My Hill House Adventure

MokeHill House Farm is for sale!

2026-07-02T12:45:25.672-07:00

I have listed the house for sale, after all this time and work, so that is a little sad. But, I have moved to a new place and I will not be able to keep it up. So many memories over these 27 years, which seems insane!

My hope is that someone who is into gardening and keeping up the place will buy it and love it like I did. Click the link below if you are interested!

Meet me at my new website!

2025-09-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

www.asfaund.com

Hello!

My little DNA & genealogy business is doing well and if you have any interests in those things, please go over to my current website.

I have a lot of blog posts and social media factoids to entertain you!

Trying to understand how you are related to all of these new cousins? Try this easy to use cousin relationship tool!
Cousin Calculator

Many more helpful bits and bobs there as well...

See you there!

Life Changes

2022-07-06T09:03:00.004-07:00

Hello

During the pandemic and quarantine period I was able to do a lot of thinking about my life and what I wanted to do with it in the future. I knew I was desperately unhappy with what I was doing and starting working on things that I was interested in more. Genetic Genealogy or the practice of using DNA and genealogy research to solve family mysteries. I went through 2 intense courses at Boston University and when I came out of those in May 2021, I quit my job and created my own business to help people in need of DNA and genealogy services.

I have to be honest, I was terrified! And it took me at least 3 months to destress from my job and start focusing on my new business. I can now say that it is going well!

And I just finished my latest trip to Norway where I met more of my distant cousins for the first time. If you are interested in what I am doing, my information is below. I will not be posting on this blog any longer but will keep it up and running because there is good information on it!

Thank you!

Me at Var Frue church in Trondheim, my families church for 100's of years.

Asfaund Genealogy Services

Cell: +1(925)588-1566

www.asfaund.com

https://www.facebook.com/Asfaund

https://www.instagram.com/asfaund_genealogy/

It's been awhile...

2021-04-12T12:43:00.004-07:00

Hello All

I haven't posted in a long time and I am sorry for that.. about the time of my last post I started a genealogy research course, and that with work and well Covid.. has made me less than productive here.

Being alone so much did affect my mental well-being and I spent the last 6 months working through that. I am much better now and almost to the end of my class..

Will post again.. Julie

Hot weather and canning don't mix - so break out the FoodSaver!

2020-08-17T10:19:00.009-07:00

Hello!

It is truly summertime here in California and the weather has been miserable. 😩 Over 100 degrees every day for a few weeks but it makes for beautiful sunsets. This is also the best time of year to get great deals on delicious fruit and veggies from supermarkets, farmers markets and neighbors. I love to can because it doesn't require any kind of electricity to maintain it. In fact earlier in the summer, I was on a strawberry jam canning spree because I found strawberries at such a good price.

But right now my neighbor has peaches and sold me a bunch of them for not a lot of money. I can't eat them all. I wanted to can them but it was 106 degrees, and the idea of a pressure canner and all that heat and humidity was a no-go for me. FoodSaver to the rescue! (BTW - no one pays me to mention their products, if I love it and I use it, you will know.)

First, I decided to freeze them in a simple syrup instead of raw. With a syrup on them, they will be ready to go to use over yogurt, ice cream and anything else you can think of including pie or cobbler. Plus, these were not completely ripe yet and they will absorb the sweetness of the syrup as they sit.

To make the syrup;

1/2 cup honey (I have so much honey! if you don't you can use all sugar)
1/2 cup white sugar
1 cup water
Cinnamon Stick
a pinch of salt

Put everything in a saucier if you have it, over low heat. Stir to get all the sugar and honey dissolved.

Low Heat!

This is something that could easily turn to caramel or napalm if you crank the heat up too high. I had it on barely simmering for about 15 mins while stirring every couple of minutes. Then I removed the cinnamon stick and did raise the heat to a low boil for about 3-5 mins. Done.

While that was going on I was prepping the peaches. Wash them, peel them and then pit them.

Next cut them into uniform slices as best you can, and put in a big bowl that can handle acid and heat. First - toss them with enough lemon juice to just coat them to stop them from changing color. I would say 1-2 tablespoons was enough.

Then pour the syrup on them, stir gently and leave them alone to cool.

The syrup is hot, so be careful and let them completely cool before trying to package them. I went off and ate dinner and came back an hour later. The peaches will slightly cook from the heat of the syrup, and will have time to absorb some of that goodness before going in the freezer. If you rush this and they don't cool.. you will miss getting the peaches to absorb some of the flavor, so don't rush this!

Then I made bags that would hold about 1 cup each and used the gentle/moist setting on the FoodSaver. This is not automated like the normal setting, and when it gets to where you think it is done, hit the "seal" button. Label and Freeze!

Perfect!

What can you do with them? I made peach and blackberry cobbler when I stumbled across a blackberry patch a bit ago. And peach shortcake instead of strawberry? Peach ice cream?

So many things...

My FoodSaver used to be in my pantry but now it just stays on the counter. I use it all the time and being single, it helps me not waste food. I appreciate that and I am sure you do as well.

Stay cool and peachy!

Julie

Quarantine Projects June 20, 2020

2020-06-20T14:57:00.001-07:00

Hello!

Like everyone else in the world, I have been unable to travel or do normal things since early March. I had planned to work from home this year, but I was traveling to San Francisco or Seattle every other week or so. While I was working "remote" I was still busy, and out a lot. Now, let me get you caught up on what I have been doing and projects that I am still trying to get done. (Work never stops on a house!)

Biggest News - I adopted 2 cats back in October, Emma and Rosie. They are named after my grandmothers, Emma Arlene Bouttier and Dorothea Rosalea Tonseth. These 2 women were so different from each other in terms of upbringing and life experiences. But they ended up being a huge influence on their families and contributions to my personality are obvious sometimes. These cats are the same story, completely different personalities! #emmathechocolatecoloredcat #rosietherivetingcat #calaverashumanesociety

Emma

Rosie

Rosie is very rarely a lap cat

Emma wants to be by my side all the time

I am so happy that I decided to adopt them, can't imagine being here all by myself everyday!

The other thing that has been taking up my time is my greenhouse and garden. I have added a deep water culture tank to the greenhouse setup as well as the grow beds. It is sorta working, I still need to figure out why the seeds don't germinate like I would expect them to do.

Plants that are growing now

Lettuce is yummy! This only took about 30 days to get it this big.

Greenhouse view now - new hydroponic tank to the right. I replaced one grow bed on the fish tank with a DWC tank to see if that would work.

Setting it up

Empty tank with the frame and board inside.

My garden is going good, still fighting the deer, squirrels, birds and bugs, but giving it a fighting chance since I am home more. Finally, I have been hiking a lot. Going to leave you with pictures from some of the hikes I took around the area.

Julie

Deck Replacement - Jan 2020

2020-02-17T09:51:00.002-08:00

Hello!

I am excited to say that I have finally gotten the back wooden deck replaced! Over the years, I have patched and painted it many times and I think only the paint was holding it up. My contractor came out and we stood on it shaking the railing and one corner of the deck roof was sloping. The deck bounced a bit in one corner section which indicated it was failing. It is a large deck, about 600 square feet of area and it is elevated off the ground about 1 story, to line up with my dining room. It is not an easy project and not something I could do myself even if I had my dad helping!
Here are some before pictures

Roof was nice to have but it was really low and full of rot

That far corner is where it was "bouncing"

My cat Rosie looking out the window at the old deck railing.

I use it a lot and when visitors come, half of them are out there most of the time. I was excited to see it go though, because it was starting to worry me. When you have a deck that is up that high, it needs to be sturdy. A normal deck that is ground level or just raised up a bit, if you put your foot through it, no one will get hurt. My deck is about 19 feet off the ground at the front of the house. Having a board fail could be extremely dangerous.

Demolition day came and the guys started tearing out the roof, when thousands of acorns started coming down! The woodpeckers drilled holes into the wood and then stashed the acorns there. It was funny because the ground later is just covered with acorns.

Here are some of the demo pictures and a video of part of the roof coming down.

Emma was supervising the demo crew

The base of this post was basically paper it was so rotted.

roof and decking out, now it is just the joists and posts

Only thing holding the posts is that small section attached to the house

roof coming off

Now that it is done, I am very happy with it. Here are some pictures of the construction and the finished project. You can see the wood grain in the decking but no one will mistake it for real wood. I will not have to sand, patch or paint ever again.

I didn't replace the roof, because that would have been even more money. I will just use umbrellas during the summer. The deck just needs to be rinsed off with a hose now... and it is really sturdy. I am glad that I did it finally!

Julie

My Mysterious Norwegian Ancestor, Johannes Buzzi aka Giovanni Antonio Buzzi Biela (1777-1846)

2019-12-25T17:57:00.003-08:00

https://www.asfaund.com/post/my-very-first-blog-post

My Mysterious Norwegian Ancestor, Johannes Buzzi aka Giovanni Antonio Buzzi Biela (1777-1846)

Way back on the family tree of my father, in the city of Trondheim on the west coast of Norway, my 5 times great-grandfather, Johannes Buzzi (‘Boo Zee’) married Lorine Antonine Roe in 1801. This was Lorine’s 2^nd marriage, due to her first husband dying, and Johannes first marriage.

The last name of Buzzi is not common in Norway, but when I originally started looking at my Norwegian genealogy, I was focused on the Tonseth line and just skipped over him. The Tonseth family has so much history in Norway, and Trondheim in particular, that I had plenty of interesting stories on which to focus. But one day, on my Ancestry.com family tree, another person posted a picture of a painting of him and his name was not Johannes. His real name was Giovanni and he was born in a small town in northern Italy, on the border with Switzerland, called Viggiu, about an hour north of Milan, on the banks of Lake Lugano.

This was a bit of a shock since if you look at me, there isn’t anything that would suggest Italy in my heritage. I am so pale that the sun will burn me in 20 minutes if I am not covered in sunscreen and protective clothing. But I have science on my side so went to check my DNA results, and there it was, a very small percentage of southern European genetics.

It finally hit me, I really am descended from a man who left Italy and somehow ended up in Trondheim, Norway. My Norwegian cousin who we first met in 2014, didn’t believe it when we told him. His statement was “there are no Italians in the Tonseths” or something to that effect. (He is also in his 80’s and follows the Tonseth tradition of being stubborn.

The distant relative who posted the picture of Johannes and started this quest, is living in Norway so I contacted her about this intriguing story. She is descended from Johannes and his 2^nd wife Clara Evensen, while I am from Johannes and his 1^st wife Lorine Roe. Her family had this picture of him and was able to give me a lot of information on him and how he ended up in Norway. This is what she told me. “ They had travelled to Viggiu and met up with a local man there, who gave them some of the history of the area and the family. Viggiu is a small town that was a mining town for limestone, that was used in a lot of the buildings and statues. The family was in mining and was doing pretty well for themselves. There is a very old church there and they had a section dedicated to a saint they paid for, and they were buried underneath that section. They had a very good life but then Napoleon Bonaparte was coming through the Alps from France and heading for a fight with the Austrians who were in Italy. The relative said that the family gave him some of their family treasures, and put him on a boat heading to some family in Bergen, Netherlands. But something happened during the trip, bad weather or bad navigation, and he landed in Trondheim. There is also a manuscript about Trondheim and the people of historical significance that mentions him.”

I found the book on the history of Trondheim and its people, and Johannes has a letter to the State Church of Norway, asking to convert to Protestantism from Catholicism. He describes leaving the country ahead of the “French Giants” that would have conscripted him to fight at Mantua.https://www.tfb.no/db/personalhistorie/3_7_20070228_134916.pdf

When you look at the history of the area, you can’t see the thing that would push a young man out of his country, and make a foreign land look better than his beautiful hometown. Unless you knew that Napoleon Bonaparte was coming after the Austrian army. If you look up the Battle of Marengo, you will see that Napoleon is pursuing them through the Alps and reached Milan in June of 1800. To get to Milan that way, you will have to go through the Lombardy region and the idea of being forced to join the French army, was probably not appealing to Giovanni and I am sure other able-bodied men in the region felt the same way. But he was able to leave and he never went back. Although the book he is in does say that when he was very old, he actually set out on a ship to try and go back to Italy, but lost his nerve somewhere around Denmark and turned around. He eventually died in Trondheim and is buried in the courtyard of our family church, Var Frue.

I needed to know more, and I decided to go to Italy to see this little town and the country. To find out anything I can about him and his life, and see for myself, where my Italian roots started. My first genealogy trip was that one to Trondheim in 2014 with my parents and my son. Since then, I have gone to a couple more places, Pennsylvania, Stockholm, New Orleans and Alabama looking at the places my ancestors lived and soaking up the atmosphere. I usually find things in person that can not be found on line, and this proved true for this trip, big time.

I set up the trip and this time my son and daughter-in-law are coming along, as well as meeting a good friend of mine who is always up for an adventure. We left California in mid-july and were excited to be going to France and Italy. We landed in Paris during a heat wave, which reached temperatures of over 100 degrees several days in a row. Paris is a city known for its food, wine, history, monuments and people who aren’t always happy to see you. Let me tell you that heat makes the people of Paris even grumpier than usual because few places have air conditioning. Because it was so hot, people were out in the streets at the cafes until the very early morning, like 4 AM. For people who are jet-lagged, it was miserable.

But on to Italy! We took the train from Paris to Milan, because Milan is the closest large city to Viggiu and I really wanted to see it. My friend Anthony, was going to go to Viggiu with me so we rented a car and I drove out towards the Swiss border where all the famous lakes are, like Lake Como and Lake Lugano. We actually crossed the border into Switzerland briefly, and then it went back into Italy. (see map) It is not easy getting to Viggiu! I got lost at least once, maybe two times.

When we got there, it was like travelling back in time to a pre-world war 2 era. It was so quaint and quiet and since it was still hot, not a lot of people out and about. We tried to start at the museum but it wasn’t open yet, so we went towards the main part of town. There was a church that had been there since the 1400’s.

And we saw the family name of Buzzi everywhere, but with different 2^nd last names. (I will explain more…) This is what the street looked like, and no one spoke English. Anthony and I walked all over the town, ate pizza at the local restaurant and gelato as well. Everyone was very friendly but looked amused and confused by us, as we obviously didn’t fit in and I don’t think they get many tourists. We had gotten to the end of a dead end road at one point and an older Italian lady and her 2 german shepherds came out to meet us. She didn't speak English and we didn't know Italian. It was pretty amusing but she told us to go back and turn left and we found the entrance. I think she must have picked up the phone and called all the neighbors to let them know about us.

Finally, we were able to go to the library and museum http://www.museiciviciviggiutesi.com/ and met up with a nice man who spoke English and was able to hand church books to look at and take pictures of them. They were hand-scribed by a gentleman who came every summer to Viggiu and spent it transcribing the church’s books into these copies. I was able to go back a few generations and confirm birth/marriage/death dates from these. He explained the last name of Buzzi, and why we saw it everywhere but with a tacked on second last name. There are a lot of people who descended originally from the Buzzi family, but as they kept growing and multiplying, they adopted a second last name to identify their branch of the Buzzi tree. My ancestor is Buzzi Biela, but there are a lot of variations. I was able to show him the Trondheim book and explain what it says, and he was fascinated that all of this was online.

I spent several hours in the library and the museum which was breath-taking. This museum houses the second largest set of plaster casts in the world and there is no one there visiting it. Anthony and I were let into the place by ourselves to walk around and see the artwork there. It was stunning and odd. With all the art in Italy, why isn’t this more popular? This little town is where the limestone for all those grand statues was quarried. This museum has the plaster casts for so many great bronze statues, and you can literally spend all day there by yourself! There is this one room with plaster scenes on every wall that form a story.

I want to go back and hopefully find someone who can speak English. The place was captured in time and had such a wonderful feeling about it. I know there is more to learn there about this mysterious ancestor of mine, but I also really want to go back for the food... and the wine.. and the art... and the gelato.

Julie

Building my own sprinkler system from PVC leftovers

2019-10-20T15:32:00.001-07:00

Over the 10 years that I have lived here, watering the plants and trees has taken a lot of my time, and money. The only real sprinkler system I have is in the front yard, and it waters wildflowers, clover and the occasional volunteer vegetable plant. (Thanksgiving decoration gourds this year!) Everything else is watered usually via drip system, soaking hose or by hand. But the drip lines and the hoses don't last longer than about 2 years around here. They either deteriorate from the harsh weather or a smart rat has figured out they store water and chews them up. Either way, it has been thousands of dollars that I have spent on trying to get water to these plants and trees. With my moving here permanently, I want to really do a lot of gardening and raise as much food as I can. In the main veggie garden, I have an odd shaped bed that I put together that hasn't had anything in it for a long time.

Putting new bark down around the bed to the propane tank

One reason is because it is big, and two it is hard to water. I have decided to put fruit trees there, probably apple and pear, but don't want to put more drip lines down. I have used PVC in many projects, like the first greenhouse my son made for my mother's day present, so lots of spare pipe and connectors hanging around in the garage. (When I went and sorted and organized all the PVC I ended up with 2 storage containers full. My dad had snuck some into my garage during their move!)I decided for that area, I was going to make a sprinkler system from PVC pipe, that I can connect to the hose bib with a short garden hose and water on a timer. How hard can it be? (Famous last words, but it was actually pretty easy.)

If you have worked with PVC before it like a grownup connector set, but you use a glue to hold the parts together. There are bunch of different kinds, some with primers for those pipes that have to hold up under pressure, but I just use a medium cement for most of my tasks. Once it is glued, it will not come apart, ever...

Before you do anything with the cement though, you need to do things. First, layout your pipe lengths and figure out what you need in terms of connectors, and sprinklers. I went for 6 sprinklers, using "T" connectors and 6 inch scrap pieces that I had from another project. (Not sure what that was that I needed 30 pieces of PVC each 6 inches long?) Once you know how many, and what kind of connectors you need, take the PVC pipe with you to get the male adapters and the sprinkler heads. If you don't take it with you, I guarantee it will be wrong! Also ask someone at the store for help, I did that after staring at the wall of PVC fittings for 30 minutes. Thirty minutes of my life that I will never get back again, because I keep saying, it can't be this hard!

Laying out all the pipes to get the shape and number of sprinklers I needed.

Dry fit all the parts first, and do not skip this step. Take your pieces and put them together without glue to make sure they actually do fit. DON'T SKIP THIS STEP! When you are sure everything is going to work, pull all the pieces out, a rag and the glue.

5 sprinklers will be on a T connector and the end of the pipe will be an elbow

You need to wipe off any loose dirt from the pipe ends and inside the connector using the rag. It doesn't need to be super clean or washed, just wipe it off. This cement works really fast, so you have to be organized, thought about the process you are going to follow and have all the parts in order. The brush is connected to the lid so pull it up and scrape it off a bit so it isn't dripping everywhere. Put the glue inside the upward section of the T connector, and outside one of the pieces of pipe. Push them together and give it a quarter turn or so, just to get the glue everywhere inside and get a good seal.

Glue inside the T and outside the pipe - you don't need a lot, just one swipe around will do it.

First pipe and connector together, now on to the next 5 of them.

You need to be very methodical and don't rush or get distracted, because once that glue is on and the pipe is together, they will not come apart. Game over, start over from the beginning and go buy all new stuff.
I finished the rest of the connectors, and went on to the top part of the sprinkler, the male adapter. This will be glued onto the top and the sprinkler head will screw into that.

Same as before, inside swipe, outside swipe, push together and give it a little turn. You don't have to wait for these to dry to keep on moving with the steps. It is a solid hold in about 2 minutes, but you need to let it cure before running water through it for at least an hour. I waited overnight because I wasn't in a rush. Next, using your Teflon tape to wrap around the connector top and screw on the sprinkler heads.

With the sprinklers finished, the next step is to assemble them to the pipe sections. Take your glue and rags with you, and the magic PVC fitting that attaches to a hose. Once again, dry fit everything together first, with the sprinklers and the pipe sections. I changed my mind on some of the placements of the pipes and moved them around before I got the best shape for this awkward garden bed.

This is part that is making it possible to do this, it glues to the end of the PVC pipe and you can connect a garden hose.

Once you got everything where you want it, you can start gluing the long pipe pieces to the connectors for the sprinklers. Makes sure you have your sprinklers are facing the same way up! If you aren't careful you will have 1 sprinkler facing out 90 degrees and once again, game over. There are no second chances with this glue! You would literally have to cut the pipe apart and start over. So move slow and make sure everything is in the right spot and facing the right direction.

Facing up!

Start gluing!

The process took awhile to understand the design and get the parts, but it really took maybe an hour to put everything together once I got rolling. I did it myself and because this only about 2 - 10 foot long sections connected in the middle to make a big U, I didn't need another person. If you were doing a much longer run, or more complicated design, another set of hands would be awesome.

Here it is running today - it works!

This system, once I bury it of course, should last at least 10 years, potentially longer than that and the cost was under $50 because I had all the scrap pieces. It will save me in work efforts every year repairing drip hoses, and money from replacing ruined hoses.

Julie

Finally Living Full Time at my house!

2019-10-06T08:32:00.000-07:00

Hello

This has been a big few months for me with my company being bought out, not sure what my job is, and now being offered a role that allows me to work remotely. It is a bit surreal because it is Sunday morning and I am going through my normal routines of cleaning up and realize, I don't have to drive anywhere today. This is my home. I am home. I woke up Friday morning and took a picture of the sunrise of my first day with this as my address.

I have lived in the San Francisco bay area since 1991, and I bought this house 10 years ago with the intention of it being a retirement property. This bit of time will allow me to see if I can truly live on my own out here. I will be working and still traveling a lot, but this is my home base. How lucky am I to get this chance?

Now I have to start getting involved in groups and making new connections. Probably the animal shelter to start with .. and a gym. I am so out of shape!

Here starts the next chapter in my life, and now I have to get working on the irrigation project I planned.

My view from crossing the Bay Bridge.. with San Francisco in my rear view mirror.

Buttermilk Biscuits - Finally a winner!

2019-09-01T15:05:00.001-07:00

I have been at this since the beginning of 2019, so 9 months of trial and error. But I think I have finally found a winning recipe and process. This is called recipe #7 but it is probably more likely to be the tenth version of the same recipe.

The original recipe came from a magazine called " Centennial Kitchen Cooking with Cast Iron.

This picture says it all!

I have inherited some old cast iron pans that were my grandfathers and when I saw this magazine and the biscuits, I decided to give it a try. Only issue is that I have been eating pretty much gluten free for years so my first attempt using gluten free flour was bad. I tried one more time a few weeks ago with the gluten free flour and once again, it was bad. This weekend, I gave up on the gluten free flour and used standard All-Purpose flour.

#7 - Buttermilk Biscuits

Dry ingredients

1 3/4 cup all purpose flour

(You may need a bit more than that after mixing in the wet stuff, and more for the patting out but start with this much. Easier to add more than take away.)

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tbsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

Wet Ingredients - all of these should be cold, nearly frozen

3/4 cup buttermilk

1/4 cup Crisco

2 tbs butter

Instructions - Measure all the dry ingredients into a large bowl, and blend them together with a fork. Next add the wet ingredients to the bowl, and using 1 or 2 forks, start mixing. You will be trying to get all the fat chunks broken up and covered in flour. Don't use your hands, the secret here is to keep it chilly. After a few minutes the dough should be coming together, if you see that all the moisture has been sucked up but you still have lose flour, put a splash or two more of buttermilk in. You want to get the dough together, and smooth not sticky or glue. Once it comes together, stop mixing and stick in the refrigerator while you preheat the oven.

Set the oven at 425 and get your 10 or 12 inch pan out, along with a biscuit cutter. I started using a smaller biscuit cutter but ended up using something a bit larger. You might need to experiment to see what fits in your pan, and doesn't leave you a lot of excess dough.

Take the dough out and on a floured board or smooth counter top, gently knead it and pat it out into a circle. I did this one time, and then folded it back onto itself and gently patted it out again. You use your fingers for this, as a rolling pin would crush it and you want to get as many air pockets in the dough that you can. You want to see the bits of butter and crisco as well, they will melt in the oven and help keep it moist.

Cooking

Put some butter in your pan and stick it in the oven for 10 mins or so, just to heat it up. When hot, carefully remove it and wipe out the burnt, excess butter. Cut your biscuits out and place in the pan. You want them to be touching the sides or each other, at least a little bit, to help them rise. Getting the size right with the cutter will help with this. I only made 5 large biscuits and it used up all the dough.

Cook them for 12 mins and then check to see if they are brown. These took about 14 mins but depending on your oven and where you place the pan it could be a little longer. Don't overcook them! If you take them out just before they are done, and leave them in the pan, the heat will continue to cook them.

Let them cook for a minute or two... and then eat with honey or gravy!

Julie

Trip To Kihei, Maui, Hawaii - Jan/Feb 2019

2019-02-17T15:18:00.001-08:00

Maui!

I took my sister to Maui for her birthday this year, and we chose to go to Maui. It had a direct flight from both our airports and since we were only for a long weekend, had enough to do. Here are the pictures.

From the plane flying in to the airport..

Molokine

View from our condo

Watching the turtles come on this beach, there had to have been 14 of the them.

Surfing Goat Dairy, where we got to to do a brief tour, and taste some cheese. They have about 80 goats in milk at any one time. Once again, rain and sun, rain and sun, but hey, you know I love goats!

Yum

Baby Goats

Food somewhere that made me want to take a picture. It was good..

Grand Wailea Resort - we had a massage at the spa, hung out in the treatment pools, and it was really amazing.

Day at Makena "big beach", the sun and I play this peak-a-boo game, where I try to hide from it as much as I can... but still be out in it. It is an awkward dance.

Lahaina at Sunset. We had a lot of rain.. but it was warm so no one was complaining.

Dinner at a local restaurant in a strip mall. It was not a tourist place but it had great food and fun entertainment.

Chickens are everywhere

More beach pictures of Lanaii and Molokai

Ali'i Kula Lavender farm - what a spectacular view. They are located in Kula which is up the mountain at about 4000 feet elevation. You can see both sides of the ocean from up there.

Lavender of all kinds is growing in a botanical garden for visitors.

Candelabra Succulent

Bird of Paradise

Protea are everywhere.. some are flowers like this and others are trees.

Hang gliders flew over as well while I was there... it has great updraft so it was really busy.

More View...

Aloha!

Fungi! December 2018

2019-02-16T11:09:00.003-08:00

Q.Why does the mushroom get invited to so many parties?

A. Because he is a Fungi!

_________________________________________________________________________________

Pictures of the various mushrooms coming up around the property... I still haven't identified any of them with certainty so I am not eating any of them.

3rd Biscuit Fail - Updated Feb 22, 2019

2019-01-13T14:30:00.000-08:00

3rd try.
2/23/19
I made biscuits again, this time using Crisco instead of only butter. I got it closer to what I wanted it to be. The texture was a lot softer and the flavor was better, but still not the rise that I was hoping to get it. At least this time I put sausage gravy on them, so they have made it past the "bird food" only conditions.

Breakfast today

_________________________________________________________________________
2nd try

2/17/19 Update on the buttermilk biscuit trials..
Made the biscuits exactly as the recipe called for, using regular flour this time and not gluten free. They did rise up more than the others, and they did look like biscuits but they were still too flat and dry for me. So the birds got more bread for them to eat. Good thing with it being this cold they need it.

_________________________________________________________________________(First Try)
Hello!

I like to post recipes and pictures of things that I cook that turn out great, just to let people know that I do more than technology and gardening. And some people want my recipes so posting them here makes it easy to share them. Well, I have a huge recipe failure to share this time, because fair is fair.
I bought a magazine that was only about cast iron cooking, because I have a couple of my grandfather's cast iron pans and I love using them everyday. But I wanted to try something really traditional and make biscuits and gravy. Sausage gravy is something I can make on my own and this magazine had an easy enough recipe to make southern buttermilk biscuits in a cast iron pan. Sweet! But I eat gluten free, so I decided to make it with Bobs Red Mill gluten free flour.
Let's get started with all the ingredients accumulated and out on the counter.

I had to buy buttermilk to make this which is unusual and actually hard to find these days, and following the instructions I put the dry ingredients in 1 bowl, and the wet ingredients in another. Bringing them together with a fork to make a dough in the large bowl.

This is when I started to question my decision to use the gluten free flour. The dough seemed to deflate.. it became as light as air. I keep going and pat out the dough to cut it into biscuits.

You don't use a rolling pin with this kind of dough, you use your fingers and pat it out to the right depth. I am starting to panic because this is so delicate. Using a biscuit cutter, I cut out the biscuits and try to put them in the pan. These just fall apart! It is like trying to move water on the spatula. I get them in the pan...

And they are ugly! I am starting to panic but I am committed to finishing. In the oven they go, maybe they will rise up in the oven?

After baking they exit the oven a bit bigger but not much more than when they started. Here is the finished product next to the picture from the magazine. They are so flat! The "crumb" is something like a cake, not a biscuit.

Comparison

Flat!

I did eat a few of them and they tasted okay, but the majority ended up as bird food. I will try this again but not with gluten free flour. Biscuits need gluten...

Julie

Thanksgiving Nov 22nd, 2018

2018-11-24T09:14:00.004-08:00

Hello

I hosted Thanksgiving this year at my house and invited all of my family and any friends that didn't have a place to go. I love Thanksgiving! It is my favorite holiday because it is about food, family, friends and fun. No pressure like finding the perfect gift for that teenage nephew of yours :) (Hint, they only want money!)
I am thankful for having a family that while small in number, is large in personality and enjoys being together. I am extremely thankful that is has finally started raining, and raining hard! I do need to go up on my roof and clean out a gutter unfortunately, but I will wait until it dries out.

For Thanksgiving, I bought the largest turkey they had in the store because I wanted to make sure we had leftovers. At 26 pounds (about 12 kg) it was the largest turkey that I had ever cooked and I was worried about it getting done enough but not dried out. I usually do a wet brine, but this monster was too big for that. (See picture) So I used a dry brine based on an Ina Garten recipe. It worked out well and along with my convection oven and dry rub from a small spice shop in Murphys, it was one of the best tasting turkeys I have made.

Dry Brine and Gravy Recipe

Here are more pictures from Thanksgiving!

Beautiful Fall Colors from my window

Food Table - And drink table

One view of the table

Other direction

Some people stayed around and talked until about 10 p.m., when I got up and went to bed. I had been woken up around 3:30 a.m. that morning by lightning and thunder. It went on for about 45 minutes but then I couldn't get to sleep again. I am NOT complaining! We are so desperate for rain that I will take all of that for a good downpour. After the first good rain - the moss and algae that was dormant on the trees will suddenly "wake up" and turn the most amazing shades of green. It is really beautiful!

Julie

Genealogy Trip To Alabama and New Orleans - Nov 2018

2018-11-11T12:00:00.000-08:00

Hello

This year (2018), I have taken 2 trips related to genealogy and 1 added weekend to a business trip as well. This latest trip was with my mom and dad, and piggy-backed on a conference they were attending in Naples, Florida. The ultimate goal was to go to Dauphin Island, Alabama, where my french Guillory relatives landed when they left Canada. We found a map that showed Isla de Guillory on land there and decided to go see the island. The itinerary would look like this - I flew into Tampa on monday night, we all drive to Tallahassee on Tues, on to Dauphin Island on Weds, and then finally to New Orleans on Thursday, fly home on Friday.
Map of our Trip

Day 1 - Tampa - to- Tallahassee

We spent Monday night at my parents friends house in Tampa, which sat on a lake there.. beautiful place with a pool and alligators in the lake. But hey, it added character!

My dad and his friend

We took off driving to Tallahassee and ate lunch along the way in a tiny little town named Chiefland, Florida. There was a BBQ restaurant there named BBQ Bill's so we stopped to eat there. It was everything you would expect from a florida panhandle BBQ restaurant... very homey feel and everyone was polite. (So many ma'ams on this trip, it started to cause me to say it!) I basically ordered a large slab of meat..

Weather was rainy every day!

Dad with his rib order

My meat only order... was really good just a lot of meat

The weather was rainy every day... every single day was warm, humid and raining! We made it Tallahassee and had dinner there at another local place that just opened, Bumpa's Local 349, and it was fantastic! Great assortment of local beer which is always a plus for me!

Day 2 - Tallahassee to Dauphin Island
On the road again!

My dad putting gas in the Lincoln he rented.. mom is in the back seat.

Before we made it to Dauphin Island, we stopped in to see another of my dad's friends in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. This area of the gulf coast got hit by Hurricane Michael and we saw the downed and snapped trees for miles and then it suddenly stopped. The path of devastation was so distinct that you can see where the line was... and once again.. the rain and rain and rain!

Mom and Dad and Friends at lunch

Then on to the island! It took about 5 hours to make this drive all together and we made it to our motel just about sunset. It is the only motel on the island, everything else is home or condo rentals. The same family has owned it for 30 years and, well, it shows the age.. It is something that you would see in a movie where the place hasn't been touched since the 80's or 90's. But it was clean and cheap and the views are spectacular.

Gulf Breeze Motel

Day 3 - On the island and then on to New Orleans
We spent Thursday exploring the island, and visiting the local history center. What a fantastic place! Why didn't anyone tell me there were places like this with these beautiful beaches that were closer than Hawaii? And way cheaper.... We had dinner on Weds night and they were selling beer for $2 and wine for $4. The whole dinner for us was about $50 which is what I can expect to spend on dinner for myself here in San Francisco. Here are some pictures from the island.

Beaches were white, soft sand with warm water and as you can see it was a slow time of the year.

My family settled here in the early 1700's, thinking they could grow vegetables and make a living. The island though, is mainly sand and with every storm it moves around. They didn't stay too long, but long enough for my 6th great- grandfather, Joseph Gregoire Guillory to be born on the island in 1716. There are a couple of people buried there, including Joseph's first wife, Marie-Jean Lacase and his young daughter Marie-Louise Guillory. We went to the oldest catholic cemetery on the island to see if we could find their graves, but we couldn't. If you think about the conditions there, with the heat, humidity and rain, a wooden grave marker would be gone by now almost 300 years later. We loved the island and the people there, who were just so nice.

Old map

Lighthouse Bakery was amazing!

We only spent a day there but saw the whole island, which shows you how small it is!

Although we didn't find anything of genealogical interest there, we did decide that we would like to go back for a vacation. Only downside is that the mosquitoes were huge and for some reason, they loved me! This side of the family left the island and moved to Mobile, Alabama where they had a plantation. Joseph Guillory was not a nice man, and yes, he owned slaves. He actually had four children with one of his slaves named Marguerite. A descendant of hers, filed a court casein Lousiana, because she while she 97% Caucasian in her DNA, she was still being required to identify as African American. NY Times Article

If you decide to start looking into your family history, be aware that some things you will find are not pleasant. Part of this family moved to New Orleans, and that is where we are going next!

Day 4 - On to New Orleans!

New Orleans is a place that my family has a lot of history with for a brief amount of time. My fifth great-grandfather, also a Joseph, left Mobile and moved to Ville Platt in St. Landry Parish, Lousiana. That is where they joined the local Cajun community there and lived through a lot of stuff... His son my forth great-grandfather, was born in Lousiana in 1781 and married Severine Lemoine. The Lemoine (Le Moyne) name is famous because that is the name of the man who started New Orleans. I am not sure if she is related but will look into that. The other branch of the family that is important here is the Bernadas line, and that is who we visited in the cemetery.

St. Louis Cemetery #3 Bernadas Crypt

We also did some fun things, like go to Preservation Hall for the Jazz show. We also went to a couple museums and of course, ate a lot. It rained every single day of our trip...

mom and dad

Day 5 - Last Day in New Orleans
Before we all left we had some time, we went to see St. Joseph's Cathedral, a place that we know our family supported because their name was on the plaque as an original family.

Mom and Dad in front of the cathedral

All of us

It was raining, again on Friday and I had the most time to kill before my flight. So I went to the Aquarium and on a bus tour of the city. New Orleans has so much history and we could spend a week visiting the family sites but we didn't have that much time. It was back to California and the terrible fires burning here, wish we can send some of that rain we dealt with everyday to my home state.
I will leave you with this video from the aquarium of a seahorse eating the little creatures in the water.

Beautiful Butterfly in New Orleans

Sign outside the aquarium, yes it is raining

We had a really good time, and drove about 750 miles, and we are still talking to each other!

Julie

July 4th 2018 - Long Weekend in MokeHill

2018-07-07T10:06:00.000-07:00

Happy American Independence Day!

Hello!

4th of July this year was smack dab in the middle of the week.. so I decided to come up here on the 3rd and stay for the rest of the week and weekend. I am dog-sitting a friend's dog as well, a female husky named Flower, so it seemed like a better idea to have her here in this big house vs. my small apartment in the city. The weather was really good for the 4th only getting to the mid 80's but it soon got hotter the next couple of days. My garden this year is very small, due to the gophers and everything getting eaten, I decided to not plant a couple of the beds. But, I did finally finish putting mulch down over the whole garden after working on it for 4 years. I also have my neighbors goats here eating the weeds down... so that is always exciting!

I did the middle section over the memorial day weekend so the goal this weekend was to finish it finally.

I always lay out weed block fabric and tack it down with landscape staples. Make sure you overlap the edges by about 4 inches or more to help block the weeds from finding a seam to poke up though. One thing i have learned is to use A LOT of mulch.. each of these piles is one 2 cubic foot bag of mulch. I used to put it much thinner but this is the most effective way to keep the weeds out. The reason it has taken so long is that prepping the dirt to get all the weeds and rocks out and somewhat smooth takes a lot of effort. And I wait until Lowes has this mulch on sale...

My "helper" Flower supervising my work

Finished it finally! Now because the other bark has lost the color, I will be putting more bark on those thin spots. But for now, I am done! The goats are here again and here are a couple of pictures.

They love attention!

They also really like dogs... they would follow us on our walk. Flower is not one who likes them however...

Random garden pictures..

California poppies

Carrots from my yard.. i got a lot of them and this is just a small batch.

This is a carrot that I let go to seed. I want to see if I can actually get seeds this way and plant them.

Must have a frog picture!

This is a picture of one of the tomatoes I started in my greenhouse aquaponics system. I have planted 5 of these tomato plants in the garden and hope they survive. I also have about 6 more in the greenhouse in the grow beds for back up plants. For me, tomatoes don't taste as good grown in the greenhouse, they need the dirt to really get that bright tomato taste. However, starting the plants in the grow beds gives me a really nice transplant to use.

And finally, the quail this year are not as plentiful has they were last year but that is because we didn't get the amount of rain like last winter. But they are still on my property and they tend to hide in the bushes and branches of trees that fall down. This one is the look out for his little group of quail..

Such a pretty bird, and to be honest, they are very tasty too. I can't hunt on my property so they are safe from me, but not the other predators like cats, dogs, foxes, hawks and coyotes.

Hope everyone had a good holiday!

Julie

SCGS Jamboree 2018 - Burbank, CA - Day 1

2018-05-31T19:16:00.001-07:00

Hello From Burbank!

My mom and I are here at the first day of the genealogy conference, but we are taking different tracks. She is taking the family history writers track and I am more interested in the genetic genealogy track. My first session today, "The Danger of Distant Genetic Matches", was fascinating! The speaker was Blaine T. Bettinger, Phd and he has a couple books out on the use of DNA in genealogy. His class talked about how to do "phasing" with the DNA of your parents and since both my parents and my son have had DNA tested, I can really do this! It will weed out the matches that are attributed to false positives due to the various algorithms the DNA sites use. My dad has so many people in Finland that are matching and we don't know why so that might help with this question.

My mom is now inspired to write so many stories, that she is going to get a cup of coffee and think about what she could write. Regarding family stories, my (maternal) great, great, uncle Dan Goodan, was not a good man. He was a thief, felon and a con man... and also fathered a child with a woman when get out of Folsom prison. This man had several kids and through DNA testing, we met Janet! She is my 3rd cousin, the grand-daughter of Dan Goodan and a really nice lady. She missed out on the cousins that my mom had and it was clear they both were sad about that.. but hopefully, this new "family" connection will help her feel like she does belong with us and connect with us more.

Day 1 is over and it has been an interesting day, great presenters, location is good, service and concessions have been terrible but you can't have it all!

Julie

Cat versus Fox

2018-05-20T13:48:00.002-07:00

This cat has been hunting on my property for years and I always worry about her. But when she came face-to-face with a fox, she didn't back down.

The fox is so confused by her!

Julie

Garden Stuff and Frogs!

2018-05-06T15:45:00.000-07:00

Hi

I missed going to my house for a few weeks in April and the weeds just exploded! I spent many hours hacking and spraying them, but for all the work, this is my favorite time of the year. There lupines are in full bloom with the red clover and golden poppies just getting going. And my tree frogs move back to the greenhouse in anticipation of the heat that is just around the corner. But the vermin are active again and my fight with them continues.

This year I planted my winter garden of onions and garlic as usual, but the voles have eaten most all of the onions. Out of 100 plants, I have about 8 of them left. I am so mad because that is my favorite crop! The carrots are doing okay, not as good as last year because a bit less rain, but there were some oddities there as well.

The fun of gardening is that you get to be the one who digs up these strange things. I have planted a bunch more to try and get a 2nd crop in before the summer heat comes, so we will see what happens with those carrots.

Julie

Just Pictures March 2018

2018-05-06T14:58:00.000-07:00

Hi
It was a strange weekend with my goal of trying to spray all the weeds interrupted with hours of hail and pounding rain. I got trapped in the greenhouse with the fish and here is a few of the pictures that make me happy.

Wildflower

The light thus morning coming through the wet trees was amazing

This is a video of my goldfish in the aquaponics tank. I bought them 4 years ago and they are just huge now. The noise is the hail and rain outside...
This was done via my phone sorry for any goofs!
julie

March Madness 2018 - Weather wise I mean

2018-03-18T10:05:00.002-07:00

Hello

When I moved the blueberry plants up to the garden, we were in the middle of another drought year. No rain, no snow, no bueno. This month, March, has been wild in terms of weather. We have had some low snow levels and lots of rain, and yesterday, I got hail for about 15 minutes.

Video of it coming off the roof of my house, it was so loud!

In the garden a few weeks ago, I took off all of the citrus from the trees ahead of all this cold weather and set about juicing them. My little lemon tree gave off about 200 lemons!

Yes this is a wheelbarrow full of citrus.. it was an amazing amount of fruit.

During the juicing process, first I rinse and scrub all the fruit really well in water with a tiny splash of bleach. There is a lot of mold spores out and I don't want to ruin my juice with mold. I juiced lemons and blood oranges and froze the juice.

First carrots of the year!

Warning - Plant Geek ahead!
I have a small patch of carrots because the seeds really didn't germinate this year as successfully as last year. (Carrots are notorious for being fickle to germinate.) This first bunch didn't taste too good I think because it had been so warm this winter, until these last two weeks. Next week I will pull a couple more and see if they taste better. Carrots are a winter vegetable, and need cold to taste better. (When it gets cold, they pull nutrients and energy from their leaves, and store it in the root.)They are also good for storage because you can leave them in the ground over winter, as long as the ground doesn't freeze really hard. Or you have voles that eat them all up! One other fact about carrots is that they are not annual or perennial, they are biennial ; which means they grow for the first year, and if you leave them in the ground, they will flower and set seeds the second year. I have never done this but I might do it this year with 1 or 2 of them. Just to see what happens.. of course, if the plant is a hybrid even though it sets seeds, the results will be different than what you were hoping for. They will take the characteristics of 1 of the parents, not both.

Okay enough plant talk!

Thanks,

Julie

Garden Bed for Blueberries Feb 2018

2018-02-18T15:43:00.003-08:00

Hello

Last year, I went to a whole lot of trouble to create an area to grow blueberries and blackberries, where the old grape vines used to be. I worked on building that soil up, putting up a deer fence and even chopped down a tree branch that was hanging over the area. I planted them all and I was very happy.. until summer came around. My garden area is where I spend most of my time, but this large planting area was on the other side of the citrus trees and by the time I got finished with everything I was working on in the main garden, I never made it down to see them. They suffered quite a lot I am afraid.. totally my fault. This winter I decided to move them up to the main garden, and built them a planting bed that used my old deck boards. I knew that I wanted something skinny and long so that it would fit in the area next to the strawberries.. so I found 2 each of the 16 foot boards for the sides, then cut 12 inch end pieces. I used corner brackets and screws to put them together because they hold better than nailing or just screws. I used the same technique when building up the strawberry beds as well, they just hold better especially when you have wood that is older.

Then of course you have to out in gopher wire which means staple gun time! You lay it out and just start stapling it to the frame, this was a narrow bed so I have the wire going down pretty deep.

The view from my deck looking down at the completed frame for the planter, minus the dirt and the plants!

This weekend, I added the peat moss, the dirt and transplanted the blue berries. The like acid soil which is unusual and why I added the peat moss. I am not sure if they will make it since I so neglected them last year. If not, I will try and plant more next year and pay attention to them! They are bit hard to see because they are just sticks right now.. since they are dormant. Soon they should leaf out and I will see who is still alive.

They are there I promise! They just blend in with the dirt right now..

This has been another really dry year, so I am not sure what I will be able to plant in the outside garden. I was really hoping to plant the Stupice tomatoes because they canned up so well and they taste wonderful still. When I open a jar of these beauties, it tastes like summer again!

We have some flowers blooming and of course I have to share the daffodil pictures before I go..

Thanks again!

Julie

Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree 2018

2018-02-18T07:07:00.002-08:00

Hello All!

As you guys now know, as well as being an obsessed garderner and fervent fixer-upper, for the last 7 years or so, I have been assisting my mother with our family history. When the technology started replacing paper records, and when DNA really started to show results, it was too much for her to deal with on her own. So she leaves me to uncover the new family members (Hello Adam, Janet and Shasta!) as well as the deeply buried internet records, and she is now telling the story of the family to the rest of our family.

To that end, we are going to attend a conference at the end of May in Southern California, which has me excited because of the heavy presence of DNA talks! I wish there was more on how to become a genealogist as a career but hey, I will be learning a ton of things here!

If anyone is interested in coming to the this with me, here is the link;
Registration Page

Thanks!

Julie

The man that started it all - Karsten Strom Tonseth (1889-1941)

2017-12-16T15:41:00.002-08:00

Hello

My diversion into genealogy started with my dads grandfather, my great grandfather Karsten, who died before my father was born. (Just like my grandfather died before I was born, but that is another story.) The family didn't have a lot of knowledge about his life before America, only that he came from Trondheim, Norway and had 2 siblings. There were also rumors about he left Norway to avoid the draft and so on. We had 1 clue which was a letter from his mother, written in Norwegian when his third son Richard was born. My mother had been focusing on her family for years and really didn't get far with my dad's family. Norway in general is difficult because even though they have great records, they are in Norwegian and frequently not digital. (This is rapidly changing and I am happy to see it!) So, here is the story that Ancestry.com has created about my great-grandfather.. it is not complete but when you look at the documents and the details you can see that he travelled here at a young age following his cousin Svend. His cousin, is our cousin Kaare's uncle, so the whole thing came back in a circle. My dad and Kaare are good friends and cousins, just like Svend and Karsten. Karsten's Story

Karsten Strøm Tønseth

1889–1941

BIRTH 06 MAR 1889 • Trondheim, Sor-Trondelag, Norway

DEATH 26 JUL 1941 • Westminster, Orange County California, USA

Life Story Narrative

When Karsten Strøm Tønseth was born on March 6, 1889, in Trondheim, Sor-Trondelag, Norway, his father, Ole, was 36 and his mother, Amalie, was 27. He married Edna Sandven on December 25, 1913. They had three children during their marriage. He died on July 26, 1941, in Westminster, California, at the age of 52.

Family Relationships

You

Children

Karsten Waldemar Tonseth

Karsten Strøm Tønseth

Spouse

Edna Sandven

Parents

Ole Kristian Strøm Tønseth

Amalie Carstine Marie Rohde

Locations

Life Story Events

6 MAR

1889

Birth

Karsten Strøm Tønseth was born on March 6, 1889, in Trondheim, Sor-Trondelag, Norway, to Amalie Carstine Marie Rohde, age 27, and Ole Kristian Strøm Tønseth, age 36.

06 Mar 1889 • Trondheim, Sor-Trondelag, Norway
22 APR

1889

AGE 0

Baptism

The Church of our lady

22 Apr 1889 • Vor Frue, Trondheim, Sør-Trøndelag, Norway
1 JAN

1910

AGE 20
REVIEW

The Americanization Movement

Karsten Strøm Tønseth moved from Norway to the United States at a time when immigrants were expected to quickly assimilate into American society.
11 JUL

1911

AGE 22
Ellis Island passenger arrival Records (1892-1924)

Arrival of Karsten Tonseth from Trondhjem, Norway at the age 22. year of birth 1889
July 11, 1911
1911

AGE 22

Emigration

City record says that he was an unmarried masseur and left for New York 6/12/1911. Ship was the Oscar 2 - he went with Svein on the same boat.

1911 • Trondheim, Norway
1911

AGE 22

Arrival

According to the city record he left in 1911 http://digitalarkivet.arkivverket.no/en-gb/gen/vis/8/pe00000000195365

1911 • New York
25 DEC

1913

AGE 24

Marriage

Karsten Strøm Tønseth married Edna Sandven on December 25, 1913, when he was 24 years old.

Edna Sandven

1886–1966

25 Dec 1913
1913

AGE 24

Death of Father

His father Ole Kristian Strøm passed away in 1913 in Trondheim, Sor-Trondelag, Norway, at the age of 60.

Ole Kristian Strøm Tønseth

1853–1913

1913 • Trondheim, Sor-Trondelag, Norway
18 MAY

1917

AGE 28
REVIEW

Registering for the Draft in World War I

After the Selective Service Act was signed in May 1917, Karsten Strøm Tønseth registered for the draft.
20 FEB

1918

AGE 28

Birth of Son

His son Karsten Waldemar was born on February 20, 1918, in Canton, South Dakota.

Karsten Waldemar Tonseth

1918–1962

20 Feb 1918 • Canton, Lincoln Co, South Dakota, United States of America
6 JUN

1919

AGE 30

WW I Draft Registration

6 Jun 1919 • Norfolk, Madison, Nebraska, USA
1920

AGE 31

Residence

Karsten Strøm Tønseth lived in Canton, South Dakota, in 1920.

Age: 31; Marital Status: Married; Relation to Head of House: Head

1920 • Canton, Lincoln, South Dakota, USA
10 MAR

1924

AGE 35

Birth of Son

His son Robert LeRoy was born on March 10, 1924, in Canton, South Dakota.

Robert LeRoy Tonseth

1924–1985

10 Mar 1924 • Canton, Lincoln County, South Dakota, USA
10 SEP

1926

AGE 37

Birth of Son

His son Richard Leon was born on September 10, 1926, in Canton, South Dakota.

Richard Leon Tonseth

1926–1980

10 Sep 1926 • Canton, Lincoln County, South Dakota, USA
1928

AGE 39

Residence

Karsten Strøm Tønseth lived in Norfolk, Nebraska, in 1928.

1928 • Norfolk, Nebraska, USA
1930

AGE 41

Residence

Karsten Strøm Tønseth lived in Canton, South Dakota, in 1930.

Age: 40; Marital Status: Married; Relation to Head of House: Head

1930 • Canton, Lincoln, South Dakota, USA
1935

AGE 46

Residence

Karsten Strøm Tønseth lived in Long Beach, California, in 1935.

1935 • Long Beach, Los Angeles, California
1937

AGE 48

Residence

Karsten Strøm Tønseth lived in Long Beach, California, in 1937.

1937 • Long Beach, California, USA
1939

AGE 50

Residence

Karsten Strøm Tønseth lived in Long Beach, California, in 1939.

1939 • Long Beach, California, USA
1 APR

1940

AGE 51

Residence

Karsten Strøm Tønseth lived in Long Beach, California, on April 1, 1940.

Age: 50; Marital Status: Divorced; Relation to Head of House: Lodger

1 Apr 1940 • Long Beach, Los Angeles, California, United States
26 JUL

1941

AGE 52

Death

Karsten Strøm Tønseth died on July 26, 1941, in Westminster, California, when he was 52 years old.

Buried in Westminister Memorial Park

26 Jul 1941 • Westminster, Orange County California, USA

My Hill House Adventure

MokeHill House Farm is for sale!

Meet me at my new website!

Life Changes

It's been awhile...

Hot weather and canning don't mix - so break out the FoodSaver!

Quarantine Projects June 20, 2020

Deck Replacement - Jan 2020

My Mysterious Norwegian Ancestor, Johannes Buzzi aka Giovanni Antonio Buzzi Biela (1777-1846)

My Mysterious Norwegian Ancestor, Johannes Buzzi aka Giovanni Antonio Buzzi Biela (1777-1846)

Building my own sprinkler system from PVC leftovers

Finally Living Full Time at my house!

Buttermilk Biscuits - Finally a winner!

Trip To Kihei, Maui, Hawaii - Jan/Feb 2019

Fungi! December 2018

3rd Biscuit Fail - Updated Feb 22, 2019

Thanksgiving Nov 22nd, 2018

Genealogy Trip To Alabama and New Orleans - Nov 2018

July 4th 2018 - Long Weekend in MokeHill

SCGS Jamboree 2018 - Burbank, CA - Day 1

Cat versus Fox

Garden Stuff and Frogs!

Just Pictures March 2018

March Madness 2018 - Weather wise I mean

Garden Bed for Blueberries Feb 2018

Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree 2018

The man that started it all - Karsten Strom Tonseth (1889-1941)

Family Relationships

You

Children

Karsten Waldemar Tonseth

Spouse

Edna Sandven

Parents

Ole Kristian Strøm Tønseth

Amalie Carstine Marie Rohde

Locations

Life Story Events

1889

06 Mar 1889 • Trondheim, Sor-Trondelag, Norway

1889

22 Apr 1889 • Vor Frue, Trondheim, Sør-Trøndelag, Norway

1910

1911

July 11, 1911

1911

1911 • Trondheim, Norway

1911

1911 • New York

1913

Edna Sandven

25 Dec 1913

1913

Ole Kristian Strøm Tønseth

1913 • Trondheim, Sor-Trondelag, Norway

1917

1918

Karsten Waldemar Tonseth

20 Feb 1918 • Canton, Lincoln Co, South Dakota, United States of America

1919

6 Jun 1919 • Norfolk, Madison, Nebraska, USA

1920

1920 • Canton, Lincoln, South Dakota, USA

1924

Robert LeRoy Tonseth

10 Mar 1924 • Canton, Lincoln County, South Dakota, USA

1926

Richard Leon Tonseth

10 Sep 1926 • Canton, Lincoln County, South Dakota, USA

1928

1928 • Norfolk, Nebraska, USA

1930

1930 • Canton, Lincoln, South Dakota, USA

1935

1935 • Long Beach, Los Angeles, California

1937

1937 • Long Beach, California, USA

1939

1939 • Long Beach, California, USA

1940