Family..

Rich’s brother (Chris) and wife (Dawn) have been visiting us from Canada. So wonderful to see them, it’s their first visit to NZ.

There has been a variety of weather; sunny and blue, then torrential rain and wind, with weather warnings and devastation to further north. The summer has not been kind to the country this year 🙁

We made the most of any break in the weather, hiking, biking, exploring, eating meals together, the boys even fitted in a rugby game, courtesy of my brother.

The local team they were rooting for won, which made their night, as you can tell from the photo 🙂

They left us to go to Nelson which is one part of the country currently sunny and warm, so a very good move on their behalf 🙂

It is back now to our usual routine.

Vincent and Jules growing fast, proved to be escape artists from their little pen, as piglets tend to be. Luckily, they know where food comes from so didn’t go far.

Little buggars!

They have made themselves right at home, love their house, which is cosy, dry and warm with lots of pea straw to snuggle in. When I check them at night, the only way I can tell they are in there is the straw is rising and falling 🙂

They stayed in the small pen for a couple of weeks, then I put them in the pig paddock, I was going to wait a month, but I felt it was time. Rich is finishing the wooden fence, so is in there with them much of the day, it is good for them to have this interaction, they are very curious about what is going on and LOVE all the grass.

They are such different pigs to Wilbur and Kevin. Not nearly as demanding, (W&K were screamers when they wanted something, V&J are gentle grunters) and don’t they eat nearly as much, so far anyway! They will let me pat them and stroke their very large ears, it has taken a while to get to that point, neither had been handled previously and were very skittish. I made them porridge for the first week which they thoroughly enjoyed, but now they have to make do with scraps, pig mash and what they can forage 🙂

Luca is enjoying the school year and his subject choice, it is really great to see him so happy with what he is learning.

He and Ted are climbing regularly, and he and Ezra have joined the school 8 Pool team.

As usual the year already seems to be flying by, here we are heading into March shortly 😲

The cruise ships are still coming in; there is a big one out there as I write this.

I took this on a recent early morning walk, just as I entered the graveyard path to our property, I was doing a late shift at work, a beautiful start to the day.

That is a big boat, those are buses lined up to the bottom right of the photo!!!!

Despite, or maybe because of the weather, we are getting lots of flowers from the garden, it makes me happy fulling the vases with them,

The girls are looking very well fed, tubby in fact! We have so much grass this year, again the weather has enabled it, there is more than we have ever had. It is hard to remember the muddy mess this paddock was in before we got a good base layer on it. It was worth going through that to get this result.

When we first started with the farm animals, I thought having one barn for the larger animals was going to be enough, then came that winter with unprecedented rain. So very grateful we now have very distinct areas and shelters for the ponies, pigs, chickens and sheep it really helps with keeping things clean and there is way less mud!!!! Cleanliness really helps to mitigate disease and helps me keep track of health.

It was Chinese New Year last night and Luca was out celebrating; he stayed at Danielle’s last night so will turn up sometime today I assume. Rich and I easing into the day, it is sunny but very windy, so not in a great hurry to do too much. I just went to check on the boys; after a large breakfast, a little wander around their new surroundings, it has proved too much, and they have put themselves to bed. The sun hitting their house in time for a siesta ❤️