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Cape Foulwind

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Last year, when we went to Charleston for our anniversary getaway, we went to Cape Foulwind to walk to the lighthouse. It was raining, though, so after we sat in the car for awhile waiting for the shower to stop, we went on to where it wasn’t raining. This year, when we got there, the weather was dry and lovely, so we walked to the lighthouse and on beyond.

Most of the trees around the Cape are stunted from the constant wind and salt spray, but this larger one stands out.

The Cape Foulwind lighthouse.

Looking down from the base of the lighthouse. That concrete structure is apparently the base of an older lighthouse.

We walked along the top of the cliffs on a very nice, well-maintained track for a quarter of an hour or so. Then, my adventurous husband decided he wanted to get down to sea level and find the old railway bed that a sign had mentioned! So, he found a track down the cliff and we scrambled down. In most places, we couldn’t see where the railway had been, but we got to see this seal, who headed out to sea at sight of us.

We walked along the beach until our way was blocked by these huge boulders. I stayed on the ground, but Gayle climbed up to have a look at what lay beyond. Guess what? More sandy beach! The railway bed is visible just to the left, at the top of the rocks.

This rock, with its few brave bushes clinging on, is just offshore.

When we walked back toward the beginning of the track, we saw this place, where the railroad went through a cut. There was a quarry somewhere around here. We aren’t sure, but we’re guessing it was a granite quarry, because of the huge amounts of broken granite that line the shore.

This area seemed to be a dumping ground for rocks and dirt.

When we arrived back at the car, this cheeky weka wanted to get in with us, or mooch something.

We went on to Westport, and after turning around and backtracking, found our way to the south side of the mouth of the Buller River. This is the view looking south from there, and the lighthouse on the south breakwall.

October 2023 Photos

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Here are the rest of the photos from October. One of the younger children’s favorite places to go is the dump down the hill from our village. I was informed, “You don’t give us Christmas presents, so we have to come up with our own.” So, they drag home all sorts of “treasures.” These beams were among recent finds. One of the boys took pictures of them to send to Simon to see if he wanted them, and Goofball obviously wanted to be in the picture.

Our friends in Ngahere had a bonfire to get rid of Simon’s garage, which he dumped in their paddock (with their permission) to get rid of it.

We took some friends to Waiuta the beginning of October, and someone got this picture of Esther and Miss Joy.

Gayle often takes the children on a walk or to go swimming when he comes home from work. The day they begged him to take them swimming, they quickly decided it was much too cold, so they played in the warm, dry sand instead.

Another day they made a different kind of castles by the river.

My sister asked me how to make t-shirt dresses, so I sent her a picture of some I recently made for the girls.

This picture shows something amazing. That Jersey calf gave us a lot of trouble when he was born. He was born one afternoon, and by bedtime we could tell he hadn’t had a feed yet. I milked his mother and gave him a bottle, and he took it greedily. The next day, he wouldn’t suck at all. We tried him on a bottle a couple of times, and tried to get him to suck on his mother, but he absolutely refused. The next day, we forced a few cups of milk down him, but he was getting very weak. He struggled to stand up, and when he sucked it was very weak. Simon got us a tube feeder, and we tubed him twice. I asked for advice on a house cows group, and we prayed a lot for this calf. The third day, we followed the advice we got, and did something called the Madigan squeeze on him (google it). We did that twice, and the second time, he started making sucking motions. That evening when we put his mother in with him, he sucked on her for the first time! The next day, we went away for the weekend, so we left this calf with his mother. When we got home, he was bouncing around happily, acting perfectly normal and healthy. Two days after that, we had to move the cows to another location for grazing. Since that place isn’t calf-friendly, he had to stay behind with the beef-cross calf, so we gave him a bottle. The first time, he wouldn’t drink; the second time, he took nearly a whole bottle, and the third time, he was away. Since that day, he has greedily sucked down every bottle we give him, and wanted more. I took this picture to remind us of the miracle God did for us.

Little Miss had an assignment in her Language Arts book to write a poem about spring. She decided to illustrate it, too!

Sand art. This kept them busy while Gayle and I were away, and then the sand went in the trash.

This also happened while we were away. The girls made bouquets to sell to Esther!

This quad bike went up to the farm with Simon, so he can fix it.

Garden–October 2023

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My first attempt at starting tomatoes this year was a complete failure. We planted the seeds in the ground in the greenhouse, as I did a few years ago when I was not able to buy potting mix because of the lockdown. When they germinated, we pricked them out and put them in a mixture of potting soil and compost that I bought from a department store in town–as I have done every year for five years. This year, they didn’t grow. After about five weeks, when I realized they had barely grown since transplanting, I transplanted them again, into larger pots. Two or three weeks later, they still hadn’t grown at all. By then, I had started some new seeds. When a friend mailed me her extra starts, I sadly dumped every one of the nearly 300 tomato plants that refused to grow and were, in fact, dying. This is what they looked like at that point, two months nearly to the day after sowing the seeds.

This is the new ones that I started the second week of October. By the third week of November, they were nearly all about 5 inches tall, growing fast and ready to put in the ground. Our tomato crop will be late this year, but hopefully we’ll get one.

I started a lot of beetroot! Quite a few of them got covered up with the mulch they were transplanted into in the garden, though. We have a resident weka who spends its nights throwing mulch around, probably searching for slugs and such underneath. What a nuisance!

When James rented the digger to work at Simon’s house, he took advantage of having it to do a couple of jobs here. This was the first; he had Elijah dig a hole for a septic tank for the garden sink. They dug the hole and then James dropped in a barrel which he had cut both ends off of. He covered it with plywood and some boards and ran the drain into it, then covered it again. It is wonderful to be able to use that sink without getting my feet wet and without having a perpetual mud puddle there.

This was the other job, and it was a sad one. Our gorgeous tulip magnolia died, so he dug it out. Now, instead of a beautiful tree with branches perfect for the children to climb in, we have an ugly hole. We’re planning to plant grass there, and eventually build a swing. I won’t miss the shade on my garden, but we do miss the tree.

Charleston, Again

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Gayle and I decided to get away for a night to celebrate our 26th anniversary in October. We went to Charleston for a night last year, and enjoyed it so much that we decided to go to the same place again. When we booked into the campground, they gave us the same room we had last year, too! After we paid for our room and put our things into it, we went on a walk. Twice last year, once by ourselves and once with the family, we explored around Constant Bay, so this time we checked out a track that went south of it. We started out on this tame track, and enjoyed the quiet and the green.

Then, we reached this sign. If you know my husband, you will know that he considers a sign like this to be a challenge. Of course, we went through the gate. I kept my eyes open for hazardous spots! We concluded that, most likely, the sign was put up so that the track didn’t have to be kept up and so that DOC wouldn’t be liable if anyone got hurt.

We were treated to spectacular scenes along that track! First was this view of the mouth of Constant Bay, with waves rolling in one after another.

Then, we walked out to one little inlet after another, each one spectacular in its own way.

One area of dense bush we walked through had deep mining trenches like the ones we see at Nelson Creek.

We sat out near the end of one of the rocks and talked for awhile. Here’s the man I love!

Looking back toward Charleston from one of the higher points. You can see the Paparoa Mountains off in the distance; we live on the other side of them.

These hardy flowers grow in a crack in the rocks.

After awhile, the track got so rough that I was ready to turn back. By then, we were scrambling up and down steep areas, holding onto the trees alongside for support. We returned to the track that was kept up, and were treated to more gorgeous views! After enjoying them, and talking for awhile on a bench overlooking this bay, we returned to the campground, cooked some food, and took it up the coast a little ways to eat it at another beach while we watched the sun set. What a delightful evening!

Concrete Work

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Simon took a week off work in late October to work on his house. His renters moved out, and he has another family wanting to move in, so he needed to build a deck. James figured they should rebuild the garage at the same time, so they tore that down and then started working on the concrete that was needed. First, they spent an entire day excavating… and then another day… and then a third day before the job was completely finished! Part of that was necessary because when he tapped the old retaining wall with the digger, it crumbled.

This was after the first day of digging. The garage used to stand just at the end of these tracks.

A few days later, the new retaining wall was formed up and the posts to support the roof over the deck were braced in their holes, waiting for the concrete.

Then, the truck came and it was all go! James worked on pushing the deck piles down into the wet concrete while other people wheelbarrowed it to the farther holes and it was run down the chute directly into the places the truck could reach. Several little neighbor boys came to “help.”

They poured the footer for the retaining wall that day, but had to let that set before pouring the upper part a few days later.

After another week of hard work, the third pour was complete, the pad to build the new garage on.

Elijah climbed a pole to watch what was happening one evening when he was there helping.

Now, whenever Simon or James has a day off, they are working on building the deck and the roof over it.

Helicopter Flight

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Last year, Elijah signed on to Land Search and Rescue. Since then, he has been doing training for searching for people, mostly in the wilderness but occasionally in urban settings. He has only had the opportunity to go on two searches so far, both in the last two months. The second of them turned out to be a false alarm, but he got a helicopter ride over beautiful terrain on a bright, sunny day, and got to spend time in the bush on that same bright, sunny day. I can’t identify the location or give any details about the incident, but I am allowed to share these scenery photos. Suffice it to say, the location is not too far from us, and the helicopter he rode in is one operated by a company based near us, which we see flying over frequently.

This is Elijah all decked out in his searching gear. He had just walked home after the helicopter ride back from the search and hadn’t taken it off yet. He was explaining here how they measure footprints and stride lengths with that stick to make sure they are still following the trail they think they are.

Here is a quick video of a little of what he saw from the helicopter. Wow!

Scenery

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Elijah has taken several work trips down south to the glacier area lately. He took these two pictures on one of the trips. What amazing views he gets to savor while he drives for work!

But then, I sometimes have amazing views while I work, too! This is the view from the top of the hill across the road, where we pasture our cows at times. They have spent the winter there, and I’ve been milking by hand up there for the past month. I didn’t have my camera along the morning that there was snow on top of that range of mountains, but talk about a spectacular view! Wow. These pictures were taken the morning we had a full moon–that’s a supermoon you can see there. The layer of fog lies over the Grey River; you can often easily see where a river is by looking at the fog in the mornings. Our house, by the way, is just to the left of the picture.

I took this one about 15 minutes later, after the sun was up higher, from a slightly different place on the hilltop. It is looking down to the right of the previous picture, down the hill to the north of our village. We use the paddock across the highway from the road that comes up from the bottom of the picture for our cattle, chickens and turkeys.

Boating Down the Creek

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About a month ago, Gayle and most of the boys and the little girls went down the hill to Orwell Creek, which loops around the hill on which our village sits before emptying into the river. They took an assortment of watercraft, and floated down the creek to the mouth. Gayle drove along to pick them up at the end, and took several photos and a few video clips when he was close to the water. These aren’t very good photos or videos, but they’re fun! The first photo is near the beginning of the excursion; the second is near the end.

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.