February 2020

A dozen Stevens Taekwondo Academy students tested successfully for new belt ranks at the Stevens Point YMCA recently.

The All Purpose Room was full of energy and pride as students of all levels and ages demonstrated blocks, kicks, forms and sparring.  Every student broke a board, showing both skill and determination.

Akiva Lyon was awarded the trophy for testing excellence as he earned his yellow belt.  Lyon, ten years old, snapped a full-sized board with a switching axe kick on his first attempt.

The testing was judged by master instructors Mark and Hilde Henkel. Master Kim Buehler directed the testing with assistance from black belts Ben Hultman and Malek Alkasrawi.

Winter Session II begins February 23 at 7 pm.  There are no  classes March 17 & 19 due to spring break.  The next testing is Saturday, April 4 at 10 am.

January 2020

The new year kicked off in Rudolph with lots of snow (Mark got to plow four more times!), very little sun (gloomy most days) and mild enough temperatures for some outdoor work.  Mark and Hilde had been eying the dying birch by the big shed for a couple years, planning an approach which would not damage either shed or driveway lights, while carrying away dead branches which had fallen.  So one of the milder days, Mark pulled up the tractor, climbed aloft and trimmed the remaining branches before successfully dropping the trunk where he wished.  There is a root sprout there which should survive to replace it and some very productive black cap berries (seedy wild black raspberries) circling the stump.

The very fresh balsam stayed in good shape until Mark and Hilde reluctantly took it down in mid-January.  Taking down the Christmas tree and the colorful decorations is always a sad point in January.   However, watching the Packers lose to the 49ers was actually more painful.  They came very far this season and all the fans can hope for even more  next year!

Determined to use the dull winter time for projects, Mark and Hilde both tackled clearing out some of the years of accumulated files and oddments.  The hope is that it won’t take 48 years to de-clutter.  Hilde has been trying to organize and digitalize all the genealogy information and the many, many heritage photographs she has been given.  It is a daunting task.  Mark has years of legal files downstairs and must carefully sort through them so that all confidential material is burned, not recycled. 

Mark began a special project:  making a dining table from the red elm harvested on the Lomira land more than 30 years ago.  He has gotten the base section done,  joined the lovely elm boards for the top and now needs to do all the tricky support work.  By the time the weather permits Hilde to do the staining and finishing outside, he will have it done, ready for that final step.

Hilde has continued her craft work also, producing a slew of handmade ornaments for the coming Christmas, a bright and warm afghan and some smaller cross stitch items.  Two more duffle bags are almost complete, using yet more of the combined fabric stash.  She is contemplating another quilt and looking at more ways to use up fabric and notions. 

Hilde’s mother celebrated her 88^th birthday with a black eye form a fall, but Hilde had a nice photo from the previous month.  Arlene is resilient and cheerful and had no other injury.  She keeps busy with little sewing projects and television—Hilde calls her frequently.

The new session of taekwondo has brought a trio of students returning to the sport after lengthy absences.  It is interesting to work with this different challenge—regaining stretch and relearning forms is tough after a long absence. The high level of illness in the school population especially has had class attendance down in January.  More people enrolled than present. 

January really sped by as Mark and Hilde kept busy.  They are thinking about ordering garden seeds and more sap bags for the syrup season.  Once January is done, the winter if half gone!

December 2019

What a wonderful, varied and full month December 2019 turned out to be!  Mark and Hilde had no “Christmas parties” or visitors, but were able to get out and visit others, so all was good.  In addition to celebrating Mark’s birthday, December is crammed full of birthdays:  Rhiannon’s, John’s, Hilde’s brother,  and those of two nephews, two nieces and several extended family, so lots of greetings and happiness.

The month started with snow on the 1^st and Mark ended up plowing four times during the month, a new record for December.  Hilde baked up the usual storm of stollen, cookies and other goodies and shared them with family, friends and neighbors.   There were several gifts to finish, since she made four sweaters, four duffle bags, two quilts and several cross stitch items.   She also organized the church fruit baskets for the shut-ins, on a new schedule and in a great hurry, before heading to Chicago.

Mark and Hilde went to Chicago before Christmas to help out John with child care as Evie was doing interviews, and the youngsters not happy with Momma gone.  The cuddling and feeding of grandchildren (and John) was sheer pleasure!  Rosemary at 4 months is very alert and cheerful---while being held.  Hazel is much more verbal and  definitely observant and assertive at 2 years.

The December taekwondo testing was special as Dr. Stevens was able to attend and join his senior black belts for lunch afterward.    The whole group has many happy memories of helping with past testings, so getting together again was a high point of the month for all.  The bo dan and first dan candidates did very well, and the white belts well quite good too, all making their instructors very proud.

The Christmas gathering at Jim’s house was a wonderful time (even though Hilde forgot some gifts and they had to turn around halfway to grab them before continuing!).  Jim had just finished his stunning heritage table, using great initiative to design and produce it from wood saved from the Lomira farm.  It is big and beautiful---with enough room for 11 Henkels to feast at!  Kayme filled it with a wonderful Christmas feast for all eleven, too.   It was a joy to have all five grandchildren in one happy, noisy place, and Great-Grandma Arlene was brought over for some time to cuddle and enjoy it all. 

Before heading down to John’s for a day, Mark and Jim tackled replacing one sump pump and resealing it…Mark is not happy without doing some kind of fix-up job.  The day at John’s was very relaxing…a nice endcap for the holidays before heading north to Rudolph.

 

Besides the holiday activities, the Henkels had interesting events in other areas.  They were contacted by a woman who is very likely a cousin (hurray for more family!), Mark did his recertification in first aid for the YMCA, and the mouse saga of 2019 now includes a mouse in a bottle.  Unfortunately, it was located long after dying there…nasty!  Mark also finally persuaded the new printer to accept commands from his laptop, making the office at home work a bit more smoothly.as he continues to be “Mark the Unretired”.

As predicted, the year turned out to be the wettest on record for this area.  Everyone is hoping for some return to average, as there are STILL some unharvested fields around Rudolph.  However, the milder temps around the holidays allowed for easy, safe travel, although there was fog and eerie conditions at the end of the month.  As the year ended, Mark and Hilde were happily at home, counting many blessings and wishing a happy and healthy new year to all.

 

November 2019 Blustery and Busy

November was such a busy month!  The weather was really cold for most of the month---9 degrees is a bit chilly even for Wisconsin, in early November!  Mark and Hilde spent a lot of time in the swamp and the sugar bush, working out trails, refreshing hunting stands and then building a couple more stands in preparation for deer season.  Since the water was high and the terrain tangled from the logging tops and the wind storms, it took effort and concentration to get anywhere, but they enjoyed their time in the wet woods.

Hilde has turned into a ‘crafting machine’ as one friend put it.  She has completed knitting four sweaters for grandchildren, sewed together four other projects for them and got most of a quilt finished during the month.  During the same period, she got the final fruits and veggies preserved, enjoying the last of the zucchini, late applesauce batches and pumpkin goodies.  

 

Mark worked diligently to get the house and property ready for winter, cutting the raspberry canes, putting up snow fence and  rabbit fence, removing hanging tree limbs and getting the tractor chains on the Minnie.  He has been putting considerable time in on the one case out in Minnesota, while struggling to get his laptop to resync with the scanner/printer.  Those tech issues surely can consume time!  He also helped the neighbor replace the steps and handrail on his deck---paying forward some of the help Henkels received when they moved out to Rudolph.

The highlight of the month was deer season, since Jim, Kayme and all three kids were here.  Jim and Mark enjoy hunting together and all the time in the woods.  Although a nice 6 pointer got away, they are optimistic about the return of deer. For several years there were simply no deer,, but the numbers are up now.  While the men were out hunting, Hilde and Kayme enjoyed time with the each other and the kids.  It is hard to believe that Rhiannon is almost 9!  Legos were the main for all three kids this trip, but Rowan enjoyed working on a plastic canvas project and did all but the finishing work on it, a turkey.  It was a real joy to have them all here.

 

John and Evie report that Rosemary is settling in (3 months old now!) and Hazel adjusting to the new day care group since she is two.  Hilde’s mother has recovered completely from her surgery last month and is adjusting well to the smaller apartment to which she shifted this month.  The Bormann side of the family expanded as Hilde’s youngest niece had her first daughter, named Scarlett.  Mark found out that one of his cousins has moved back to Wisconsin so a get together is going to be planned.

The winter varieties of birds have been very active at the feeders---watching the small birds tweak tail feathers and swoop to startle the larger birds off is fascinating.  There are lots of woodpeckers, cardinals and nuthatches around to brighten the landscape. 

Thanksgiving was pretty quiet, as Mark and Hilde observed it with church, a feast for the two of them and time to really count up their blessings.  Sometimes those quiet times are really precious, especially before the busy end of the year with holidays, and special observances.

Silly and Sweet:  Caleb, Rowan and Rhiannon

High Octane October 2019

What a month!  Henkels were busy bees, the weather varied wildly from a few golden days, to many cool, wet days and three days of snow, and the family experienced birthdays, emergency surgeries and other special events.  October was FULL!

Those early days of cold prompted the earliest ever switch to flannel sheets and some very hurried outdoor activities.  Hilde hustled to plant fall bulbs, ruthlessly prune the forsythia (again) and get those brilliantly colored blueberry bushes tucked in with pine needle mulch.  Mark went aloft to tuckpoint and repaint the chimney, picked late raspberries until about the last week (once after the first snow!), pruned SOME of the wild grape vine on the antenna tower and crafted two beautiful wooden spoons from heritage Lomira ash.

That last project was preceded by dealing with a mess in the wood shop, where an enterprising mouse had made a nest IN Mark’s drill press.  Cleaning that up took hours and disassembly of the drill press.  Mark and Hilde also made an   early Christmas delivery, taking the refurbished JD lawnmower down to Jim and Kayme just before Halloween, between those aforementioned snows.

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The usual fall harvest finales took time:  the Henkels had some helping hands for the major chicken butchering on a fine frosty morning, and did the last three roosters (which needed fattening) a couple weeks later.  They dug the poor carrot crop, brought in the three pie pumpkins and all the deck plants and enjoyed one last dinner on the deck, too.  After picking apples and clearing the garden, Hilde was quite busy making applesauce, drying apples, freezing final peppers and making a few more batches of those delicious chocolate zucchini muffins for winter desserts.  Mark got the fence down, and then the gardens disked up so things were ready for winter.

 

The autumn colors were lovely, but the season late and then shortened by the early snow and cold.  Mark and Hilde took some time to enjoy one day at Horicon, another at Lake Sherwood and a special fish fry down at the Silvercryst in Wautoma.  While they were not able to visit them, they rejoiced in Rowan’s 7^th birthday and Hazel’s 2^nd  birthday---both happy girls and growing nicely.

Hilde has been on a crafting binge:  she finished one really interesting afghan in rich colors, knit two children’s sweaters and sewed a table runner, just to try out a pattern she noticed on line.  Mark started getting fairly busy on the (final???) out of state lawsuit, so phones were ringing, the printer was spewing lots of paper and his usual pacing to and fro began.

On the family side, Alana and Justin visited on a nice Sunday, and Hilde’s mother scared everyone by having an emergency appendectomy at age 87.  After a couple weeks in rehab, Arlene is back at her assisted living apartment and doing well.  One of the neighbors on Tower Road dropped over dead way too young (55) and made everyone think about “numbering their days aright.”  

Annual physicals and the ensuing scans and tests took some time, but with those were all fine.  The flat tire on one car, and nearly empty gas tank on the other were only minor irritations ---and they were not even late for the taekwondo class---just not as early as usual.

Mill Creek mid month

With the wet conditions, two expeditions to the Seneca swanp were quite challenging:  high water, tangled tops from past logging disguised by tall undergrowth, and hidden stumps.  The moss and leaves were quietly beautiful, as Mark and Hilde struggled to find and reclear the serpentine path leading to the back deer stand out there!  As usual way out in rural Rudolph, no trick or treaters, but a quiet night for Mark and Hilde to snuggle down and face up to an early winter. 

 

So Wisconsin!