This year was relatively quiet, though quite a bit did happen.  Charlie finished working on the family farmhouse, and it's now structurally sound for another 150 years – and the rebuilt kitchen wing is beautiful, functional – and warm!  We have an artist friend living there for the winter, as a trial run of a possible artist-in-residence program, and we are thrilled that Dahlov's studio is again being used for making art.

We attended several events in conjunction with a wonderful display of Dahlov's artwork at Bates College, titled "Dahlov Ipcar: Blue Moons and Menageries" as well as several shows at Rachel Walls Fine Arts (Rachel is the representative for the Dahlov Ipcar Arts Collection).  Charlie and friends also worked with Bates to do a concert of "Dahlov's Favorite Folk Songs & Ballads" in conjunction with the show there.

We did manage to get the boat in the water this year, and the new motor worked beautifully. We enjoyed visiting our favorite osprey nests, and boating over to Boothbay Harbor.

Last year we didn't really take a vacation, so we made up for that this year with 10 hectic days in Nova Scotia.  Judy enjoyed spending some time in Halifax with an online friend she works with closely on the wildlife forum she helps administer but had never met in person; we also had a wonderful music party with other friends in the City.  We then attended the Lunenburg Folk Harbour Festival – an amazing weekend of all kinds of music in a beautiful town.  Charlie sang one of the songs he put together with the Yarmouth (NS) Shantymen at their concert in Lunenburg, and after the Festival we had another song party with the Shantymen in Yarmouth itself. 

Our card this year started to come together when we hired a stone mason to reinforce the stone bridge leading to Charlie's family farm, and family members began asking if the work bothered the resident troll (Judy here – if ever a bridge called out for a troll, that's the one!).  Charlie channeled a new song based on a dream about the bridge, The Stone Bridge Troll, which begins like this:

Don't go up the Stone Bridge, the Stone Bridge, the Stone Bridge;
Don't go up the Stone Bridge, as evening shadows fall;
For the Troll lives under the Stone Bridge, the Stone Bridge, the Stone Bridge;
The Troll lives under the Stone Bridge; he'll creep out and eat you up!

But then Charlie realized that even a troll might get into the spirit of the season!

Stone Bridge photographed by
Charlie Ipcar in 2014
Troll drawn by Theodor Kittelsen in 1890

Charlie and Judy
on vacation in Nova Scotia
2018

Ipbar Productions
©2018

Link to Charlie's song The Stone Bridge Troll