Lots of Helpers

Our family's life in New Zealand

You are here: Home / Archives for Activities at Home

Activities at Home

Cherry Soup

by Leave a Comment

We’ve picked wild sweet cherries twice this year, already, and I thought I’d share one of our family’s favorite ways to eat them:  Cherry Soup.  This is a recipe that my Mom got from a Hungarian cookbook back when I was a girl.  We always enjoyed it growing up, and my family loves it today.  I don’t think I make it exactly like the recipe, and I happen to be holding a sleeping baby right now so I’m not going to go look it up, but here’s how I make it:

Put in pot:
1 quart pitted cherries
1 quart water or fruit juice (I concentrate plum juice and often use that)
3/4 cup sugar (not sure of this one–might want less)
1/2-1 teaspoon cinnamon
Bring to a boil.  Whisk together:
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup flour
Add to boiling mixture, stir till boiling again and thick.
Beat 2 eggs. Stir some of the boiling mixture into the eggs to warm them, then stir them into the pot. Turn off the heat as soon as you think the eggs are cooked enough.
Stir in 2 cups cream or milk.

We enjoy this with crusty bread.  Sometimes this soup will be the main course; other times I make it to go along with something else.  Leftovers are great for breakfast, or dessert at lunch the next day.

The finished soup

Baby loves cherries already

Broccoli

by 2 Comments

When I was in the garden this morning, I noticed (again) that the broccoli needed picked, so assigned a boy to cut it for me.  We got a nice bowl-full of beautiful, worm-free organic broccoli!  Next question–what to do with it?  I can’t eat it raw, and we don’t especially like it cooked.  When Gayle got home from work I asked him if he had an idea; he suggested cooking it with mushroom soup.  I got online, and found this recipe.  Well, I have to work around Gayle’s allergy to cow’s milk, and I don’t keep those ingredients on hand anyway, but it sounded good.  So, I cooked the broccoli. While that was cooking, I put homemade goat feta cheese in the food processor, with some goat yogurt, and a couple of tablespoons of basil pesto from the freezer, and whizzed it.  Then, I made croutons from a flopped batch of sourdough bread by frying cubes in a skillet with fat, seasoned with salt, pepper and paprika.  As soon as the broccoli was cooked, I drained it and in the same pot it had been in, made a white sauce with goat’s milk, flour, salt, pepper and paprika, and added cooked frozen mushrooms and the cheese mixture.  I put the broccoli in a baking dish, poured the sauce mixture over it, and topped it with croutons.  Then, I baked it for half an hour or so.  It turned out quite good!There!  Now, I can look back here when I want to remember how I did this.

Why I Haven’t Been Writing!

by Leave a Comment

I know, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything.  That’s because, when  I’m not doing this–

I’m trying to catch up with all this–

Tomatillos, peppers, basil, eggplant

Tomatoes

And now, the blackcurrants are ripening, too!

Pole beans, salad greens, and strawberries

Pumpkins and carrots

The potato patch!

This is supposed to be beans and cucumbers!

Turnips and onions

Cabbages and carrots

Tomatoes and corn

Another Musical Baby!

by Leave a Comment

Every one of our children has loved singing and music, and it looks as though this baby is no exception!  One of the children found a CD they hadn’t listened to in awhile, yesterday, and put it in the CD player.  It was Eduard Klassen, playing hymns on the Paraguayan folk harp, which is very beautiful music.  Baby loved it–see his reaction below!

Dirt!

by 3 Comments

We finally got the new raised-bed gardens filled with soil today.  We had been trying to decide, for a month and a half or so, what to fill them with.  A local man had topsoil for sale, but it would have cost nearly a thousand dollars to get that.  We thought about using straight compost, since Gayle can get that cheaply from work, but that wouldn’t be good for growing tomatoes.  There is a pile of rubbish and clay pushed up in the “pear orchard” near our house, so we decided to have a friend who has a Bobcat, a digger, and a big dump truck come today to sift through that pile and get what’s good from it, then fill in with compost.  Apparently, the boys told our landlord’s son we were going to do that, and yesterday morning he came to the house and told me that his dad’s cousin, another farmer here in the area, had a pile of topsoil to get rid of–for nothing!  He took Simon over to show him where it was.  Simon came home saying it might be enough to fill half of one of the two beds, but I just knew that if God had given us that soil it would  be enough for the job.  When our friend arrived this morning, he went and got a load.  Immediately, we knew we had plenty of soil!  He ended up bringing three loads, and smoothing it out, and then he and Gayle went over to where Gayle works and got a load of compost.  Once we get the smoothing out finished, it looks as though we’ll have a couple of lovely garden plots!

Baby watched from the window in front of the computer desk–if he climbs on the shelf under the desk he can easily see out.One bed is right out the kitchen window–see how close the digger was to the window!

Baby loved watching!

The boys are sure enjoying this! I made this boy stay inside or on the porch while the machines were moving around. He didn’t like that very well. He made the best of it though, and used Baby’s lookout spot.

Exciting Birthday!

by Leave a Comment

Today is my birthday, and I had a wonderful birthday present–my cow calved this morning!  She was nearly a week late, so we’ve been keeping a close eye on her.  Last night she looked like she was very close, so we moved her into a paddock (we had her beside the road) so the calf wouldn’t end up on the road.  When I went out at 6:30 this morning to check on her, it was apparent that she was in labor, but she also had milk fever and couldn’t get up.  Of course, Gayle was at work, so I called our landlord, who knows a lot about cows, and asked him if he would be able to come over and give her some calcium.  He very kindly came over soon, and instead of giving her the oral calcium that I had, he gave her two bags under her skin.  He tried to hit a vein, but missed both times.  It still works, just not quite as fast.  We continued to watch her closely, and around 9:00 I felt inside to see if the calf was in the right position.  It was, and half an hour later the feet started showing.  Around 10:00 she finally stood up!  The feet and nose disappeared back inside, and she took a break for awhile, eating some grass and hay.  By 11:00, though, the calf was born–a healthy little bull.  The children all got to watch.  They had been hoping for that.  They’ve had quite the education–they witnessed the breeding and now the birth.

And here’s a funny:  This is Chestnut’s third calf, and all three have been born on a Thursday.  We’ve had four different goats kid here, and three have kidded on a Thursday.  What are the odds of that happening?

Just born!

Everyone wants to meet the new baby!

Worn out.

This afternoon, the two oldest boys went to help a local man “tail” lambs.  Of course, lambs are born with long tails, but if you leave the tails on, poo builds up on them and then flies lay eggs…. I’ll spare you the details, but it’s kinder to cut off the tails.  At the same time, they notch the ears for identification, and “ring” the males.  This farm has around 2,000 ewes, so there are 3-4,000 lambs.  The farm is in the hills directly east of Cheviot.  We were able to drive the van to the back of the farm where they were working, since we have 4-wheel drive in it.  We were going up and down some mighty steep hills!  I have been looking at those particular hills, and the farm road we went up, since we moved here, wishing I could go up them!  What a day for my wish to come true–my birthday!  The views from the top were awesome.  Snow-capped peaks in one direction; the sea in the other.

Ever since we moved to Cheviot I’ve wanted to go to the top of this hill. The tailing operation.

On the way back down, we stopped on the hill at the base of the cell tower (we were higher than the tower when we were back where they were tailing!). We live at the edge of the worked ground in the middle of the picture–just beyond Cheviot.

View to the north from the cell tower.  You can vaguely see the Kaikoura mountains here; in reality they were quite clear.

Look how steep this hill is!

See the cows along the top of the ridge across the valley?

The road we drove on to get to the back of the farm, viewed from the other side of Cheviot. That’s the road I’ve been eyeing for nearly three years!

Birthday Party

by Leave a Comment

We had a birthday party last week for the boy who turned nine.  I am not one to plan an elaborate party, so I just invited a few families with boys that my boys like to play with, and they had a fun afternoon together the day after his birthday. The game of choice was apparently Red Rover–I think they played it nearly all afternoon!

They took a break when two boys banged heads.

This boy actually had two parties–we had a friend over the night of his actual birthday, and had pavlova.

Freezer Inventory

by Leave a Comment

We had our heifer butchered today, so in anticipation of a freezer full of meat soon (after it is cut up and packaged) I sorted, organized and inventoried all our freezers.  It was amazing to see how empty they are–they were chock full two months ago!  We go through a lot of food here.

This is the most of what is in the freezers (I left out some little things):

Kitchen frig
cooked beef 5 pints
chopped peppers 3 bags
pineapple 3 small bags
mushrooms, fried 7 small bags
celery 3 small bags

Laundry frig freezer
walnuts 2 big bags
beef mince 11 kg
chicken breast 2 pkg
cut-up chicken 3 pkg
goose 1
leg of lamb 1
duck 1
casserole 1

Laundry chest freezer
peas 6 kg
mixed veges 3 kg
pumpkin 6 quarts, cooked
parsnips 3 quarts, cooked
plums 11 gallons
zucchini 17 4-cup bags
sandwich meat 2 pkgs
sausages 11 pkgs
whole chicken 8
goat chunks 10
duck 1

Shed freezer:
pumpkin 3 quarts
zucchini 10 quarts
cow milk 16 bottles
goat milk 16 bottles

This isn’t quite everything; I left out some of the insignificant little things that always litter a freezer.  What a blessing to have such a stash of food on hand!  And, most of it was home-grown.  The peas and mixed veges and sandwich meat, and the celery, mushrooms, and pineapple, came from the supermarket; the cooked beef, beef mince, and sausages came from where Gayle works; otherwise, it was all grown here or foraged locally (the ducks and geese were gifts from hunters here).

Water Fight!

by Leave a Comment

Spring is here; today is warm!  The big boys are away, working for our landlord (they get to drive tractor!), and the younger boys asked if they could have a water fight.  I am trying to say “yes” more often, when I can, so I told them they could.  They have been having great fun!  Baby is having fun, too; he’s been crawling around the yard going from bucket to bucket and getting himself all wet from the wet grass.  Don’t worry about baby and bucket of water; it’s empty now.

No, this isn’t the water fight, but I thought it was cute. This happened this morning.