Our family's life in New Zealand
There are a few extra cameras floating around here right now. Several people have either upgraded or gotten phones that take good pictures, so the old cameras were up for grabs. One of the boys gave Miss Joy an old camera that still works, and she spent several days taking pictures of whatever caught her fancy. Some turned out fairly good, so here is a glimpse at life as seen by a three-year-old.
We got some good pictures of our little girls over the past couple of months! This was an evening we went to visit some friends. One of their children spread dish soap on the trampoline, and the children all had great fun! Later, we bathed Miss Joy and the youngest of the children of that family.
The little girls occasionally make soup. Here, they are stirring soup in “pots” over “stoves.”
James bought a new backpack, and put Miss Joy in it to test it out. She was delighted!
The girls were walking around one day eating sorrel leaves and checking the strawberries for ripe fruit.
One of her brothers gave Miss Joy a camera, and she had great fun playing with it for a few days.
Elijah arm-wrestled the little girls one day! I was too late to get him wrestling with Miss Joy; she needed some quality time with her thumb and blankie after losing.
Miss Joy put this cloth on her head one day, and then brought me the camera and asked me to take a picture of her.
As we often do, we went to the beach for Christmas Day. Since Christmas was on Sunday this year, we went to church in the morning, and then left soon after the meeting. We headed north along the coast from Greymouth towards Punakaiki, and stopped at the Strongman Mine Memorial to eat our picnic lunch. Of course, Elijah being Elijah, he had to climb the memorial while we were reading it.
After lunch, we drove on north. Because the sea was so calm, we decided not to bother stopping at Pancake Rocks, so we went to the Truman Track, just north of Punakaiki, instead. I took this video of the walk down to the sea, and the fun we had there.
I wanted a new family photo, so we stopped along the trail, before everyone got spread out, to take one. I got this picture while we were trying to figure out where the best lighting would be.
I took this one on the way down, too, since I wanted individual photos. This one didn’t make the cut; we ended up getting all the good ones with Esther’s camera.
It’s kind of a tradition to bury someone at the beach. James had great fun building a dike around himself, but was disgusted when the sea came around the ends!
After we played at the sea here for awhile, we got back into the vehicles and went farther north yet, to Charleston. There, the boys all went swimming and kayaking in Constant Bay, while the rest of us explored the sandy beach.
Use your imagination here! The beach was full of sparkles, as if someone had dumped glitter all over. I tried to get a picture of it, and almost succeeded. There is a drift of glitter through the center of this picture. The water was full of it, too. I think it’s mica.
This bluebottle jellyfish (actually, not a jellyfish but a siphonophore, but often called a jelly) washed up while we were there. The boys had seen it floating in the water just before we found it. We wanted to see the tentacles hanging down, and knew it would die anyway, so we brought it home in a container of seawater. That’s Esther’s hand for scale.
We stayed at that beach for an hour or more, and then went a little farther north, past the mouth of the Nile River, and explored a section of beach with lots of life in the cracks between rocks. There were a lot of these crabs, watching us and trying to get farther back in their safe hiding spots.
There were bluebottles everywhere. Most were washed up and drying out on the sand, but this one was still floating.
When we got home, we put the bluebottle in a preserving jar, and sure enough, the tentacles stretched out. It started feeding, moving its tentacles up and down–see the video at the bottom. It also turned its float up and down, and pulled itself into a horseshoe shape, and then stretched out again. Fascinating! By morning, the tentacles had died and by Monday evening they had completely disintegrated, turning the water blue.
Somehow, I ended up with a lot of pictures of animals this month.
One of the boys borrowed my camera to take pictures of the cattle to share with his cousin. This is the two milk cows. Bluebell is on the left, and her mother Poppy on the right.
The young stock were on top of the hill that day. The two biggest ones are steers, and the two smaller ones are heifers. The Jersey heifer is Poppy’s calf from this year, Rosie. The other is a beefy that Simon brought us from the farm on which he worked. We assumed it was a bull, and gave it a masculine name…until Gayle and Elijah went across the road to castrate it two months later. That’s when we realized that no one had ever looked to see what gender it was! We changed her name.
The calves. Rosie and Ramona are best friends.
These cats are not best friends, but they do end up sleeping in close proximity sometimes, when conditions are right! This is my miniature greenhouse. It was getting too hot to start plants in it, so I left it propped up. Now, I have a frame covered in shade cloth, in the same place, to start the summer’s crops.
This cheeky weka lives in our garden. It scratches the mulch away from the plants and eats the tomatoes.
The flax in front of the house are in bloom, and we often see a tui drinking from them.
I was hanging laundry one morning, and one of the tuis serenaded me from a nearby tree. It went on long enough that I was able to get a video of it!
One day, the boys took Mom on an adventure. At one farm, they saw this family of pigs.
At another farm, they saw these deer.
Someone was moving an old wool underlay one day, and discovered a bumblebee nest inside. We had never seen such a thing! Thankfully, no one got stung.
One day last week, a friend of ours organized a cross-country race for the local homeschool children. It was very low-key; no prizes for the winners. It was just a time to have fun together! We held it at the Nelson Creek campground. The littlest children ran a 250-meter course, the older ones could choose to go 2 or 3 km, and the middle-age ones ran 1 km.
This is Mr. Sweetie about 2/3 of the way through his 3 km run. Mr. Imagination was right behind him.
Both my school boys nearing the finish line!
After the races and our picnic lunch, we took Grandma on a walk around the loop through the bush. A friend’s three children wanted to stay and spend more time, so we took them home with us later; their 4-year-old is leading Esther and Miss Joy in this picture.
A few weeks ago, Simon and Elijah decided to take a three-day tramp in the mountains. Simon was between jobs, and Elijah had cut his hand and had a week off work, so they took off. Elijah took a lot of pictures with his phone, and shared them with me. Here is Simon, taking off up a river valley.
This picture needs a bit of explanation! The two of them had a thing going where they left their fingerprints on each trail marker. They figured that, if they got lost, someone could come along and dust all the trail markers to see where they had been!
That is the Top Trent Hut ahead. It was their goal for the first night; they had lunch at Elizabeth Hut.
This was the lunch stop on the second day.
Their second night out was spent at this hut, the Tutaekuri Hut. A French fly-fisherman joined them there for the night. They walked out from this point and arrived home early in the afternoon.
Here are some video clips Elijah took. They’ll give you a better idea of the terrain.
Simon has started a new job, since his time at the dairy farm came to an end. He is now picking moss. I don’t know where else in the world sphagnum moss is harvested, but the West Coast of New Zealand supplies a large share of the world’s supply. This moss grows wild in the swamps here, and harvesting it is a big business. Simon is going along with a man who has been doing it most of his life and loves the work, learning from him. He came home from work one day last week and told me they would be doing a “fly-out” the next day, and we should come to watch. I had planned to stay home and get some work done here, and do some school, but I decided we would have a field trip, instead. Sadly, we arrived just too late to see the bags flown out, but we learned a lot about the rest of the process! Another time maybe we’ll get to see that part.
This is a patch of moss in front of Simon’s boot. This is a thin spot, not worth harvesting, but because it was raining we didn’t want to go much farther. Anyway, he said that the mud gets pretty deep the farther you go into the swamp, and we didn’t want to get that dirty! They have to cut the gorse out, and then they use pitchforks to pick up the moss, cleaning mud and sticks out of each forkful before putting it into the bag.
These wool bags are filled with 200 kg of moss. Two are filled side by side, and when they have enough to fill a truck with 72 bags, they call in a helicopter to lift them out. The helicopter can lift two at once. Simon said that at first it was a 40-second turnaround between dropping off one set of bags and the next, and by the end it was 50 seconds, since the helicopter had to go a little farther.
Close-up of some of the moss.
The moss is trucked to the sheds. These are long, low buildings with clear roofs and lots of ventilation. The moss is spread out on these tables, made of bird netting fastened to frames, to dry.
After it has dried some, the moss is put through the kiln. This used to be a tobacco kiln, but is now used solely for moss. After the moss has dried enough here, it is sorted again to get out any more stuff you don’t want in your hanging baskets, and baled in an old wool press. The original 200 kg now weighs 11 kg.
Simon took a video with his phone of part of the fly-out. He told me that a lot of static electricity builds up in the cable. He unhooked the bags that were loaded onto a smaller truck, and said that he got shocked with every set of bags!
As usual, I have a number of photos from October that didn’t fit into their own posts!
Gayle often walks somewhere with the little girls on Sunday afternoons. They like to go down to the bridge, and one time he took a picture of them on the sign for our little town.
One evening, Miss Joy requested that someone take a picture of her holding Princess!
One day, we saw helicopters flying over the river. The next day, they were flying over it again. We watched closely, and saw them following the riverbed exactly. We couldn’t figure out what was happening, but then we started hearing jet boats, as well. I searched online for awhile, and finally found information about a jet boat marathon that was happening. One leg of it was up the Grey River, and into the Ahaura! We went down to the riverbed to watch the boats go back downstream. They move fast!
Our heifer Bluebell had her calf in October. It was a little bull, so we decided not to keep him. We were glad that the farm Simon was working on wanted him for breeding!
Someone gave a battery-powered car to the family in whose home we meet for church. The little children love it! It can be operated with pedals and a steering wheel on it, or by a remote control. Here, Miss Joy and another baby were riding while one of the older children operated the remote.
I think these pictures are actually from September. The greenhouse was looking pretty lush! Since then, I have ripped out the old lettuce and planted peppers along the right-hand side.
I did an experiment with onions this year. The ones to the left were planted from seed directly in the ground in May. To the right, the top tray is ones of the same kind that I planted in that try in June, and the others were a different variety, planted in the tray in July or early August. We set them all out in the main garden at the same time, in September. I am hoping for larger onions than usual! So far, the ones I started earliest are doing best. The ones started in June mostly died, and the red ones, started last, are doing fairly well.
This is how I plant onions. I dig a shallow trench and lay the roots in it, then cover them with soil. After a few days the plants stand upright, and, theoretically, start growing!
Elijah bought a Surf a few weeks ago, and badly wanted to try it out on a four wheel drive trip. He organized one on Labour Day, and a lot of friends came along. I stayed home, but Gayle took all the younger children–neither of the girls wanted to be left behind! Gayle, Elijah and James all took photos and let me use them. In this first picture, they were approaching the farm through which you gain access to the track.
Off on the trail! James took most of the pictures; he rode in a friend’s Land Rover, between Elijah’s Surf and Simon’s Safari, which another friend was driving.
The line of vehicles, taking a break.
The cemetery at Napoleon. About 100-150 years ago, this was a thriving mining town–today there are hardly any traces of it!
They drove through a couple of tunnels.
One boy rode his family’s quad bike. Partway through, it started having trouble, and they discovered that the battery was about to burst into flame! One family was driving a ute, and they were able to push the bike onto it to get it home.
I patched together several video clips from Gayle’s and Elijah’s phones and James’s camera. The last two clips, of the Surf going through a creek, are from a one-vehicle trip a few days later. This is the creek where we stopped on Christmas Day, thinking a vehicle couldn’t get through.
I shared a few pictures last week of our anniversary getaway. The next morning, we tried to find some rock pools that Gayle had explored with a friend while doing supervision when this friend had his children on a visit, but the tide was too high, so we gave up. We drove towards Westport, and stopped at Tauranga Bay. We walked up the Cape Foulwind walkway, and enjoyed seeing the sights along the first part of it.
This is Wall Island, where several different species of sea birds nest. It is one of the few predator-free places in New Zealand.
Next, we came to the overlook above the seal colony. There were just a few mothers and pups hauled out. One pup was very active, moving around from place to place.
This rock was just offshore from the seal colony. We saw waves breaking over it!
This was a fun place to take a picture!
There is Cape Foulwind in the distance. A rain squall was on its way, so we turned around and walked quickly back to the car. We drove around to the other end of the walkway, but it was raining so we decided not to walk any more.
We went on to Westport, and drove out to the Tip Head, the end of the breakwall on the north side of the Buller River mouth. Then, we went back to the beginning of the breakwall and doubled back, going out to the beach again. We found this beautiful little garden, in memory of someone.
This beautiful picnic area was next to it, and there were wild cherry trees all around.
It was raining, and the Whitebait Festival was happening, so Westport was crawling with people. We decided to head home. I got these next two pictures while we drove through the Buller Gorge.
We ended up buying our lunch at the supermarket in Reefton and having a picnic, then walking around the Powerhouse walk because the sun had come out. It was a wonderful time away–I think we should do it more often!