Wisconsin Farmer Journal

May, 2008

Here it is the first week of May. The grass is green, the trees have their leaves, the tulips and daffodils are blossoming and all is well with the world. The barn
swallows are building their nests in the barn, and we have fat robins pulling angleworms out of the grass on the lawn. Wild Canadian geese made
their trip north, honking to say hello as they passed the Miller farm.

Off we go on Tuesday the 13th of May to Boston to see Richard and Family. Going to his lake home at Barnstedt, and going to a Boston Red Sox/
Milwaukee Brewer baseball game on Friday night, sitting in Mr Kraft's luxury box seats. He is the owner of the New England Patriot Football Team
and Richard's boss. Will be nice to see our grandsons, Joshua and Colin and Sharon and Richard's yard. We will be gone a week. Robin and family are coming this weekend for the Appleton Area Cancer Walk. Robin wants Indian
Food too. Matt and Lisa were here last weekend, Marianne's girls Cassidy and Elena were in a jazz dance recital, dressed as bumblebees. We all went
to see them perform their 2 minute dance. Russ and I have been going to the chiropractor, I threw out my shoulder and he has been making me do exercises. Russ threw out his neck, but the chiro seemed to make it worse, so he did not go back.

We think we may have actually sold three building sites in the subdivision. Of course we lowered the price so it is a good investment for people. Don't know if they will build soon or not. Still going dancing, sometimes as much as three
times a week. But now it is summer time and the musicians go on hiatus, but come September we will go again. We went to a German style dinner show featuring the orchestra Dorf Kapelle. 15 members of the band most of whom are area music teachers, led by Ernie Broeniman, himself a retired director of music at Plymouth High School, now living in Hortonville, his home town.
Menu included a cabbage salad with a celery seed dressing, potato buns, applesauce, mashed red potatoes with the peelings left on, sweet and sour
green beans with a bacon dressing, gravy, pork roast, wiener schnitzel veal, baked apples with whipped cream crunch. 370 people were in attendance, all older than we were. Round tables, with cloth napkins, wine water glasses.
German beer was sold in steins at the bar, we passed on that. Musicians were dressed in authentic German costumes, velvet short pants, lederhosen,
white stockings, suspenders and hats with feathers.

Dorf Kapelle means Village band, and Mr Broeniman is trying to preserve traditional music, waltz, polkas, marches, real oomph music. Trombones, tubas, drummer, horns, piccolo, flutes, clarinet, trumpets, accordions, all made
good music for two hours. Tickets were $30 and well worth a whole afternoon's entertainment. Pope Benedict from Rome was in New York and Washington D.C. for 6 days. Watched all the proceedings on TV, we did
get to see him in Rome a few years ago when we were there for an audience. However we are Lutheran. Did the rounds up north one day, to Tigerton and the cemeteries, and got a gallon of maple syrup from our friends, Donna and David Polzin who will be married 50 years this week. Russ is very upset with the winter rabbits, they gobbled all the tops of his new raspberry bushes. They left only the dead stalks. Now the gophers came out of hibernation and are digging holes in the barn hill. He is putting moth balls down their burrows, and filling with gravel, but sometimes they just spit them back out. I think they are
pretty.

Had company from Mount Hood, Oregon, for a few hours, John and Diane Warneke, Jeanette Winter's daughter. Old neighbors from Shady Grove of Russells. They drove a 29 foot motor home, with a 16 foot trailer. They were
delivering furniture to their missionary son in Florida, picked up a canoe in Tennessee, for his cardiologist. Seeing they had room, I gave them an old rusted cow stanchion.

Russ had a bad cold and cough, but he didn't give it to me. He finally went to the doctor for antibiotics and is better now. Doctor said it was bronctitis.
Niece LuAnn and her grandson Bryan are coming in mid June to Wisconsin for 2 weeks. Will be nice to see them, she wants to go fishing and visit other relatives and friends.

All the news that is fit to print this month.
Russell and Delores Miller