll post pictures when we finish it.

July 2022 Photos

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For some reason, I often end up with only a few photos in July. It’s the middle of winter, so maybe there just isn’t that much that’s inspiring to take pictures of? Here are the few I found in my picture folder.

This is Mr. Sweetie, with Mr. Imagination’s cockatiel, Jo-Jo, on his shoulder. Jo-Jo prefers to sit on the organizers on top of my desk, or on a high cupboard, and watch what happens in the house, but sometimes Mr. Sweetie can coax him onto his shoulder like this.

Mr. Sweetie borrowed a book from a friend. He read it, and then Mr. Imagination picked it up and read the whole book. When they were going to return it, Little Miss found it in the van, and she read the whole book, too! If you know anything about the struggles I had teaching a couple of our older boys to read, you’ll know how much this picture means to me.

One day, the girls were playing on our street with the go-cart. First, Little Miss pushed Miss Joy around–and then they reversed! I tried to get a picture when I could see both their faces, but wasn’t fast enough.

Last Sunday after we came home from church, Miss Joy laid down on the floor and went to sleep. It was late enough that we had decided not to have her go down for a nap, but she obviously needed one!

This was about a month ago. She was so tickled to be able to “read” me this book! She had done a better job a day or two before, “reading” it to me, and wasn’t real thrilled about reading it again, but I coaxed her to and she obliged. I held the iPad above her head to get this clip, so she wouldn’t know what I was doing.

Flooding!

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We had quite a storm yesterday. In less than 24 hours, we got at least 4, possibly as much as 6, inches of rain. Late in the afternoon, as the rain started slacking off, the boys discovered that the creeks were overflowing into the paddock our cows, chickens and turkeys live in. The cows were locked onto higher ground in one corner, and the chickens are on high enough ground to be safe; the turkeys free-range, and they were all fine. Mr. Imagination came running home as soon as they saw the water, to get his camera, and when Elijah went down, he took some pictures with his camera. Several locals said they had never seen the water this high. Part of the problem was that gravel had washed under the bridge, backing up the water into the paddock on the other side of the highway from us. There were also several log jams downstream, which also backed up the water.

The water in this picture is usually several meters away from where the cows are standing. This is a small creek that comes from a culvert that goes under the highway just to the right of the picture. It’s usually a wide, flowing pool of beautiful, clear, shallow water.

The cows are on the high ground at the right of this picture. Normally, there is no water flowing across there! You can see, about in the middle of the picture, where our little creek flows into Orwell Creek. There was a log jam across the mouth of our little creek, which diverted some of the water from Orwell Creek and directed it into our paddock, as well as the little creek having a lot of water of its own. The other two times we’ve seen that overflow, both within the last year, all the water has gone into a drainage ditch that starts just there, near the left side of this picture.

To the right is the normal channel of the creek. The drainage ditch is just left of the middle of this picture. This time, the water went right across the paddock to the left!

Look at all that water! The drainage ditch to the far right normally flows with a couple of inches of water at the bottom of a 2-meter ditch. The other drainage ditch, on the left, is normally just a swampy strip of water that might flow a little but not much. It got a good clean-out this time, though!

The turkeys are unimpressed with the weather. See what looks like a small lake in the distance? Some of our neighbors have fences set up there and have been grazing three ponies there this winter. We were glad to see they got the ponies out and up here to their house before that area was flooded too badly.

This is just across the highway from the gate to “our” paddock. Because of the gravel built up under the bridge, Orwell Creek was backed up into the paddock and around the neighbor’s house.

The boys were pretty impressed with this whirlpool. It goes down into the culvert that goes through into our paddock. They said the mouth of the culvert was about a meter, maybe three feet, below the surface of the water.

After checking out our paddock, the boys went around the block to where Orwell Creek crosses a road at the bottom of the hill on which Ahaura is built. The railroad parallels the road at this point, and this is what they saw at the two bridges:

Two hours later, this is what they saw:

By this time, the water was over the road bridge, and level with the train bridge–and a spot downstream just a little ways was washing out. There is normally no gap under the track here, but the water that went over the road washed it out pretty badly. Simon called Kiwirail to report the washout, and they sent a crew out this morning to fix it. We went past on our way home from church this afternoon and the track was safe again!

Several of the boys took video clips of what they saw, so I’ve put them together here. The power of moving water is amazing! There’s a little bit of fun here, too, at the end; Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination rode their bikes at top speed past James, through puddles.

May 2022 Photos, Part 2

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Here are the rest of our photos from May!

Esther made peanut butter one evening, from 5 kg of peanuts, and forgot to put salt in one lot of it. She put it all in a big bowl to stir the salt in, and was pretty amazed at how that much peanut butter looks. We normally put it in 2-litre buckets as we make each batch in the food processor, so we don’t see it like this.

We had a hailstorm one afternoon. The younger children were thrilled and ran outside to play in the ice that was coming out of the sky.

They scraped up some hail from the trailer bed and brought it in to show me!

James and Princess, enjoying the warmth from the fire. That’s one spoiled cat.

We killed a beef the end of the month, and Esther and I spent three days cutting it up. Lots of meat! This was everything from the two hindquarters, which we mostly made into roasts and steaks. We saved all the bones to make into broth, and all the fat, to render into tallow. We enjoy doing the work ourselves and being able to use everything.

Little sister, delighted to be joining her big brothers for breakfast; they usually leave before she gets up in the morning.

Miss Joy helped her daddy mow lawn one afternoon!

Late April/May 2022 Photos

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Whew! Finally I found a chance to sit down and work on this blog. Between visitors on the day I normally blog (two weeks in a row), a three-day migraine, internet issues, driving lessons for James (worthwhile: he passed his test!), and butchering a cow, it’s been an intense couple of weeks. And, the wonderful busyness continues, since we have more company coming this weekend. We are blessed! For the moment, though, I have a bit of peace. The younger children are finishing their schoolwork for the week by doing a small craft project, and then they’ll finish cleaning the house. I need to make a big pot of chili for tonight, when we’ll be feeding 4-5 extra young men plus a man from our church, and start on food for the weekend, and cut up the steaks from the cow, but that can all wait till after lunch. So, what did we do the end of April and in May?

Gayle took this photo on his phone from the top of the hill across the road, where we often graze animals. I like that he has the ability to take pictures, as that way special times like this are captured!

Gayle’s health is much better than it has been for many years, and he has a lot more energy, which means he can do things like take Little Miss for a walk after work. One afternoon they walked down to the river, and he took this picture under the train bridge.

The younger boys took two of their boats down to the paddock in which we keep our cows, and they love to play in the little creek that flows through one corner. Miss Joy loved a ride with Mr. Sweetie! This is a kayak that a neighbor gave the boys. They patched up a hole in it, and it works!

This is a boat that Mr. Imagination and Mr. Sweetie made. It works pretty well.

Gayle liked these toadstools, and of course the little beauty in front of them.

Elijah snapped this picture one evening when he was taking care of the chickens on top of the hill across the road, at sunset. Living between two mountain ranges means shorter days in winter, but we sure have some gorgeous scenery!

This was one of our huge pumpkins. It weighed over 9 kg (20 pounds), and had very thick, sweet flesh. If anyone wants seeds, just ask!

Some friends came for food and fellowship one Sunday evening, on the spur of the moment. After we ate, we enjoyed a lively game of dice. No gambling–just a lot of fun!

Jo-Jo is getting much better at flying. He isn’t loose often enough to be really good yet, so one day he found himself in this predicament when he landed on a blind and had to use every tail feather to keep himself balanced. As soon as she took the picture, Esther took pity on him and helped him down; he couldn’t figure out how to get off the blind by himself.

April 2022 Photos

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Here we are in May already! The months fly by very fast. This first picture is Miss Joy driving her car. We use that crate to take Bibles to church–it keeps them off the floor of the van! She loaded herself into it when it was empty, along with a bear and several books, and pretended to drive. See her hands on the “wheel?”

It is time to finish the salve we started in early March. We had started three jars, and I got one finished just before Easter. Until meeting up with a friend in Timaru at Easter Conference, I didn’t have enough beeswax to finish, so now I need to do the other two jars. The first step is to strain the herbs out of the olive oil. Then, I weighed the oil, and for every ounce of oil, I added a Tablespoon of beeswax bits and the oil from one Vitamin E capsule. Then, I heat it all just enough to melt the wax, and pour it into small jars. The younger children (and a few of the older ones) love to eat the empty Vitamin E capsules! I opened about 50 that day, with such a big batch of oil, and they were all gone before the boys got home from work.

Also, a few days before Easter, Mr. Imagination brought up three baby turkeys! Because a hawk has been destroying all the turkey nests, these are the only ones we got this year. We kept them in the house for about two weeks; while we were gone a neighbor came in a few times a day to check on them. Now, we’ve gotten them acclimated to being outside in a small cage that we move around on our lawn. They got a lot of love the first week!

The day we drove over the mountains to Timaru was a gorgeous morning! It’s impossible to capture all we see with a camera, but here’s a tiny glimpse.

We harvested most of our pumpkins a couple of weeks ago. This is about 100 of them! On the far left you can see our biggest, a Hubbard. One end was rotting, so I cooked it immediately. It took a lot of work to get inside it. I had to use a cleaver and bang that with a piece of wood to finally crack the hard shell open. After I cleaned out the rotten bits and the seeds, I tried to weigh it. Both halves overloaded my 5 kg scale! I’m guessing it may have been about 13 kg, or 26-28 pounds. It was delicious, too! Very sweet. One of the gray ones was also almost that weight. It didn’t look quite so big, but had a smaller seed cavity. It was also very sweet. If any of my friends here in New Zealand want seeds, I saved all of them. The long brown one to the right is actually a zucchini. I hand pollinated it so the seeds would be what I wanted, and then watched it swell through the summer. It took only about three weeks to reach that size! I haven’t opened it up yet, because I’m making sure the seeds are totally mature. Anyone who wants zucchini seeds can have a few of them, too! I hope they are viable, anyway!

This is Elijah with his favorite toddler.

One morning right after we got off Daylight Savings, the girls were both up early enough to “help” take the cows back down to pasture.

At one point we had too many zucchinis, so I told the younger ones to cut them up. We cooked them a bit and fed them to the cows. The children had fun, and the cows had a feast!

Miss Joy loves to cut paper. She was delighted when Esther gave her an old phone book to cut.

The little girls set themselves up on Esther and Miss Joy’s bed one evening, with lots of pillows, soft toys, and books. They had great fun reading.

Fresh Salsa

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This post, like the last one, has to do with food. However, this food is much less controversial!

This time of year, our garden is overrun with tomatillos. These unique fruits look like small, green tomatoes, and grow in papery husks. They readily self-seed all over the garden, wherever they drop and don’t get picked up. In Michigan, I had a lot of trouble with worms getting inside them and ruining them, but that doesn’t happen here. I really like food that grows itself without my input! This spring, I wanted them in a particular area, so I dug up seedlings where they grew by themselves, potted them, and when they had roots established, planted them in the section designated for them. Then, I thinned the ones that were growing in other parts of the garden, so there would be only one in a space instead of two dozen. Now, I harvest them while I harvest zucchini or cucumbers or green beans. They often fall off the plant when they are ripe; I also harvest them green sometimes when they are big enough to burst their husk.

The problem is, what to do with all this bounty? We put them in the salsa we make to can every year, using about half tomatillos and half tomatoes. We were done with that a month ago, however, and now the main crop of tomatillos is ready! I made salsa verde last year, but most of it is still on the shelf. Our favorite way to use them is by making fresh salsa. I made a batch a couple of days ago and took a picture to show you this deliciousness.

I have no idea how much of most ingredients I used. That’s a two-quart bowl, and I filled it over half full with chopped tomatillos. Then, I added three or four chopped tomatoes. The proportions really don’t matter; we’re short on tomatoes now, so I used extra tomatillos. I don’t have a lot of bell peppers, either, so I used one, I think, but you can use two or three. I also put in half an onion (red is best, but I don’t have them this year), and about four minced cloves of garlic. Also, add maybe half a teaspoon of salt, several shakes of pepper, and a quarter cup or so of cider vinegar. The tricky part is the amount of chili. My chili peppers didn’t do well this year, but my neighbor, who moved away and let me take over her garden, has two plants that are loaded. One of them is consistently very very spicy, and the other is sometimes spicy and sometimes mild! I put in one finely diced chili from that second plant, then gingerly tasted the result. It wasn’t very spicy, so I added another. Wow! That took the heat level way up. So, use your own judgment as far as the amount of chilis or jalapenos you use. Dig in with corn chips and enjoy.

Finally!

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Warning: If you have problems with hunting or eating meat, stop right here! There are details you may not want to read or see.

When Simon was about seven, and James was about three (maybe eight and four–I’m not sure), the two of them and a cousin who was in between their ages, who lived on our property, disappeared one afternoon in November. This was in Michigan, and in Michigan, the last two weeks of November are Deer Season. (Maybe that should be in all-caps; it is that important to a lot of people, and the first day is nearly a state holiday!) People who are not hunting stay out of the woods and near buildings during that time, lest there might be stray shots. It can be dangerous to be walking around in the woods or fields during that time. Anyway, these three children disappeared. When someone realized they were missing, both families started searching. By the time we had been looking for 45 minutes, my sister-in-law was about ready to call the police–and then they showed up. They had been out hunting deer behind the woods at the back corner of our 40 acres, over a quarter of a mile from the houses! They were armed with a baseball bat and a stick, and Simon apparently fully expected to bring down a deer. They were totally unafraid, with no idea of the danger that the adults knew about!

Ever since that time, Simon has dreamed of killing a deer. He would love to live off the land, with a hunter-gatherer type of lifestyle. He has gone on hunts with friends half a dozen times since we moved over here, and never saw a deer when anyone in the group had a gun that could bring one down. This week, he went hunting twice with a friend who moved to the area a few months ago and who, importantly, possesses a gun license and a deer rifle. They went out in the middle of the afternoon the second time and searched for likely places to see a deer. After several hours, an hour or so after dark, they gave up and started out, and finally got a possum for their pains. Then they continued on down the road–and saw a deer in the middle of the road! It took a couple of minutes for Simon’s friend to get his gun loaded again, and Simon kept the spotlight on the deer. The first shot only wounded it (they hadn’t realized the gun wasn’t sighted in properly), so Simon took off up the river, following it. He soon caught up and delivered the killing shot. Then, he got to pack it out of there to the car (probably a good thing he had so much adrenalin in his system–it was heavy!) Finally, his dream of bagging a deer came true.

Mr. Imagination was along, since I had gone to town that day, leaving him with Simon, and no one was home to keep track of him. He was over the moon to be a part of this experience.

I love the grin on Simon’s face! The second picture is the Daihatsu–the gutless car that is often scoffed at, but which can go almost anywhere.

Simon brought the deer home and hung it in our carport. The next evening, Little Miss helped him skin it, and then he and Gayle brought it into the kitchen where we boned it out. The friend he went with, and his wife, stopped in while we were working, and he was excited to see that part of the process. The next day, they came back, after we had minced all the meat, and helped turn some into sausage and package it all. We got 34 kg of mince and 5 kg of backstrap from that deer! (That’s about 86 pounds.) It was a young stag, so quite tender and tasty. We had venison sausage patties with breakfast, venison hamburger patties for lunch, and backstrap for dinner. The boys were delighted to get to eat all that meat! Now, Simon wants to go hunting even more.


Half of the bones are cooking in a big pot right now, to make bone broth, and the other half are in the freezer waiting. There was very little waste from this animal, something that makes me feel good about them killing it.