Tuesday January 4th

Tuesday January 4^th

The day began unexpectedly with a visit from Jacob at 5 a.m. who could not sleep. After getting him back to bed, we found it difficult to sleep as the sun was rising and so too were the numerous species of birds that start singing with the daybreak.  The sounds were incredible as we listened carefully to the completely foreign sounds coming from out our bedroom window.

We eventually fell asleep and awoke around 830 am to a beautiful morning and hardly any wind. The wind yesterday was incredibly strong and blew til nearly midnight.  We opened our curtain to view a 180 degree panoramic view of the valley overlooking the Sound with sheep and cattle scattered among the hillside. It was quite surreal as we readied ourselves for the day with the brilliant view.

We had a bite of toast and made a plan for our day. Helen barbequed up the fish we had caught yesterday along with some tomatoes, bread and eggs. The eggs were labeled with a marker as to which day they were picked. The property here functions quite self-sufficiently with vegetables, fruit and animals to provide the sustenance they need for the most part.  With solar panels on the house and garage, electricity and water heating is provided for the entire property. 

After breakfast, we headed for a walkabout on the property to tour the garden and tend to the sheep. The dog herded them and pushed them from one paddock to another so they could graze in the new grass. Darren moved Nicholas out of the way when Pat opened the gate and as Nicholas leaned on the fence we heard a ‘zap’, followed by a “OUCH!!” Nicholas had brushed the electric wire on the fence top with his arm and got zapped. Of course it was all Dads’ fault and consoling was required.  We toured the cattle zone and had a visit with the two cows, one of which will be calving in 10 days - we were just a bit early. Nicholas crawled into the hen house and retrieved an egg which was cool. 

We headed back to the house and Darren earned his keep by climbing a ladder to the steep garage to clean off all the solar panels from the bird poop that had collected on them. He carried on to the roof of the house to clean 10 windows that needed some tidying as well. Unfortunately the flies on the inside of the house caused more of a mess than there was on the outside of the house – we will get to them later today.

We cooled off by taking the boat down with the tractor and launching it so we could go for a ride in the afternoon.  Darren got to drive the truck and tractor and help out with the official launching. Nicholas, Jacob and Dad jumped into the Sound and swam for a bit to cool off in the mid-day sun. A lady was fishing and caught a few fish but her line caught on the mussels clung on to the bridge posts so Darren had to do a little surgery to remove it. In doing so, he cut is foot up badly in a few places but will survive. 

We came back up to the house and had lunch – leftover lasagna and a bacon/egg pie. Helen is quite the chef and has fed us well! We are off for the afternoon for a boat ride/picnic/swim.

We departed just after lunch and headed out to the mussel farms floating in the water. Some major companies bought out most of the small farmers and took over the operation taking it to a high tech operation. Large buoys are floating in the water with two long ropes running alongside them for several hundred metres. There were probably a hundred of these sections floating in the water in the Sound. This is the most popular place in all New Zealand to grow them and provide the economy with their mussels.

From each of the two floating ropes hangs 3m-8m ropes spread out every 20cm of which the mussels are sewn on at a very small size. The mussels then filter through the water and grow for a period of 12-18 months where they get as large as your hand, turn green and are ready for harvesting.  There is a staggering number of mussels harvested yearly – something like 40 tonne? We drove up to one of them and snuck about 25 of them off one vine that had over a thousand hanging on it. Besides the ones that are sewn on, there are millions that attach naturally from the waters below. When the tide goes out, the dock bottoms are covered with thousands of them. Earlier in the day, one lady removed a few, cutting them open and using the meat inside as bait for fishing. She was jigging off the dock and caught a half dozen fish in 10 minutes for which she was going to feed her cat. The circle of life in the ocean is absolutely fascinating and so different from the prairies from which I grew up on.

We travelled around the water getting the tour from Pat on how the mountainsides yielded many different types of trees. Many are naturally grown, but thousands of acres are seeded pine trees where they are harvested every 20-25 years depending on growth. With recent changes to the environmental laws, only certain portions of the mountainsides are able to be used by the forestry industry. The pine tree being the heartiest of them all will actually choke out the natural vegetation from growing. In the areas designated for natural vegetation to grow, the pine trees that start it that area are sprayed with a chemical that kills them thus ensuring all the natural vegetation success in growing. As you admire the mountainsides while driving through the Sound, you can see the different areas of pine trees, natural areas and dead pine trees mixed into the natural areas as well as the bald mountainside that has been clear cut for forestry. It is quite the mix and all part of what drives the economy in the area. While most of the houses in the Sound are holiday homes, there are several families that do live and work in the area in the limited capacity of what the economy offers them.

We travelled over to a beach where Helen met us as she drove around on the road. We picked her up and went to another beach and had a picnic and relaxed while the boys ran around throwing hundreds of jellyfish back into the ocean. The tide changes every 6 hours thus abandoning millions of creatures on the beach every day. The boys felt special for a few minutes that they helped alter the lives of so many sea creatures! After a picnic, Nicholas went tubing behind the boat for fifteen minutes and we headed over to a shop and bought popsicles for everyone. We travelled back to our dock and Helen headed home with the Ute. We left the boat moored at the dock as we would be heading back to our car around 10 the next morning after our last night here in the Sound. 

Pat and Helen’s water supply comes from a natural stream and waterfall high up in the mountains above their home on their 120 acre property overlooking the Sound. When they moved in back in the mid 90’s, they sought out a great spot from which to run a water line down from the waterfalls down to the house where they would store 23000 litres in a tank from which to use in their home. They also decided to go off the grid from electrical use and run strictly on alternative energy sources – that being solar, wind and water. The solar energy is by far the most expensive but the most reliable. Wind is by far the cheapest but the most unreliable. Water falls about the middle. They found that at a high point in the waterfall, they could run the water through a 5cm pipe down about 40m where it would pick up speed from gravity that it could run a small turbine and thereby generate over 15 amps of power that provides more than enough electricity to run their home. The two of them laid the pipe and ran the wire down the 1km stretch back down to their home with a bit of help from family.

Pat and I drove the quad up the intensely steep slope over tens of switchbacks to get to the area where the waterfall was. Being that the quad could tip over from the weight of the two of us on the back, I had to sit on the metal crossbars of the front to provide extra weight to keep us stable from tipping over. After a good twenty minutes of uphill trek, we levelled out and I was able to sit on the back cushion for a bit before declining back down a portion of the mountain. We parked the quad and trekked through some serious brush, Pat with pants and rubber boots, Darren with swimming trunks and flat sandals… brilliant idea. After several stream crossings, repetitive brushes with stinging nettle and several rope ladders, we arrived at the waterfall. It was an amazing setup but makes one appreciate the effort one must go through on an acreage or mountainside property of which to obtain water for survival.

We travelled back down the hill to the turbine and I was given the demonstration on how it worked. On the way back through the bush, nature again proved it’s fascination by travelling through the thickest grove of pine and fir trees I have ever seen. The most amazing thing about it was the needles. Because of the temperate climate, the needles were as soft as you could ever imagine – so much more different than those found in Alberta. The boughs were big, green and almost fluffy. I likened the density of the forest to that with which the Pevensie children must have experienced in leaving the wardrobe in C.S. Lewis’ novel. It was truly a fascinating experience I shall never remember.

The trek up the back of the mountainside commenced and the rocky trail and bouncing metal bars on my bottom will be another thing I doubt I shall ever forget as well.  After a while, we finally reached the summit and I was able to sit on the back cushion all the way down while still holding on for dear life down the super steep terrain. I walked the last three hundred metres and closed the gates of the many sheep paddocks we traveled through. Pat moves them into different areas every couple weeks so the grass has a chance to grow back after being grazed for a two week period.

Krista and Helen had been making supper for the boys and I headed off to a much needed shower after my mountain experience! The boys played a couple computer games while we sat down to supper. The menu consisted of the twenty five mussels we caught earlier in the day. Helen had five and Darren had the other twenty! They were absolutely delicious with no sauce or spices required. Helen barbequed some steak and lamb and we had our second appetizer. Sashimi raw fish on a red lettuce leaf with peppers. Fantastic! When our main course was ready, we sat down to more fresh broccoli/cauliflower, tomatoes with goat feta, steak, lamb and fresh roasted baby potatoes all washed down with a local beer. This was wrapping up to be an amazing day. After getting the boys showered and ready for bed, we got them each a snack and got them into bed.