Down the Rabbit Hoel

Stories of family, creativity, and diverse distractions.

A Valentine’s Anniversary

It’s a few days early, but we wanted to be sure to celebrate a special anniversary. This February 14, Carl and Georgie would have been married 80 years.

RPG Minis – a painting station

Walt and I like role-playing games (in case you couldn’t tell). Much of the games are theater of the mind, where the events are described but not actually seen. Often times, tokens of some sort are used on a map to help show where characters are in relation to each other. For an online game, they are images, such as Walt described here.

These tokens can be simple pieces of card stock or they can be more elaborate miniature figures. Here is a glimpse into my painting set-up for working on figures.

Keeping track of the Links – and the Hoels, Kelloggs and James – Pictures

As I talked about in this post, we became the family historians kind of by accident. And once word got out, we have been sent information and pictures from lots of different branches of our families. Keeping it all organized is a big challenge.

Why I love backpacking Part 5: It Rocks!

When you are out exploring in the woods, you see all kinds of amazing things. Don’t forget to look at the earth itself. It has stories to tell!

Here is a small cave in southern Indiana. These pictures are many years old – now they do not want people to enter these caves as it is damaging habitats and spreading disease among bats.

Just outside the cave, you can see the hillside and down to the shore of Lake Monroe.

If you head on down to the lakeshore, you can see a variety of colors in the rocks along the water. The different types of rocks wear away and you get amazing patterns. Occasionally, you will also find fossils.

Keeping track of the Links – and the Hoels, Kelloggs and James – Information

We became the family historians kind of by accident. Walt always says that his brothers elected him when he wasn’t there.  At any rate, we were given a bunch of typed and hand-written sheets of family history and genealogy put together by Georgie (Walt’s mom) and Leonard Brune, Georgie’s second cousin. There were also photocopies of newspaper clippings and a few documents.

A Year of Homesteading on the Digital Frontier – Happy Birthday to Our Blog!

Just over a year ago we started our blog. It has been… interesting.

Eleven Tons of Thunder – Grandpa’s Minneapolis Tractor

When I think of a farm, I naturally think of a tractor. Every farm has a tractor. Most farmers have more than one. Even when I was a kid, farmers would have a “small” tractor for routine hauling and lifting jobs, and a bigger tractor for plowing, cultivating, and other heavy field work.

But in the early 20th century, most farms didn’t have any tractors at all. Farms were smaller, and the most of the work was done with horses or oxen. Tractors did exist, but they were specialist tools. They needed a different set of skills to maintain and operate, and they were quite costly. Since a typical farm only needed a tractor for a few days a year, it made more sense to pay someone to run their tractor than to buy your own.

What’s for dinner? What ya got soup!

As I’ve mentioned in a few other posts, such as this one and this one, I like to have things prepared in the freezer for easy dinners. Sometimes, dinner comes from the freezer, but in a different way.

Happy birthday, Glen McCain

Glen McCain was born January 14, 1907 in Ohio. His parents were Charles Hudson MaCain and Sarah Jane Hoel. Sarah was the sister of William Henry Hoel, Walt’s grandfather.

Keeping Christmas Up a Little Longer

It’s a bit of a let down to put away the holiday decor. All the bright colors and lights brighten up winter days. We take down our tree after Epiphany. There is one bit of Christmas that is always the last piece to be put away.

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