Monday, August 17, 2009

Hey all,

As promised, here are some pictures of our new lifestyle. Enjoy, and please leave a comment!


This is the view of our property from the street.



Walking across the top paddocks, looking towards the cliffs.

Coco and CJ enjoy the view.

When you climb up to the top of the cliff and look around, this is what you see:


Jed Clampett lives here. No, wait, that's our house!


We have a minimal kitchen, with a woodburner for heating the house, and making hot water.



The view from the living room, out through the french doors.


Such a sunny living room, but a wee bit cold in the winter....


This is how Levi gets up to his room. It's an old ship's ladder!


Levi's room.


The view from Levi's window, toward the street.


The view from Levi's other window.


Our shed is a dumping ground for all our stuff. This is a project for another day.


In the rear of the shed, we built a work room for our business.



Blue skies are common around here.



Luka on the day she arrived at our farm.


Gail and Tinna enjoy a moment together.


Tinna romps in the tall grass.


Levi rides the Headless Horse.


We have four cows. The pretty red one is Bessie, our Jersey cow. She will be our milk cow once her calf is born in September. Zim is in love with her. Don't tell Gail.


What a nice place to live! This picture puts our house into its proper setting. Someone once phrased it this way: our "house" is 20 acres, but only part of it is inside.


Levi relaxes in the living room.


In June, our neighbor Eric helped us out by ploughing our veggie garden, which is a quarter of an acre.


The next day was the winter solstice. We had a huge bonfire and invited many of our friends.


We are still active in the Jewish community. One of the visiting rabbis came to pay a house call, and we tied one on.


Another view of the house, after we removed some of the rubbish. Humble on the outside, but nice on the inside.



Zim runs the tractor through the garden with the rotary hoe attachment.

Gail takes a turn.


Luka and Tinna relax in their paddock.

Zim has been taking life drawing classes.


There's a story in this next picture. We talked to Mom and Dad one Sunday morning, and they told us how their friends were envious of our lifestyle. Later that day, we had to excavate our grey water system, because the grease trap was plugged up. In the midst of the stench, we thought to take this picture to show how good our life really is.


Baby lambs are so cute! Today is the second anniversary of our arrival in New Zealand. As a special gift, Uni the one-horned ewe gave birth to triplets!We had to assist with two of the births, as they weren't in the right position to come out. Don't ask if you don't want to know.
Uni says thanks. Actually, she says bleahhhh.

3 comments:

Jo said...

Hi Family,
Miss you so much! Ken and I talk about spending our winters in NZ when our ship comes in :-) He wants to experience the fishing and I miss my sister.

Can't say that all aspects of your current life look appealing to me, but I can tell from the warm, witty and wonderful prose that it suits you all well. Can't wait till we can come and experience it all first hand.

Love to you all!
Ken and Jo

Lee said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lee said...

You rock up and down and all around the world!

Sheep and horses and septic systems and water towers and acres and acres and vegetable gardens and paddocks and cliffs and green green grass. Wonderful!

I still miss riding the motorcycle in Denver.