Photo © Betty Droel
Ken & Ruth Kitto
(I took this picture just as they were leaving for the reunion.)

Photo © Donna Johnson
Our carpenter crew: Travis, Jody & Moje, hard at work tearing apart the old rotten deck. A window where the old air conditioner was located, now open to the great outdoors, will soon be the door into the new sunroom.

Photo © Donna Johnson
The new sunroom begins to take shape.

Photo © Donna Johnson
Sunroom now has windows and they are getting the outside door done. The one into the house will be put in on Monday, as well as steps up to the house. Getting very exciting!

Berry picking was serious business. If you read that book that old Knight wrote, the whole family went berry picking. You picked blueberries when it was in season. Come fall they picked high bush cranberries and canned them and made juice out of them. My ma always made jam. We always had high bush cranberry jam and wild plums. There were lots of wild plums in those days.

I remember one time my dad and I went and took the packsack and some pails and went west down a quarter mile and turned off and went south again down that very same hill there by that Shine Lake and back over in there towards that old homesteader there, Orin Patrow. He was one of the first settlers in that country that stayed there. There were nice big plums all through that area.

We were picking out the nicest plum bushes and we had our containers pretty well full and there was one clump that was quite large, I suppose the diameter of the thing was 12 to 14 feet and then the branches bush out. We were pretty close together all around there and so I thought my dad was picking on the other side of this clump of plum bushes there.

I was picking on one side and talking to him and he wasn't answering me. So I turned and looked and here he was, way over on someplace else on another bush. It was a bear over there picking on the other side of the clump of bushes that I was picking on.

One time, I think it was that very same trip, we were walking down this real old, original tote road. We were walking along and we looked off to the side and there was a small bear that was tearing into a large anthill. What they do is take their paw and give it a rip and scrape off some of it and put their paw back on there again and let the ants crawl up on their paw and lick them off. He was having a great time.

We watched him a little while and pretty soon my dad hollered at him, "What are you doing there?"

That bear took off just like he'd been shot. He went crashing down through the brush. There weren't many trees, mostly brush. Oh man, you could hear him going, just like a tornado, like he'd been stuck by something. He sure took off. That was kind of funny.

That plum business was good. Boy, Ma would can this for plum sauce. I don't think my ma ever made plum pudding or anything like that. It was all part of our winter supplies to survive.

Fall is almost there and time for a letter from me, it has been a while since you heard from me. The summer in the Netherlands was not warm, we had a long period of clouded skies and cool temperatures. A few times a short period with warm and sunny weather. Perhaps it's because the climate is changing. The winters are very mild, when I was a child we could skate for weeks and we had much more snow.

Today started sunny but in the afternoon it became clouded, temperatures around 18 degrees C (64 degrees F).

With me, all is fine; it's time for an article in The Bulletin and want to send it to you this week for publishing next week.

I read The Bulletin every week; wonder to how many people you send it?

At work, we started building up the tables for the Christmas articles, hope to have it ready in three weeks.

Greetings from the Netherlands,

Ary Ommert, Jr.

Editor's comment: At present we have about 125 e-mail subscribers. We have heard that there are more who read The Bulletin on the Web.

Miss Hetty's Mailbox:

Thanks for the birthday card! I had a pretty nice day. I brought two dozen bagels to work, as a thinly veiled excuse for friends to swing by my desk and chat for a few moments.

For lunch, two friends treated me to my favorite Italian Beef sausage at Bertrossa's in downtown Fargo.

For supper, my mom and step-dad, John, came to town and treated Jolene, the girls, Chris, Jessy, and me to supper at Paradiso's Mexican Restaurant in Fargo!

Rylie made a heart-shaped birthday card for me, very well illustrated and mostly spelled correctly!

So it was a pretty nice day of eating, and a great day spending some time with some family!

Wyatt Johnson
Moorhead, MN

Photo © Betty Droel
Alison Elizabeth Droel explores Great Grandma Betty's cupboards.

We had a visit by Roy's son, Rodger and Claudia, yesterday. They brought along their granddaughter so she could see her great grandpa and great grandma, or was it that they could see her? They were babysitting Alison Elizabeth Droel.

It was extra special to open The Bulletin and see Lori's beautiful photos of Beaver's farm. They brought back such wonderful memories. I really enjoy every part of The Bulletin every week! I can hardly wait to get home and try the chocolate cake in a mug. I only hope it's not habit-forming! Just imagine what might happen if we kept a canister of the dry ingredients in the break room at work.

With Rachel in Quito, we have the advantage of some very interesting pictures and stories of places we would never, ever be. How interesting to see the University campus there, Also, to hear of her schedule which gives opportunity to see places and people and things as she chooses. Spring appearing sounds better than the upcoming winter.

We sure laughed at the goat story. Those boys would never forget the time they had the goats, and the story will be added to, likely, as they relate it to their own children. The update was written in such a way that you kept wondering just what was coming next. The nature of a goat is unpredictable, and no respect to gardens, flowers or anything in their path. We are still laughing as we visualize the trailing goats behind the pail of feed.

Reminds me of a farm we were visiting near Bellingham, Washington. The men could not get the animals into the truck, no matter how hard they tried. Finally, Becky Lavergne, the lady of the house, left her dinner making and walked out into the yard with a bucket of feed, stepped up into the truck herself, and all the pigs eagerly followed her. Then they shut the tailgate behind her, as she jumped down, and they drove away. Dinner wasn't even delayed.

We have such darling children in our Bulletin families -- Trinidy checking the goat pen could [and did!] inspire one of Bitzi's captions.

The proud little Jazmine with her trophy. What a treasure to that 5 year old, and we can't wait to hear how it goes at the national level.

I don't know which is most intriguing, the spaghetti faces or the big blue eyes? It's a good thing these moms and dads have their cameras ready. We love these candid shots.

That porcupine story was both sad and funny. They are not to be trusted at close range. The poor dogs. With all the porcupine stories in The Bulletin this time, we learned one thing -- and that is to have great respect for them and give them their space. Interesting it should be the mailbox and bee neighbor that we have another story about. By instinct a person gets ideas about how to handle such a situation. A hose and dip nets!

Oh, Donna Mae, it was so great to see that picture of you, McKenna's grandma, looking so thin. I didn't realize you had success like that with this diet thing. I haven't been able to figure out the second picture there of the tree? What is the significance? [Beaver's farm was all oak woods until Grandfather Bennie Johnson cleared it -- with an ax -- and planted the fields in the pictures. The picture is of a mighty oak, still standing. Grandpa Bennie built the silo in the last picture, too. The other buildings are newer. --Photo Ed.]

Talk about nostalgia! The Lake Christina scene and the Johnson farmstead.

Bruce's story of the porcupine in Homesteading Days fit in very well with the theme in this Bulletin. The scene of them pulling the quills from the dog without him yelping and biting is incredible.

Travelogue always brings an awesomeness with the pictures of those snow-covered, sharp peaks. What an accomplishment, and Jeff tells us that Sheldon and Kjirsten even hiked farther yet than the rest. It all sounded so risky and scary and dangerous, but they seemed to think the spectacular views were rewarding. "The trail dropped off steeply," put it mildly. We are just glad they are home now and no fractures.

The Appalachian Trail trek was featured in our Sunday paper today. It listed how many thousands had started hiking and how very few ever finished it to the end. It gave us a greater appreciation for the Lowthers and their non-stop purpose to get to the end even after months of sticking to the grind of ups and downs and ins and outs. They were three of the few that kept on keeping on.

The chocolate mug cake was unique. Here is a dessert I created the other day, and it actually is just a Duncan Heinz mix and whipped cream and chocolate syrup in a flan pan. It was much more appetizing than it looks, though, on the picture.

Photo © Betty Droel
Chocolate Cake Dessert

The Quotation for the day: "The porcupine whom one must handle gloved, may be respected, but never loved." Well, we found that out in this issue of The Bulletin.

Thank you again to the editors who somehow continue to have stories and pictures to share with us. That means our subscribers have faithfully contributed their news.

Betty Droel