Early August 2012

9-grain bread, choc oatmeal cookies, pineapple zucchini bread and pickles

Using an existing crack and then bending the conduit!

Evie smashes her two-inch board, with John holding

 August started with Mark and Hilde roaring home from Platteville, watering everything in the garden and then repacking for a couple days at WI Wells.  Mark gathered continuing education credits while Hilde relaxed and caught up on the pile of county papers which had accumulated.  While they were in  playland, Rudolph experienced a wildfire (over 100 acres) and then a violent storm which left half of one birch tree cracked off.  For the rest of the month Hilde went full speed ahead on canning, freezing and baking, despite the heat. This picture is one day's yield.

Just after the  8th anniversary of Jim and Kayme’s wedding (how can it be so long?) the big family gathering took place: Jim, Kayme and Rhiannon for four days and John and Evie for 3!  Rhi had a wonderful time with all the attention and loved chasing the young chickens, although she wanted to crawl into the brooder house through the HIGHLY ‘be-fowled’ hatch.  Lots got accomplished:  Jim enjoyed running the country roads, John did the annual de-rusting of our final family pathfinder, and Mark wrote a will for Jim and Kayme.  Having everyone together for worship on Kayme’s birthday was special---look at the smiles on the new group picture atop the page!

The big event was Evie testing for her second dan black belt, with all the senior masters Henkel together at a testing—first time in several years.    Evie did a great job, with precise, clean forms (five taegeuk and keumgang), energetic sparring and then smashing her two-inch board with a spinning sidekick.  Jim and Mark assisted Dr. Stevens on the judging panel, John led the testing groups, held lots of board (bruising his hand in the process) and finally, Hilde got to present Evie with her black belt and pin.

Over the weekend two property issues came up:  the driveway lights shorted out and the inspection of the roof on the addition revealed it was in much worse shape than previously appeared.  The previous owner of this place had very poorly installed wiring under paved driveway without conduit to protect it, so Mark ended up digging a narrow trench across the driveway to straighten things out with three days of labor.  The roof became the labor of Labor day weekend...see part two of August blog soon!