West Coast

For a month now, my boys have been working on clearing land across the road from us. We need grazing land for our cow, and were offered the use of a hillside that was covered with gorse and broom. The boys are enjoying the hard work, and making good progress.

The hillside between where our cow is in this picture, and the base of the pine trees, is where the boys are clearing. You can see a lot of gorse and broom in the middle of the picture. This was before they started.

The beginning of the job—they cleared a strip along the bottom of the hill first. They are hauling the brush to a “green dump” down the hill from town.

I went up the hill one sunny day to see what the boys are up to. Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Diligence are doing most of the work, spending an hour or two a day after school, before dark, working on cutting brush. On Saturdays, Gayle helps them haul it all away.

This is what I can see from the kitchen now. Can you see the difference? The boys are hoping that another 2-4 weeks will see the end of the project.

I’m grateful, not only for the land to use, but also for work for my energetic boys to do.

The girls moved back into their bedroom a week ago, after only a week and a half out of it. They are really enjoying having a beautiful new room, rather than than the old room with its horrible pink and purple walls. It now looks quite beautiful! Here are a few pictures of the process of building. This first one was taken by one of my boys, who said, “Safety first!”

By Saturday night, the room was painted!

Little Miss got into some glue, and our friend had just finished cleaning her up when I grabbed my camera. That hat!

Sunday afternoon the boys took advantage of an empty room to play games. It was also warm; since we insulated it, it’s probably the warmest room in the house.

The girls moved back in Tuesday afternoon, after Esther finished painting the trim. In case you wonder what it looked like before, there is a picture in this post.

<p>Esther found the wardrobe in the corner out in the carport when we moved in here. She needed a closet, so decided to strip and refinish it. The project took a lot more time than she anticipated, but she’s happy with the result.

A friend from Dunedin, who is a builder, offered to spend a week helping us work on the house. For two months we have been anticipating this week, and finally, he is here. We decided that, although the exterior of the house is badly in need of some help, we don’t have the money to work on that right now, so we decided to do the next most urgent project, redoing the girls’ room. We told Esther before we moved in here that we would do it up and get rid of the pink and purple walls. She hated them, even if Little Miss loved them. Saturday, Esther moved everything out of the room, and the boys began the demolition job. They had great fun ripping old wallpaper off, and then they began the task of taking down the boards that were underneath the wallpaper (five layers in places, with the top layer being painted). They also played hard in the room for a little while, since it was an open space!

Typical cat—as soon as the mattress was moved out of the room she was relaxed on the highest point!

We’re looking forward to seeing what the room looks like in a few days, when the gib board is finished and the walls are painted!

There isn’t much fruit grown around here, but because Gayle is still working in Cheviot, he has been able to bring us a lot of apples. One Sunday afternoon, the boys decided to make some of them into cider. They washed the apples and cut them in half, then put them through a garbage grinder (which has been thoroughly cleaned!).

They ground the apples into a clean pillowcase, then pressed the pulp between some boards, using a jack to apply pressure.

Then, they carefully poured the juice through a strainer and enjoyed it!

From approximately a bushel of apples, they got nearly four gallons of cider.