Ahaura

A friend from Dunedin, who is a builder, offered to spend a week helping us work on the house. For two months we have been anticipating this week, and finally, he is here. We decided that, although the exterior of the house is badly in need of some help, we don’t have the money to work on that right now, so we decided to do the next most urgent project, redoing the girls’ room. We told Esther before we moved in here that we would do it up and get rid of the pink and purple walls. She hated them, even if Little Miss loved them. Saturday, Esther moved everything out of the room, and the boys began the demolition job. They had great fun ripping old wallpaper off, and then they began the task of taking down the boards that were underneath the wallpaper (five layers in places, with the top layer being painted). They also played hard in the room for a little while, since it was an open space!

Typical cat—as soon as the mattress was moved out of the room she was relaxed on the highest point!

We’re looking forward to seeing what the room looks like in a few days, when the gib board is finished and the walls are painted!

There isn’t much fruit grown around here, but because Gayle is still working in Cheviot, he has been able to bring us a lot of apples. One Sunday afternoon, the boys decided to make some of them into cider. They washed the apples and cut them in half, then put them through a garbage grinder (which has been thoroughly cleaned!).

They ground the apples into a clean pillowcase, then pressed the pulp between some boards, using a jack to apply pressure.

Then, they carefully poured the juice through a strainer and enjoyed it!

From approximately a bushel of apples, they got nearly four gallons of cider.

We had the (good) surprise of our lives today, and were rather in shock for a couple of hours. Actually, some of us are probably still somewhat in shock over what happened.

We’ve been discussing for a year or more what to do with the engine in our van. It was obviously wearing out, but wasn’t bad enough to replace yet. Then, right after we moved over here, I started having trouble getting it out of fifth gear (it’s a manual). It wasn’t all the time, just sometimes, but we also noticed a strange whine when going the speed limit. I didn’t think much of it, and kept double- or triple-clutching when necessary to shift gears. Then, on Monday this week, I took the van to Simon’s boss to get a warrant of fitness. He told us that fifth gear was going out, but if we only used it when going downhill we should still be able to use the van for awhile. He advised that it wasn’t worth rebuilding the gearbox again (we did three years ago), given the age of the van (a 1994 model) and the state of the engine. The next time I used it was yesterday, Friday. I drove it the six minutes to pick Simon up from work, and both times in that short distance that I tried to shift from fifth gear to fourth it took everything I had to accomplish that—and the second time, I had to actually turn the van off after half a dozen tries, and then keep working at it for awhile. So, I didn’t use fifth on the way home, and the noise produced by driving in fourth, even below the speed limit, was such that conversation was impossible, and I had a headache by the time we got home.

After all that, we decided it was probably time to either never go anywhere as a family until we can take two vehicles, or get a different van. Esther and Simon started looking for them online, and we prayed for direction, but I could tell that Gayle was dreading making a decision. Simon’s boss came by this morning for a few minutes, and Gayle asked his advice about rebuilding the gearbox, since he hadn’t talked personally to him about it. Simon’s boss said he’d think about a vehicle for us. Three or four hours later, he pulled into our driveway in a very nice van, and his wife was right behind him in their vehicle. He handed Gayle the keys. We were absolutely speechless. This is something we never ever, in our wildest dreams, would have imagined happening. All we can do is say thank you, to a wonderfully generous brother in the Lord, and to God Who orchestrates such things. And, I believe we’ll be going to Easter Conference in Timaru again as we had planned on doing before the van started acting up! (Unless the Lord has other plans for us, that is.)

We are enjoying Saturdays even more than usual right now. Because Gayle is still working at the job he has had for the past 7+ years, he is living on the other side of the island during the week and we only get to see him on the weekends. So, Saturday is a special day with Daddy! Yesterday, he helped the boys get started building shelves for me to store my jars on. Mr. Diligence had finished closing in one end of the garage a few days ago; there was a stud wall there already from someone else’s project. Yesterday, they added the framework for shelving, and last evening the boys got started putting down the bottom shelf. So far, all we’ve bought for the project was four sheets of cheap plywood for the walls; the rest of the timber is recycled, stuff we’ve salvaged here and there.

Here is Mr. Intellectual cutting boards for the shelves.

Mr. Diligence working on the supports.

This is the stack of boxes to unload onto the new shelves.

Meanwhile, Esther and I were working on tomatoes. Gayle brought me four big boxes of overripe tomatoes that had been rotting in someone’s garden over there. We got all this plus a couple of pots of juice from them! I’m planning to save seed from them; they are a heritage variety from South Australia, and this woman has been saving seed from them for many years. The seeds haven’t been sold on the market for over 50 years. Her father used to sell the tomatoes all over the island; he would ship them on the train from Cheviot. While we were working, I threw a bunch of rotten tomatoes into a jar, and then poured them into a bucket when the jar got full. Later, I said something about the tomatoes I had put in a bucket to save seed from. The boy who is in charge of taken garbage out to the chickens got a funny look and admitted that he had taken that bucket out, not knowing what I was doing with them. We immediately went out with a flashlight and found the pile of rotten tomatoes; I was able to salvage about half the seeds. Whew! There will be plenty, unless the bucket gets dumped again. I appreciate diligence—but I need to make sure everyone knows what is going on!

We have spent the week settling into our new home. It’s starting to feel like our own house, now that we have our things in it and have it in order. My goal for this week was to get the house tidy and everything ready for school to start next week, and we have met that goal.

For our first few days, we sat around the living room to eat.

On Monday, we unloaded the container—what a mess as we shoved things into the house to organize later! See the cats? They were thrilled to have their cushions back again!

Wednesday evening I started unpacking and sorting the books. Here I am, surrounded by about 1800 books!

Now the living room is tidy!

The kitchen is small, but well-organized.

The wide hallway is doubling as our library and Mr. Intelligence’s schoolroom.

The girls’ room.

The boys’ room.

Our room. That small room just off it will be the sewing room. It’s just big enough for a small table.

My garden.

The chicken coop that Simon and Mr. Diligence converted into a sleepout. They got it in place yesterday, and plan to start sleeping in it soon. I’m quite dubious about how they and all their stuff will fit in, but we’ll see. They are convinced it will work.