Cheviot

Dear Mr. Imagination

December 6, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I found a number of pictures of or taken by Mr. Imagination on my memory card when I went through it today, so I decided to give him his own post.

One morning during dishes, while I was reading aloud, he climbed into this tub and spent several minutes totally engrossed in his own little world. I took several pictures, and he never seemed to notice.

He took this picture, of me helping Mr. Sweetie with school, one morning.

Either he or Mr. Sweetie took this picture, of Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligence working on a lawn mower.

Mr. Sweetie took quite a series of pictures of Mr. Imagination being funny.

Apparently, they took turns with the camera!

Fun Times

November 24, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Life in this family can be a lot of fun! Here are a few glimpses into the past few weeks of life here.

Our oldest two left for America the beginning of the month. This was our last glimpse of them, as they headed for their gate at the airport.

The lemon tree outside my kitchen window is blooming.

Mr. Sweetie lost a top front tooth—but this is the look I got when I tried to get a picture of his gap!

I had Mr. Sweetie clean out the container cupboard one day.

Little Miss loves to stand up by herself!

She also loves being carried in the backpack. This time, Mr. Inventor carried her for awhile, and then Mr. Intellectual took a turn. She is very happy in there!

Mr. Imagination and Mr. Sweetie were busily reading How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World. They had the story pretty close to right! Mr. Sweetie was taking apart a pallet last week and fell, giving himself a greenstick fracture just above his wrist. He still hasn’t had an x-ray and doesn’t have a cast on it, but two doctors have said that is the problem and we’ll be going to Christchurch in a couple more days to get the x-ray and the cast. They said there shouldn’t be a problem if we keep his arm wrapped and he doesn’t do anything silly with it.

The cat comes in to beg for food when the door is open. Little Miss was sure checking him out!

She is such a happy little girl!

Outdoors Fun

November 20, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Because it’s spring, and the temperatures are lovely and moderate most days, and the grass is green, the boys have spent a lot of time outside lately. I get out when I can—I try to get to the garden at least a little each day. Here are several pictures I’ve gotten lately. As you can see, Little Miss loves being outside. If she’s grouchy and nothing seems to suit her, asking if she wants to go outside will often make her happy. This week, she figured out how to get outside without falling on her nose out the kitchen door, so watch out—she won’t be contained in the house any more!

Little Miss wanted to go watch her brothers play in the water.

She stands up anywhere she feels like it, without support, although she hasn’t started to take steps yet.

Apparently, she didn’t want to go through the patch of bare ground; it was more interesting to follow Mr. Imagination.

He had a toy car!

I assigned Mr. Diligent to plant pumpkin seeds in the moist creek bed. We’ll see if they grow. He had a wetsuit on because he had been playing in the water.

Mr. Imagination and Mr. Sweetie were still playing in the water. The boys built this dam across the creek after the 3-inch rain we had in September. The creek dried up behind it by mid-October, and the boys reinforced the dam at that point, and then when we got another inch of rain a few weeks ago, it filled up again. They rigged up a small sump pump below the dam to pump the water that leaks through back above the dam. That’s what the white pipe is for. The boys have spent a lot of time playing in that water, but by now it is starting to smell like swamp muck and I’m not very happy to let them “swim” anymore. Yesterday they put a bigger pump in and used the water to irrigate the garden—perfect use for it!

October 2015 Pictures

November 12, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are the rest of the pictures I saved from October but haven’t shared here yet—just a mish-mosh of random glimpses into our life.

One Sunday afternoon when we arrived home from church, a howling nor-wester was blowing. Mr. Inventor figured out a way to get a free ride. He had taken the engine off this old lawn mower (although now he’s put it back on and it works again!), and this time, he took a sheet of plywood to act as a sail. It didn’t work as well as he hoped, but every so often a particularly strong gust of wind would really push him along his track.

Since Mr. Handyman has a job in the afternoons now, we often have worship in the evening, in the kitchen while dishes are being done.

Story time. Little Miss just got out of her bath. Mr. Sweetie, Mr. Imagination, and Mr. Diligence were enthralled.

Mr. Inventor goes to the local dump (a transfer station) at least once a week to see what treasures he can find. This hand-crank washing machine was one. We scrubbed it out thoroughly and have used it twice now to churn butter. This was the first try, but I decided that the drill would probably end up breaking it so now we do it by hand. It works pretty well!

My two daughters! Little Miss was very upset because she had to sit still for worship. Pure torture—see that face?

Little Miss is standing up frequently without support right now. She also loves to be under the table, or a chair. Here, she had a shoelace and was trying to pick up the shoe.

One Sunday afternoon the boys were playing with snails. Mr. Inventor, especially, played with them for a long time.

This shed got crunched a year ago when a tree fell on it. A few weeks ago, Gayle and the boys fixed it; this is the before picture.

A turkey on her nest.

Two turkeys sharing a nest. It turned out that they didn’t have any eggs! Mixed-up birds.

We’re hoping to soon have the money to spare for plastic to cover a small greenhouse! Mr. Imagination here.

Choretime. I thought it was cute the way the ducks were all flocking around Mr. Diligence.

Busy Little Miss—she loves to be outside.

I have the boys work in the garden for 30 minutes most days, to help pay for the food they eat. This day, it was wet so I said they didn’t have to—but then there were enough spats that I sent them out anyway! This is Mr. Sweetie, Mr. Intellectual, and Mr. Diligence.

Leaf Jumpers…and a Cannibal!

November 2, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

A couple of weeks ago, I took the children to the Domain here in our village. It’s a piece of public land, and it’s fairly heavily wooded, with trails through the trees. There is a large open area, which is now a cricket playing field. The cricket clubhouse is at the edge of the field, and was built on part of the foundation of William “Ready Money” Robinson’s mansion. Robinson made a fortune on the Australian gold fields in, I believe, the 1870s, and came here with the money. He bought an immense tract of land, about half the size of a county in Michigan, and then built this mansion. If I remember right, all 3 stories and 40 rooms of it were finished in about 1881, and Robinson died the following year.

Anyway, we went there a couple of weeks ago to do some filming for a movie the children were making. (Watch for it to post here sometime in December, after Esther posts it on her blog, http://estherfilbrun.com.) The day was a perfect spring day, so after the filming was finished, we just spent some time enjoying the beautiful setting. While the boys played, and rode a bike very fast down a very steep hill, Esther and I read for awhile and played with Little Miss. The little boys (and some slightly bigger ones) enjoyed jumping in a big pile of leaves that Esther raked up for them. Esther put this short video together for me.

Finishing the Harvest

April 27, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We are getting close to the end of harvesting food for the year. Gayle and the boys are digging potatoes today. That is quite different from last year! It was so wet last year that there was water in every hole made by the fork when they dug up a potato plant. About half the crop rotted in the ground, and I had to deal with rotten potatoes in the bin all winter. Yuck! This year, the soil is bone-dry! We’re hoping for heavy rains soon, though, so Gayle decided it was time to get them dug.

The shelves in the jar room are very nearly full. The freezers are mostly full—even the “new” one we bought to put a steer in in another two weeks is a third full! Onions are braided and hanging beside the jars of food, and the pumpkins are piled in there and on a porch. We won’t go hungry this year!

Apple Picking!

April 26, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Every year, we like to take an afternoon in April and drive around through the hills to the west of us, looking for wild apples along the road. We never get over there otherwise, and it’s a beautiful drive. The apples are the excuse to take a family drive! We all enjoy it. We went last Saturday, and it turned out to be a beautiful afternoon. We ended up picking or picking up about 7 bushels (14-15 banana boxes full) of apples, mostly for the cow. We have plenty for ourselves already, and since it’s so dry, we’re feeding her apples and pumpkin to supplement the dry grass she has.

This little girl is learning to accept her car seat.

Mr. Diligence with a huge apple—we always stop at that tree!Mr. Intellectual with his two apples from the special tree.

Notice how dry the landscape is. We have not had significant rain since about August. Even so, it’s a beautiful place!

Mr. Diligence and Mr. Intellectual, climbing a hill to check out a tree we normally pick from—it has fallen over, though.

Mr. Handyman, doing what he does best! (Growing, teenage boy.)

We couldn’t resist doing a mini photo shoot of this beautiful baby!

While we were at it, we got a nice picture of Mr. Intellectual……and of Mr. Sweetie.

They found a dead hawk on the road.

Esther spent a lot of time trying to get a picture of this curious, friendly fantail.

Gum trees are so beautiful, with their white trunks and branches.

At one place, five or six bulls were grazing the roadside. All that kept them in was an electric tape! Those massive creatures seemed quite placid, but I was glad to be inside the van.

Fantails

April 24, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

In other words, flying flytraps! Since we leave the doors open for ventilation on warm days, and have no screens, we often have fantails in the house these days! They are such cheery little birds. They are so friendly they remind me of the chickadees we had in Michigan in the winter. They eat insects, though. As they swoop through the room, you can often hear a sharp little click as they catch another fly! That makes them welcome guests, you can imagine. I’ve been trying to get pictures of them in the house, but they move so fast it’s hard to catch them. That’s how I ended up with a picture of one taking off in flight. If you listen closely to the video of one, you can hear a faint twittering. It was a lot louder in real life, but apparently the sound capture isn’t real good on my camera. If you want to hear it better, go to this page, click on the sound icon, and choose “South Island fantail, male song.” Oh, and by the way, we’re studying birds, insects, bats and flying reptiles this year for science. We recently had a lesson about feathers, and one type of feathers is bristles. Bristles are found around the mouths of insect-eating birds. When we looked closely at the fantails in our house, we could see the bristles! They apparently help the bird to catch insects in flight. The bristles touch the insect and then the bird can turn to grab the insect.

More March Pictures

April 17, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Just a few more pictures I thought some of you might enjoy.

One morning, Esther looked out the window and thought she saw something white in the sheep’s water barrel. That seemed strange, so she called Mr. Intellectual to come see what he thought it was. They both had the same thought—a turkey—so he raced outside to see. Sure enough, one of the half-grown turkeys was in the water. It was still alive, so he pulled it out and they wrapped it in a towel, then put it in front of a heater for several hours till it recovered.

The eight baby turkeys only stayed in the house a few days, but we enjoyed them while they were there. It was nice to be able to send them out to the chicken coop after a week or two, though! That many babies fill up the box in a hurry. A couple of the boys built a new bridge across the dry creek in the front yard, using gates. This is Mr. Diligence on the bridge and Mr. Inventor in the creek.

Mr. Imagination had a birthday in March! He’s now three. That is him, as well, beside a barrel—just a random shot his sister got.

This was the first pumpkin we picked this year. The boys had fun bringing it in and cutting it open. Unfortunately, it didn’t taste that good. We raised some Atlantic Giants last year, and obviously the pumpkin we saved seed from had cross-pollinated with the Atlantic Giant, which is watery and tasteless. The cow likes these, though!

Early March Pictures (with cute little turkeys)

March 25, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Somebody (probably Joseph, but I’m not altogether sure) got hold of my camera during school the other day, so here are a couple of pictures in the school room.

This is our bedroom:

These cute baby turkeys hatched Saturday. Boy #2 was excited when he discovered six babies from the nine eggs, and then two more appeared later! They can sure hide. We had to take them away from the mother, though. It’s not safe to let them free-range, since we have hawks and ferrets, and we couldn’t catch the mother to put them in a pen. So, we have eight baby turkeys in the kitchen. Their owner loves to swat flies and feed them to the babies, and they love the flies.

Our onion crop, 110 onions drying, waiting to be braided: