Day 40 - Farmers market, stock market, lunch with Molly, TGC, canoes and rainbows.

Friday 9th Feb
Everybody else had to be off to work and school, we made a date for lunch with Teresa and Molly and headed out for the morning.
First stop was to find the Feilding Promotions that lives in the iSite, it took us a while to find even though we'd been given excellent directions (which hadn't stuck in my brain very well), fortunately the library was easy to find and they pointed us to the iSite; this occupies the back of the old railway station. We needed to get tickets to visit the stock sale yards, once we had tickets we took a stroll around town and visited the farmers market, finally we saw someone selling venison! I had to have a quick coffee top up and Karen had to have a chocolate brownie before we hit the stock market.
The Feilding stock saleyards is one of the biggest in the world and they have walking tours every Friday at 11:00 with a very knowledgeable guide; our guide was a retired sheep farmer, his son was still farming sheep nearby, but he lived in town. Lots of sheep and cattle were being auctioned.
They also sell the fallow deer, but on Monday; there seems to be a lot of deer walking around in the fields in New Zealand, but no evidence of it in the supermarkets. We learnt a bit about how sheep are sold and where they go next. It was pretty much about whether they are ready for making into food now, next month or a couple of months later.

While we were in the noisy cattle auction we missed a call from Teresa, so Karen called her back, she was on her way for lunch with Molly and to meet her at Essence on Manchester street. We set off walking along Manchester street, we made it all the way across town before seeing Teresa getting out of her car, unfortunately we'd walked past the restaurant which was just by the exit of the stock yard, a win for the step count, as we all walked back along Manchester street together.

Teresa had picked Molly's phone up from the repair shop that morning so we were all interested to see if she still had her photo's from her trip Nicargua and Costa Rica, (the phone got wet after she dived into a waterfall).
After a lovely lunch we couldn't remember where we left the car so had to wander around for abit to find it. In fact we walked past the car once not recognising it straight away even though Molly asked "Is that your car?" We dropped Molly back to school, Teresa went back to work and we went back to Teresa and Matt's house to try and get our planning done for Northland (and blog of course!).
After school the boys were doing polo at the Makino outdoor pool and Molly was working there, so Teresa ordered pizza's for the kids. We picked up the pizza's and dropped them off with the boys polo kayaks and gear at the pool. We were supposed to drop Kai off too, but we forgot him first time round and had to go back and get him after he rang us from the house to ask where we were.
We dropped everyone off and then off back home for an amazing Thai green curry (thank you T!). Jenson called and I went and picked him up, he was spectating while his elbow recovers and having to sit and watch everyone play was not fun.
After we'd eaten we went back and watched the last game in the pool. We were treated to a double rainbow while we were there.

Molly lifeguarding

beautiful sunset

Jago was playing, he was playing blue 6 but then he changed to yellow 6 to even up the teams.
After the game we loaded up the boats and kids and then went back home for ice cream in cones. I tried to persuade everyone to go to park run the next day in Palmeston North, but only Teresa showed any enthusiasm. :(