Last Update: 21 January 2012
Our 2011 Christmas Letter is now available for reading or download. [PDF format, 670 kB]
I have begun work on our news summary for 2011. This page will be developng over the next couple of weeks.
on 22 January.
17 January 2012: The maps of our new tract of land and the photos from our family reunion that were here for a couple of weeks have been moved into our 2011 News page. I’ve had a bit of a rough go this month so progress on that page has been slow but I’m working at it.
January 4th was a very cold day and we were gone until dusk. When we got home Beth was down and could not get up. We did everything we could without success and finally covered her up with several layers and packed hay around her, hoping that the morning sun would help. It did not. She thrashed around but could not get her legs under her. She was very elderly for a cow and suffered from severe arthritis so I finally put her down. She has now gone to join Duffy, her friend of many years, who died a couple of years ago. She is shown here on a pretty day last October.
30 October 2011: We hosted an ecology field trip a couple of weeks ago. One of the sites visited was the spring that is home to a rare blue crayfish, reported here on our 2009 News page. I have updated that page to include the name of the species, Cambarus monongalensis, which is a species of upland burrowing crayfish. These are links to the web site of Roger Thoma, the biologist who identified the critter. I will have more to say about the field trip later.
In our 2010 News report we described our visit to the home of Ted and Kathy Carns in Pennsylvania. Since that time Ted has written a book, Off On Our Own: Living Off-Grid in Comfortable Independence, which is available from Amazon and other book sellers. They have also put up a web site with more photos and a lot of info about them and their home. I do not endorse everything said but it is interesting reading and a good complement to the book. The web pix are in color while the book (aside from the cover) is black and white.
11 February 2011: I have made a few updates to our news summary for 2010. Among other things, our mystery snake has been identified as an albino milk snake, courtesy of Ted Carns.
Our 2010 Christmas Letter is now available for reading or download. [PDF format, 450 kB]
7 January 2011: I have finally finished our news summary for 2010. I went a little overboard with photos this year, so it is 1.34 MB. That will take a few minutes with a dial-up connection. Fortunately, not too many folks still rely on dial-up. It loaded in 15 seconds with our DSL. I have also updated the news summary for 2009 to bring it up to the end of that year and the recent house-project pages are also finished.
Now for a quick review of the year 2010. Char took two trips this year, one to Washington to visit her two sisters and other relatives on Orcas Island, and a shorter one to Pennsylvania to visit daughter Beverly, her daughter Lynne, and our great-grandchildren. We took two weekend trips together in the fall. Here on the farm we put in a new road so we could build fence up the mountain, and restored the east end of the house and finished a complete exterior paint job (photo at right). We had family company for a week in August and learned that daughter Kathy is going to be married next year! Char totaled our new car (without personal injury, fortunately) so we bought yet another new car. I did not do much caving this year, though more than in 2009. One of our surface digs broke into a new cave that now has over two miles of passage. I’ve been in on some of the surveying and hope to get into more virgin cave before it is all wrapped up. (I will prepare a page with details on this cave but it will not happen for a month or more.) We closed out this year with a visit from all three daughters between Christmas and New Year’s. It was great to have all of them here for several days.
The house renovation project that has taken center stage for several years is finally completed, not that we won’t find more to do as time goes by. It has resulted in a new bathroom, laundry room, kitchen, dining room, and pantry, as well upgraded electrical service, insulation, a solar hot-water system, and radiant heat in the floor of the new part of the house. Most recently we have regraded the front lawn and repaired and painted the exterior of the house. Following are links to the various project pages:
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Our news summary for 2010 has even more photos than last year so it is 1.34 MB. That will take a few minutes with a dial-up connection. Fortunately, not too many folks still rely on dial-up. Char went to Washington to visit her sisters on Orcas Island. We made several shorter trips, built more fence, and finished a complete repainting of the house. John got into a new caving project and Char resumed violin lessons.
Our news summary for 2009 has more and larger photos than in previous years. [620 kB] It is still a reasonable download, even for dial-up users. Char traveled by train to Minnesota to visit daughter Stephanie and attend the high-school commencement of our youngest grandson. I did very little caving this year. We built fence, painted most of the house, and bought a new car.
Our news summary for 2008 is somewhat smaller than recent years [125 kB] despite major happenings. I did a lot of caving early in the year, then spent most of the rest of it remodeling our kitchen. We got our solar collectors up and running, Kathy bought a house, and Char had another stroke, more serious than the first one, which put her in the hospital and rehab for sic weeks.
Our news summary for 2007 has lots of photos of our year’s events. [240 kB] Cleo died and we became great-grandparents. We began remodeling our house and bought a new tractor. John went on quite a few caving trips while Char spent most of her time battling the after-effects of her stroke. Much more.
Our news summary for 2006 has lots of pix. [190 kB] Clarence died, a granddaughter married, Char had a stroke, and Cleo got sick — plus all of the usual farm chores, musical events, and caving ventures.
In 2005-06 we added a large porch, nearly surrounding the cabin. This page tells more than anyone would want to know about this project. [About 500 kB]
News from 2005 includes Char’s big trip, a fence building project, starting construction of the new porch at the cabin, cutting firewood and playing music, and ends with the sale of our business.
Char began playing with the Allegheny Highlands Orchestra in Covington in 2005. She took some time off from this due to her strokes but participated again in the fall of 2009.
Char made a cross-country trip in May–June 2005 to visit relatives in Kansas, Washington, and Minnesota. Click on the small photo at left to open a photo-diary of her trip. [375 kB]
News from 2004 includes our new tractor shed, fence building, land and road improvements, Char’s musical endeavors, and the national Christmas tree.
One of our annual projects is maple syrup making, or “sugaring off” as it is called locally. This page takes you through the process from tapping the tree to bottling the syrup. Recently updated for 2007 with the addtion of a few new photos. [310 kB]
Click on the small photo of Rudy at left to open a photo gallery of our cats. [460 kB]
Most of our friends know that I have been a rail fan for many years and that I have thousands of photos of trains. I have a page with a gallery of train pix, which is now entirely of a trip in March 2002 on the Durbin and Greenbrier Valley just west of here. I will add more to this page when I have some time.
Even before I was a rail fan I was a caver. My Caving Page presently has some historical photos of Butler Cave 
in Bath County, VA, a trip report for Sinnett Cave, a spring 2007 digging project seeking new caves, and detailed reports on the Water Sinks Subway, a large cave discovered in October 2007. It is owned by Phil and Charlotte Lucas but I was involved in some of its exploration and mapping, which was pretty much completed by the spring of 2008.
In 2010 we’ve been working on a new cave called the Wishing Well, only a half mile from Water Sinks. It involved lots and lots of digging to get in but it now is approaching three miles of surveyed passage. I’ve been on several of these trips. A report has been written for each trip, accompanied by many of Phil Lucas’s fine photos. I hope to assemble these into a consolidated report whenever Phil agrees to release his material for use.
The map at right shows the extent of the Wishing Well Cave in relation to surface features as it was known on 12 December 2010. The entrance is right in the owner’s front yard! The entrance pit is lined with a large steel pipe. Access is via a 50-foot ladder climb. The section between the entrance and the first major junction on the map is tight and very tough going. From there it opens up a bit and some of the passages are quite large. We pretty well wrapped up the exploration and mapping by mid-summer 2011, at which point the total length was 4.87 miles. There are very few leads left, all of which are difficult and not very promising. Still, there is known to be an air connection to nearby Helictite Cave. Explored passages in the two caves are separated by about 300 feet horizontally and 60 feet vertically at the closest point.
Our annual Christmas letters provide a capsule of events year by year.
2011 Christmas Letter in PDF format. [670 kB]
2010 Christmas Letter in PDF format. [450 kB]
2009 Christmas Letter in PDF format. [250 kB]
2008 Christmas Letter in PDF format. [200 kB]
2007 Christmas Letter in PDF format. [136 kB]
2006 Christmas Letter in PDF format. [47 kB]
We did not send a letter in 2005 due to moving the business.
2004 Christmas Letter in PDF format. [155 kB]
2003 Christmas Letter in PDF format. [174 kB]
2002 Christmas Letter in PDF format. [198 kB]
2001 Christmas Letter in PDF format. [153 kB]
2000 Christmas Letter in html format. [36 kB]
1999 Christmas Letter in html format. [58 kB]
Several people have asked about our Conservation Easement so we are posting it here for anyone interested. Such easements are an excellent way to protect one’s property from development beyond one’s lifetime and granting an easement provides some immediate tax advantages. Studies are now underway on the rare botanical communities in our wetlands. The subject of another eventual update!
My mother, Mary Heath Sweet, died on 15 July 2003. Please see her web page for her obituary and information about her memorial service as well as photo galleries and other material. She had been in declining health for some time so her passing was expected; however, it came more suddenly than expected due to a fall, which resulted in a broken hip. The hip was repaired but at her age and condition she was unable to make a recovery and died quietly in her sleep three days after being transferred from the hospital to a nursing home.
Road concerns have been pushed to the back burner by the threat of industrial wind development, but we remain concerned about unnecessary and environmentally unsound road projects scarring our landscape. The major issue is US 250, our main artery, but there have been some egregious projects on our secondary roads, shown here in 2002.
One of our best friends in Highland County died in October 2001. For those who knew David Allen I have prepared a rather extensive biography.
In early February 2001 Char went to Anacortes, WA, to be with her sister, Thelma Kallam, to help out as Thelma’s husband, Ralph, passed on from incurable cancer. She arrived just in time, as Ralph died only two days later. She stayed for a couple more weeks to help Thelma prepare to move to Orcas Island to live with her other sister, June. Obituary for Ralph Kallam. Other events from the winter of 2001.
We hosted a family gathering, or mini-reunion, in July 2000. Char celebrated by breaking her leg.
In 1999 we reconstructed our dilapidated little cabin. It turned into quite a project but it was finished by mid-2000 except for some porches, which have since been completed. We continue to be very pleased with the result. If you come to visit you will get to experience it first hand. [~400 kB]
Reconstruction of the dam was our major project for 1998. This is the story of a project that did not turn out exactly as we had hoped but it seems finally to have come to a happy ending. [~280 kB]
It occurs to me that perhaps some of our friends may not know exactly where we live. The map at right highlights Highland County.
We are very close to the WV border, in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains at 2400 feet elevation. Highland has the lowest population and second highest elevation of any county east of the Mississippi River. The closest city is 50 miles away over four mountains. During the summer of 2000 we watched TV reports of triple-digit temperatures and drought in the plains. Here we had lots of rain and the high temperature in 2000 was 85°. For a closer look go to Google Maps. You can also see a closeup view of our local topo map. On this view we are right in the middle of the map. To see a wider area, select the 1:250k series and 1:1,000,000 scale, click “Update Map” and you will see most of Highland County, with us still right in the middle.
J R S
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