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Away From Home

After the Storm

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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!

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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!

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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

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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.

 

Winter Harvest, and random pictures

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One thing I really enjoy about our climate here is being able to grow things year-round.  Right now, it is the equivalent of early December in the Northern Hemisphere.  I harvested our salad and some vegetables for soup today, and spent some time weeding.  After spending six hours teaching the children, weeding is a great way to relax and reset.

Today’s harvest–lettuce, radishes, green onions, parsley, and celery.

He was waiting for me to fill containers with weeds, so he could dump them into a larger container for me.

There was snow on the hills around us early last week.  We went to Dead Boring that day, and enjoyed the beautiful snowfall on the way there.

The Hurunui River, looking towards the sea.

Farmed deer near Greta Valley.

Coming over the Omihi Saddle into the Waipara Valley. You can see the Southern Alps in the distance.

A hill to the west of us.

And, some pictures of the children. Elijah was doing school, and baby wanted to do the same.

Jealousy–I was holding Mr. Sweetie, and baby had to get in between!

Tired baby–he fell asleep being pushed in a stroller outside, and couldn’t wake up for supper.

One of baby’s many funny poses!

Baby thinking about the hat someone put on him!

James dumping a container of weeds.

Our Week

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This has been a pretty normal week–lots of school and other real life, too.

Baby wants more kombucha!

Baby loves his daddy! These Usborne puzzle books have been very popular this week.

Part of school every day–the most popular part–is practicing math facts with a game on the computer. I forgot to include these two pictures last week! Our hedge was trimmed.

The children have been bringing in heaps of these field mushrooms. They are delicious!

The hills to the north-west of us.

We see a lot of these cows in the paddock next to the house.

Baby fell against the wood stove Sunday night. Ouch!

After trying in vain to get into this laundry basket, and squealing in frustration, he picked it up and brought it to me. I put him in–and he was delighted!We enjoyed the sight of snow blowing off the tops of the mountains north of Kaikoura as we drove to church this morning. Finally, here are some of the pictures Esther took when we stopped at the beach on the way home this afternoon.  One boy was moving so fast all the pictures of him turned out blurry!

This Month

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I am not getting anything put on here, so I’ll share what Esther wrote about the past three weeks.  She has lots of pictures to share, and this will bring you up-to-date!  Maybe in a month or two I’ll have more time to write!

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Dear Friends,

We’ve been very busy lately, but I thought you all would probably appreciate a quick update! ☺ So here goes…

Grandpa’s (Dad’s parents) arrived on Saturday, the 23rd of February. They brought along with them my cousin, David (David’s father is Dad’s brother). I had found out ahead of time (like at least three weeks before) that he was coming, and in the last week Seth and Simon (the next two children after me) had found out he was coming, but all the younger ones were totally in the dark—they had NO idea that David was coming! So it was a really nice surprise for all of them.

On Sunday, we all went to church together, then in the afternoon went up to a church friend’s farm. He owns about a thousand acres of very hilly land (they’re the foothills to the K——- mountains; the farm is so rugged that he hasn’t even set foot on some of the land!), where he raises sheep and cattle. He gave us a demonstration of sheep dogs working sheep, and also sheared a sheep so we could see how that process works. It was all very interesting! I’ve seen sheep dogs working sheep before, but only two (out of our 12-person group!) of us had ever seen a sheep sheared before. So that was a very special afternoon…

To read the rest, go here and enjoy her pictures!

Sheep Shearing

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We’ve just enjoyed a three-week visit with my in-laws and a nephew from America.  I’ll try to share some of the highlights of our activities while they were here.

Their first Sunday, we took them to the aquarium in Kaikoura, then up to the overlook on the water tank on top of the Peninsula.  After that, we all went up the Blue Duck Valley to visit friends there.  The highlight was when we were given a demonstration of sheep dogs working, and sheep shearing.  Of our group, only our nephew and I had ever seen a sheep sheared.

Sorting sheep in the the wool shed.

Our friend with his dogs.

The view from the top of the water tank–Kaikoura on the right.

Napenape

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Today was Christmas Day.  We didn’t have anyone to spend the day with, so we decided to go to a beach we hadn’t been to before.  Napenape (pronounced nappy-nap) is just south of the Hurunui River.  It is a beautiful beach!  It always amazes us how different each beach is from all others.  We thoroughly enjoyed spending time there and relaxing this afternoon.

Looking down the hill, across the Hurunui River towards Cheviot (on the other side of the hills)

Hills on the way to the sea

The beach road at Napenape

Napenape beach

We had a picnic for lunch

The boys found this baby shag

On the way to the end of the beach, the boys climbed this little hill. The day was quite misty at first.

This cliff marked the end of the beach we could walk today! The tide was near high.

Baby loved the rocky beach!

About to grab the camera (and taste it!)

Gayle and some of the boys climbed the cliff

We played tic-tac-toe

The mist cleared shortly before we left

On the way out, we stopped so the boys could investigate a spring

They said the spring water tasted good.

 

Fossils and Port Robinson

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Last night, we took a picnic supper to Gore Bay.  It was a warm, breezy evening, unusual for this time of year.  Last week, when I took the children there for lunch one day, we had found a couple of rocks with fossilized bones sticking out of the top, and wanted to go back to take pictures of them.  They are in a place you can only go at low tide,  which is why we had to wait till evening yesterday.  We got there about two hours before low tide.

The boys took off down the trail to the beach as soon as they were done eating, taking a cloth shopping bag with them to hold all the mussels they were planning to collect!  The rest of us followed a little more leisurely.  We were able to find the fossils we had seen the last time without too much trouble–and then found more and more and more!
A lovely paua shell.Baby appreciates rocks, too–salty ones, especially!
Finally we made our way to the south end of Gore Bay, where the boys were diligently hunting.  After walking around a little on the rocks there, we decided to go around into Port Robinson.  This was the only access to the Cheviot area in the early days, 100-130 years ago.  Apparently, they would unload the ships and send the goods up some sort of track to the top of the cliffs.  They say there is no trace of the port left at sea level.

Port Robinson

I’m not sure what this tunnel was all about, but it opens out of the cliff just above the high tide line.  As you can imagine, the boys were pretty excited when their Daddy found it–that is the sort of thing you generally only find in mystery stories!

The tunnel that Daddy discovered in the cliff.


The boys, of course, had to practice their mountain-climbing skills, in addition to gathering a shopping-bag nearly full of mussels (now I have to figure out how to cook them!).On our way back to the van, we stopped for a few minutes to chat with some tourists from Australia, and then got caught in the rain when it started suddenly.  No one minded getting a little wet, though.  Everyone agreed that this was a perfect way to spend an evening.

The largest chiton I have ever seen! They are normally 1/2-1 1/2 inches long; this one was 4-5.

Sea squirt