After our great week in Governor’s Bay we were off to a short week with Ben and Cheryl at the edge of the Canterbury plains. They had a large-scale beef and sheep farm with a chunk of native bush in their backyard. The farm, though it had escaped his family’s ownership for a few decades, was originally settled by Ben’s ancestors and had the coolest huge heritage home that was over 100 years old. The house had so much character, with interesting woodwork and huge stained glass windows everywhere. We got to stay in their guest room which was so beautiful and cosy. The gardens on the property were so gorgeous as well, full of roses and hydrangeas.
One night we just took a walk down their super long driveway to see the sheep in their paddocks and just explore the farm a little bit. I had never seen so many sheep in my life, or even any sheep so close, so it was so much fun checking them out and taking too many pictures of them! Ashley found some bales of hay to climb and had way too much fun walking along on top of them!
Most of the work we did was helping them clear some trees from their property. They chopped down the trees, took of the branches, and sliced the trunks into firewood, while Ashley and I sent the branches through the chipper and piled all the firewood. It was good hard work and we got a few bruises and scrapes. One of the afternoons there was a working bee at their little girl’s school (8-year-old hip-hopping Emma) and we helped fix up a fence then joined in on their BBQ. I finally tried lamb and it was delicious!
We got to see the lambs being shorn which was interesting and a little sad. They just go so fast and sometimes the lambs get a bit cut. I realize it’s unavoidable when shearing such huge volumes of lambs (like 3500), but it still made me sad. Still it was interesting to see the process and how they sort the wool. We also helped with herding some cattle and sheep into different paddocks. That was pretty fun, walking behind a ton of sheep. Sometimes they would stop and look at you but as soon as you got too close, they would be like ‘Ah!’ and run on ahead. We had some fun with that!
Another thing we were able to do at their farm was take a hike through their native bush. They have this certain native tree (I think he said it was black birch) which looks as though its bark is covered with thick black bumpy mould but sometimes the white bark peeked through and it kind of looked like a dalmatian. The trees give off this weird sap that is typically food for birds, but since the wasps have kind of taken over in New Zealand, they end up taking most of it. It’s pretty weird because you just hear this constant buzz in the air which is all the wasps flying around and there’s a weird and powerful sweet woody smell throughout the forest. This native forest was so cool to walk through. There were a ton of ferns (I love ferns!) and all these smaller bushes with the tiniest leaves which just kind of sparkled and glowed in the light. It felt like we were walking through a fairy forest! Part of the trail went along the river too which was so gorgeous!
At the end of our time with Ben and Cheryl, Ben took us to a beach in Christchurch and showed us how to find agates on it. The beach was super rocky and the waves were intense! At first we really had trouble telling the difference between actual agates and just cool looking rocks, but once we knew what we were looking for, we ended up finding quite a bit! And at the end of the beach we found a baby seal chilling on the rocks! We were able to get up so close to him and he just kinda looked at us in a very cat-like way and was just like ‘whatever!’ He was so cute! Afterwards we went to see his friend who cuts and polishes agates and has a huge rock museum full of agates and fossils and amethysts and petrified wood. It was pretty cool!
So that was our short week in Canterbury! We learned lots about sheep and beef farming and saw some pretty cool things. The next little chunk of our trip involved a bit of sight seeing and time to ourselves which was so fun and that’ll be featured in my next blog!
A Couple of Runaways 