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Ahaura

Milking Time!

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We decided to set up our milking machine down in the paddock where the cows live, at least for now. We’re only milking one cow at the moment, and she walks so slowly that it’s hardly worthwhile to bring her up here to milk with the machine–but my arms can’t hold up to handmilking. So, right now, I’m walking down there twice a day. It’s a lovely walk most of the time (except when it rains). I took my camera along yesterday morning when I went down at 7:00 for the morning milking.

This cherry tree is in bloom along the roadside. I have been thoroughly enjoying the beautiful flowers and the fragrant aroma!

This is the view from the gate into the paddock. I love seeing the range of mountains to the west of us–the Paparoa Range.

There’s Poppy, waiting for me. Behind her are the young stock. The one in the middle is Bluebell, who will have her first calf in the next few weeks, and the two yearling steers are on either side of her. Bluebell is Poppy’s daughter. Notice the nice roof James built for the hay, to keep it from spoiling so fast?

We moved the old milking shed up from the low spot where we had first placed it, to this place on the stopbank, where it never gets mucky. James built a shed up against it to house the milking machine.

Meanwhile, the calves wait for their bottles. The brown one is Rosie, Poppy’s latest calf, and the other is a beefy that Simon brought home from the farm he works on. They are best friends, and Rosie gives the bull calf a good scrubbing with her tongue every day.

July 2022 Photos

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For some reason, I often end up with only a few photos in July. It’s the middle of winter, so maybe there just isn’t that much that’s inspiring to take pictures of? Here are the few I found in my picture folder.

This is Mr. Sweetie, with Mr. Imagination’s cockatiel, Jo-Jo, on his shoulder. Jo-Jo prefers to sit on the organizers on top of my desk, or on a high cupboard, and watch what happens in the house, but sometimes Mr. Sweetie can coax him onto his shoulder like this.

Mr. Sweetie borrowed a book from a friend. He read it, and then Mr. Imagination picked it up and read the whole book. When they were going to return it, Little Miss found it in the van, and she read the whole book, too! If you know anything about the struggles I had teaching a couple of our older boys to read, you’ll know how much this picture means to me.

One day, the girls were playing on our street with the go-cart. First, Little Miss pushed Miss Joy around–and then they reversed! I tried to get a picture when I could see both their faces, but wasn’t fast enough.

Last Sunday after we came home from church, Miss Joy laid down on the floor and went to sleep. It was late enough that we had decided not to have her go down for a nap, but she obviously needed one!

This was about a month ago. She was so tickled to be able to “read” me this book! She had done a better job a day or two before, “reading” it to me, and wasn’t real thrilled about reading it again, but I coaxed her to and she obliged. I held the iPad above her head to get this clip, so she wouldn’t know what I was doing.

Flooding!

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We had quite a storm yesterday. In less than 24 hours, we got at least 4, possibly as much as 6, inches of rain. Late in the afternoon, as the rain started slacking off, the boys discovered that the creeks were overflowing into the paddock our cows, chickens and turkeys live in. The cows were locked onto higher ground in one corner, and the chickens are on high enough ground to be safe; the turkeys free-range, and they were all fine. Mr. Imagination came running home as soon as they saw the water, to get his camera, and when Elijah went down, he took some pictures with his camera. Several locals said they had never seen the water this high. Part of the problem was that gravel had washed under the bridge, backing up the water into the paddock on the other side of the highway from us. There were also several log jams downstream, which also backed up the water.

The water in this picture is usually several meters away from where the cows are standing. This is a small creek that comes from a culvert that goes under the highway just to the right of the picture. It’s usually a wide, flowing pool of beautiful, clear, shallow water.

The cows are on the high ground at the right of this picture. Normally, there is no water flowing across there! You can see, about in the middle of the picture, where our little creek flows into Orwell Creek. There was a log jam across the mouth of our little creek, which diverted some of the water from Orwell Creek and directed it into our paddock, as well as the little creek having a lot of water of its own. The other two times we’ve seen that overflow, both within the last year, all the water has gone into a drainage ditch that starts just there, near the left side of this picture.

To the right is the normal channel of the creek. The drainage ditch is just left of the middle of this picture. This time, the water went right across the paddock to the left!

Look at all that water! The drainage ditch to the far right normally flows with a couple of inches of water at the bottom of a 2-meter ditch. The other drainage ditch, on the left, is normally just a swampy strip of water that might flow a little but not much. It got a good clean-out this time, though!

The turkeys are unimpressed with the weather. See what looks like a small lake in the distance? Some of our neighbors have fences set up there and have been grazing three ponies there this winter. We were glad to see they got the ponies out and up here to their house before that area was flooded too badly.

This is just across the highway from the gate to “our” paddock. Because of the gravel built up under the bridge, Orwell Creek was backed up into the paddock and around the neighbor’s house.

The boys were pretty impressed with this whirlpool. It goes down into the culvert that goes through into our paddock. They said the mouth of the culvert was about a meter, maybe three feet, below the surface of the water.

After checking out our paddock, the boys went around the block to where Orwell Creek crosses a road at the bottom of the hill on which Ahaura is built. The railroad parallels the road at this point, and this is what they saw at the two bridges:

Two hours later, this is what they saw:

By this time, the water was over the road bridge, and level with the train bridge–and a spot downstream just a little ways was washing out. There is normally no gap under the track here, but the water that went over the road washed it out pretty badly. Simon called Kiwirail to report the washout, and they sent a crew out this morning to fix it. We went past on our way home from church this afternoon and the track was safe again!

Several of the boys took video clips of what they saw, so I’ve put them together here. The power of moving water is amazing! There’s a little bit of fun here, too, at the end; Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination rode their bikes at top speed past James, through puddles.

May 2022 Photos, Part 2

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Here are the rest of our photos from May!

Esther made peanut butter one evening, from 5 kg of peanuts, and forgot to put salt in one lot of it. She put it all in a big bowl to stir the salt in, and was pretty amazed at how that much peanut butter looks. We normally put it in 2-litre buckets as we make each batch in the food processor, so we don’t see it like this.

We had a hailstorm one afternoon. The younger children were thrilled and ran outside to play in the ice that was coming out of the sky.

They scraped up some hail from the trailer bed and brought it in to show me!

James and Princess, enjoying the warmth from the fire. That’s one spoiled cat.

We killed a beef the end of the month, and Esther and I spent three days cutting it up. Lots of meat! This was everything from the two hindquarters, which we mostly made into roasts and steaks. We saved all the bones to make into broth, and all the fat, to render into tallow. We enjoy doing the work ourselves and being able to use everything.

Little sister, delighted to be joining her big brothers for breakfast; they usually leave before she gets up in the morning.

Miss Joy helped her daddy mow lawn one afternoon!

Late April/May 2022 Photos

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Whew! Finally I found a chance to sit down and work on this blog. Between visitors on the day I normally blog (two weeks in a row), a three-day migraine, internet issues, driving lessons for James (worthwhile: he passed his test!), and butchering a cow, it’s been an intense couple of weeks. And, the wonderful busyness continues, since we have more company coming this weekend. We are blessed! For the moment, though, I have a bit of peace. The younger children are finishing their schoolwork for the week by doing a small craft project, and then they’ll finish cleaning the house. I need to make a big pot of chili for tonight, when we’ll be feeding 4-5 extra young men plus a man from our church, and start on food for the weekend, and cut up the steaks from the cow, but that can all wait till after lunch. So, what did we do the end of April and in May?

Gayle took this photo on his phone from the top of the hill across the road, where we often graze animals. I like that he has the ability to take pictures, as that way special times like this are captured!

Gayle’s health is much better than it has been for many years, and he has a lot more energy, which means he can do things like take Little Miss for a walk after work. One afternoon they walked down to the river, and he took this picture under the train bridge.

The younger boys took two of their boats down to the paddock in which we keep our cows, and they love to play in the little creek that flows through one corner. Miss Joy loved a ride with Mr. Sweetie! This is a kayak that a neighbor gave the boys. They patched up a hole in it, and it works!

This is a boat that Mr. Imagination and Mr. Sweetie made. It works pretty well.

Gayle liked these toadstools, and of course the little beauty in front of them.

Elijah snapped this picture one evening when he was taking care of the chickens on top of the hill across the road, at sunset. Living between two mountain ranges means shorter days in winter, but we sure have some gorgeous scenery!

This was one of our huge pumpkins. It weighed over 9 kg (20 pounds), and had very thick, sweet flesh. If anyone wants seeds, just ask!

Some friends came for food and fellowship one Sunday evening, on the spur of the moment. After we ate, we enjoyed a lively game of dice. No gambling–just a lot of fun!

Jo-Jo is getting much better at flying. He isn’t loose often enough to be really good yet, so one day he found himself in this predicament when he landed on a blind and had to use every tail feather to keep himself balanced. As soon as she took the picture, Esther took pity on him and helped him down; he couldn’t figure out how to get off the blind by himself.

April 2022 Photos

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Here we are in May already! The months fly by very fast. This first picture is Miss Joy driving her car. We use that crate to take Bibles to church–it keeps them off the floor of the van! She loaded herself into it when it was empty, along with a bear and several books, and pretended to drive. See her hands on the “wheel?”

It is time to finish the salve we started in early March. We had started three jars, and I got one finished just before Easter. Until meeting up with a friend in Timaru at Easter Conference, I didn’t have enough beeswax to finish, so now I need to do the other two jars. The first step is to strain the herbs out of the olive oil. Then, I weighed the oil, and for every ounce of oil, I added a Tablespoon of beeswax bits and the oil from one Vitamin E capsule. Then, I heat it all just enough to melt the wax, and pour it into small jars. The younger children (and a few of the older ones) love to eat the empty Vitamin E capsules! I opened about 50 that day, with such a big batch of oil, and they were all gone before the boys got home from work.

Also, a few days before Easter, Mr. Imagination brought up three baby turkeys! Because a hawk has been destroying all the turkey nests, these are the only ones we got this year. We kept them in the house for about two weeks; while we were gone a neighbor came in a few times a day to check on them. Now, we’ve gotten them acclimated to being outside in a small cage that we move around on our lawn. They got a lot of love the first week!

The day we drove over the mountains to Timaru was a gorgeous morning! It’s impossible to capture all we see with a camera, but here’s a tiny glimpse.

We harvested most of our pumpkins a couple of weeks ago. This is about 100 of them! On the far left you can see our biggest, a Hubbard. One end was rotting, so I cooked it immediately. It took a lot of work to get inside it. I had to use a cleaver and bang that with a piece of wood to finally crack the hard shell open. After I cleaned out the rotten bits and the seeds, I tried to weigh it. Both halves overloaded my 5 kg scale! I’m guessing it may have been about 13 kg, or 26-28 pounds. It was delicious, too! Very sweet. One of the gray ones was also almost that weight. It didn’t look quite so big, but had a smaller seed cavity. It was also very sweet. If any of my friends here in New Zealand want seeds, I saved all of them. The long brown one to the right is actually a zucchini. I hand pollinated it so the seeds would be what I wanted, and then watched it swell through the summer. It took only about three weeks to reach that size! I haven’t opened it up yet, because I’m making sure the seeds are totally mature. Anyone who wants zucchini seeds can have a few of them, too! I hope they are viable, anyway!

This is Elijah with his favorite toddler.

One morning right after we got off Daylight Savings, the girls were both up early enough to “help” take the cows back down to pasture.

At one point we had too many zucchinis, so I told the younger ones to cut them up. We cooked them a bit and fed them to the cows. The children had fun, and the cows had a feast!

Miss Joy loves to cut paper. She was delighted when Esther gave her an old phone book to cut.

The little girls set themselves up on Esther and Miss Joy’s bed one evening, with lots of pillows, soft toys, and books. They had great fun reading.

Up in the Air!

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James has spent several days in the last few weeks helping to reroof a house about a block from our house. It is positioned such that we can see it from a few of our windows! It’s fun to be able to see what he’s up to. One afternoon we walked over to have a better look. They had hired a cherry picker to get up to the roof, since it’s so high and steep–the house used to be a church. James’ boss offered that James could take the younger children up in it. Three of them were delighted to have a ride up over the roof and the power lines! James was delighted to take them, too. He had been operating that machine all day, and his boss said that James never stopped smiling all morning!

They went all the way up, but I didn’t get a photo of them at the top. I could hardly stand watching–there’s no way I would want to go up like that! They loved it, though; when Miss Joy got down, she said, “Dat was fun!”

So Far in March….

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We have not taken many pictures this month! I’ll have to be more intentional about taking some if I want to keep blogging. This was a potato someone found in the garden. It weighed an entire kilogram (over two pounds!).

We got our year’s supply of salve started. Packed into those jars is comfrey, plantain, lavender, calendula petals, and a bit of self-heal. We filled the jars with olive oil, and it is currently soaking for six weeks.

Miss Joy was delighted to figure out one day that she could tuck her doll inside her dress. That was her baby carrier!

James signed his apprenticeship papers, and to celebrate, his boss took him to the store and bought a bunch of tools.

Elijah took Mr. Sweetie on a trip to Dunedin to visit friends. They spent a day in Timaru with a friend, who took these two pictures of Mr. Sweetie using a giant slingshot at the beach.

They stopped at Moeraki Boulders, and Elijah caught a picture of Mr. Sweetie balancing this boulder on his head!

February 2022 Photos

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I don’t have very many pictures left from February. Guess we haven’t taken very many lately. I was working in the garden one morning when the neighbor asked if I had set that fire. I looked at him blankly, and he gestured to the south. I looked up–and saw this! Over the next few hours, the smoke drifted over us, making it quite hazy here for awhile. That evening, we learned that it had been just up the road from some friends of ours. It was set intentionally to burn off a paddock, and at the point that I took the picture, the fire was under control. Several hours later, though, it got out of control and they had a hard time putting it out.

Mr. Sweetie found this old coat in a box of rain coats that a neighbor gave us when she cleaned out the place where she lived for 50 years. It had been her husband’s. Mr. Sweetie loves it!

A cyclone hit us about a month ago, dropping around five inches of rain in 24 hours. Six or eight hours after the rain stopped, I walked down to the paddock with Mr. Imagination to see the flooding. Normally, the water is contained in a small creek to the right. It’s good that there is a drainage ditch to catch the overflow!

A friend sent a stamp collection to Elijah. He had great fun sorting his booty.

Apparently, someone thought Princess wanted to read a book!

These boys got home at the same time one afternoon, and I was amused at the contrast. James had been tearing down an old chimney, while Elijah was, as usual, laying new, clean carpet or vinyl. They are both hardworking young men!

January 2022 Photos

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I ended up with a lot of photos taken in January! I wonder why some months we take a lot and some months we don’t take many. This first one is of the bed that was supposed to be full of onions. Most of the onions died, so I left the volunteer potatoes, and then transplanted zinnias throughout it and portulaca around the edges. Lots of dill came up, too, and we ended up with quite a mix of colors. Now, a month later, the potatoes are dying back, but the zinnias are taking over, and this bed is really gorgeous! It’s right beside the driveway, so a good spot. I’m enjoying the flowers.

I was coming in from the garden one day when Esther was going out with her phone, and she grabbed this picture.

I took this picture to advertise the heifer that James is leading (she sold immediately!). We were moving the herd back down the hill to the large paddock we graze them in. They had been on the roadside above our town for a few days, but this day they wouldn’t stay in. One was in heat, and she was likely pushing the others out. Those of us who are home during the day locked them in this small paddock till reinforcements got home, and then I grabbed a quick picture before they headed down.

We needed another bed in the girls’ room so Miss Joy could move out of our room. The only way we could figure out how to fit her in there was to build a loft bed. I found several sets of plans online, and Elijah designed and built this. Little Miss sleeps up there, and Miss Joy sleeps in the queen bed with Esther.

One hot day, we took lunch down to the river bed and let the children play in the creek for a little while before we came back up.

The girls helped Esther make a rhubarb crisp one day. They enjoyed that!

The boys’ sleepout is no more. A couple of our boys had started demolishing it, and one day when a friend brought his children over for a little while they finished the job. That was great fun! Then, it had to be picked up and taken to the dump. That wasn’t so much fun.

Miss Joy loves being read to, and Mr. Imagination is learning the joys of reading aloud.

Little Miss had a birthday in January. She enjoyed opening her presents!

We finally replaced the grain mill that has been limping along for years. The little girls were intensely interested in how it worked when I tried it out.

So much fun to cover a salad with flowers!

Picking beans. I had a few bush/dwarf beans, but we got most of our crop from the runner beans on the trellis.

The joys of a crate, a blankie, and a thumb!

Jo-Jo is tame enough to ride on shoulders now. Mr. Imagination was thrilled the first time he could do this! At first, Jo-Jo bit anyone who tried to pick him up. Now, he might nibble, but gently. He keeps trying to fly, but since his practice time is limited to 10 minutes a day, he is still wobbly, and often crashlands.