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Ahaura

More New Shelves!

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We love books around here. We are addicted to buying books. That creates a problem. We keep running out of shelf space! The good part about that is that we have a person in the house who likes to build things out of wood, so I asked Elijah to build us more shelving in the library. The library is a very wide hallway in the center of the house, and we now have floor-to-ceiling shelves all around it. Elijah took advantage of a weekend when most of us went away for two nights to do the construction. He had been away a lot just before that, so didn’t want to be gone again, and Esther wanted to stay home, so they took care of the cows and the house, and built.

Esther helped take the books off the shelves as soon as they finished the morning work, and then he got busy. She sent us several pictures throughout the day to keep us updated.

After we got home, we put the books back on the shelves, and since then I’ve done a little tweaking to organize them better. Now, Esther and two of the boys just arrived home from a month in America, and brought a lot more books in their suitcases. We’re soon going to run out of space again!

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.

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!

Ahaura River/Lake Ahaura

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One Sunday afternoon in April, our boys organized a kayak trip with friends from church down the Ahaura River. I got roped into driving the vehicle back after they unloaded the boats, which meant that I got to enjoy a scenic part of the river that I don’t normally get to see.

Another Sunday afternoon, they decided to go on a four wheel drive trip. They ended up at Lake Ahaura, up near the farm on which Simon lives. Elijah shared these pictures with me; the one of the mushroom was taken especially to share with his grandma. There were actually at least a dozen people on each of these trips, but because a lot of them are not our family, I didn’t want to post their pictures.

Garden–November

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We got most of the garden planted in November. We also got a water tank to collect rainwater from the garage roof to use in dry times! It is enormous; we estimate it holds about 15,000 liters (that’s in the neighborhood of 3,000 gallons). It took a couple of tries to get a HIAB truck (crane) to get the job done, and even then we were holding our breath to see if the truck would get back out of the garden after setting the tank down! It worked–praise God–and now we’re hoping for enough rain to fill the tank.

Our pitcher plant is blooming this year. Such an interesting plant!

We got a truckload of 10 cubic meters of compost delivered, and spread it through the garden. The children did part of the job, and Gayle finished it.

Remember my story about the tomatoes that didn’t grow? A friend in Canterbury mailed me her extra seedlings, and I potted them. A month later, they were looking like this, and now they are growing fast in the ground!

These are the ones I started in early October. This is seven weeks after seeding them. They grew fast!

After setting out the tomatoes we spread newspapers on the ground in between them, and then rotten silage that a local farmer gave us. We’re hoping for few weeds! This thick mulch is certainly keeping the soil moist. Other places have gotten rather dry already, but it’s very wet under those layers of paper and hay.

More Children’s Fun

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Our children are always coming up with new and creative ways to have fun together. One Sunday afternoon on our way home from church we stopped and let the girls pick a few daffodils beside the road. Then, Esther took a selfie with her little sisters and their flowers.

Mr. Imagination built this contraption for Miss Joy. It’s supposed to be a tractor; it’s more like a go-kart. They have spent a lot of time pushing each other around in it.

One afternoon, I noticed the girls playing that they were going shopping with the book bags Grandma made while she was here. I didn’t want to distract them by going in the room to get my camera, so I grabbed the iPad to take a picture. It didn’t turn out very well, but it’s precious to me anyway.

Miss Joy loves Goofball! Goofball isn’t sure she loves Miss Joy, but she puts up with a lot. She’s a very gentle cat who keeps her claws in.

Gayle frequently walks “around the block” with the children. One time, he let them slide on piles of gravel at the bottom of the hill. They sure had fun–and they sure came home dirty!

Scenery

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Elijah has taken several work trips down south to the glacier area lately. He took these two pictures on one of the trips. What amazing views he gets to savor while he drives for work!

But then, I sometimes have amazing views while I work, too! This is the view from the top of the hill across the road, where we pasture our cows at times. They have spent the winter there, and I’ve been milking by hand up there for the past month. I didn’t have my camera along the morning that there was snow on top of that range of mountains, but talk about a spectacular view! Wow. These pictures were taken the morning we had a full moon–that’s a supermoon you can see there. The layer of fog lies over the Grey River; you can often easily see where a river is by looking at the fog in the mornings. Our house, by the way, is just to the left of the picture.

I took this one about 15 minutes later, after the sun was up higher, from a slightly different place on the hilltop. It is looking down to the right of the previous picture, down the hill to the north of our village. We use the paddock across the highway from the road that comes up from the bottom of the picture for our cattle, chickens and turkeys.

Boating Down the Creek

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About a month ago, Gayle and most of the boys and the little girls went down the hill to Orwell Creek, which loops around the hill on which our village sits before emptying into the river. They took an assortment of watercraft, and floated down the creek to the mouth. Gayle drove along to pick them up at the end, and took several photos and a few video clips when he was close to the water. These aren’t very good photos or videos, but they’re fun! The first photo is near the beginning of the excursion; the second is near the end.