ABA 1999 Spirit Haven

[Suki]

Hi, I saw this group on the 99 ABA catalog.  I was wondering if Spirit Haven is still around? Oh btw, they were the only ad for Ameraucanas that year.

[Mike Gilbert]

The Eutslers threw about the best post-show party ever at their farm in the Virginia mountains after our national meet at Galax, VA.   They pitched a very large tent and we had a live bluegrass band, a huge kettle of chili, lots to eat and drink, and everybody slept right at their place that night.   In the morning they made pancakes for everybody, we had a tour of their farm, and then everybody headed back home.   It was a time to remember.   Paul and Angela Smith drove all the way from Texas with over 20 large fowl Ameraucana entries, and the host club had not received their entry.   The Smith's ended up showing their birds in the carrying cages from their truck, and if memory serves I believe they still took best large fowl.   I would have to check in an old bulletin to say for sure.   We still exchange Christmas cards with the Eutslers, but they have been out of showing chickens for a long time.  Scott is a traveling physical therapist who attended grad school about 20 miles south of where we live, and that is how we met through a mutual friend, the late Ron Klemmedson.   Good times for sure.   The "golden quail" mentioned in their ad is what we now call black golds.  The name change occurred when a Georgia exhibitor brought in bantams colored like quail Belgians at a subsequent national Ameraucana meet. 

[Suki]

Thanks for the memories.  Does sound grand...

[John W Blehm]

Kathy and I were reminiscing about that National Meet just a few days ago.  She still raves about the homemade cooking (buttermilk pancakes topped with cinnamon apples and much more), the entertainment and all.  For the night we shared a very cold motorhome with Mike & Mary and Neil & Donna were in a cargo trailer on or under a bear rug.

Here is a photo with the late Arne Schmidt of MN looking on as Scott presents Mike with the very first "Ameraucana Breeders Award".   

[Mike Gilbert]

Arne is another guy we really miss at the shows.   He was a generous and always positive ABC member, and he may have been a Director as well.

[John W Blehm]

I've been going thru old photos as I work on genealogy and came across a few more photos from our 2001 Ameraucana National, in Virginia.

[Mike Gilbert]

Hard to believe that much time has gone by.  I believe one of the Eutsler daughters is living in the United Arab Emirates now.    The other is a teacher.

[Suki]

Impressive Mike that you have kept up with so many.  speaking of your photos why don't you just scan them and upload them to a Gmail account made for the purpose?  When you run out of 15 gig make another...Ameraucana2020.1...Ameraucana2020.2 and so on.
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Best Regards, Sue

[Mike Gilbert]

Impressive Mike that you have kept up with so many.  speaking of your photos why don't you just scan them and upload them to a Gmail account made for the purpose?  When you run out of 15 gig make another...Ameraucana2020.1...Ameraucana2020.2 and so on.
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Best Regards, Sue

John was kind enough to upload a lot of those photos to a couple of CD's and mailed them to me.   So I do have that.  It would take considerable time to label them all, and summers are just too busy here to take on a project of that size. 

[Suki]

Well summer isn't the only season and since this is a hobby do it at your leisure.  There isn't a rush. 

Uploading via Google Photos is a breeze to a vanilla club account. You just scrape them from the CD to a folder on your hard drive and then tell Google Photos/Drive to upload them when your bandwidth is low.  After you're done you share them via email or copy the url here.

https://photos.google.com/albums