Lots of Helpers

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Activities at Home

Birds–In Memory

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Mr. Imagination’s birds mostly stay in their cage and look pretty. We try to let them out to exercise several times a week, but because we have to do it when the cat is locked up it doesn’t happen every day. We are always able to pick up Jo-Jo, the cockatiel, but Kea, the budgie, doesn’t want to be touched. However, she will land on people’s heads now–or on a back, if someone is bent over! She weighs so little that sometimes it’s hard to know if she is still there. Everyone likes it when she lands on them!

A few days after I wrote that paragraph and scheduled this post, we found Kea on the bottom of the cage one day, unable to use on of her legs. We did what we could for her, but a few hours later she died. Jo-Jo is very subdued these days, and we miss our lively, beautiful bird.

Miss Joy

Mr. Sweetie

Mr. Imagination

Little Miss

I didn’t realize till I was putting this post together that I had pictures of all four of the younger children with the birds! Speaking of which, has anyone noticed how different my life is now from when I published my first post, in July 2011? At that time, I had six children and the oldest was 13. Since then, we have had three more babies, one child died, and four of them are now legal adults with jobs! At this stage, I have only four schoolchildren, and the youngest will soon turn five. Thirteen years can make a huge difference in a family.

Meat!

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We did a lot of butchering in June. The first weekend, while more than half the family were in Dunedin, a neighbor gave us a deer. Those of us who were at home got it boned out and minced, and then I made it all into hamburger patties.

A couple of weeks later, Simon killed a deer, and we made that one into mince, and froze it for later use.

We also got some nice pieces of backstrap from it.

The last weekend of the month we killed a beef heifer we raised for almost two years. She was the biggest beast we’ve ever processed ourselves, and when we weighed all the packages of meat while we were putting them in the freezer, we calculated that the hanging weight would have been about 275 kg (over 600 pounds). This was the quarters hanging in the carport, where they stayed for two days before we broke them down.

We made everything possible into roasts and steaks, and turned the trim into sausages.

The kitchen was a very busy, messy place that evening!

A few days later, I cut up the steaks, which we had put in the fridge in big bags, and the children helped to get them wrapped.

After a month, my hand has finally recovered from all that knife work!

Cats

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We continue to enjoy watching our goofy cats, and teasing them. Of course, any new surface must be sat on–this sheet of newspaper was obviously the best place around for taking a bath!

The house the little girls made was a great place to hide out, too–especially when we were trying to catch Princess to put her outside!

One evening, James started teasing Princess, and it was so funny I grabbed my phone to get a video of it.

Mr. Sweetie was amused at Grizzly enjoying the sun on top of our ute one day.

The picture above, of Grizzly from behind, reminds me of Capyboppy in the book by that title–a capybara that was a pet for awhile. This is the picture:

A friend stayed here with our boys for a few days, and the last day he was so worn out that I found this!

Aurora

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Along with almost everyone else in the high latitudes of the world, we were privileged to see the brilliant auroras in May. I didn’t get any decent pictures, but Esther got a few. She edited this first one to make the colors more like what we saw with the naked eye. Amazing! We saw this from our driveway, looking past the neighbor’s house with its lights on.

An hour or two later we drove up the road a little ways to where there were no lights, to see what we could see. The red was gone at that time, but there was a green glow in the sky that was also amazing.

May 2024 Photos–Part 2

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Here are the rest of the pictures I have from May. This first one is sad. She was playing on the trampoline after church one Sunday and fell off onto concrete. She gave herself a black eye and a concussion. After we got home and she had rested for an hour or two she wanted to know what she looked like, so I took this picture. She looked a lot worse the next day, though, as her eye got blacker, and then over the next few days it turned green and yellow. Within a week, though, the color was gone; within a day she had no visible effects from the concussion.

I’m not sure what this was all about. I do know they were being goofy! This is Mr. Imagination and Mr. Sweetie.

Someone got the idea that we should photograph all the tourists who stop to photograph our calf! We can’t now, though, because a fence has just been built along the road and we can’t see across there anymore.

I was working at my desk one evening and Little Miss brought me her rock creation, so I quickly snapped a picture of it.

Little Miss created this bouquet one morning, and then took a picture of it and asked me to print it. She then made it into a card for an elderly couple we were going to visit that afternoon at a rest home in town.

This is more of Little Miss’s artwork! She took this picture, too.

The Conking Donkey

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Mr. Imagination was assigned to write and perform a puppet show as part of his Language Arts program. He chose to adapt one of Aesop’s Fables from a book we have, and got his older brother to help perform it. This video was taken during a practice run, and then they performed it for our homeschool group the next day. The first few seconds are blurry, and then the camera got focused, so hold on till you can see what is happening.

This is the story he was inspired by:

May 2024 Photos Part 1

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It looks like we took a lot of random pictures during May that don’t share themes, so I’ll just do a couple of posts of those. One of the fads during that month was building Lego 4WD vehicles with a lot of flex. The creator of this one took this picture to show the flex.

When I work in the garden, there is often a fantail hanging around. One day I was able to capture this picture of it. Such cheerful little birds! They remind me of the chickadees we had in Michigan.

I took this picture one evening to show two of the older boys who weren’t home what they were missing: Homegrown roasted chicken, roasted potatoes and pumpkin from our garden, and coleslaw (also from our garden). It was delicious! One of the boys showed up in time to get some, but the other didn’t.

Mr. Sweetie discovered this when he went out to do his morning chores on a very cold morning.

This dress got ripped, so I got creative with a patch. I did talk the dress’s owner into using fabric that coordinated with the dress–she wanted to use some really wild fabric she found in my stash! I let her have that bit on the back to provide support there.

Three years ago, we let this little girl play with beans that were soaking–and she still occasionally asks to when she sees them on the counter!

This was the entertainment the evening we spent with friends in early May. He got a few levels higher before his tower collapsed!

Kea, the yellow and green budgie, does not like to be handled–but if Jo-Jo the cockatiel is on someone’s shoulder, she often lands beside him for a few minutes. Miss Joy loves when that happens!

Leaf Fun

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When the leaves fell off the peach trees in May, the three youngest had great fun raking them up and playing in them. I remember loving maple trees when I was young, because of the wonderful leaf piles! This isn’t as good, but as close as our children are likely to get to that. While they were playing with the leaves, they got the idea of making a movie about it. I’m not sure what the plot was supposed to be, if any, but I put together the clips they got. You might want to turn it off when it starts getting crazy–when all three are tumbling together in the pile.

April 2024 Photos

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Here are the rest of April’s photos! A few days after Easter, our new cow, Maple, finally calved–three weeks after we thought she would, based on what the previous owner told us. I had started to wonder if something was wrong! No, just a late calf. Elijah took this picture when he went down to take care of the chickens and discovered a new calf, which another boy had overlooked when he went down an hour or so earlier. The calf is a bull, a Jersey/Dexter cross. These first two pictures are from the first evening; the third picture was a week or two later, after we started bottle-feeding him and he decided that people were all right. His name is Clifford, as in Clifford the Big Red…Calf!

Remember how much fun we had earlier this year hatching chicks? Well, we ended up with a lot of them. The roosters from the first two batches have moved into the freezer by now, and we sold the pullets. These are some of the pictures we took to advertise them.

We went to Reefton for church one Sunday, and before coming home, drove around to check out the project that has been ongoing for several years: rebuilding the hydroelectric plant. Reefton was the first town in the Southern Hemisphere to be lit with electric lights, but the electric plant fell into disrepair a long time ago. They got a grant recently to rebuild it as a museum. This is the water race, looking toward the building that will house the turbine.

What happens when a four-year-old hurts her foot? She gets to sit on the couch with her blankie, a big stack of books, and the recordings that Grandma made of those books! She spent a couple of hours listening to those stories after cutting her foot badly.

I don’t normally take my phone with me when I go down to milk the cows in the morning, but one day I did. On the way up the hill, I looked up the valley to the east, and saw this breathtaking sight.

Here were our record-breaking vegetables in April–a potato and a tomato. The weights are in grams.

I was surprised one day when the children showed up with a pukeko chick. I had them take it right back down the hill and try to give it back to the parents–hope it survived!

March 2024 Photos

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And here are the rest of our photos from March! First, some pictures of the animals. I bought a new cow; she is behind Little Miss’s head in this first picture. She gives the type of milk we need, and was due to calve soon, so we needed to sell a couple of our other cows who don’t have the genetics we want. I took this picture to upload in an advertisement for Poppy, our old faithful cow. The girls were delighted to pat her while I was taking pictures–but there were a lot of tears the day we loaded her into a truck to go to her new home. We also sold her daughter Rosie, the one at the far left of this picture. Both have good homes, which I’m happy for.

These are the pullets from the first lot we hatched. We sold a few, but we need to sell the rest.

These are the turkeys. They are quite curious about everything! I took this picture the day Poppy went to her new home, while I was waiting for the truck to arrive.

And these are the house pets!

The garden has been outdoing itself this year, with bumper crops of almost everything. I’ve sent several boxfuls of zucchini we weren’t getting used down to the the cows. Here, the little children are cutting them up, having fun carving before the squash got eaten.

Mr. Imagination found this rutabaga in the garden. He wanted to know what it tasted like, so I cooked part of it. We didn’t like it, though (probably too old), so the cows got that, too. It didn’t go to waste!

This was one day’s harvest of tomatoes and beetroot. Since, we’ve had much larger harvests of tomatoes. We’re getting a bit tired of dealing with them.

Mr. Imagination turned 12 in March. He requested kebabs for his birthday meal, so the children had great fun assembling them, and then he got to help grill them.

Miss Joy wanted me to take a picture of her tower.

We saw this across the road one day. It’s apparently a hotel on wheels!

These four pictures were taken by Mr. Sweetie. He was intrigued by the artistry created by a foggy morning and steamy windows.

We went to Timaru for Easter Conference as usual. On Sunday afternoon I supervised our four youngest, and several children from another family, for an hour or so at a park across the street from the hall. This was a game of tag in which they couldn’t touch the ground. If they did, they were automatically it!

I got cold after awhile, so I suggested that the girls use the colored pencils an older lady had just given Miss Joy, and draw pictures. They spent the next half hour or hour, until the next meeting, drawing, while the older young people sang next to them.