Praise God From Whom ALL Blessings Flow

What an evening!! What a cascade of events!!

Yesterday was Harvest Thanksgiving at all our congregations. Our little family has been so blessed with the harvest from our orchard that we did not plant and the grape vine that we did not tend, we really do feel like we have come to the promised land in so many ways. That and our veggie patch that we planted has kept us well supplied.  This was our opportunity to formally give thanks to God for the wonderful and great blessings here.

So I brought along a platter of my grapes, thinking I would be giving them away. What I didn't know was that here they give all the produce from Harvest Thanksgiving to the pastor's family! I came with my small offering and ended up with 50 fold back!

Massive zucchinis

So today was a preserving day. The kids and I spent the afternoon making "Harvest Jam" - grapes (from Thanksgiving), apples and figs (from our own trees) and making Tomato and Zucchini chutney.

After all that it was time for a break, so we went out to feed the sheep and Mum's horse. It looked like a storm was coming so we decided to head into the paddock and up the hill to check it out.

Have I mentioned our property is over 130 years old? We have plans to do some archeology at the old school site, which we think we have found through looking at the topography in the old school area. We have had a few minor finds in our walks, like a glass drink bottle from a cordial company that closed in the mid 1950's, or a piece of coloured, patterned glass that may have been in a window above a main door. But today Tank made a major find.

Our archeological finds.

Tank found an uncovered brown coloured glass bottle in amongst some old bits of flat tin. Tiger gave it a bit of a clean with his hands and found a date "1925". So right up front we dated our find. A wee bit of hand digging and lifting a few bits of the tin and we discovered an old tin pot and then an old cast iron cooking pot. We also found a number of tins stacked inside each other, and so we think that this was one of the old house rubbish tips that we have been looking for.

At which point Christian arrived home...and the storm did too. We quickly bundled the kids out of the paddock (away from a bucking horse) and into the house. Then managed to get the clothes off the line just as the first big drops started.

The "pool"

It was a great downpour. We walked around our verandah as we cooled down from the day. The paddocks were all misted from the rain, our down pipes were overflowing and when we got to the back of the house we discovered the area we are about to pave was flooding. 

What a blessing! We had heard about this kind of downfall from my brother, but now we got the chance to see it and work out what we could do to mitigate it before we pave our back area!

Our back door.

There was much fun for the kids building dams to save the unpacked boxes of books in the garage, building dams to redirect the water into the veggie patch and away from the laundry door...digging trenches. We were all thoroughly drenched, so the kids had a play in their "pool"...an area thats a part of a large contour drain to stop the flooding.

All topped off with a dinner off the land. What a fantastic day!

2014's Review

Harvest 2014 - The storm clouds were rolling in so we
headed off down our road to watch the headers.

Yep, I know, we are now in February of 2015. But the last few months have been so incredibly hectic that any thought of a review of our year was simply out of the question!

So what were we up to last year. Well you could trawl through our posts of 2014...but never the less here are our highlights.

So many good photos...we saw the header enter the paddock
and then put his comb down...and shortly after passing us the
first time another header came into the same paddock...
a rare treat!

Our year began with preparations for the birth of our delightful baby, Skipper. The kids and I spent much time going through each room and culling the excess. Simplifying is such a beautiful thing. But it was a slow process, with my growing belly causing significant tiredness and getting in the road of too much bending.

My pregnancy was punctuated by regular contractions that concerned my doctor. And then our little Skipper decided to start labour before our set caesarean date. He was born 3 weeks premature, but only 8 hours before he was intended. The poor little man spent a week in the special care nursery, and then we struggled to breast feed for 2 and a half months. But our struggle has proved to be just a blink, with time since then flying past.

Christian bought me a much longed for camera this year. I have enjoyed honing my photography skills, although with that comes the need to delete a whole heap of unnecessary photos. It's a great hobby to have with kids, they are constantly coming up with new things to photograph and I think even Christian has enjoyed taking photos this year too.

Our last Sunday in Toowoomba...Enoch's Confirmation.
After this we went to Lunch and then began our drive to
Burrumbuttock.

And then Christian was given the call to Burrumbuttock Parish when we were 2 months into our feeding struggle. It came at an interesting time. My parents had retired from Wagga (2 hours from Burrumbuttock), and would be moving to Inverell (4 hours from Toowoomba, but 11 hours from Burrumbuttock) and at the same time my youngest brother was just about to put his Burrumbuttock house and 13 acres on the market. We had to visit...and of course then we were in love with the place!

Christmas on the front verandah

We took our holidays to Tasmania for a friends wedding and had an amazing time travelling around and exploring. So much history! We made a wonderful journal of our time there.

Saying goodbye to Toowoomba was hard in some ways and easier in others. We made some wonderful friends in the homeschooling community there and we all miss them.

Since arriving in Burrumbuttock I have sewn curtains for 8 windows, planted a veggie patch, preserved fruit from our orchard, and made a good dent on the many renovations we have to do to the 130 year old house. Christian has really enjoyed taking up woodwork again, with making another set of large shelves for our growing library, repairing gaps in the floors, making a sign for our property, a cabinet for Tank and a treasure chest the Man. There is still much to be done, but we are pretty much enjoying each bit as it comes. This year holds much change for our property "Stoneleigh".

Birthday fun

Bonnet by Tiger and Mama.

Happy 10th Birthday to Princess! All she really wanted...has wanted for some time...was a bonnet. The kind worn by Laura Ingalls Wilder of "Little House on the Prairie" fame, or Mandie from her favourite adventure girl books (by Lois Gladys Leopard). Then of course there is her love of Jane Austin, Anne of Green Gables and all things old fashioned...so much like her mother. And yes, we had to make one for Joybug so they could be beautiful girls together. I truly enjoy indulging her

And for a fantastic lunch we had a homemade lunch...home made buns (thanks Sal), homemade mayonnaise (thanks to Mrs. Patmore - our Thermomix), and homegrown tomato and cucumber. Delicious! 

Clearly we are in our element! The veggie garden is growing great, as is the orchard. We are inundated with cucumbers, zucchini, plums, grapes and soon tomatoes. We are preserving, preserving, preserving. The kids are loving the idea that we are saving up for the winter, just like we have read about in the "Little House" books.

Tiger's 2014

This year Daddy got called to the Burrumbuttock Lutheran Parish in NSW. Burrumbuttock is in the Albury-Wodonga area which is right on the NSW-VIC border. Our new home, ''Stoneleigh'' is 5 minutes out of Burrumbuttock and the West Burrumbuttock School is on the property and so is the teachers house which has had extensions added and is where we live. We are still doing our own renovations and so far we have built the pantry, made curtains and a whole heap of other stuff. We have  1 horse Lorien, 2 ducks: Mopsey and Flopsey, 3 Guinea Fowl: Bash, Dash and Crash, 7 Silver Sussex and 20 Sheep, 3 of them have names Bob, Jim and Moo Moo.

This year on April 24th we welcomed our new brother Skipper into our family. It was really fun feeding him with the bottle and holding him. I like watching him do different things and seeing him smile.







Earlier this year we went on a holiday to Tasmania.

We went to a place called Tasmazia with life size mazes, cubby house villages and even a correction centre. I liked all the cubby houses the best because they were fun to play in. The mazes were downright annoying because it took ages for us to get into the centre. Mama got completely lost more than once.

We also went to Port Arthur where we learnt about convicts and looked inside prisons and went to the Isle of the Dead. At the Isle of the Dead there were interesting stories of the people who were buried there.  The day we were there was freezing!

In Hobart we visited a replica of Mawson's Hut in Antartica. We got to dress up in the clothes they would have worn and write with their typewriter and read stories about them.

While we were in Tasmania we made of what we did and each of us kids, including Mummy and Daddy, wrote about what happened for every day. We still look at it. It has lots of great memories.

This year I got Confirmed on November 9 2014. Me and my fellow Confirmees stood up in front of the church and proclaimed our faith. Here is my faith statement: I believe that Jesus is my saviour. I am a sinner like all people, and that Jesus saved me by dying on the cross. I also believe that Jesus cleansed me, a bloodied person like every body else, so that I am now with as snow. I chose Deuteronomy 31:6 because it reminds me that I can be strong in God, faithful and trusting him no matter what, and that he will be with me to the end of the age.

2014 has been an adventurous year and I hope 2015 will be just as fun!


By the Tiger  

The Man's 2014

We went to Robinson Cabin at Boonoo Boonoo National Park. We went for a little holiday after Skipper was born. I liked the river and the big rocks called granite. I liked being able to light fires and going bushwalking. In this picture I was holding pure quartz.









When Skipper was born he was very cute and I like that I am his buddy. Being his buddy means that I have to help him when he needs help. Skipper struggled to breastfeed so I got to feed him using the bottle. I liked doing that. Now he has normal food. He likes sweet potato and rice with Korma (we all like Indian food).

 I like going swimming. This year I have got really good at swimming, but I still need a few more lessons.

I miss Toowoomba because I miss our church there.

In Burrumbuttock I like it best because we have a bigger yard and lots and lots of pets. My favourite pet is our chickens.

Tank's 2014

I liked going to the museum of army stuff. I liked looking in the surgery. It was fun to look around in it.














This year we met Sir Tony Robinson. He works with archeologists. I like to watch his show "Time Team". He came to Toowoomba to make a show.

Our baby was born in April and he's so cute because he laughs a lot. I like Skipper because he's very beautiful. When we were in Toowoomba he could not sit up, but now he can. He can crawl.

 I miss Toowoomba. I liked the house we used to live in, but now we don't. It had very good hide and seek places.

Burrumbuttock is a very good place. I like our animals. We have a horse, two ducks, seven chooks, three guinea fowl and 20 sheep. And we even have wild duck in the dam.

The Fig Tree...and the Snake

Can you see it? We are grateful to God that I did.

We have a beautiful fig tree in our orchard. I love having "biblical" trees growing. We also discovered a pomegranate as we were clearing out an overgrown garden.

Before Christmas we went on one of our night walks with all the children and feasted on four or more  very large figs. It was a great delight! We are waiting for the second harvest, which looks like it's going to be huge! The tree is still covered in the bird nest from last season, which is great for keeping the birds at bay.

We went for a night walk this week and Tank and I were just starting to walk around the tree checking the readiness of the second harvest, when I saw something under the tree that didn't look like part of the nets. A snake!

It was very still, and we wondered if it was stuck in the net or dead. The children and I talked through our options on how to check out if the snake was alive, and we decided to spray some water on it from afar. This way we could all stand well away from it and no one was going to be silly enough to touch it with a stick!

A small spray from the hose determined that it was not just alive, but firmly stuck in the net. We took some photos and looked up photos of snakes in our region. We are pretty sure this one was an eastern brown snake. A fairly large one at that...about 1metre 30cm to 1.5metre.

We decided the best course to go was to kill the snake as he was so distressed,  and no proper snake catcher would return our calls. We called a parishioner neighbour, who came around with a gun and a rake. The children got the opportunity to touch the end of the dead snake and feel the way the bones move inside it's body when it moves. We were able to talk about snake anatomy.

It was actually a lovely visit. We were able to learn more about our local neighbours, our congregations, mission work, how home education works, share snake stories (this farmer had been bitten by a brown twice!) and develop friendships too.

Who would have thought one could do farm work, school work and church work whilst killing a snake!?

Nativity 2014

Joybug with the sleeping Baby Jesus (Skipper)

Every other year since Tiger was born, we have had a baby to put in the manger at Christmas.

This year was Skipper's turn.

Today the children took part in the Christmas play at Holy Cross Lutheran church in Burrumbuttock. Tiger and Princess read parts for puppets, Tank played a wonderful shepherd, The Man was an amazing wise man and Joybug chose to be the star.

Surrounded by adoring children...and crowns cast down...
quite theologically appropriate!

But the highlight for everyone was baby Jesus, who was played by our Skipper. He had a trial run on Friday during the rehearsal and since he was so still and quiet then (he was in wonderment at the puppets above him) he was allowed to try it during church.

It was sleep time, so a gentle wrap and a dummy was all that was needed. He was surrounded by the little children taking his hand and all obviously in love with him...and so he fell fast asleep.

The adults were more than just a bit impressed. His timing...impeccable.

Afterwards Tiger and Princess put on some dress ups
for a family nativity scene

Christian spoke only a short message, but an important one: We have all been invited to God's party, we all have been given a gift.

Our children, like all the children we know, are in love with
 babies...particularly this one.

Jesus is the gift.

Given FOR YOU.

Not to those people over there, for YOU.

To paraphrase Martin Luther's words: It doesn't matter if Jesus came into the world if he didn't come for you.

Renovations part 1

We've bought a 130 year old house...it's a beautiful home, but there is a lot of work that can be done to get things more liveable.

Project number 1: Curtains.

There were only see through curtains in the girls room (designed so they could see out but you can't see in). So since we came from Queensland, our dear children all thought they were being put to bed in the middle of the day. 7pm is rather bright during daylight savings!

I worked hard on this project, and sewed curtains for the boys room and then the girls room and then our room and finally worked out some curtains for the study/baby room. All the curtains for the bedrooms are made with triple weave fabric that is thermal and also 95% block out. The result was just what I wanted. I've also sewed some curtains for the two bathrooms (so we can see out but you can't see in). My favourite curtains would be in our room...they look heritage. Or are they in the kids bathroom, where the curtain has little animal shapes all over it...cute!


Project number 2: Pantry






I wanted to have more storage in the house in general, but here the storage was poorly worked out, and food being central to our life and entertaining guests...this was an urgent project.

My wonderful father took on the task. Tiger was faithfully by his side, and quickly showed his grandfather that he is indispensable! Tiger worked as hard as his grandfather, not shirking when the other kids were playing. It was a hard job, and whilst not beyond my amazing Dad...it was a little harder than we both thought. The pantry is just over 3 metres long and over a metre and a half wide. It's a great size for a growing family. I just need to order an extra shelf for each section up the top.

I think the result is wonderful! Thanks Tiger and Dad.

Harvest 2014

I've never been a farmer...but I've always admired them from afar.

It's a menacing look on a photo, and I wouldn't want to get
in his way, but still beautiful...and amazing that I got a shot.

Sure we owned 6 acres in the Snowy mountains for a few years, but we never tried to run anything other than a horse on it, and it was not arable land.

But here, in Burrumbuttock (gotta love the name)...it's harvest time.

It's nearly 10pm and I can still hear the header whirring. It's a high pitched sound, with the low drone of motors from the harvester under toning it. Ordinarily, it's the kind of sound that would have annoyed me in the city...annoyed me a lot. But here, it's a sound that makes me feel excited.

A full paddock of ripe wheat (which is what our neighbours all had this afternoon) is a beautiful sight. Even more beautiful, after 20ml or more of rain in the past week, is hearing the headers take the wheat, knowing that it's now safe. Over and over since I heard the headers this afternoon I've been singing in my head "Bringing in the Sheaves, bringing in the sheaves, we shall come rejoicing bringing in the sheaves!" It's an old song, but it matches the excitement.

The Seven Silos tonight.

Our front verandah looks out on a large paddock with seven silos. Tonight there were multiple vehicles there with their lights on as they delivered their wheat. As I was walking and watching and feeling the excitement of the night, I heard one of them whoop. I know this can be a great time for farmers, the culmination of the best part of the year of planning, working and praying that the weather goes their way. It's good to be able to share in their excitement as we see our lonely lane become a bustling road of trucks, utes, tractors, headers, harvesters and chaser bins.

Tomorrow, Christian is installed as Pastor here in the Burrumbuttock parish, with 4 congregations and 5 preaching points. They have been vacant for three years. But they have not been idle, there has been much activity going on in the absence of a pastor. We pray there will be much to harvest here...and many good plantings and harvests in the future too.