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IT'S QUITE AMAZING THAT I'VE already got another personal Guinness record to tell you about--the second such in less than a month! This fact about which I'm reporting is undoubtedly a record for me, and I have a sneaking suspicion it'd be a record for you, as well. But I'll just let you be the judge: I have wooden shoes on my doorstep that are the largest pair of wooden footwear ever to sit outside my door. For sure.


If truth be told (and since, Dear Reader, I suppose the truth in this case is already a grave suspicion, I feel it best to go ahead and blow away the notion that there's been much competition in this category) the pairs of wooden shoes outside my door have only ever numbered two.

Still...it is rather extraordinary to see 14-1/2" (yes, I measured them) ones resting on the porch. They are the footwear of a quite delightful Dutch guy. The runner-up pair belongs to his equally charming friend and traveling companion. These two guests from the Netherlands have been in the U.S. for three months, the final three weeks of which their shoes have populated this porch of ours (mine and the man who lives here and houses his seven Belgian horses in the barn).





Ties and Jelmer, you see, are nearly as enamored of working with equine as that husband of mine with his barn full of them. The two have crossed the country working on (mostly Amish) farms and learning to speak English quite fluently.





I'd have to say, even more impressive than their shoes is the pleasant congeniality of these two, the way they each make us laugh with their fine sense of humor, and their earnest desire to work and learn.









We've gotten accustomed to having them around. When they leave next week, I will miss hearing those (record-breaking) wooden shoes making a pleasant clatter on the porch.

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