Strawberry Fare

Saturday 12th December: We had another one of those days with incredibly gusty nor'wester changing to gusty southerly, with calm bits in between.
Today was Waimate's Strawberry Fare, an annual event in the park in town. Stallholders come from all over the South Island, and many thousands of people come to Waimate, with live bands, Father Christmas, and most of the local groups using it as an opportunity to raise funds. We went about 11am and spent a couple of hours there, rattles round by the strong winds. We nipped home for a quick lunch then Mum, Dad, Edward, Jonathan and I dashed off to a local playground. Peter was coming with us but changed his mind at the last moment to stay home with Steve while the butcher came to dispatch our ram lamb. Apparently Peter was absolutely okay until Steve decided to do a tutorial on the anatomy of the still-warm heart in his hand and then he went a little pale and decided a stint on "Dino Dig" on the computer was more his thing!
While we were out we saw our friend Guy's traction engine start its journey back home from the Strawberry Fare (see photo). We dashed up the road in the car down other roads to get ahead of it to wave and take photos, three times! Guy even let Dad, Edward and Jonathan have a ride on the back of it. The black smoke belching out of it was amazing and the "boys" got off their ride grubby and happy!!
We then set about splitting the middle paddock so the goat and ewe are in one bit, and the two little lambs moved down to the other bit, separated by three lines of electric wires. Hopefully they will get used to each other and one day soon we'll be able to put them in together. All this was interrupted several times by heavy downpours of rain, and then the sun came out again. Steve borrowed next door's sit-on lawnmower again and let Peter have a go!! (see photo)
In the evening we had a pavlova made with our eggs, cream (from the supermarket) and strawberries from our garden! Yum!