I’m sure you’ll all agree that, as a bunch, we are not ones to wander far from the Homestead.  We tend to keep our celebrations close to home, quiet, low key, and carbon footprint friendly  But then, every so often, things deviate for a while. This has been one of those weeks.

Even if the weather was decidedly grey.

NB: People that actually have a life, start chuckling now.

For our animal contingent, it was admittedly pretty much business as usual; the chickens and ducks spent it puddling about in the mire recent rain has reduced the meadow to, while Geraldine, Leia and Ruby have been subjected to the goat equivalent of wining and dining by our debonair man-about-paddock, Bob. As bloke-goats go, Bob is that one-in-a-million sweetheart and we’ll miss him very much when he heads back to the farm in a couple of weeks time. His smell? Not so much…

But for the rest of us it was a bit of a giddy haze of social flurry, which included a milestone birthday party for one of those people we have known forever. Yes, you read did that right: we went to a party. Happy birthday, Sue from all at the Homestead.

Sunday morning saw us in church, hugely honoured to be witnessing the incredibly joyous, heartfelt, and honest declaration of faith by our esteemed Auntie Joss.

You go, girl!

The Farmer was otherwise engaged, taking part in the annual Queen’s Birthday Celebration and Night Run at Halswell Miniature trains, a place he spends a lot of his off-Homestead time The video below explains why he was a tad tired afterwards.

Farm Girl managed to cram a couple of school visits into this week as well.  On Tuesday, her room at the Kingdom of Nova (Kauri Class) spent a morning at the Canterbury Museum as part of their Ancient People, New Land study of New Zealand history and geography. If that wasn’t enough, the following day she was off enjoying our very own Christchurch Symphony Orchestra as part of their community engagement programme. Her personal highlight: seeing and hearing a harp for the very first time.

But the show stopper this week was two of our number, The Farmer and Bean Counter, jumping aboard a silver bird bound for Sydney. Over the course of this blog, mention has often been made of The Bean Counter’s enduring enamorment of Liverpool Football Club. Less has been said about The Farmer’s football favourites, Chelsea, but this does not mean his fervency is any the dimmer.  This week, who should be playing Sydney FC at home than the Mighty Blues and, furthermore, what kind of mean-spirited killjoys would stand in the way of him clapping eyes on Jose “The Special One” Mourinho and his happy band of league winners? Not us.

The football may not have been breathtaking, but as an adventure it was all that was wished for and more.

You can pack a lot into 36 hours.

Soon, we’ll be back to the gardening/animal tending/off-Homestead toil/Kingdom of Nova stuff we know and love. We know we love it; we’ve just had a week of exceptions to prove the rule.