Canterbury

What Day Will it Happen? Contest!

July 17, 2016 by NZ Filbruns 9 Comments

We are eagerly anticipating fresh milk again soon. We’ve been drinking frozen milk since I dried off the cow about the first of June, but it isn’t the same. The cow has started to bag up now, though, so we’re getting excited about having a new calf on the place again–and did I mention, fresh milk? And cream? And butter? We ran out of the frozen butter today and have to use butter from the shop now.

Anyway, I’m having a contest! I have a free copy of each of Chautona Havig’s two most recent books, Sweet on You and Ante Up!, so they will be the prizes for this contest. To enter, please comment on this post or on my Facebook page (with the link for this post) with the day you think the calf will arrive and whether it will be a heifer calf or a bull calf. The cow is due on July 23, and these pictures show how she looks today. (No, it’s not twins; we saw the calf when we had the vet do a scan to confirm the pregnancy in November, and it was definitely just one calf–this cow simply gets huge!) I’ll give one of the books to the person who guesses closest to the right date (or draw from all the right guesses), and the other book to someone who guesses the right gender. The contest closes when the calf is born–sometime in the next two weeks! The book you get will be a Kindle book, but you do not have to have a Kindle to read it. If you have a tablet or a smart phone you can easily get a free app to read Kindle books, or you can read them on your computer. So, make a guess and you may get to read a book by my favorite author!

June 2016 Pictures

June 23, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I happened to have my camera in my pocket the other day when I was in the garden and discovered this beauty!

Preparing lunch the night before for our trip to town. It takes a lot of sandwiches to feed this crew! Making them assembly-line fashion helps.

What do you do with a big pile of coasters from the dump? Build castles!

Sunday afternoon fun. The little boys were trying to play the organ.

Mr. Diligence was playing with a bean bag.

Weka Pass Railway

June 19, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Once a month, we go to church in Waikari instead of Kaikoura. Normally, we go back home the same way we go there, via the Scargill Valley. In April, however, we went through Waipara to visit a friend on our way home. As we left Waikari, we noticed that the Weka Pass Railway had a sign out by the road, and then we saw the steam engine coming! This old railway line is only used now for an excursion train, and only runs a couple of days a month. We turned around and drove back to Waikari to see the train come into the station, and then Gayle got the idea of taking the children on a ride! Someone had to drive the van to the other end. He would have done it, but I offered to let him ride with the children, and I would drive the van and pick something up from a friend in Waipara on the way to the station at that end. The children loved that ride! They still talk about it. Hopefully we’ll be able to do it again sometime—I would love to go, too!

Coming into the Waikari station:

Coming up to Frog Rock:

The station in Waipara. This used to be the Cheviot railway station!

In places, the train goes through a pretty deep gorge.

There is a turntable at each end, on which the engine is turned around before being hooked up to the other end of the line of cars.

I happened upon this video of the railway. I haven’t watched it all—it’s 57 minutes!—but I watched snatches here and there through it. Beautiful scenery!

Sunday School Picnic and Gore Bay

June 15, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I looked at the pictures on Esther’s memory card yesterday, and found some from the Sunday School picnic in March that I’d like to share! This picnic is an annual event at the home of a family way up in the hills, nearly to the mountains. After lunch, we walked out in a paddock behind the house. A couple of our boys had spent two nights there in December, and wanted to show us where they had played. It was quite interesting! They discovered that this tree was hollow, and opened up a hole just a bit more so they could fit inside. Here is Mr. Inventor peering out.

This is how you get it—turn sideways and wriggle through! No thanks.

The valley the tree was in.

They also wanted to show us the big willow trees they played in.

This was the original house on the farm, built about a hundred years ago. Unfortunately, it is in very poor shape now. It was quite interesting to look at, though.

The day after the picnic, we took a picnic to another place: Gore Bay. The boys wanted to try out an inflatable dinghy they were given. It didn’t work very well in the waves here, but when they tried it on a quiet lagoon, it worked well.

Little Miss is terrified of the sea—she wanted to stay safe with Daddy.

A New Forge

June 13, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Mr. Inventor built himself another forge this week. He cut apart a propane cylinder and used the top for the place for a fire. He welded it to a pipe and used the bottom of the cylinder for a stand. The pipe coming out the side is to attach a blower to (he uses an old vacuum cleaner) for air for the fire. He welded a metal grate inside to hold the coal fire up off the air hole.

Here is the forge in action. It worked great—it was so hot they could hardly get close enough to work with the fire! However, it melted the grate. I’m not sure what he’s doing next!

May 2016 Pictures

June 9, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

My computer is still acting up; we reset to factory setting two weeks ago because it had automatically updated to Windows 8.1 and this computer won’t work right on that operating system. Now, it’s demanding that we put in the product key for Windows 8! I’ve been talking to the technical support at Acer, and getting very frustrated. Most of them are difficult to understand, and don’t really want to listen to me. When they told me what to do, it didn’t work, so I called back and they said to reset to factory settings again! So, I’m going to write and schedule a bunch of blog posts with all the pictures I have ready, so I can delete those folders, and then back up my computer, and then reset it. Then, we get to set it up again for the third time in three weeks, and copy everything from the backup into the computer again, and spend a day installing updates again, because there are so many that they overload the system, and search for the particular update that enables the upgrade to Windows 8.1 and block it, and reinstall all the programs I use! What a bother. Esther is getting really good at setting up a computer. I tried, I really did, but messed things up so she had to fix them. I told Gayle today that Esther isn’t allowed to leave home—I can’t figure out my computer without her! I have a feeling I’m allowing myself to be lazy about it, though and could do it if I spent a lot more time with it.

Anyway, here are the random pictures from May.

Little Miss loves to drape clothing around her neck as a scarf.

Socks and shoes are her favorite items of clothing. Socks over pajamas? Why not!

One afternoon on the way home from church the sea was so still we could see reflections. Barney’s Rock was so beautiful this way!

An apple in a cup—the perfect way to eat it!

Mr. Handyman holding our biggest pumpkin of the year. I can’t remember how much it weighed, though.

A new dress! This came from either her grandmother or an aunt, on Gayle’s side.

I thought this was funny—three boys using three computers.

We had quite the harvest of peppers. I planted four types, Bell Peppers, Anaheim Chilies, Jalapenos, and Cayenne. Such a pretty assortment. Today I need to be washing the last of them; I picked a bushel basket full (40 liter tub) a few days ago when the plant were mostly killed by frost.

Mr. Intellectual was given a margarine tub full of stamps from around the world. He had great fun sorting them and discovering what countries they were from. There were a lot of double-ups, so his brothers got some, too.

Cuteness—Kittens and Chicks

June 7, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We acquired two kittens toward the end of April, Leif and Linda. They were awfully cute, playing together. When we let them in the house in the morning, they would spend the next hour or so playing with each other, then settle down for a nap on their favorite chair. We thoroughly enjoyed playing with them and holding them for a nap. Unfortunately, Linda was accidentally killed only a month after we got them. We’re still enjoying Leif, though. He’s growing fast, and full of life. He searched for his sister for a day or two after she died, but seems to have forgotten her now. Mr. Inventor allowed Leif into his room so he wouldn’t be so lonesome at night, and now the kitten sleeps with him.

The fire-worshippers!

The only time we saw Leif up this tree was when he was searching for Linda—she used to climb it.

Guarding a schoolbook?

We also have some very cute chicks. This hen has hatched chicks for us quite a number of times; she’s getting pretty old—Esther found a picture of her from 2013, when she was young. We think someone gave her to us. This time, she hatched 16, out of 16 eggs—quite an impressive record.

It’s pretty funny to see all 16 chicks under their mother at the same time. She can’t relax! All you can see of the chicks is a few feet sticking out. I’m really impressed by how a mother hen takes care of her chicks. It’s really cold in the mornings here right now, with heavy frosts. The chicks run around and forage for awhile, then duck under their mother’s feathers to warm up. Then they run around for awhile again. When we put feed on the ground for them, she races over and starts virtually ordering the chicks to eat.

These white chickens were raised by the light brown hen you can see just in front of the red tub. She and another hen, between them, hatched 23 chicks within a few days of each other in April, and have successfully raised all 23. We locked them up just a few days ago, because there were too many chickens on the loose.

“Eat up! You don’t know when you’ll find more food!” says Mother Hen.

April Fun

May 23, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Otherwise known as random pictures! One Sunday in April, our nephew went to church with us, and we took him north of Kaikoura to see the baby seals. Little Miss loved them, too!

Everyone has been enjoying our new kittens. They love to sleep on people! Unfortunately, the black-and-white one was accidentally killed this week when she got in someone’s way. We miss her, but are glad to still have the other.

I liked this sight, as Mr. Inventor took a turkey to a neighbor who wanted to buy him to live with her turkey hens.

A favorite activity has been building towers with the base 10 blocks.

Just a funny picture of Mr. Imagination!

Mr. Imagination loves his “robot pajamas”, which were in a bag of clothes that was given to us.

Impromptu math lesson one evening! I can’t remember any more what we were discussing, but that white board sure comes in handy!

Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligence got the idea to bob for apples one evening. They soon caught on to pushing the apples to the bottom of the dishpan to get hold of them!

Mr. Intellectual is my kitchen helper. He learned how to make tortillas recently.

The two little boys built this. We brought very few toys with us when we moved here from America, but this was a set we didn’t want to be without.

April Garden

May 21, 2016 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One morning in early April, it was already getting frosty when I went out to check on the garden at 12:30. No, I don’t normally go outside at that hour, but it was so cold that I was checking for frost to try to protect the tomatoes. I turned the pump on to try to keep the frost off them. When I went out at 6:30 to look, the entire garden was encased in ice! By 8:00, when I turned the water off as the sun came up, the ice was about 1/8 inch (2-3 mm) thick on all the tomato and pumpkin leaves! The little boys had fun going out and carefully taking the ice off a big leaf and bringing it in to show me. They put several of those crystal leaves in the freezer to show Daddy when he got home. I figured that was the end of the tomatoes, zucchini, and pumpkins.

That afternoon, I went out to the garden again. I was very surprised at what I saw! The next two pictures are the garden that I watered, which was encased in ice. The plants had not been hurt at all!

This picture shows the pumpkins in the next garden, across a narrow walkway. They were not protected with water, and were killed! I knew there was some sort of science behind that, so I looked it up. Apparently, as the water freezes into ice, it releases a tiny amount of heat, which keeps the plant above freezing temperature as long as the ice stays wet. If it gets dry, for example if a breeze springs up, the plant will be damaged badly. You have to keep the water running till the sun comes up, to prevent damage. It was very interesting to see this in action!