Success is getting what you want; happiness is liking what you get

Monday 7 December 2009

Off to get the Christmas Ham

Christmas is getting closer so we took a trip up to Haighs Meats in Ohau, south of Levin, to collect our Christmas ham.  Two hams, actually, we ordered one large one to be cut in half.  That certainly suits us better as we take one piece away in the caravan over Christmas/New Year (the caravan fridge is smaller than our one at home).  Then, we have the second half all freshly sealed up waiting for us for when we return home. Haighs Meats only use New Zealand female pork, (it’s sweeter, Charlie assures us) and the meat is all free range.  We haven’t tried their hams before, but can certainly vouch for their special award winning sausages!  (In fact, we drive miles out of our way to buy them).  The traditionally cured hams are smoked with manuka and rosemary, so we are really looking forward to tasting our Christmas ham. We’ll let you know what we think!!

While we were on the road we stopped for coffee at Paekakariki.  Our Kiwitea family were driving down to Wellington to have an early Christmas get-together with the other side of the family.  Paekakariki was a good place to catch up with each other, have a coffee, and exchange gifts to take home and put under our respective Christmas trees.  Then we said our farewells and continued on our journeys.

DSCF2333 Jenny, Robert, Emma and Nicky

The main trunk line runs parallel to State Highway One for quite some distance, and we noticed a lot of activity on the track.  The workmen are obviously re-laying the railway sleepers as we saw a couple of huge piles of discarded sleepers all jumbled up at the side of the track.  They are also double tracking the line from MacKay's Crossing to Waikanae and electrifying that section as well.  There were men and machines everywhere.   The workmen were dressed in orange overalls and the long lengths of orange netting denoted where the repairs were taking place.  With all this work going on, it was no wonder that were saw signs advising “Trains replaced by Buses” further down the line.

 DSCF2341 DSCF2343

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