Getting the upper hand....or so we hoped

I'm starting to think the Equine Mafia around here are starting to run the show. It's bad enough we've got a village idiot dog that has his 4 pm yap routine, and the evil cats start having couch ripping sessions with The Last Airbender on the TV, and me muttering stuff about why things are always nuts around the place.

Well and truly, the smaller equines have now entrenched themselves into the craziness that goes on around here. Very shortly they are both going to locked up and the protests have already started about that one. My mum loves them and enjoys seeing the little toads at her gate each day. It's the 'I'll miss them if you lock them up' routine.

They've already charmed the socks off my family who came over from Australia to visit Mum. She turned 80 on Friday and we celebrated her big day on Saturday down at The Stables Restaurant at the Matakana Country Park.  She's the one in the middle with that great big cake one of my wonderful sisters chose. It was good to see our entire rather large family come together. Coming from a family of six kids...? I loved it!

The Country Park itself started around 8 or 9 years ago - it's an interesting place full of animals and rides. They even have archery and axe throwing on the offer. I'm used to the real rural stuff out here in the sticks - not plastic country. I guess otherwise, people from Auckland City wouldn't really get to see farm animals, if a place like that wasn't set up, there's Sheep World as well further North. It's all geared for the tourists and reasonably well to do city folk, not hicks like me who are usually broke and wear gumboots to go shopping. I did dress up yesterday and there were no gumboots to be seen anywhere. Got some great photos as well of old tractors and a gig. I'd recommend checking out the Matakana Country Park it's well worth a visit. Not too far from Auckland and they have a market, cafes and animals all over the show. Great for the horse lover and those who just like animals in general.

While I was there I took a couple of shots of the old St Andrew's Presbyterian Church now sited at the Matakana Country Park as well. It's a stunning  Kauri Building constructed 1895  in the Gothic style.The church was opened on 14 April 1895.

MATAKANA.
St. Andrews Church was formally opened by the Rev. James Hill of Devonport on the 14th inst. The new building is Gothic in style, the dimensions being; Nave, 22 x 6 and the transept 27 by 16. Although the new church cost £300 it has been erected free from debt.
Auckland Star 23 April 1895

 
Lisa at Timespanner told me an interesting fact about the fret work on the building. The Kauri Timber Company used to have them in a ready to made off the self set up. So your local builder could order them off the shelf so to speak and put them on a building. Well ready made or not it looks great.

And I had to take a photo of the old tractor there in front of the complex. They've got a few around the place. It looks cool in the old black and white. The tractor is actually red in colour. Thinking about my Mum who lives at the top of this insane farm on her own bit of land I recall a certain time around a couple of years back when one of the cows decided she would like to visit Grandma's garden and have a munch on her plants and um...get into the fish pond. Naturally at a rather early hour in the morning waking up to find a damned cow on your deck makes for interesting viewing. Unimpressed by the unwanted bovine visitor Grandma got out of bed stuck on her dressing gown, shoved on the slippers and went off to find something to give that darned cow a reminder about why she wasn't welcome in the garden. Out marched Grandma with the broom at the ready and round and around the fishpond they went. Cow at trot Grandma with broom. Through the fishpond went cow and up the other side. Grandma was waiting for her with the broom and she got a darned good wallop in the rear end. Several bootings and wallopings later said cow wisely removed herself very quickly from the garden. And of course she was back in there the next morning. They never change! We still have a chuckle about it.

Well that's another post done and dusted. I'll just ..go now and get out the duster....