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Finally!

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Warning: If you have problems with hunting or eating meat, stop right here! There are details you may not want to read or see.

When Simon was about seven, and James was about three (maybe eight and four–I’m not sure), the two of them and a cousin who was in between their ages, who lived on our property, disappeared one afternoon in November. This was in Michigan, and in Michigan, the last two weeks of November are Deer Season. (Maybe that should be in all-caps; it is that important to a lot of people, and the first day is nearly a state holiday!) People who are not hunting stay out of the woods and near buildings during that time, lest there might be stray shots. It can be dangerous to be walking around in the woods or fields during that time. Anyway, these three children disappeared. When someone realized they were missing, both families started searching. By the time we had been looking for 45 minutes, my sister-in-law was about ready to call the police–and then they showed up. They had been out hunting deer behind the woods at the back corner of our 40 acres, over a quarter of a mile from the houses! They were armed with a baseball bat and a stick, and Simon apparently fully expected to bring down a deer. They were totally unafraid, with no idea of the danger that the adults knew about!

Ever since that time, Simon has dreamed of killing a deer. He would love to live off the land, with a hunter-gatherer type of lifestyle. He has gone on hunts with friends half a dozen times since we moved over here, and never saw a deer when anyone in the group had a gun that could bring one down. This week, he went hunting twice with a friend who moved to the area a few months ago and who, importantly, possesses a gun license and a deer rifle. They went out in the middle of the afternoon the second time and searched for likely places to see a deer. After several hours, an hour or so after dark, they gave up and started out, and finally got a possum for their pains. Then they continued on down the road–and saw a deer in the middle of the road! It took a couple of minutes for Simon’s friend to get his gun loaded again, and Simon kept the spotlight on the deer. The first shot only wounded it (they hadn’t realized the gun wasn’t sighted in properly), so Simon took off up the river, following it. He soon caught up and delivered the killing shot. Then, he got to pack it out of there to the car (probably a good thing he had so much adrenalin in his system–it was heavy!) Finally, his dream of bagging a deer came true.

Mr. Imagination was along, since I had gone to town that day, leaving him with Simon, and no one was home to keep track of him. He was over the moon to be a part of this experience.

I love the grin on Simon’s face! The second picture is the Daihatsu–the gutless car that is often scoffed at, but which can go almost anywhere.

Simon brought the deer home and hung it in our carport. The next evening, Little Miss helped him skin it, and then he and Gayle brought it into the kitchen where we boned it out. The friend he went with, and his wife, stopped in while we were working, and he was excited to see that part of the process. The next day, they came back, after we had minced all the meat, and helped turn some into sausage and package it all. We got 34 kg of mince and 5 kg of backstrap from that deer! (That’s about 86 pounds.) It was a young stag, so quite tender and tasty. We had venison sausage patties with breakfast, venison hamburger patties for lunch, and backstrap for dinner. The boys were delighted to get to eat all that meat! Now, Simon wants to go hunting even more.


Half of the bones are cooking in a big pot right now, to make bone broth, and the other half are in the freezer waiting. There was very little waste from this animal, something that makes me feel good about them killing it.

So Far in March….

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We have not taken many pictures this month! I’ll have to be more intentional about taking some if I want to keep blogging. This was a potato someone found in the garden. It weighed an entire kilogram (over two pounds!).

We got our year’s supply of salve started. Packed into those jars is comfrey, plantain, lavender, calendula petals, and a bit of self-heal. We filled the jars with olive oil, and it is currently soaking for six weeks.

Miss Joy was delighted to figure out one day that she could tuck her doll inside her dress. That was her baby carrier!

James signed his apprenticeship papers, and to celebrate, his boss took him to the store and bought a bunch of tools.

Elijah took Mr. Sweetie on a trip to Dunedin to visit friends. They spent a day in Timaru with a friend, who took these two pictures of Mr. Sweetie using a giant slingshot at the beach.

They stopped at Moeraki Boulders, and Elijah caught a picture of Mr. Sweetie balancing this boulder on his head!

February 2022 Photos

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I don’t have very many pictures left from February. Guess we haven’t taken very many lately. I was working in the garden one morning when the neighbor asked if I had set that fire. I looked at him blankly, and he gestured to the south. I looked up–and saw this! Over the next few hours, the smoke drifted over us, making it quite hazy here for awhile. That evening, we learned that it had been just up the road from some friends of ours. It was set intentionally to burn off a paddock, and at the point that I took the picture, the fire was under control. Several hours later, though, it got out of control and they had a hard time putting it out.

Mr. Sweetie found this old coat in a box of rain coats that a neighbor gave us when she cleaned out the place where she lived for 50 years. It had been her husband’s. Mr. Sweetie loves it!

A cyclone hit us about a month ago, dropping around five inches of rain in 24 hours. Six or eight hours after the rain stopped, I walked down to the paddock with Mr. Imagination to see the flooding. Normally, the water is contained in a small creek to the right. It’s good that there is a drainage ditch to catch the overflow!

A friend sent a stamp collection to Elijah. He had great fun sorting his booty.

Apparently, someone thought Princess wanted to read a book!

These boys got home at the same time one afternoon, and I was amused at the contrast. James had been tearing down an old chimney, while Elijah was, as usual, laying new, clean carpet or vinyl. They are both hardworking young men!

Mount Alexander

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Elijah went on a tramp with two other men over the past two days. He arrived home last night, tired and footsore, but elated to have climbed a mountain, and the tallest one in the area, at that! He wanted to show me the pictures he took on his phone, so this afternoon we connected it to my computer and I enjoyed an armchair climb up the mountain with him. He’s happy for me to share his photos here, so you can do the same thing! Someday, I want to climb a mountain–but he says not to try this one. He says I wouldn’t handle scrambling over and through and under (yes, he said that! Then he said not really under.) the rocks very well.

I asked Elijah to help me caption the pictures. From here on, all the text is his words.

Notice the waterfall in the distance there?

The mountain you can see down the valley there is Te Kinga, it is a very popular climb right next to Lake Brunner.

The little lake is called a tarn. There were several of them up and down the mountain. A tarn is a small rain fed lake. The water is pure enough to drink just straight.

I found the rock formations fascinating. As you’ve probably noticed, most of these pictures are shrouded in fog. We ascended through fog, but the decent was a lot clearer.

This was the second tarn on on our route. We ate lunch here on the way back down.

This is a glimpse into the Taramakau River Valley.


Another glimpse into the Taramakau River Valley.

Here I was trying to get a picture of something on that ridge in the cloud. That is J to the left.

There were several of these rocks spines around. It almost looks like they’re petrified wood.

This is J again. Notice how the rock has been sheered off flat in the foreground.

These sorts of rock formations were all over above the 1450 meter mark. Right under the peak they were constant.

Sorry about the fuzzy picture. These are three or four tarns in a row off on another ridge of the mountain. We did not visit them.


This is a panoramic view of both sides of the ridge we were climbing up. Off to the left half of the picture are the southern alps.

The only thing we could figure this to be was a mountain grasshopper. Underneath the back legs were bright red patches that you can only see when it hops.

The Taramakau River as seen down a boulder slope. Yes that is the Otira River off to the left.

As you can see, we were right up in the cloud layers.

The picture is a little bit too fuzzy for most people to make out, but that bright white streak at the base of the mountain of to the left section in the picture is the trans-Alpine tourist train. During the summer it generally does a trip over and back every day  I believe.

This would’ve been at around 1700 m. Once again it was of the only clear side of the mountain, the Taramakau River Valley.

This is the only patch of snow we found on the mountain that we could walk in . It was pretty solid but we still had a little bit of a snow fight. I decided I needed to get myself in at least one picture.

E decided to cool himself off a little bit while we were at it.

The final summit! We were at an elevation  of 1958 m (around 6,000 feet) here. Pictured are some old anchor points for some scientific instruments that has been taken down.

Me in front of the Taramakau Valley, and no, the mountainside isn’t as steep as it looks there.

That’s the Taramakau River valley to the left and a bit of the mountain peak to the other side of the picture.

Yes, it does get pretty steep off this section of the mountain. We were following the ridge line above that precipice, but it was plenty wide enough to make for reasonably safe walking.

These flowers are pretty hardy, being able to grow right up the top of the mountain.

J thought at first at this was something like parsley until he smelled it. Then he decided not to taste it.

Another flower growing near the top of the mountain.

You can’t see it in the picture, but these flowers actually have a slight purple tinge. Sorry about my dirty old boot in the picture.

Another view of Te Kinga (in the middle left of the picture) with Lake Brunner peaking around behind it, and the Arnold Valley to the middle of the picture.

A better view of Te Kinga, Lake Brunner, The Arnold River, and Kangaroo Lake in the right portion of the picture.

That was Te Kinga to the right of the picture this time, the mountains in the left half are right behind Lake Brunner as viewed from Moana.

All in all, this was a wonderful hike, and I would definitely do it again if I had the chance.

Simon’s House

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The older boys have spent all their spare time over the last two months working on fixing up Simon’s house. A young family plans to move over here in about a month, and they want to rent the house, but it was unlivable without a lot of work. The work began on Monday right after New Year’s. Our boys and Gayle and the man who is planning to live in the house spent that day gutting the kitchen and living area. They accomplished a lot of demolition in one day. A week later, Simon and Elijah went over the hill to pick up a kitchen Simon bought on Trade Me. The next day, they set it up in the house to see how it would fit. They wanted my input on how to organize it, so I went over and while I was there I took some pictures.  These first two pictures were taken after nearly an hour of discussion and poor Simon was saying he had a headache from all the thinking. I got out of there so he didn’t have to listen to me any more. They got busy on other jobs for the day.

The ceilings were very uneven so several of them spent several days putting small boards in between the the rafters to straighten out so the gypboard will be able to go on properly. Before they had even gotten the cupboards they had poured a new concrete floor in the kitchen. The original floor was very uneven and varied 2 inches in height from one side to the other. It was also extremely rough.

The next step was to bring up the living room floor to match the kitchen floor. While they were doing this they added insulation under the plywood between the  original floor and the new plywood.

After that they tore out the side wall of the house and framed in a new window and door.

The first Monday of February, I had the chance to stop in and see the progress. It was good to see the new wall frame done.

Wiring was being added to the kitchen and although you can’t see it, they had put in a sliding door to the laundry room, over to the right.

The old window in the living room had been taken out and they were replacing framing in that wall.

Simon took these two pictures  yesterday after they finished working. As you can see they’ve been very busy framing and adding the doors, and have added cladding to the house and two sides.

The flowers at that house were very pretty in early January. This is the flower bed along the garage walking up to the door of the house.

Here are close-ups of a couple of the especially pretty flowers.

January 2022 Photos

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I ended up with a lot of photos taken in January! I wonder why some months we take a lot and some months we don’t take many. This first one is of the bed that was supposed to be full of onions. Most of the onions died, so I left the volunteer potatoes, and then transplanted zinnias throughout it and portulaca around the edges. Lots of dill came up, too, and we ended up with quite a mix of colors. Now, a month later, the potatoes are dying back, but the zinnias are taking over, and this bed is really gorgeous! It’s right beside the driveway, so a good spot. I’m enjoying the flowers.

I was coming in from the garden one day when Esther was going out with her phone, and she grabbed this picture.

I took this picture to advertise the heifer that James is leading (she sold immediately!). We were moving the herd back down the hill to the large paddock we graze them in. They had been on the roadside above our town for a few days, but this day they wouldn’t stay in. One was in heat, and she was likely pushing the others out. Those of us who are home during the day locked them in this small paddock till reinforcements got home, and then I grabbed a quick picture before they headed down.

We needed another bed in the girls’ room so Miss Joy could move out of our room. The only way we could figure out how to fit her in there was to build a loft bed. I found several sets of plans online, and Elijah designed and built this. Little Miss sleeps up there, and Miss Joy sleeps in the queen bed with Esther.

One hot day, we took lunch down to the river bed and let the children play in the creek for a little while before we came back up.

The girls helped Esther make a rhubarb crisp one day. They enjoyed that!

The boys’ sleepout is no more. A couple of our boys had started demolishing it, and one day when a friend brought his children over for a little while they finished the job. That was great fun! Then, it had to be picked up and taken to the dump. That wasn’t so much fun.

Miss Joy loves being read to, and Mr. Imagination is learning the joys of reading aloud.

Little Miss had a birthday in January. She enjoyed opening her presents!

We finally replaced the grain mill that has been limping along for years. The little girls were intensely interested in how it worked when I tried it out.

So much fun to cover a salad with flowers!

Picking beans. I had a few bush/dwarf beans, but we got most of our crop from the runner beans on the trellis.

The joys of a crate, a blankie, and a thumb!

Jo-Jo is tame enough to ride on shoulders now. Mr. Imagination was thrilled the first time he could do this! At first, Jo-Jo bit anyone who tried to pick him up. Now, he might nibble, but gently. He keeps trying to fly, but since his practice time is limited to 10 minutes a day, he is still wobbly, and often crashlands.

Our House

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Just before Christmas, we started working on recladding the house. For a week, until we took off for a weekend over New Year’s to visit friends in Kaikoura, all the men in the family focused on pulling off the old weatherboards and putting up new ones. Then, Simon started work on his house, and Gayle kept puttering away at this one, with help from James on a couple of days, until they all went back to work.

See how rotten that sill is? It had to be replaced. Later, they also replaced the pile at the corner of the house.

This side is insulated, and the building paper is going up to keep the house drier!

One day, I saw several of them on top of the house. They had pulled the weatherboards off the end, and couldn’t put up a new fascia board because so much was rotted out up there at the top. So, part of the roof was pulled off, several purlins replaced and a new fascia board put on, and the roof replaced–all in one day

.Finishing up the gable end. We had to get the electric company out to pull the fuse so the cable could be safely unhooked, the weatherboards put up, and the cable hooked up to the house again. We had about two hours to do all that before they returned to put the fuse back in at the pole.

This was the most challenging part of the entire project. Gayle spent a couple of days working out the angles to cut the boards to get it to look right under the bay window, and then James took a couple of days off working on Simon’s house and helped him get it finished. They started all over again at least once. It came out looking good–but what a process!

In early February, Gayle had a day off work, so he started painting the house. With help from Esther and the younger children, they got the first coat on the two sides that were replaced. We need to get the other two coats on yet, but it’s a start.

We’re hoping for a warmer, drier house this winter! We should do the other two sides of the house, but not this year. These were worst, so they got done first.

Children’s Night Out

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Something that our children like to do occasionally, since the older ones have full licenses now, is all go out to eat somewhere, leaving Gayle and I at home alone. They don’t do it often, and they don’t get fancy; fish and chips is a favorite. They went to town one evening in January, bought fish and chips, and ate them at a trailhead on a hill above Greymouth. Then, they walked to the end of the track, enjoying the scenery and each other. Esther and a couple of the boys took pictures on their phones, and then I borrowed the pictures.

Left to right: Mr. Sweetie holding the food box, Elijah, Little Miss, Simon, Miss Joy.

The Grey River in the foreground, Cobden in the middle, and the Tasman Sea out to the horizon.

Part of Greymouth

Looking up the Grey Valley. Left to right: James, Mr. Sweetie, Simon holding Miss Joy (who informed me later that she had walked up the entire track!), Mr. Imagination, Elijah, Little Miss.

The Grey River and Grey River Valley

My three girls–Little Miss, Miss Joy, Esther

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.

Then, Miss Joy wanted to do it, too!

Off they go down the track!

Meanwhile, at home, I made a special candlelit meal for just the two of us! It was a very good evening.

Videos!

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I was sorting through memory cards this afternoon, and came across a lot of videos I thought some of you might enjoy.

Miss Joy loves to read. When Little Miss was this age, if I would tell her to sit down and read a book, meaning look at a picture book, she would exclaim indignantly, “I can’t read!” In contrast, Miss Joy takes the book and starts “reading” what the pictures are about or what she remembers from hearing the story read to her.

Esther took this video on Christmas Day at the end of the 4WD track where we stopped to eat lunch. Simon had taken his hatchet, so of course he had to chop down the dead tree he saw!

One afternoon, we took a lunch down to the riverbed and ate there, then let the children swim. They had a lot of fun.

December 2021 Photos

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Miss Joy found Daddy taking a nap!

I was reading aloud to the family one evening, and Miss Joy started bringing me books to read to her!

She informed Simon one evening that she was going to drive somewhere, so he asked her where her driver’s license was. She didn’t have one, so he gave her this business card. She got busy diligently signing it.

For Science, we made a model of a water molecule.

For a couple of days, the girls’ favorite activity was making soup, using flowers and leaves.

We bought a cockatiel for Nathan, since his budgie died. This little bird is named Jo-Jo. He’s still a baby, so he looked rather ragged when we got him. He’s looking better now, and getting slightly tamer.

The day before Christmas, we started working on the house. These are the before pictures of the sides we are redoing.

It didn’t take long to rip off the old weatherboards!

The flax bush in front of the house bloomed in December. We enjoyed watching the tuis come to drink the nectar.

When two or three tuis showed up at the same time, there were always raised feathers and arguing. It was pretty funny!

This is the view from our kitchen window. Actually, this WAS the view; all those pine trees at the left are gone now, and we can see the house behind them at the top of that hill.