West Coast

May 2021 Photos—Part 2

July 4, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are the rest of our photos from May!

Esther took photos one evening of what everyone was doing. The little girls were reading books.

The younger boys were playing a game.

The bigger boys were also playing a game, and I was working on a puzzle.

Esther, Elijah, and Mr. Sweetie stayed up late to watch a lunar eclipse one night. A few of the rest of us woke up briefly to see it at this stage.

Just a typical evening! Simon and Mr. Diligence were wrestling.

Our little girls are good friends!

She loves yogurt!

We were working on a writing assignment, and someone who wasn’t even doing the course came up with a funny story!

Potty-training the doll!

May 2021 Photos—Part 1

June 27, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

The pictures we took during May don’t fit very well into categories, so I decided to just do two posts of random pictures.

This happened every day during May. This must have been a Saturday morning, since it was daylight. The cow in the lead is Poppy, the older one; the other is Pansy, her daughter. Pansy is now dry, so we’re only milking Poppy. They live in the paddock we use out of town; it takes about 10-15 minutes to walk them up here to the shed for milking.

Elijah has new clothes for work. He doesn’t often wear the high-vis pants, but he wears the orange shirt all the time.

The younger ones love to bike around. They often hook a trailer to one of the bikes so they can take Miss Joy for a ride, too.

The little girls found a snail! They spent a lot of time watching it.

A cold morning! It felt good to cuddle around the fire to do school

Miss Joy loves her babies. She spends a lot of time carrying them around, usually trying to get someone else to hold them.

Our entire herd of cows spent a few days up here across the road from the house. It was fun to see them, even though it was pouring rain. There are six: two cows, two steers and two heifer calves.

April 2021 Photos

June 20, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are the rest of our photos from April—and a video clip of Miss Joy drawing! This little girl loves to draw. She frequently requests—or demands—paper and pencil; she wants to “ite!” Since these photos were taken, she has progressed from scribbling all over a piece of paper to drawing little circles. She also cuts things; scissors are her other frequent request. Yesterday, she cut one piece of scrap paper into little bits, then pointed to the stack and wanted another. It was soon in bits all over the floor, too!

Simon helped a neighbor kill and skin a few sheep, and a few days later, he came home with one of them! He and Elijah soon had it cut into pieces. I’m so happy that they can—and enjoy—cutting up meat.

Late one afternoon…I was making applesauce while Mr. Sweetie tried to finish his school work for the day.

A few weeks after Esther and her brothers built the shelves, she and I spent a day organizing the container. This is what it looked like when we started. We never got a picture when we were done, but it’s usable, now! It’s still crowded,but we can find things and get to them.

Simon starting on the tiny house.

They lined it with these sheets of insulation, and then put plywood over that.

March 2021 Photos

June 6, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I am way behind with posting these pictures!

This is what the girls’ room looked like for several weeks, while we were redoing the carpeting in the hallway, which doubles as our library. All our books were packed in boxes for a few months, and stacked in the hallway, and when a date was finally set for putting in the new carpeting, I moved the books to Esther’s room. She was away for a month, and Little Miss doesn’t need all that space, so it worked.

Elijah got a new set of tools for floor laying. Here he is giving Simon a guided tour on the day he got the set.

I am doing Sonlight Kindergarten American History with Little Miss this year. One of our early read-alouds was The Missing Mummy. Mr. Imagination listened in, and was so intrigued by the story that he read ahead. He was so involved with it that he didn’t notice I took a photo of him reading!

We were given a tiny house by a man from Nelson! We met him at a friend’s funeral up that way in December, and he spent a night in our driveway in March. Several days later, he called and asked if we were interested in taking the tiny house he had been living in but didn’t need anymore. Our boys borrowed a vehicle and trailer, and drove up to Nelson on Friday night to get it. They got home with it late Saturday afternoon, also having purchased a vehicle for Elijah while they were up there!

Our little flock of goats. We don’t have any of them anymore; when one of the kids decided she was going to jump the fence and get out no matter what, we decided to get rid of them, and then we sent the nanny off to get bred. At this point, we’ve decided that they are enough work that we are better off without them, although we like goats and Gayle does well on goat’s milk.

Mr. Imagination with a katydid one Sunday afternoon at church.

Esther took this picture to show me the grain mill that a neighbor needed to get rid of. We helped this lady clean out her house when she moved away, and this mill is one of the things we took.

One week’s harvest of tomatoes!It was quite a process to get the tiny house into place! The boys put rollers under it and used a logger’s winch and chain to pull it to its corner. I was thankful that nothing—and noone—got broken!

Inside. It was just a shell; by now, it has been insulated and lined with another layer of plywood, and we plan to paint it and put down a vinyl floor covering.

We got one largish watermelon from our greenhouse this year. When we ate it, Mr. Diligence requested an entire round slice of it. Apparently, this has been a long-time wish of his!

One Saturday, Esther organized her brothers to help her build shelving for the container. She, Elijah and Mr. Diligence spent the day building two sets of shelves.

4WD Excursion Up the Snowy River

May 30, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

Gayle, Esther, and all our boys went with a number of other people from our church on a drive along a rough track up the Snowy River. The road along this river comes out on the main road about 20 minutes’ drive north of us. They went up that road to the end, where they had morning tea at a farm, and then took the track a couple of kilometers into the bush to a former gold-mining area—the Alexander’s mine and gold stamping mill. Here is some of the scenery on the way to the farm.

Mr. Sweetie gesticulating about something at the farm. (Notice his new glasses, Grandma?)

The center vehicle is Simon’s Pajero. The one in front is his boss’s Land Cruiser, affectionately known as the Troopie (because it’s a troop carrier). My family has been talking about the electric system for this farm ever since they got home. They generate their own power with a water turbine. The power is taken to the buildings with a single Number 8 wire, and most of the year they have to leave the lights on all the time so they don’t burn out the system, because they have too much power!

The first river crossing!

The Troopie has made it across; will the Pajero and the other Land Cruiser make it?

Simon hooking up a snatch strap so the Troopie can help him get up the muddy bank. He says the water was icy.

Checking out the ruts the Pajero made. The bank was apparently about three feet high before the Troopie went up it, and then the Pajero smashed it down some, too.

Eating lunch.

A tree was across the track—it’s a good thing someone had a chain saw along!

The old stamping mill at the end of the track. They used to use some sort of cyanide treatment to extract the gold. Here is a video I took several years ago of a stamping mill that can still be used; it will give you a bit of an idea how they worked.

Back out at the road!

The vehicles emerged not much the worse for wear. The Troopie had no damage. The other Cruiser had some, and Simon lost a bit of trim from the sill under his door. They were pretty muddy when they got home, but that was the worst. Simon is hoping to do this kind of thing a bit more often, now that he has a vehicle for it.

Here is a video we put together from clips that Esther took of the river crossings:

A Day at the River

May 23, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Some friends from Dunedin came for a visit on a weekend in March. We took them down to the riverbed for a picnic. It was a perfect late-summer day, and the children enjoyed playing in the water, as usual.

It was a wonderful day!

Miss Joy in March

May 16, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

In looking over our photos from March, I’m seeing a lot of them of one person! Miss Joy is quite popular, and very cute. She’s into everything, and jabbers about everything. We can even understand part of what she says!

Her favorite book is Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? This copy was given to Elijah by his grandmother, probably 15 years ago. It has been taped together and glued together, and is still being enjoyed! I just ordered a replacement, though, a board book this time, because this one got left in a windowsill overnight and the condensation soaked it. It’s still readable, but the pages are all falling out and the covers are swollen. We can’t be without this book, though!

Mr. Imagination built a couple of hammocks, and his little sisters enjoyed them.

Helping the big boys mow lawn! She must have been trying to figure out how to start it.

There are two little babies at church, and Miss Joy loves them. So does her big brother Simon!

Miss Joy is an artist. She loves to draw! She often asks for pen and “papee!” She wants to “ite!” She focuses hard on what she is doing, and keeps at it until her piece of paper is covered with her scribbles.

She also loves to climb in bed with Little Miss! It’s so much fun to read at bedtime.

I’m not sure what she was doing here in Esther’s room.

Sitting in the windowsill behind the couch. This is where Brown Bear met its demise.

One afternoon she came marching into the living room brandishing a croquet mallet in one hand, a block of wood in the other, and dangling a toothbrush from her mouth!

Another day, she figured out how to climb into the washing machine. Can you tell we enjoy having this little girl around? She sure adds sparkle to our days!

And, here is a video I just remembered making.

February 2021 Photos

May 2, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are the last of the pictures we took in February! It seems like we haven’t been taking a lot of pictures since our trip, so I may end up getting caught up soon.

The Sunday afternoon right after Simon sprained his ankle on their tramp, we were relaxing after getting home from church when we heard the ice cream truck coming. It plays the traditional tune of ice cream trucks, and comes through randomly, several times a year, on Sunday afternoons. Simon decided that his little brothers needed practice making purchases, so he pulled $20 out of his wallet and sent them across the road to flag down the truck and buy ice creams for all the boys and Little Miss! While the truck was stopped there, several other neighbors came out to buy ice cream as well.

I have no idea what this was about!

I found this blossom one day when I was picking zucchini. I have never seen one so huge!

The garden was so beautiful in February! Picking green beans in this tunnel was so easy; I’m definitely doing that again. I planted two varieties of runner beans—Blue Lake and Cobra. The Cobra beans came on first, and produced bushels and bushels, then stopped; the Blue Lakes came on about that time. They, too, produced bushels and bushels. Meanwhile, the Cobra looked like they were dying; the leaves were even turning yellow. Then, when the Blue Lakes quit, the Cobras came on again, with new foliage and lots of nice beans—not nearly as many as the first round, but enough for several meals for the ten of us in a week’s time. I’m planning to plant both varieties again, but maybe more of the Cobra and fewer of the Blue Lake. That way, I can do the bulk of the canning at once with the Cobras, and have the Blue Lakes to fill in for eating on while the Cobras take a break. (A bit of trivia: It’s easy to tell the difference between the seeds—the Cobras have black seeds, and the Blue Lakes have white ones. This is significant because the labels I used to mark which kind was which got lost, so I wasn’t sure which I liked better till I saved seeds from both and compared with what was left in the seed packets!)

Little Miss wanted me to take a photo of this dill plant, since I had asked her to bring the camera out to get a photo of the beans. The garden doesn’t look this pretty anymore. Almost everything is dead now.

Tramp to Elizabeth Hut

April 25, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

About the middle of February, Gayle and all five of the boys went on a tramp to Elizabeth Hut, in the mountains to the south of us, with several other men and children from our church. I stayed home with the girls, and with the help of a neighbor, did the milking. Mr. Diligence took his camera along and took these photos. Here they are getting ready to head out. Simon is in the center, and Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination to the right in the photo.

They tramped up a river valley.

These little fish were found trapped in some puddles that were drying up.

This is a hot spring partway up to the hut. At some point in the past, someone made a concrete pool, but it’s in bad shape now.

Inside the hut! There are only six bunks, so the men got those and most of the young boys spread their sleeping bags on the floor.

They headed back the next morning. Soon after setting out on the 4-5 hour tramp, Simon twisted his ankle, and just kept going. He could hardly hobble by the time they got out, and didn’t walk on his foot again for a few days.

They all thoroughly enjoyed this tramp, and want to do it again!

January 2021 Photos

April 18, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We had a lot of things going on in January after we got home! Gayle decided to paint the garage roof. He went over all the rusty places with a wire brush, and then painted them with something to stop the rust. He got two coats of paint put on all those places, and one coat on the rest.

Little Miss turned six in January! She was delighted to have a birthday! We had chocolate cake and lime ice cream for dessert.

Esther stripped our dining table and refinished it with teak oil. It’s pretty now!

We were given a deer! It was a huge red deer stag, and we got 39 kilos of meat off it. What a blessing!

Mr. Imagination put a bowlful of meat through the mincer.

Then, Simon took over and put a lot more through, faster!

The boys fried up some of the meat immediately, and pronounced it delicious!

Simon was doing exercises for awhile to strengthen his knees. One evening, he tried pushups with a load on his back!

Baby turkeys!

An apple tree at Simon’s house. I still haven’t gotten over there with a camera, and now the house is full of furniture, being stored till it’s needed by other people.

Esther took some friends to see the old dredge at Ngahere one rainy day.

They also went down to our picnic spot by the river. Near the end of a week of torrential rains, this is what it looked like!

Later that week, also on a rainy day, we took some other friends to Shantytown, a historic village. We got to the school in between lessons on using old-style pens, but with the supplies laying out on the desks, we figured out how to use them.