Day 9

Donkey that The Tin Shed had behind their shop in the petting zoo.

We started out our day at 8:30 a.m. where we headed out of Ashburton to the Tin Shed. The Tin Shed is a luxury wool shop that sells a variety of wool products ranging from men’s and women’s quality sweaters, coats, vests, pants, socks, gloves, and hats, just to name a few. They even sell kids clothing, baby blankets, and baby shoes. 

The Tin Shed where we were able to purchase high quality wool products.

In this shop you can find household items such as sheep pelts and wool blankets. The wool to make these products come from merino sheep, alpacas, and possums. When you are not shopping inside the Tin Shed, they have several farm animals that they have housed in a petting zoo type setting. Many students spent time visiting with their donkey, alpacas, sheep, and pot belly pigs.

Geraldine Cheese Company where we got our ice cream.

Geraldine Cheese Company ice cream

Once everyone finished their retail therapy, we headed to Geraldine Cheese Company 30 minutes down the road to get ice cream, muffins, coffee, and some souvenir’s. Geraldine Cheese Company had the choice of cheese tasting or ice cream cones for those who are visiting. You can find a selection of unique cheeses and even see the process they undergo to make the cheeses. On the shelves of this small business, you will also see a variety of flavors of olive oil and other fun trinkets.

The Good Shepard church one of the most photographed pictures on the South Island.

Once we were on our way, in about an hour we wound up at the Church of the Good Shepherd which was built right next to frigid Lake Tekapo, which is a glacial lake with the perfect view of Mount Cook, New Zealand’s largest mountain.

 

 

 

 

We were lucky enough to see Mount Cook “Aoraki”

Students in front of Mount Cook.

Pool of Salmon fish

We then headed towards our last stop of the day, High Country Salmon. High Country Salmon is a salmon farm floating on the glacial waters of Wairepo Arm. They produce around 20,000 tons of New Zealand salmon that gets sold locally and as one of the most high-end salmon across the world. We learned that it’s a unique specie of salmon to New Zealand which gives them several benefits. One of the best benefits we learned about is the lack of disease that they have as an island with a unique breed. This helps make their system more efficient as they can focus more on their feed efficiency and adding in new lines of genetics. They feed their fish a high pressure pressed pellet, produced in Australia, comprised of fish meal, fish oil, and durum wheat. They have hope in the next 5 years to move away from the fish oils to other more easily accessible products. They grow their salmon in round floating nets in the canal. This specie of salmon is especially suited for the cold glacial waters of the region and with the warming climate cycle we are in they are concerned whether it will affect the production of their spawn. We gathered around one of their nets where we got to listen to the farm manager talk while feeding the salmon. They have a restaurant on site where they offer freshly harvested salmon that our group grabbed for the bus ride to our hotel.

The Collie dog monument representing the impact herding dogs have in the Mackenize Country