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Simon’s Life

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One day last week, I had an errand to run which took me about halfway to the farm on which Simon is working, so I decided to take the four younger children to visit him at work. He has been living and working on a dairy farm about 45 minutes’ drive from us since he got clearance to go back to work in March, and he seems to really be enjoying it! Several other members of the family had been up there to see where he lives, but I hadn’t been there yet, so I was glad to finally see his house.

He took this Safari up there a few weeks after he moved, so that he would have something to do in the evenings after work. He bought the vehicle a couple of years ago, and he’s been working on restoring it ever since. It had a lot of rust that had to be cut out and new metal welded in, and the whole thing needed to be painted. He’s getting close to ready to put it on the road again and try to sell it; at the moment he is building a new bumper for it.

The view from Simon’s back door. The white roofs are the two barns that farm uses for housing the cows when the weather is nasty. The milking shed is close to them, but not visible behind the other worker’s house beside Simon’s house.

Simon hard at work. He was milking around 2-300 cows that day. There are 800 on the farm, but they haven’t all calved yet. It was interesting to see how a rotary shed works. The boys were quite fascinated, and wanted to go back after we visited the calf shed.

Lots of calves! Two ladies work full time to care for them right now. And look at the view those calves (and the people who care for them) have!

The scenery on the way to Simon’s place was amazing, too. I thoroughly enjoyed the snow on the mountains.

June 2023 Photos

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Here are last month’s pictures!

I was working in the garden one day, digging oxalis corms and buttercups out under the edge of the greenhouse. Miss Joy came along and laid down flat on the freshly-dug soil, and started digging through it, finding earthworms. I suggested she “plant” the earthworms in soil in her container, so she did, and then tried to dig them out.

Jo-Jo the cockatiel and Kea the budgie get along pretty well most of the time.

We had a lot of frosty mornings the first two weeks of June. Mr. Sweetie used my camera one morning to get pictures of the sun coming up through the trees across the road.

He also got some pictures of a cold kingfisher that sat on this post for awhile. Once, we saw it fly down to the mud, pick something up, and eat it–probably a worm.

Another day, the children found this tiny frog in a flax bush behind the house.

Miss Joy loves to brush hair. One morning when Little Miss needed her hair brushed, and Miss Joy was at loose ends, I suggested she brush her big sister’s hair. She was delighted, and it kept her busy for quite awhile. She’s very gentle, and does a good job.

Mr. Sweetie was outside with my camera one day and took a picture of Grizzly. That cat is always looking for a new place to sit for a nap.

May 2023 Photos

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May was a busy month–but not many photos! Here are the ones I have to share.

I was sitting here at my desk one rainy day (it rained the entire month of May) and glanced out the window to my right. There were two wekas walking around in the drainage ditch!

This was a Sunday afternoon that we spent at home. A friend came for lunch and played a game with the children. It happened to be Simon’s weekend off, so he was here, too.

This was the most exciting thing that happened in May. We hatched some eggs in our incubator! We started with 36 eggs, but threw away 21 after a week and a half because they were duds. We ended up with 9 babies. So exciting to have some success!

Our jalapeno plants in the greenhouse, did very well this year. There were so many that I decided to try pickling them. I thought this bowlful of sliced peppers was so pretty!

The final product is pretty, too. I used a few slices in a soup I made for church today, and they flavored it very nicely. The boys like to add these to hamburger sandwiches or tacos.

We often see James sleeping in odd places when we finish family prayers in the evening. He goes hard all day, and then sleeps hard at night.

Pumpkin Seeds

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Several days ago, I cut open a pumpkin to cook. Little Miss wanted to dig the seeds out of it, and we were talking about how many seeds there were. I got curious, so we divided all the seeds into three groups and I had the three school children each count a group. First, we all guessed how many. I was closest; I guessed 500 and there ended up being 518! That’s a lot of seeds.

Meat

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Do you sense a theme here? Milk last week, meat this week. Hmm. What does my life revolve around? It couldn’t be feeding a lot of hungry people, could it?

We’ve processed two cows in the past month. One was an old dairy cow that we boned out and ground up because she was too tough for much else. The other was a 1 1/2-year-old steer that we raised. He was on the small side for eating, but because of his bad habit of jumping fences, we decided that he had better jump into the freezer before he caused any more trouble with neighbors. We have a lot of meat in the freezer! I thought I’d share a few pictures of some of the things we did with all that meat.

First, here is a picture of Simon running it through the mincer. We normally use that table for school in the mornings, but the days that we were working on meat, we set up a table in the living room and used that, instead.

I made a lot of the meat into meatloaf. I packed it into plastic-wrap lined loaf pans, froze it, then popped it out and put two loaves into each ziploc bag in the freezer. We’ve already had a couple of easy meals from that.

Another lot of meat got shaped into hamburger patties and frozen, then put into bags, free-flow. I put plastic wrap between each two layers of patties on the cookie sheet, and stacked them up about four layers high. It wasn’t too hard to pop them apart with a butter knife to transfer to a bag when they were frozen.

I also saved out a lot that day to make into meatballs the next day, which are also in the freezer. I guess we forgot to get a picture of them!

Another lot of meat I cooked up right away and froze that way. It sure is handy to pull out a package of frozen, cooked hamburger and throw it into my soup or whatever! I liked it so well after doing the first cow that I cooked up a lot more from the second one. I was also going to can a lot of it, but I got sick and spent the day in bed, instead, so Esther just divided the meat up and froze it raw.

We saved all the bones, too. We cut them into smaller pieces with a power saw, and divided them into bags according to the amount that will fit into my biggest pot. I fill the pot with water and add some vinegar, then simmer for a day or two. Then, I pressure can it and we have the beginnings of instant soup or gravy!

We got all these bones from the old cow! I didn’t make it through all of them before it was time to do the steer, but had friends who were happy to take some.

One of the evenings we were working on meat, I didn’t have much time to cook but needed a nourishing meal quickly. I opened these jars–beans, stew beef, and broth–and made a quick, delicious stew.

Then end product: I had some black beans in the fridge, and added a package of pasta. We enjoyed it that evening, and there was enough left for men’s lunches the next day or two.

Power Line Track

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A couple of weeks ago, Elijah organized a four wheel drive trip. He bought a souped-up Surf last year, and badly wants to use it, and has been wanting to go on a particular track for several years. It is called the Power Line Track, and goes from the Buller Gorge, over the mountains to Denniston, north of Westport. Five vehicles went on the drive, including Elijah’s Surf and another young man’s Surf, Simon’s L300 Mitsubishi ute, one friend’s Land Cruiser troop carrier, and another friend’s 4WD Mitsubishi van. They took off from here reasonably early one morning and got back late in the afternoon.

They took off from this bridge, the Iron Bridge, over the Buller river between the Upper and Lower Buller Gorges.

Ready to go! Elijah’s Surf is in the lead, and Simon brought up the rear.

Simon driving his ute, with Mr. Imagination in the coveted front middle seat.

They hadn’t gone very far when Elijah’s Surf stalled and smoke came out from under the bonnet. The ground wire had burned through and they had to jerry-rig something. No problem–there were five mechanics on the trip!

They came across a DOC camp, where people were checking on the local kiwi population.

The Surf made it through the deep river crossing!

As they approached the river crossing, the spare tire fell off the van.

This crossing was rather exciting–several people took videos of it! Everyone was worried that the van wouldn’t make it across, or that water would get through the air intake, since the van didn’t have a snorkel. If you watch the video, you’ll see our James leaning out of a window behind the driver’s seat, watching the intake to make sure water didn’t get in, and even putting his hand over it at one point. They had hooked a strap from the Troopie to the van to pull it through, in case the water got too deep and the van had to be shut off suddenly to protect the engine. No problem; it made it through–but as they came out the other side, the strap wound around the front axle and it was a challenge to get off.

Partway through the trip, the group came across this coal bank. There was an old chimney beside it; apparently, the people who lived in the house mined coal from here to heat their house.

At the end of the trip, the group drove up to Denniston, a former coal mine. This was the newest building up there, a bath house, which was vandalized after the mine closed.

Everyone who went on the trip enjoyed it! Esther and I enjoyed staying at home and getting some things done here without being jounced around for hours on a rough track.

Mountain Climb

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A few weeks ago, when Simon was home for his two days off, he took Mr. Imagination on an excursion. They took along Simon’s deer rifle in case they would see a game animal, but ended up climbing a mountain and not doing any hunting. The only animals they saw were a couple of goat kids. They came home tired, but very happy with the climb they had done. It was a mountain up the road from us maybe a half hour’s drive, overlooking the Ahaura River.

That’s the Ahaura River visible through the trees.

Looking to the northeast from the mountain. Simon was able to make out one of the farms he works on, and Gloriavale is visible, as well.

Mr. Imagination found this katydid.

It was after dark by the time they got home, and both boys were hungry and tired, but they had the time of their lives, and Simon felt rejuvenated and ready to go back to another week of work.

March-April 2023 Photos

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Here are the rest of the pictures I have found on our devices from the last couple of months. For some reason, we aren’t taking many pictures. I guess we’re too busy living life to document it! And, nothing that exciting has been happening; just daily life.

We found a pear tree near the river that no one claimed, and processed a lot of pears. What a treasure!

James had a bicycle accident in March and landed on his face on the pavement. The three younger children all saw it happen, and Mr. Imagination drew this picture while I was at the hospital with James. He had a concussion and his face was messed up, but by now he is no longer extra tired, no longer getting headaches, and his face is looking much better.

The hot peppers in the greenhouse have done very well this year. I dried a lot and ground them in the food processor into hot pepper flakes. When I need cayenne pepper powder, I’ll grind that in the spice grinder.

Elijah went to the farm on which Simon is working and they shot a stag. Elijah had quite an audience the next morning as he skinned it before he went to work!

We spent the day boning out the deer, and got about 80 kg (170 pounds) of meat.

As usual, we went to Timaru for Easter. We took a shortcut on the way, which led through a very beautiful area I had never seen.

The Lego lovers of the family built some four-wheel drive vehicles, and then tested them out on the stove.

February/March 2023 Photos

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Barring our trip to Karamea, detailed in the last several posts, I haven’t taken many pictures this year! I’ve been living life, not documenting it. Here are the ones I have from the last couple of months, though.

The last time I went to the States, four years ago, Mom gave me a quilt top that my sister had pieced, from blocks I cut out of a lot of fabric scraps before we moved to New Zealand, over 13 years ago. I put the quilt top in a closet and basically forgot about it because I didn’t know what I was doing with it. After she got through all the other sewing projects we had on hand, Mom still wanted something to do, so we figured out what to do with this quilt top. We found an old sheet for the back and a couple of flannel sheets for the middle, and she tied it together for a comforter. The next problem was to find a place to do the work. Our house is too small to lay it out on a floor, so she took it outside! The ground was dry, so it worked. It was amusing, though, to see a quilt laid out on the grass.

We found a playground in Karamea, and Miss Joy and Little Miss played on it for a little while one afternoon. This little girl is infatuated with playgrounds!

We arrived home from Karamea on a Friday, and spent the entire next day working through the ripe produce that had accumulated in the garden while we were away. This was over 250 pounds of tomatoes, and the green pile in the living room was cucumbers. As you can see, we ran out of room on the table for the washed tomatoes and had to make piles in the living room, too! We are very thankful to have a lot of jars of tomatoes to use over the winter.

The little girls love to dress up. I love how Little Miss sometimes reads to Miss Joy, who obviously loves that, too.

James is helping to build a house behind us, on the edge of the hill on which our village is situated. We took a field trip one morning to watch them pour the pad for it. How do you like the view? The mountains you can see are the Paparoa Range, between us and the Tasman Sea.

Just before Mom left, the children decided they needed to make Chocolate Cream Doughnuts, after we read a book in which the main character built up a business making them. I had the stove covered with pots that day, as I was canning, so they used a camp stove on the table to do the deep frying.

The children liked helping us peel tomatoes when we canned them this summer. What a mess they made of themselves, but we appreciated their help!

On the way home from taking Mom to the airport, we bought a budgie. Kea now lives with Jo-Jo in his cage, and they are very happy together. We started out with them in separate cages, but the birds soon let us know they wanted to be together. The funny thing is that Jo-Jo has put on so much weight since he has company that he can hardly fly now! We’re trying to force him to fly every day, hoping to slim him down a little. Kea flies very well. We can hold Jo-Jo, but Kea won’t let us touch her. She readily goes back into the cage after a fly, though.

Simon was feeling enough better by March that he looked for things to do outside. Obviously, the children benefited from this!

One Saturday morning, we started seeing vintage cars cruising around the village. Mr. Imagination took my camera and went out to take pictures of a lot of them. It was a rally that went around the various villages in the Grey Valley.