Since I have spent a fair amount of time over the last 30 years or so pursuing one specie of fish or another, it is only expected that I would have an ‘adventure’ or two along the waterways.
In the early 80’s we lived in southwest KY. It was there that I came to be friends with the first “real fisherman” that I had the privilege of fishing with. What I mean by “real fisherman” is one of those individuals who not only loved to fish, but is very good at it and spent most of his time ‘on the job’. This fellow was a lot older than I was, but we hit it off perfectly. He has been dead now for a number of years, but I think of him often and cherish the fishing outings we shared.
There was one element to out trips that seemed to be a given. Every time me and Kenneth got into a boat on a body of water, we could count on a rainstorm. He blamed the phenomenon on me, saying that I was a “jinx” and could bring rain during a drought by simply going fishing. Of course, I would counter that it was ‘him’ since it always rained when I went fishing with him, never mind that I did not fish with anyone else.
On one such outing we had gone to the Barren River Reservoir in Kenneth’s johnboat. We had about a 5 horse motor on this little boat, which was just fine for the narrow channel up which we were traveling to the spot we wanted to lay out our trotlines. That was his favorite method of fishing for channel cats and it was legal at that time in KY, I suppose it still is, but in MN we have no such ‘freedom’, which is probably good or we would surely have a lot less fish, because a trotline does its job well if properly set and baited.
We went what must have been 3 or 4 miles up the Reservoir when, out of a clear sky, came a thunderstorm. Of course we got wet, but nothing to be concerned about. We went ahead and laid out a few trotlines and baited them. The plan was to go back to the landing and nap until around 10 PM and then run the lines taking any fish we had. Then we would re-bait our hooks and come back the next morning to check them again and pull them in.
Our plan did not work that way due to a mishap with the starter rope on the motor. After we had gotten all the lines out, Kenneth pulled on the starter rope and it came clean out in his hand! No way to start the motor, so we thought at the time. Now I plead ignorance because it was not my motor and I had never owned a boat motor, what we learned later was all to Kenneth’s embarrassment, not mine. At the time it was already nearing dark and we had to cover about 4 miles of water to get to the landing. No oars, only one little “mini” paddle about 3 feet long. We took turns sitting in the bow of the boat and pulling ourselves along the best we could. It was a long pull. Naturally it got dark very quick, but to our good fortune there was a security light at the landing, so we kept the boat pointed that direction and kept pulling ourselves with that little paddle.
We were not able to run the lines that night, so we made the trip back home. I did not have time to go back with Kenneth the next morning to run the lines after he got a new rope in the motor. Our lines however, did their job. There was a half dozen or so channel cats hooked and one of them was over 5 lbs.
After Kenneth got back, naturally he called me with the report on our success. Then he laughed and told me that we were surely a couple of fools for having pulled ourselves miles with that little stub of a paddle, all due to “ignorance”. Then he explained to me that all we would have had to do was pull the cover off the motor and we could have started it with any piece of rope. All boat motors have a knot catch so that you can wrap a rope around the starter shaft and start them even if the pull rope comes out. At least all small outboard motors have such a emergency shaft. I told him that my ignorance was ‘excusable’, but his was evidently from old age and senility!
Incidentally, for those who have never used a trotline, it is a most convenient manner for taking fish, especially in a situation where you don’t have time to fish or in a survival emergency. The makeup of a trotline is this. The mainline can be as long as you want, but ours were around 100’ in length. Most often we would tie one end off on shore to a tree root or some other solid anchor.
Then we would string it out to where we wanted the other end to be. Drop a cement block down to the bottom of the lake attached to another rope, with a gallon milk jug tied on at the surface to hold our rope and line up off the bottom. To this line we would go down to whatever depth we wanted, usually a couple feet below the water, to miss “most” boat motor props in case a boat passed over our trotline. At this point we would tie off our main trotline, whose other end was on shore and tighten up the slack, leaving just enough leeway that we could pull the line up to the side of the boat. Once the main line was in place, we had prepared ahead of time about 50 hooks on short lines. These we would have made up in advance and hang them on the top lip of a 5 gallon bucket so that they would not be in a big tangled mess.
Then we would simply tie, very securely, each of the hooks onto the main line about 2 feet apart and in such a manner to prevent them from slipping on the main line or the fish from being about to reach the next hook and make one “big mess”. As we tied on the hooks we would put a live minnow or a chunk of chicken liver, or gizzard, on the hooks for bait. As catfish will come close to the surface in calm water at night to feed, it was an almost perfect set up.
Now Kenneth was not a ’wealthy’ person. So we never even thought of purchasing all those minnows. He knew every small creek within 25 miles of his home and it was there he would go to collect his bait. With a one man seine net attached to two 4’ sticks and a pair of hip waders he would go out into a deeper hole in the creeks and corner a mess of bait in short order. It was remarkable to watch an ‘expert’ dip minnows from a creek. I have tried it, but with limited success, partly because MN does not have the kind of small cricks that baitfish can live in year around like KY. Here any small stream will generally ‘winter kill’, so bait must be taken from lakes or larger rivers. A different process entirely.
It was also Kenneth who taught me the “fine art” of how to properly deep fry fish. His method was simple but almost perfect. His fish batter he would make with a mixture of white corn meal and flour (50/50), adding only salt and pepper. Then he would drop his fillets into bread-bag and shake them up so that there was a good even coating of batter. Then he would wait until his deep fryer, which was filled with vegetable oil, was “smoking hot”, that is the real secret to frying fish. The ideal is that you want the hot oil to immediately seal the outside fish batter and thus prevent the fish from becoming “greasy” which it surely will with low heat, trust me. I realize most people reading this blog will know these details, but in case there are some who don’t I include them. I hate to see “good meat” wasted from poor cooking habits!
Not only did Kenneth use trot lines to catch fish, he also used them for snapping turtles. I don’t know which gave him a bigger thrill, a big fish on his line or a monster snapping turtle. He was also expert at butchering and cooking turtle meat, which, if made properly, is one of the best meats one can enjoy. Unfortunately I cannot remember in detail his method of frying turtle, but I do know, from experience, if not done right it will be like eating shoe leather, but his turtle was as tender as a young chicken, too bad I did not pay close attention to his cooking of turtle meat.
To close this blog, before it rambles on and on, I remember one piece of advice Kenneth always gave me. He would say, “Ernie, if ‘you’ are going fishing, you better have a raincoat and take an extra pull rope for your motor.” Yes Kenneth, I remember your advice.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Saturday, January 28, 2012
My Grandparents
Long ago and seemingly in a different world, I have a memory of my grandparents burned into my consciousness. This memory has risen up in my mind because I was reminded that yesterday (Jan. 27, 2012) would have been my grandfather Malcolm H. Fouts would have turned 104 years old. He died in 2000 at 92 years old. My grandmother Laura, was born in the same year and died in 1992 at 84.
I often think of them and the world they lived in. Both being born in 1908 in Pike Co., KY. Yea, so far back in the hills they had to pipe sunshine in. As odd as that sounds it is not far from the truth! The mountains were so steep and close together the sun must have been hidden behind mountains much more than flatlanders can imagine. They married in 1925 at the age of 17 just a few weeks before grandpa’s 18th birthday. Unlike what is said of early marriages in our society being such a ‘tragedy’ and unlikely to last, they were married 67 years before death separated them. It was really another world. Within a few years of their marriage, the Great Depression hit, gripping the country in “hard times” for at least 15 -20 years. It was World War II that finally created an industrial ‘boom’ for war materials that supposedly brought the country out of that depression. But at the cost of thousands of dead young Americans and millions of other peoples around the globe.
This was the world that shaped the lives of my grandparents. Most of their families were coal miners or subsistence farmers, or both. Grandpa, fortunately was born with an uncommon ability to build houses. I say he was born with it because from what I have learned he build his first house when he was 16 years old, for his parents. I never saw the house since it was gone before my memory, but from the descriptions it was a very good house. As far as a career was concerned, grandpa never looked back. He build houses for the rest of his life, mostly as an independent contractor. Often building the houses single handed without a helper. I ask him one time how he managed getting the rafters and walls up by himself. It was a short answer that he assumed I should be able to understand, all he said was, “ropes and pulley”.
At some point in the early 50’s, they uprooted from the mountains of Pike Co. and moved to southern Ohio to fulfill their “dream”. It was to own a farm that was not entirely on the side of a mountain. The purchased 100 acres, (maybe more I am not sure) of fairly good land near the village of Dundas, OH.
What always strikes me as remarkable is that they had the courage and determination to leave home and family, when they were nearly 50 years old and go to a new place. These days that would not seem very strange in that we are a very mobile nation of people. But understanding a little bit about their culture and the mindset of mountain people of eastern KY, moving off at that point in their lives was really a remarkable thing. But they had a “dream” and followed it with success.
One cannot really comprehend the ‘world’ in which they lived most of their lives. Eastern KY in the 1920’s was a good hundred years behind most of the country, as far as modernization was concerned. I believe it was around 1946, after the war before electricity even came to their “hollow”, if my memory is correct. That would mean they were almost 40 years old before they could have had electric.
Our nation stands on a thin edge this very moment of slipping into another great depression. This time though, it would be very different than in my grandparents youth. Most of the modern things that people now would have to “give up” (and many already have), the people in eastern KY in the 1920’s did not have to begin with. It is a true saying, that you don’t miss what you never had. But to have such a comfortable way of life as most Americans have today and then lose it, seems to me to be much harder than if you had never become so ‘comfortable’ to begin with.
We think back and feel sorrow for the hardships those folks had to suffer in their youth, it was a hard life and no doubt about it, but I can’t help but think it also gave them life lessons that they would never forget. In my grandparents case, I know they never forgot. Even in their “golden years” (that farce of a cruel joke that society advertises about growing old), after they had sold the farm, they continued to grow a very large garden, only giving it up when they were not able to get out the door to tend it. They understood very clear the value of having food grown and stored in case of “hard times”.
Another thing that always struck me about grandpa was that he always seemed to have a good sense of humor with a quick laugh and ready smile. About the only time I have ever seen his ‘blood pressure’ raise is when politics would come up. He too, had a very serious opinion about how things ought to be run.
We think of hardship these days and for some people there is serious hardship, I would not want to make light of that fact, but when you sit with older people and visit knowing some of their history, you grow to admire their ability to coup with serious hardship. My grandparents had 12 children, only 8 of which grew to near adulthood. Two of those, a daughter who died at 21 giving childbirth and a son who died at 19 in an automobile crash, did not live very long. They lost several children at young ages, one I know was 5 years old. That is “hardship”, no matter how you look at it. Most of those events happen at the same time the nation was in deep depression or serious wars. In addition they had two sons who served in combat, one in Korea, one in Vietnam. Thankfully, they both came home.
Most of us “common people” have some hardship in our lives, that is just the nature of living. But when we reflect on the fortitude of our ancestors we ought to learn some lessons that should help us. Don’t ever think things are so bad they won’t improve, sometimes we just have to ‘tough it out’ and wait until our circumstances change for the better. Yet, they did not sit back in defeat and give up, they kept on toward their dreams and to my knowledge we quite content to live simple lives on their farm. They always had several cows, hogs and various critters around the place; food on the hoof you might say. But when you have seen what can happen so quickly to an industrial society, my thinking is, they were not about to give up living close to the land from which they could and did, gain food, shelter and as much security as this world can provide.
I often think of them and the world they lived in. Both being born in 1908 in Pike Co., KY. Yea, so far back in the hills they had to pipe sunshine in. As odd as that sounds it is not far from the truth! The mountains were so steep and close together the sun must have been hidden behind mountains much more than flatlanders can imagine. They married in 1925 at the age of 17 just a few weeks before grandpa’s 18th birthday. Unlike what is said of early marriages in our society being such a ‘tragedy’ and unlikely to last, they were married 67 years before death separated them. It was really another world. Within a few years of their marriage, the Great Depression hit, gripping the country in “hard times” for at least 15 -20 years. It was World War II that finally created an industrial ‘boom’ for war materials that supposedly brought the country out of that depression. But at the cost of thousands of dead young Americans and millions of other peoples around the globe.
This was the world that shaped the lives of my grandparents. Most of their families were coal miners or subsistence farmers, or both. Grandpa, fortunately was born with an uncommon ability to build houses. I say he was born with it because from what I have learned he build his first house when he was 16 years old, for his parents. I never saw the house since it was gone before my memory, but from the descriptions it was a very good house. As far as a career was concerned, grandpa never looked back. He build houses for the rest of his life, mostly as an independent contractor. Often building the houses single handed without a helper. I ask him one time how he managed getting the rafters and walls up by himself. It was a short answer that he assumed I should be able to understand, all he said was, “ropes and pulley”.
At some point in the early 50’s, they uprooted from the mountains of Pike Co. and moved to southern Ohio to fulfill their “dream”. It was to own a farm that was not entirely on the side of a mountain. The purchased 100 acres, (maybe more I am not sure) of fairly good land near the village of Dundas, OH.
What always strikes me as remarkable is that they had the courage and determination to leave home and family, when they were nearly 50 years old and go to a new place. These days that would not seem very strange in that we are a very mobile nation of people. But understanding a little bit about their culture and the mindset of mountain people of eastern KY, moving off at that point in their lives was really a remarkable thing. But they had a “dream” and followed it with success.
One cannot really comprehend the ‘world’ in which they lived most of their lives. Eastern KY in the 1920’s was a good hundred years behind most of the country, as far as modernization was concerned. I believe it was around 1946, after the war before electricity even came to their “hollow”, if my memory is correct. That would mean they were almost 40 years old before they could have had electric.
Our nation stands on a thin edge this very moment of slipping into another great depression. This time though, it would be very different than in my grandparents youth. Most of the modern things that people now would have to “give up” (and many already have), the people in eastern KY in the 1920’s did not have to begin with. It is a true saying, that you don’t miss what you never had. But to have such a comfortable way of life as most Americans have today and then lose it, seems to me to be much harder than if you had never become so ‘comfortable’ to begin with.
We think back and feel sorrow for the hardships those folks had to suffer in their youth, it was a hard life and no doubt about it, but I can’t help but think it also gave them life lessons that they would never forget. In my grandparents case, I know they never forgot. Even in their “golden years” (that farce of a cruel joke that society advertises about growing old), after they had sold the farm, they continued to grow a very large garden, only giving it up when they were not able to get out the door to tend it. They understood very clear the value of having food grown and stored in case of “hard times”.
Another thing that always struck me about grandpa was that he always seemed to have a good sense of humor with a quick laugh and ready smile. About the only time I have ever seen his ‘blood pressure’ raise is when politics would come up. He too, had a very serious opinion about how things ought to be run.
We think of hardship these days and for some people there is serious hardship, I would not want to make light of that fact, but when you sit with older people and visit knowing some of their history, you grow to admire their ability to coup with serious hardship. My grandparents had 12 children, only 8 of which grew to near adulthood. Two of those, a daughter who died at 21 giving childbirth and a son who died at 19 in an automobile crash, did not live very long. They lost several children at young ages, one I know was 5 years old. That is “hardship”, no matter how you look at it. Most of those events happen at the same time the nation was in deep depression or serious wars. In addition they had two sons who served in combat, one in Korea, one in Vietnam. Thankfully, they both came home.
Most of us “common people” have some hardship in our lives, that is just the nature of living. But when we reflect on the fortitude of our ancestors we ought to learn some lessons that should help us. Don’t ever think things are so bad they won’t improve, sometimes we just have to ‘tough it out’ and wait until our circumstances change for the better. Yet, they did not sit back in defeat and give up, they kept on toward their dreams and to my knowledge we quite content to live simple lives on their farm. They always had several cows, hogs and various critters around the place; food on the hoof you might say. But when you have seen what can happen so quickly to an industrial society, my thinking is, they were not about to give up living close to the land from which they could and did, gain food, shelter and as much security as this world can provide.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Random Thoughts
I want to thank all of you who follow my blog. As you can see my posting is falling off in frequency. I could make ’excuses’, but the fact of the matter is that my ambition and time slip away very quickly. Due to the minor detail that I have lost almost a month of productive work in the woodshop, I am now way behind where I should be on projects. That however, is not really an excuse since I barely have the energy to work 5 hours or so each day and this only by forcing one foot in front of the other. For the most part I save my energy for the one day a week that I grade lumber, when I have no choice but to exert all my strength to get that job done.
I have also been spending some time thinking about the direction I want to take this blog in. One thing seems clear to me; if I don’t write about subjects that really interest me, then having a blog called “Ernie’s World” is rather misleading. It might seem that a common working person’s world would be rather dull, but the truth is, for every individual, their world is very important to “them”. In school they taught us, that when writing an essay or such, one should never use “I”, supposedly this was taboo to proper writing. But to borrow a thought from Henry Thoreau, he said, he would not use the personal pronoun “I” so often, except it was the only way he knew to express that it was “him” making the statement or opinion. (Or something to that effect, that is not a direct quote.)
There are many subjects and opinions that I am bound to touch upon while expressing myself on matters that are important to me. I find a couple of themes that constantly come to the forefront of my mind when I sit down to make a post. One, since we are in an election year, I can’t help but express my very strong feelings about how this should go. It is unavoidable that those opinions are going to offend “someone”, which is not my wish at all, however, how can it be avoided? Everyone has heard the old saying, that the two subjects that should be avoided to “remain polite” is religion and politics. I heard a “Dr. of Theology” one time that made the statement that people avoid religious discussions because the don’t care about it. In my experience, that is not the case. The only reason people avoid politics and religion is because they don’t want the “heated emotions” that come from the discussion. “Heated emotions” do not come from a passive subject, but rather from a subject that we take very seriously and hold dearly. This is why religion and politics are prone to get the “blood pressure” raising.
The fact of the matter is that religion and politics are going to affect everything we do, believe and practice. So it does not seem unreasonable to me that I express my opinions on either subject. There can be no mistake that the state of the U.S. economy and our foreign affairs will have something to do with the welfare of each and everyone of us. We might not acknowledge that in an attempt to ignore all the controversy and conflict, but don’t make the mistake in thinking that it has nothing to do with “you”.
It might be true that there is not much, if anything, we can do to influence the outcome of elections, but at least we can inform ourselves as best we can concerning the politicians involved and make some kind of decision and vote for who we think will be the best person for the job. Setting aside the fact that most of us will have little or no ’vote’, in who our particular political party puts on the ballot in November. My thinking is that I can vote for the lesser of “evils” and hope for the best, realizing the ultimately God is in control of nations and knows what he is doing, whether I understand it or like what I am seeing taking place.
The other subject that is constantly in my mind, as it has become a ‘way of life’ for my family, is the ideal of “Simple Living” and how best to live in a manner that attempts to avoid a lot of the “stress” associated with modern life. These two subjects, politics and simple living will be the things I find most interesting to write on. I could easily get started on religion and faith, but if I go there I think it will be necessary to start another blog just for that subject. I have mostly avoided doing that for several reasons, mainly I don’t get the time to faithfully post on this blog, how could I keep two blogs going with very limited writing time? In addition to that, there is a lot of blogs dedicated to Christianity and faith already and I am not sure that I could add a great deal of useful thoughts to the subject.
As I am writing this, the morning is slipping away and the shop is almost warm enough to begin work. By the time I finish up my day there I will not have the energy left to think straight, so I write this before getting my day started and will post it this evening.
I see it is also snowing outside my window, but I don’t think it will amount to anything that will require my snowplow, that is my hope anyway.
I have also been spending some time thinking about the direction I want to take this blog in. One thing seems clear to me; if I don’t write about subjects that really interest me, then having a blog called “Ernie’s World” is rather misleading. It might seem that a common working person’s world would be rather dull, but the truth is, for every individual, their world is very important to “them”. In school they taught us, that when writing an essay or such, one should never use “I”, supposedly this was taboo to proper writing. But to borrow a thought from Henry Thoreau, he said, he would not use the personal pronoun “I” so often, except it was the only way he knew to express that it was “him” making the statement or opinion. (Or something to that effect, that is not a direct quote.)
There are many subjects and opinions that I am bound to touch upon while expressing myself on matters that are important to me. I find a couple of themes that constantly come to the forefront of my mind when I sit down to make a post. One, since we are in an election year, I can’t help but express my very strong feelings about how this should go. It is unavoidable that those opinions are going to offend “someone”, which is not my wish at all, however, how can it be avoided? Everyone has heard the old saying, that the two subjects that should be avoided to “remain polite” is religion and politics. I heard a “Dr. of Theology” one time that made the statement that people avoid religious discussions because the don’t care about it. In my experience, that is not the case. The only reason people avoid politics and religion is because they don’t want the “heated emotions” that come from the discussion. “Heated emotions” do not come from a passive subject, but rather from a subject that we take very seriously and hold dearly. This is why religion and politics are prone to get the “blood pressure” raising.
The fact of the matter is that religion and politics are going to affect everything we do, believe and practice. So it does not seem unreasonable to me that I express my opinions on either subject. There can be no mistake that the state of the U.S. economy and our foreign affairs will have something to do with the welfare of each and everyone of us. We might not acknowledge that in an attempt to ignore all the controversy and conflict, but don’t make the mistake in thinking that it has nothing to do with “you”.
It might be true that there is not much, if anything, we can do to influence the outcome of elections, but at least we can inform ourselves as best we can concerning the politicians involved and make some kind of decision and vote for who we think will be the best person for the job. Setting aside the fact that most of us will have little or no ’vote’, in who our particular political party puts on the ballot in November. My thinking is that I can vote for the lesser of “evils” and hope for the best, realizing the ultimately God is in control of nations and knows what he is doing, whether I understand it or like what I am seeing taking place.
The other subject that is constantly in my mind, as it has become a ‘way of life’ for my family, is the ideal of “Simple Living” and how best to live in a manner that attempts to avoid a lot of the “stress” associated with modern life. These two subjects, politics and simple living will be the things I find most interesting to write on. I could easily get started on religion and faith, but if I go there I think it will be necessary to start another blog just for that subject. I have mostly avoided doing that for several reasons, mainly I don’t get the time to faithfully post on this blog, how could I keep two blogs going with very limited writing time? In addition to that, there is a lot of blogs dedicated to Christianity and faith already and I am not sure that I could add a great deal of useful thoughts to the subject.
As I am writing this, the morning is slipping away and the shop is almost warm enough to begin work. By the time I finish up my day there I will not have the energy left to think straight, so I write this before getting my day started and will post it this evening.
I see it is also snowing outside my window, but I don’t think it will amount to anything that will require my snowplow, that is my hope anyway.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Pliable As Water
Sometimes it seems strange what energy we expand working at, or planning for things that we question the value of to start with. I thought about this today when I finally decided I just had to get back to the woodshop and work on a project that I had started just before Christmas. Since my hospital visit and surgery I have picked up most of my work load, but I have been avoiding the woodshop, due to the fact that working with power tools that can very quickly remove body parts, particularly fingers and hands, that I would prefer to keep attached.
Today I decided was the ‘day’ to get back at it. The first thing I discovered was that “the dog had ate my homework”! Literally! The little ‘criminal Beagle” has been sleeping there at night, due to the winter cold and I never gave another thought to my project plans, that I had left laying on a low shelf, after having expended a lot of time and energy in drawing them up. Mr. Trigger must have gotten bored and decided my clipboard looked like a good ‘chew toy’, all I could recover was a few well chewed pieces of scrape paper. Since I had the framing for this project mostly done, it won’t take as much work to re-draw my plans as it did the first time. But it got me to thinking about the way we go about our lives.
It is my decided opinion that a person, young or older, should have some plans and direction they want to go in their life. It appears too many people simply ‘float’ with the stream, never having any solid ideal what who or what they want to become. The result is often poor. We find people who are never content, but from all known appearances, we can’t figure out why because they don’t seem to be working toward any tangible goals in their life. Often they jump from one meaningless job, that they despise, to another that is just as hateful. Complaining all the while that they are ‘mistreated’ by ‘society’, as if, society owed them some kind of debt by making them “happy”.
I consider that since I have reached the prime age of mid-50’s that some advice might be worthwhile. No one can make decisions about my life except me and the same goes for you or anyone else. The ultimate responsibility for our contentment must rest upon on our own shoulders. No matter what circumstances come our way that might interfere with our plans, we have to become like a stream of water. What I mean by that is this; water will find a way to flow downhill to it ‘goal’ no matter what is standing in its way. It might have to go around bends in the earth, cut its way down steep mountains or make a path around large boulders, but by and by water will reach the ocean for which it is headed, one way or another.
It is certain that all people cannot possibly reach some ’pie in the sky’, unrealistic goal. In our society, it appears that most people think only in terms of “wealth” as a measure of ones success. No wonder there are so many miserable people walking around. It is impossible for all of us to be multi-millionaires, that just can’t be under any known economic system. So using ‘wealth’ as a measuring device is a poor standard to judge a persons life, in fact, it is right down foolish or maybe a better term would be “insane”. Yet, all the communication media we see paints the picture of ‘contentment’ as, in one way or another, having to do with money or the things money can buy as the means to be ‘content’.
The “American Dream” that has been ‘sold’ to a couple generations now is something that has been modified and twisted into the “American Nightmare” for far too many people. Just look at any real estate advertisement. What you have is a nice house in the suburbs with a small yard and a two car garage that has many times been ‘thrown together’ with junk building materials and doctored up with cheaply made but nice looking furnishings. You can have it all if you will only take out a 30 year mortgage, that a two income family can barely manage to pay each month.
My advice to young folks is, don’t buy that “dream”. You will be far ahead in the long run to buy a smaller, older, better built, cheaper house. One that you could make the payments on even if you were reduced to a ‘one income family’. By exerting all your effort to pay this house off in less time than the mortgage calls for you will save a bundle of money and, if you are lucky, the value of that house will increase. At which time if you still what the more expensive house, you can sale your first one and use that money to greatly reduce a new mortgage.
This gets to a flaw in our current thinking, as a society. It has been said over and over, because it is true, that Americans no longer look to the ‘long term’, but want everything “now”! The bankers, finance companies and government have been very helpful in seeing that we don’t have to “wait”, they will find a way to “loan” us the “funny money” for whatever we want. At least that was true 5 years ago, now, as the saying goes, ‘our chickens have come home to roost’ and it is time to pay the bill.
I know that not everyone in our society has fallen for that ‘dream’ (nightmare), but enough have to put our whole economic welfare in danger of collapsing on our heads. I won’t go into a ‘rant’ on how the government and our politicians have helped to enable this mess, I would rather consider ways to “escape the trap”.
To start with we have to change our thinking if we find that our current mindset is flawed, in other words, “check your premise”. The ’premise’ of our current system is that a modern society like we have is “too big to fail”, or we are too advanced to collapse as a society. Sorry if I am the one to inform you of this fact; but it is not true. Many great societies and empires of past history were not much different than we are. The only difference between us and the Roman Empire is really just in our technology and that might be a questionable “advantage”.
By 400 A.D. Rome had lots of high level creature comforts that many people aren’t even aware of. For example most people know that they had aqueducts to deliver running water to many homes, but they also even had ’air conditioning’ that was provided by water pipes that would circulate cold water through some of the wealthier homes. Imagine air conditioning long before the invention of electricity!
Rome also had something that proved to be their “Achilles heel”, it was the “Just in Time” deliver system of food and other necessary products to a city of over a million people. It is not much different than most all of our cities, and even small towns, which are dependent on the steady flow of goods to the grocery stores on a daily basis. Just imagine what would happen if for some reason, any reason, the trucks were stopped in their tracks for even a week or two. This is what happen when Rome was surrounded by her enemies, the supplies to the city was shut off. Before that was over, people in Rome were reduced to little more than animals, even resorting to cannibalism, eating each other. As they say, the rest is history. The marvel of the Rome that was is no more than ruins that amaze tourists.
Let me advise you to think over your current state of affairs and ask yourself some questions. Then make some common sense plans on how you will deal with any crisis that might occur. Remember that water is pliable and will go around any obstacle, so I like to think that I will learn to be as pliable as water. I might have to change course and do a lot of turning and wandering, but as long as I have life I will keep moving, no matter what might stand in the way.
Got to get those chewed project plans redrawn and go back to work.
Today I decided was the ‘day’ to get back at it. The first thing I discovered was that “the dog had ate my homework”! Literally! The little ‘criminal Beagle” has been sleeping there at night, due to the winter cold and I never gave another thought to my project plans, that I had left laying on a low shelf, after having expended a lot of time and energy in drawing them up. Mr. Trigger must have gotten bored and decided my clipboard looked like a good ‘chew toy’, all I could recover was a few well chewed pieces of scrape paper. Since I had the framing for this project mostly done, it won’t take as much work to re-draw my plans as it did the first time. But it got me to thinking about the way we go about our lives.
It is my decided opinion that a person, young or older, should have some plans and direction they want to go in their life. It appears too many people simply ‘float’ with the stream, never having any solid ideal what who or what they want to become. The result is often poor. We find people who are never content, but from all known appearances, we can’t figure out why because they don’t seem to be working toward any tangible goals in their life. Often they jump from one meaningless job, that they despise, to another that is just as hateful. Complaining all the while that they are ‘mistreated’ by ‘society’, as if, society owed them some kind of debt by making them “happy”.
I consider that since I have reached the prime age of mid-50’s that some advice might be worthwhile. No one can make decisions about my life except me and the same goes for you or anyone else. The ultimate responsibility for our contentment must rest upon on our own shoulders. No matter what circumstances come our way that might interfere with our plans, we have to become like a stream of water. What I mean by that is this; water will find a way to flow downhill to it ‘goal’ no matter what is standing in its way. It might have to go around bends in the earth, cut its way down steep mountains or make a path around large boulders, but by and by water will reach the ocean for which it is headed, one way or another.
It is certain that all people cannot possibly reach some ’pie in the sky’, unrealistic goal. In our society, it appears that most people think only in terms of “wealth” as a measure of ones success. No wonder there are so many miserable people walking around. It is impossible for all of us to be multi-millionaires, that just can’t be under any known economic system. So using ‘wealth’ as a measuring device is a poor standard to judge a persons life, in fact, it is right down foolish or maybe a better term would be “insane”. Yet, all the communication media we see paints the picture of ‘contentment’ as, in one way or another, having to do with money or the things money can buy as the means to be ‘content’.
The “American Dream” that has been ‘sold’ to a couple generations now is something that has been modified and twisted into the “American Nightmare” for far too many people. Just look at any real estate advertisement. What you have is a nice house in the suburbs with a small yard and a two car garage that has many times been ‘thrown together’ with junk building materials and doctored up with cheaply made but nice looking furnishings. You can have it all if you will only take out a 30 year mortgage, that a two income family can barely manage to pay each month.
My advice to young folks is, don’t buy that “dream”. You will be far ahead in the long run to buy a smaller, older, better built, cheaper house. One that you could make the payments on even if you were reduced to a ‘one income family’. By exerting all your effort to pay this house off in less time than the mortgage calls for you will save a bundle of money and, if you are lucky, the value of that house will increase. At which time if you still what the more expensive house, you can sale your first one and use that money to greatly reduce a new mortgage.
This gets to a flaw in our current thinking, as a society. It has been said over and over, because it is true, that Americans no longer look to the ‘long term’, but want everything “now”! The bankers, finance companies and government have been very helpful in seeing that we don’t have to “wait”, they will find a way to “loan” us the “funny money” for whatever we want. At least that was true 5 years ago, now, as the saying goes, ‘our chickens have come home to roost’ and it is time to pay the bill.
I know that not everyone in our society has fallen for that ‘dream’ (nightmare), but enough have to put our whole economic welfare in danger of collapsing on our heads. I won’t go into a ‘rant’ on how the government and our politicians have helped to enable this mess, I would rather consider ways to “escape the trap”.
To start with we have to change our thinking if we find that our current mindset is flawed, in other words, “check your premise”. The ’premise’ of our current system is that a modern society like we have is “too big to fail”, or we are too advanced to collapse as a society. Sorry if I am the one to inform you of this fact; but it is not true. Many great societies and empires of past history were not much different than we are. The only difference between us and the Roman Empire is really just in our technology and that might be a questionable “advantage”.
By 400 A.D. Rome had lots of high level creature comforts that many people aren’t even aware of. For example most people know that they had aqueducts to deliver running water to many homes, but they also even had ’air conditioning’ that was provided by water pipes that would circulate cold water through some of the wealthier homes. Imagine air conditioning long before the invention of electricity!
Rome also had something that proved to be their “Achilles heel”, it was the “Just in Time” deliver system of food and other necessary products to a city of over a million people. It is not much different than most all of our cities, and even small towns, which are dependent on the steady flow of goods to the grocery stores on a daily basis. Just imagine what would happen if for some reason, any reason, the trucks were stopped in their tracks for even a week or two. This is what happen when Rome was surrounded by her enemies, the supplies to the city was shut off. Before that was over, people in Rome were reduced to little more than animals, even resorting to cannibalism, eating each other. As they say, the rest is history. The marvel of the Rome that was is no more than ruins that amaze tourists.
Let me advise you to think over your current state of affairs and ask yourself some questions. Then make some common sense plans on how you will deal with any crisis that might occur. Remember that water is pliable and will go around any obstacle, so I like to think that I will learn to be as pliable as water. I might have to change course and do a lot of turning and wandering, but as long as I have life I will keep moving, no matter what might stand in the way.
Got to get those chewed project plans redrawn and go back to work.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Fishing The Lake Of The Woods In Winter
Ernie is back to his ‘world’ after having spend a few days in another. I am referring to my winter fishing trip to Lake of the Woods. This rather huge lake lays on the border of Canada and the U.S. It is the next largest body of water, after the great lakes, that is part of this country. It is roughly 70 miles from north to south and just slightly less east to west. One remarkable thing about this big water is that it contains over 14,500 islands, most of those are on the Canadian side of the border.
We enter the lake near Baudette, MN right along the side of the Rainy River. Depending on the snow conditions our travel on the lake will either be on roads that are plowed and marked by the guide or if the snow is too much to keep a road open, we will be transported in a tracked vehicle. These are often a converted cargo van that has been fitted with huge tracks like a snow machine and can ride on top of the snow and go almost anywhere as long as they don’t hit a spot of slushy water on top of the ice. For safety they are also outfitted with an emergency floatation system that by pulling a lever the guide can inflate huge air bags that is suppose to float the vehicle. I have always wondered if they would work, but fortunately have never had the experience for finding out.
Depending on where the good fishing is located, we go out from 7 to as much as 15 miles from shore to what is called a “sleeper house”. This is where we spend the weekend fishing, sleeping and living.
This year was considered a good one for us. We did not keep track of the number of fish we caught, which were Sauger (a crossbreed fish much like walleye but never get very big), walleye and a couple whitefish. Sometimes we also catch large eel pouts, that look a bit like a cross between an eel and a catfish, only uglier than either, but fun to catch. We have eaten them, but I am not fond of their fatty soft meat, although if cooked properly it can be good grub, especially if you have nothing else!
We got started fishing around 11 AM on Friday morning and by evening had enough fish to feed 4 hunger fishermen all we could eat of the crisp fried fillets. Saturday night we even ate more, plus we froze some for bringing home.
There was no really large fish caught, the longest I think was a 22 inch walleye that was caught at 1:30 AM on Sunday morning. It seemed the sauger were biting during the daylight hours and the walleye after dark or late in the night, at least this year.
Being that the wind was on a ‘roar’ the whole time we were there with the thermometer around the 0 mark or below, we did not spend anymore time outside our fish house than necessary. The wind did bring warmer air by late Saturday night, but with it came snow on Sunday morning. That made the first 100 miles or so of out trip home Sunday a bit ‘dicey’ for the road conditions, but we made it safely back, having had a grand time on the ice.
For those unfamiliar with this type of fishing, there are a few things that are remarkable on a large lake like this one is. For one, the ice was good since they too had very little snow this winter. The ice on average was around 18” thick and even on a large lake that is enough to support almost any kind of vehicle. But the lake is never ‘silent’, there is a stead sound of popping, cracking, groaning, mixed with a roaring wind outside our house.
When it is really cold and new ice is forming, the whole body of ice moves slightly, especially in a wind. This creates what is called ice heaves or pressure ridges. I have see these heaves that were over 10’ tall, made by two opposing is shelves crushing against each other at a crack in the ice. These break the ice and push up huge blocks of ice to make almost a wall of ice that can for miles on a large lake. When these are encountered on the roadways, the ice must be chopped out and a temporary bridge put in place to drive a vehicle across the broken up ice.
On Friday night it was very cold and at one point we heard one particular ice crack that went for the longest time I believe I have hear one run. It must have lasted a full 20 seconds and rumbled close enough to our house that the water was pushed up through out fishing holes slightly. It is nothing to be fearful of, but interesting to watch the water raise up, maybe as much as in inch and then settle by down to its normal level. We wondered that time if a crack would actually form on the ice under our house, but it must have went somewhere else near us.
Now that my ‘winter vacation’ is over, it will be time to get back in the swing of a full work load that I have been avoiding since my hospital visit over Christmas. But today I must first do a little snowplowing to clean up a few inches that has gradually accumulated over the last week or so and has now gotten to be a nuisance to walk around in all the time. But being past the mid-point of January, I am not going to complain about a little snowplowing, it was months past due and still not very much of it.
We enter the lake near Baudette, MN right along the side of the Rainy River. Depending on the snow conditions our travel on the lake will either be on roads that are plowed and marked by the guide or if the snow is too much to keep a road open, we will be transported in a tracked vehicle. These are often a converted cargo van that has been fitted with huge tracks like a snow machine and can ride on top of the snow and go almost anywhere as long as they don’t hit a spot of slushy water on top of the ice. For safety they are also outfitted with an emergency floatation system that by pulling a lever the guide can inflate huge air bags that is suppose to float the vehicle. I have always wondered if they would work, but fortunately have never had the experience for finding out.
Depending on where the good fishing is located, we go out from 7 to as much as 15 miles from shore to what is called a “sleeper house”. This is where we spend the weekend fishing, sleeping and living.
This year was considered a good one for us. We did not keep track of the number of fish we caught, which were Sauger (a crossbreed fish much like walleye but never get very big), walleye and a couple whitefish. Sometimes we also catch large eel pouts, that look a bit like a cross between an eel and a catfish, only uglier than either, but fun to catch. We have eaten them, but I am not fond of their fatty soft meat, although if cooked properly it can be good grub, especially if you have nothing else!
We got started fishing around 11 AM on Friday morning and by evening had enough fish to feed 4 hunger fishermen all we could eat of the crisp fried fillets. Saturday night we even ate more, plus we froze some for bringing home.
There was no really large fish caught, the longest I think was a 22 inch walleye that was caught at 1:30 AM on Sunday morning. It seemed the sauger were biting during the daylight hours and the walleye after dark or late in the night, at least this year.
Being that the wind was on a ‘roar’ the whole time we were there with the thermometer around the 0 mark or below, we did not spend anymore time outside our fish house than necessary. The wind did bring warmer air by late Saturday night, but with it came snow on Sunday morning. That made the first 100 miles or so of out trip home Sunday a bit ‘dicey’ for the road conditions, but we made it safely back, having had a grand time on the ice.
For those unfamiliar with this type of fishing, there are a few things that are remarkable on a large lake like this one is. For one, the ice was good since they too had very little snow this winter. The ice on average was around 18” thick and even on a large lake that is enough to support almost any kind of vehicle. But the lake is never ‘silent’, there is a stead sound of popping, cracking, groaning, mixed with a roaring wind outside our house.
When it is really cold and new ice is forming, the whole body of ice moves slightly, especially in a wind. This creates what is called ice heaves or pressure ridges. I have see these heaves that were over 10’ tall, made by two opposing is shelves crushing against each other at a crack in the ice. These break the ice and push up huge blocks of ice to make almost a wall of ice that can for miles on a large lake. When these are encountered on the roadways, the ice must be chopped out and a temporary bridge put in place to drive a vehicle across the broken up ice.
On Friday night it was very cold and at one point we heard one particular ice crack that went for the longest time I believe I have hear one run. It must have lasted a full 20 seconds and rumbled close enough to our house that the water was pushed up through out fishing holes slightly. It is nothing to be fearful of, but interesting to watch the water raise up, maybe as much as in inch and then settle by down to its normal level. We wondered that time if a crack would actually form on the ice under our house, but it must have went somewhere else near us.
Now that my ‘winter vacation’ is over, it will be time to get back in the swing of a full work load that I have been avoiding since my hospital visit over Christmas. But today I must first do a little snowplowing to clean up a few inches that has gradually accumulated over the last week or so and has now gotten to be a nuisance to walk around in all the time. But being past the mid-point of January, I am not going to complain about a little snowplowing, it was months past due and still not very much of it.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
We Needed That Pipeline
Most Americans work to provide for themselves and their families, which is only right and proper. But what some of us “working people” don’t understand is; why does it seem that our government is doing everything possible to make our lives “harder”?
Case in point, today the President has determined that the Keystone pipeline that has been in the works for sometime now, cannot go forward and must be put on hold until after the next election.
Mr. President, I have some questions; 1) Why is it important to hold up this nations supply of oil that Canada, our “friendly neighbor” wants to sale us? How can it even be questioned whether or not this “Private financed” project is good for our nation and economy? I also see where you want another 1.2 trillion dollars to spend for only God knows what, money that must come from the pockets of working Americans, but at the same time your policy in stopping this one project is costing us billions more by way of jobs that could be created with money put up by industry and not the taxpayers. It would help us toward cutting down on the amount of oil that we have to buy from the “not so friendly Arab nations”. It might also help stabilize the price that we have to pay for gasoline, the only viable fuel source we have right now to power this country.
2) Mr. President, who needs Iran for an enemy when we have you sitting in the White House, in effect holding us hostage? Why say we need to wait until after 2013 to decide whether or not to build this pipeline? Do you really think there are enough votes by the “anti-pipeline” environmental “nuts” in this country to assure you a re-election? Then, if you are elected, what happens? Will you be beholden to that crowd and thus put a stop to this project ‘forever’? All at the same time you are feeding us a complete line of ****** that you want what is best for the USA.
With respect, Mr. President I don’t think you need those few votes nearly as bad as our country needs oil from Canada.
Something is wrong with this picture folks. Our own president, who knows better than any of us, how close we are to another war in the middle east, with Iran this time, refuses to let Canada ship crude oil to us.
I will be the first to admit that I never had much faith that Barack Hessian Obama was going to be “good for our country” from the beginning. That based upon his own statements while campaigning for office the first time. One of those statements was to the affect that the coal companies would have to go out of business, because we could not longer be using coal as a source for electric power. Yet, he nor anyone else has a reasonable alternative at this point in time. What? Are we suppose to go back to the ‘dark ages’ and do without electric just because it “might” be having some affect on our weather, like warming us up. I wish he could have stood with me today, while I worked in sub-zero wind and then tell us that “warming” was a serious problem!
Ok, Ernie’s World is not very pleased today with our beloved president. Of course he is not the only one standing in the way of our survival. There is a whole army of liberal over educated fools standing side by side with him. Many politicians and tax leaching bureaucrats who are playing ‘high and holy’ with environmental claims are right there on his side.
Here is my opinion of the whole bunch. Hypocrites one and all! They deny common tax-paying working Americans the energy we need to “produce something” and pay their salaries, while at the same time while spending us into bankruptcy, they are flying around all over the world on fuel consuming jets and using up more energy than most large cities, and then tell us, we have to pay more for gas from the Arabs, because they just can’t allow us to buy oil from Canada.
The rumor is that if Canada can’t get this pipeline going soon, they will turn to China to sale their oil. Who would blame them?
If there was ever a time in our nation, when our national leaders have truly worked against its citizens, it is happening now right before our very eyes.
I think I best go fishing and forget about the “fools”, I don’t have a vote until next fall, but it is certain my vote won’t be for someone who is either ‘stupid’ or ‘anti-American’.
Case in point, today the President has determined that the Keystone pipeline that has been in the works for sometime now, cannot go forward and must be put on hold until after the next election.
Mr. President, I have some questions; 1) Why is it important to hold up this nations supply of oil that Canada, our “friendly neighbor” wants to sale us? How can it even be questioned whether or not this “Private financed” project is good for our nation and economy? I also see where you want another 1.2 trillion dollars to spend for only God knows what, money that must come from the pockets of working Americans, but at the same time your policy in stopping this one project is costing us billions more by way of jobs that could be created with money put up by industry and not the taxpayers. It would help us toward cutting down on the amount of oil that we have to buy from the “not so friendly Arab nations”. It might also help stabilize the price that we have to pay for gasoline, the only viable fuel source we have right now to power this country.
2) Mr. President, who needs Iran for an enemy when we have you sitting in the White House, in effect holding us hostage? Why say we need to wait until after 2013 to decide whether or not to build this pipeline? Do you really think there are enough votes by the “anti-pipeline” environmental “nuts” in this country to assure you a re-election? Then, if you are elected, what happens? Will you be beholden to that crowd and thus put a stop to this project ‘forever’? All at the same time you are feeding us a complete line of ****** that you want what is best for the USA.
With respect, Mr. President I don’t think you need those few votes nearly as bad as our country needs oil from Canada.
Something is wrong with this picture folks. Our own president, who knows better than any of us, how close we are to another war in the middle east, with Iran this time, refuses to let Canada ship crude oil to us.
I will be the first to admit that I never had much faith that Barack Hessian Obama was going to be “good for our country” from the beginning. That based upon his own statements while campaigning for office the first time. One of those statements was to the affect that the coal companies would have to go out of business, because we could not longer be using coal as a source for electric power. Yet, he nor anyone else has a reasonable alternative at this point in time. What? Are we suppose to go back to the ‘dark ages’ and do without electric just because it “might” be having some affect on our weather, like warming us up. I wish he could have stood with me today, while I worked in sub-zero wind and then tell us that “warming” was a serious problem!
Ok, Ernie’s World is not very pleased today with our beloved president. Of course he is not the only one standing in the way of our survival. There is a whole army of liberal over educated fools standing side by side with him. Many politicians and tax leaching bureaucrats who are playing ‘high and holy’ with environmental claims are right there on his side.
Here is my opinion of the whole bunch. Hypocrites one and all! They deny common tax-paying working Americans the energy we need to “produce something” and pay their salaries, while at the same time while spending us into bankruptcy, they are flying around all over the world on fuel consuming jets and using up more energy than most large cities, and then tell us, we have to pay more for gas from the Arabs, because they just can’t allow us to buy oil from Canada.
The rumor is that if Canada can’t get this pipeline going soon, they will turn to China to sale their oil. Who would blame them?
If there was ever a time in our nation, when our national leaders have truly worked against its citizens, it is happening now right before our very eyes.
I think I best go fishing and forget about the “fools”, I don’t have a vote until next fall, but it is certain my vote won’t be for someone who is either ‘stupid’ or ‘anti-American’.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Ice Fishing With Line or Spear
Soon it will be time for my annual trek up to the Lake of the Woods for a winter fishing trip. While going over my ice fishing gear this afternoon it occurred to me how important fishing has been to our wonderful state of MN, both in the past and current.
Prior to the coming of European peoples to this part of the world, the native Americans settled on the major bodies of water, for good reasons. One is obviously transportation. It was much easier to travel along the waterways of this state than ‘cross country’. I would say any time of the year. For during the short summers, the consuming insects, mosquitoes, black flies and deer flies were/are a horror to anyone caught in the woods or even on the prairie, if the wind was calm and the grasses were high.
During the wintertime, the many large lakes and rivers make for ‘super highways’ to travel on, either by snowshoe or dogsled. I have often wondered how the reality would have been to have been in this state, say around 1800, before there was much “civilized” influence to bring in roads, railroads and other modern forms of transportation. I have heard some “old timers” tell stories of their parents and grandparents who were some of the early settlers to the northern part of this state. They describe fish and fishing in terms that is hard to imagine for current day sportsmen. Naturally, the big excitement was in the spring of the year when the northern pike and walleye are moving up the small rivers from lake to lake. I have seen by spotlight some remarkable “schools of fish” at that time of year, but nothing like the old timers talk about.
The natives and settlers would harvest an mountain of fish in the spring by means of spearing fish in the streams as they migrated. Even now, the game wardens have about a month or so of busy activity during that time of year when they patrol for ‘outlaws’ who can’t seem to resist the urge to spear fish in the springtime.
Another means that was used in the past was fish traps. These were generally wire cages, just imagine a cage about 4 feet long and 2 feet all around, with a funnel of wire on each end and you have a fair ideal of a good fish trap. They would put these in steams under overhanging banks which are the fishes favorite passage way. Stories are told of traps so full it took several men to pull them from the water.
What I can’t get over is thinking about the fish feast these folks must have had! That at a time of the year when fresh food was hard to come by.
Then there is winter ice fishing. Most years from the central part of the state on north, from late November until April the lakes are covered with several feet of ice. I have wondered how the natives cut their holes for fishing, but I suppose they chipped them out with an ice chisel before the invention of augers. I am also guessing that they would have done what I would and that was to cover the hole over at night so a chopped out fishing hole could be used for many days before freezing shut.
For those who have never ice fished with a decoy and spear, it is an activity that is far different than fishing with a hook and line. I will describe the way it is still done and assume it was not a lot different from how it has been done, for who knows how long.
You start with a dark house, that means a structure build without windows of any kind and sealed against any light shining through the walls, doors or around the bottom of the shack. For the ideal is to lure the fish up close to the surface where you can run him through with a spear, about the size of a pitchfork, only the prongs are heavier with barbs to prevent the fish from getting off once you have it speared, northern pike is the legal species now, but in past history, any fish would have been ’fair game’.
The ideal spot is to go out on the ice in fairly shallow water, say 6-8 feet with some cabbage weeds showing in the water. That is a favorite place for the pike to hang out looking for an easy meal. Then you cut a hole in the ice, usually around 3 feet long by 2 feet wide, although we once used a house build for two people, that had a hole that was 2’ wide by 8’ long, that made a nice big hole to watch.
Once you have your shack over the hole and banked on the outside with snow to prevent light and cold air that will freeze your hole, you are ready to fish. It is best to have heat in the house, not only for comfort but also to keep you hole open and free of ice. Then the most common practice is to use a artificial decoy carved from wood with a lead weight sunk into it to hold it under the water. These come or are made in almost any size and form to be imagined. It is common for them to be from 4-6 inches long and of a bright color, red and white being the most common. You put this decoy on a string tied to the roof of you shack and drop it into the water anywhere from 2 to 4 feet below the ice. The decoys are made with metal fins that can be adjusted so that they will swim in a circle when you work the string, this swimming action is what will attract the predator fish. Then you wait. Sitting there in a darkened shack while the cold wind roars, with the water clear and bright enough to sometimes reflect light back into your shack and watching and waiting for a great northern pike to come in to attack your decoy is exciting to fisherman, all the more if you are hungry for some fish!
Sometimes a northern will cautiously swim up to have a look at your decoy from several feet away, usually under the edge of your shack where you can’t get a jab at him. At other times they will cruise in like a torpedo and attack the decoy like lightening and be gone before you know what is happening! It is for that reason that we sometimes use a live sucker. These baitfish are around 7 or 8 inches long and are rigged up with a harness around their middle and tied to the string just like the artificial decoy is. Under this circumstance you have to be on close watch or a northern will come in and kill your live decoy with one good bite and sometimes make his escape when he discovers his food is anchored to a cord. Then you are left with a piece of dead meat that is not likely to attract anything. No matter how you do it spear fishing for northern is great fun and can be very exciting. Regrettably, I had to give up the sport several years ago due to arthritis in my neck. One can be amazed at how stiff your neck will get while staring down into a hole of water all day. All the more reason for us to not put off the things we wish to do while we are young, there will come a day when we can’t do some of the things we would like too, due to the great enemy “time and age”.
All ice fishing is not so demanding. When we arrive at the Lake of the Woods, we will be met by our guide who we rent the ice house from. He will escort us out however many miles it is to where the fish are located this season (sometimes as far as 15 miles from land) and see that we are settled into a large sleeper house. These houses are completely outfitted with bunks, tables, gas lights, a gas cook stove and all along one wall will be our fish holes cleanly cut and ready for fishing. Such services come at a “cost”, but once a year me and three friends ‘bite the bullet’ and make the trip. If all goes well we will have a couple good feasts of fresh walleye cooked right in our ice house and good memories.
Sometimes I think God gave us fishing, more for the joy and memories than for the meat. I will enjoy both.
Prior to the coming of European peoples to this part of the world, the native Americans settled on the major bodies of water, for good reasons. One is obviously transportation. It was much easier to travel along the waterways of this state than ‘cross country’. I would say any time of the year. For during the short summers, the consuming insects, mosquitoes, black flies and deer flies were/are a horror to anyone caught in the woods or even on the prairie, if the wind was calm and the grasses were high.
During the wintertime, the many large lakes and rivers make for ‘super highways’ to travel on, either by snowshoe or dogsled. I have often wondered how the reality would have been to have been in this state, say around 1800, before there was much “civilized” influence to bring in roads, railroads and other modern forms of transportation. I have heard some “old timers” tell stories of their parents and grandparents who were some of the early settlers to the northern part of this state. They describe fish and fishing in terms that is hard to imagine for current day sportsmen. Naturally, the big excitement was in the spring of the year when the northern pike and walleye are moving up the small rivers from lake to lake. I have seen by spotlight some remarkable “schools of fish” at that time of year, but nothing like the old timers talk about.
The natives and settlers would harvest an mountain of fish in the spring by means of spearing fish in the streams as they migrated. Even now, the game wardens have about a month or so of busy activity during that time of year when they patrol for ‘outlaws’ who can’t seem to resist the urge to spear fish in the springtime.
Another means that was used in the past was fish traps. These were generally wire cages, just imagine a cage about 4 feet long and 2 feet all around, with a funnel of wire on each end and you have a fair ideal of a good fish trap. They would put these in steams under overhanging banks which are the fishes favorite passage way. Stories are told of traps so full it took several men to pull them from the water.
What I can’t get over is thinking about the fish feast these folks must have had! That at a time of the year when fresh food was hard to come by.
Then there is winter ice fishing. Most years from the central part of the state on north, from late November until April the lakes are covered with several feet of ice. I have wondered how the natives cut their holes for fishing, but I suppose they chipped them out with an ice chisel before the invention of augers. I am also guessing that they would have done what I would and that was to cover the hole over at night so a chopped out fishing hole could be used for many days before freezing shut.
For those who have never ice fished with a decoy and spear, it is an activity that is far different than fishing with a hook and line. I will describe the way it is still done and assume it was not a lot different from how it has been done, for who knows how long.
You start with a dark house, that means a structure build without windows of any kind and sealed against any light shining through the walls, doors or around the bottom of the shack. For the ideal is to lure the fish up close to the surface where you can run him through with a spear, about the size of a pitchfork, only the prongs are heavier with barbs to prevent the fish from getting off once you have it speared, northern pike is the legal species now, but in past history, any fish would have been ’fair game’.
The ideal spot is to go out on the ice in fairly shallow water, say 6-8 feet with some cabbage weeds showing in the water. That is a favorite place for the pike to hang out looking for an easy meal. Then you cut a hole in the ice, usually around 3 feet long by 2 feet wide, although we once used a house build for two people, that had a hole that was 2’ wide by 8’ long, that made a nice big hole to watch.
Once you have your shack over the hole and banked on the outside with snow to prevent light and cold air that will freeze your hole, you are ready to fish. It is best to have heat in the house, not only for comfort but also to keep you hole open and free of ice. Then the most common practice is to use a artificial decoy carved from wood with a lead weight sunk into it to hold it under the water. These come or are made in almost any size and form to be imagined. It is common for them to be from 4-6 inches long and of a bright color, red and white being the most common. You put this decoy on a string tied to the roof of you shack and drop it into the water anywhere from 2 to 4 feet below the ice. The decoys are made with metal fins that can be adjusted so that they will swim in a circle when you work the string, this swimming action is what will attract the predator fish. Then you wait. Sitting there in a darkened shack while the cold wind roars, with the water clear and bright enough to sometimes reflect light back into your shack and watching and waiting for a great northern pike to come in to attack your decoy is exciting to fisherman, all the more if you are hungry for some fish!
Sometimes a northern will cautiously swim up to have a look at your decoy from several feet away, usually under the edge of your shack where you can’t get a jab at him. At other times they will cruise in like a torpedo and attack the decoy like lightening and be gone before you know what is happening! It is for that reason that we sometimes use a live sucker. These baitfish are around 7 or 8 inches long and are rigged up with a harness around their middle and tied to the string just like the artificial decoy is. Under this circumstance you have to be on close watch or a northern will come in and kill your live decoy with one good bite and sometimes make his escape when he discovers his food is anchored to a cord. Then you are left with a piece of dead meat that is not likely to attract anything. No matter how you do it spear fishing for northern is great fun and can be very exciting. Regrettably, I had to give up the sport several years ago due to arthritis in my neck. One can be amazed at how stiff your neck will get while staring down into a hole of water all day. All the more reason for us to not put off the things we wish to do while we are young, there will come a day when we can’t do some of the things we would like too, due to the great enemy “time and age”.
All ice fishing is not so demanding. When we arrive at the Lake of the Woods, we will be met by our guide who we rent the ice house from. He will escort us out however many miles it is to where the fish are located this season (sometimes as far as 15 miles from land) and see that we are settled into a large sleeper house. These houses are completely outfitted with bunks, tables, gas lights, a gas cook stove and all along one wall will be our fish holes cleanly cut and ready for fishing. Such services come at a “cost”, but once a year me and three friends ‘bite the bullet’ and make the trip. If all goes well we will have a couple good feasts of fresh walleye cooked right in our ice house and good memories.
Sometimes I think God gave us fishing, more for the joy and memories than for the meat. I will enjoy both.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Simple Pleasure of Heating With Wood
Having used wood heat for part of my childhood and most of my adult life, I find that no other kind of heat source has what we might call “character”. Without a doubt all other common heating systems are ‘convenient’ when compared to wood. So ’convenient’ in fact, that they are taken for granted and forgotten about, that is until it is time to pay for the “fill up” whether it be fuel oil, propane or even electric.
For many years we heated our home with a combination of heating oil and wood. That had a great benefit, for if we were not at home to keep the fire up, the furnace kept the house at a reasonable temperature. But at that time heating oil was relatively cheap compared to now. I remember nearly having “the big one” when I had to pay over a dollar a gallon for it. We most often got by with two 250 gallon tanks that we would fill in August, as that was usually the cheapest time of year to buy heating oil.
Then a little over 10 years ago we moved to the farm. No furnace, just wood with a couple small electric back up heaters, plus a vent-less propane heater in the bathroom for quick heat when bathing. That we run from 100# tanks, one most often lasts the winter, unless it is especially cold.
Our heat source is wood. Two stoves, one in the middle of the house which is the main stove, plus a small stove in the kitchen that we use on cloudy days or really cold weather. This year we have had the pleasure of using, for the first time, a Soapstone stove. These stoves are build with cut soapstone, each square being 1¼” thick, all held together with a cast iron frame. They are also the most expensive free standing woodstove I know of, apart from the outdoor stove furnaces.
Those who know my wife will guess where she found this stove, at a garage sale of course. That is the only way we could afford, or justify the cost of one of these stoves. We got it in a good used condition for less than a third of the cost of a new one. Having used it this winter I can safely say that the cost of a new one would not be too much, as long as one can afford it. They are a marvelous heating unit! Naturally, they are heavy stoves by their very nature of being build from solid stone and cast iron. Ours weighs something over 500#. That is part of the secret to their great usefulness. The mass of stone once heated will hold heat for many hours after the fire has gone cold. I think the manufactures claim is 14 hours, in our experience, I have every reason to belief that this is close to the truth. Certainly when we wake up in the morning, even if the fire is long out, the stove is still very warm to the touch.
But there is more charm to wood heat than simply the stove that the wood is burned in. It is not always a lot cheaper. If one must purchase all their wood from a firewood dealer, I doubt that they would save any money at all. We use a mixture of purchased slab wood that we buy in 8’ bundles and must cut with a chainsaw and dry during the summer, plus we take out fallen or lightening struck trees from our own woodlot. This is our greatest cost saving item for heat, however it is also ’labor intensive’. I try to get the trees down and cut to 9’ lengths in the spring before the mosquitoes hatch and also before the sap gets up in the tree. They will dry much better and burn hotter if harvested when the sap is down in the fall, winter or early spring.
Then we have to cut the logs into 18” pieces and split them on the wood splitter. I used to split wood with a splitting maul, but after a couple hernia surgeries, back surgery and other physical problems, those days are over. We now use a good gas powered wood splitter.
As heat, wood has warmed and comforted millions of common people for as long as we have been on this globe. In nearly all countries of the world, wood has, at least in the past, been as necessary to survival as food and water. I like doing things in a way that I know my remote ancestors also did. I certainly got the better end of the stick, when it comes to the technology used to harvest firewood. The axe was the traditional method going back to biblical times. Even the crosscut saw is a relatively late invention in its use for felling trees, in this country it was late in the 19th century when the narrow crosscut design began to be used for felling, prior to the invention of a narrow blade the trees were chopped down with axes, then bucked up (cut to length) with a wide blade crosscut saw.
When you think of the pioneers having to mostly use an axe to gather firewood, no wonder we read about them building fire places that were up to 6 feet wide. Stories are told, which I have no reason to doubt, that some pioneers would drag a 6’ piece of log into their dirt floor cabin with a horse and then roll it into the fireplace! I am thinking that log would burn for awhile, if you could keep it burning. For wood does not dry very well in large log form, it needs to be split to dry properly.
As to the details of using wood as heat, it is usually a “learning experience” for the first few years. One will quickly realize that the specie and quality of your firewood will make a considerable difference in your comfort. Some wood, cotton wood for example, or Norway pine, will nearly put your fire out if at all green. Cotton wood, which thrives in western MN and ND and I am sure many other places, when freshly cut is will latterly drip water, it has a very high content of moisture. Then if it is well dried it will give off fair heat, but like many other soft textured woods, it will burn up very fast, almost like paper.
The best woods to use for firewood are the harder dense hardwoods. Hickory being one of the best, but that does not grow in central or northern MN. Our most common good wood is either white oak or red oak, followed by birch and ash. We do have in places and our farm is one of them, a specie of ironwood that rivals hickory when it comes to heat production, but they generally do no grow very big before they die. We have a few that are around 8 or 10” at the stump and still living, these are ‘huge’ for an ironwood tree. There is another specie of ironwood which has a different bark and purple wood on the inside, but that is properly called ‘hornbeam’; of course, the names of some of these trees are dependent upon the “authority” you talk to. Hornbeam is more of a ‘shrub’ and does not get very big at all that I have ever seen and generally rots before it even falls over.
Another thing about wood heat that should always be stressed when speaking of the subject, is safety. Many of houses burn to the ground yearly from wood heat. There are lots of causes, some just plain carelessness and others are sometimes things hard to control. Other than being careful in general, the best policy is to keep you chimney cleaned of creosote buildup. A chimney fire is a dangerous situation and has been responsible for a lot of fires. What happens is that by having greenish wood or keeping a low fire the heat is not enough to burn the wood clean, thus as the by products go up the chimney they cool and cling to the inside of the tiles or pipe, depending on the kind of chimney one has.
We make a habit of cleaning our chimney with a stiff chimney brush several times during the winter and always in the spring and fall, plus cleaning the stove pipes more often than that. It is in the stove pipe that many chimney fires get started and then set the creosote in the chimney itself on fire. By making certain creosote is not building up in the pipes is one way to help prevent a chimney fire. That said, it is still always a risk when one must take in heating with wood. That is why insurance companies hate woodstoves in houses. I understand their concern. But on the same hand I am willing to pay for the extra risk I cause them in order to heat my home the way I want.
The old saying that “firewood will heat you twice” is not quite accurate, in my experience. Certainly not the way we put up the wood. If we speak of trees that we take from our own woods. First, no matter how you do it, you are going to get warmed up running a chainsaw to drop the tree or if it is downed by the wind, cut it to lengths than can be gotten out with a tractor. Second, then you must cut it to 18” firewood length. Third, you split the wood and stack it on pallets that can be handled with the forks on a tractor. This is so it can be set out in the open air to get the benefit of the wind and sun to dry good before putting it into a shed for winter. That is the ‘fourth’ handling of each piece of wood. Fifth, you move the wood from the woodshed to the woodstove, usually with a stop by the wood box on the closed in porch before it actually gets to the stove and ‘makes heat’. By my count that wood will warm you anywhere from 5 to 6 times! It surely is more than twice.
On a cold snowy winter evening, it is a pleasure to sit before a glass door of a good woodstove, watching the fire while sipping on a cup of hot tea and reading a good book. When you choose to live in the country away from any semblance of city or town life, nor TV, the simple joy of a warm woodstove is something that I would not want to give up. Nor would I trade places with any of the ‘rich and famous’, who, though they may be able to afford a grand fireplace with ‘easy bought wood’, it is nearly assured that they cannot appreciate or enjoy their fire more than I do. For I am reaping the direct reward for my own labor, and that, without the cares of worries of a rich man.
This is a quote from William J. Dawson in “The Quest of the Simple Life”, published in 1907, it hit’s the point when we speak of ‘simple living’;
“It would seem that the anxieties of getting money only beget the more
torturing anxiety of how to keep it.”
While I set by my woodstove this evening, I won’t be bothered by such ‘anxiety’.
For many years we heated our home with a combination of heating oil and wood. That had a great benefit, for if we were not at home to keep the fire up, the furnace kept the house at a reasonable temperature. But at that time heating oil was relatively cheap compared to now. I remember nearly having “the big one” when I had to pay over a dollar a gallon for it. We most often got by with two 250 gallon tanks that we would fill in August, as that was usually the cheapest time of year to buy heating oil.
Then a little over 10 years ago we moved to the farm. No furnace, just wood with a couple small electric back up heaters, plus a vent-less propane heater in the bathroom for quick heat when bathing. That we run from 100# tanks, one most often lasts the winter, unless it is especially cold.
Our heat source is wood. Two stoves, one in the middle of the house which is the main stove, plus a small stove in the kitchen that we use on cloudy days or really cold weather. This year we have had the pleasure of using, for the first time, a Soapstone stove. These stoves are build with cut soapstone, each square being 1¼” thick, all held together with a cast iron frame. They are also the most expensive free standing woodstove I know of, apart from the outdoor stove furnaces.
Those who know my wife will guess where she found this stove, at a garage sale of course. That is the only way we could afford, or justify the cost of one of these stoves. We got it in a good used condition for less than a third of the cost of a new one. Having used it this winter I can safely say that the cost of a new one would not be too much, as long as one can afford it. They are a marvelous heating unit! Naturally, they are heavy stoves by their very nature of being build from solid stone and cast iron. Ours weighs something over 500#. That is part of the secret to their great usefulness. The mass of stone once heated will hold heat for many hours after the fire has gone cold. I think the manufactures claim is 14 hours, in our experience, I have every reason to belief that this is close to the truth. Certainly when we wake up in the morning, even if the fire is long out, the stove is still very warm to the touch.
But there is more charm to wood heat than simply the stove that the wood is burned in. It is not always a lot cheaper. If one must purchase all their wood from a firewood dealer, I doubt that they would save any money at all. We use a mixture of purchased slab wood that we buy in 8’ bundles and must cut with a chainsaw and dry during the summer, plus we take out fallen or lightening struck trees from our own woodlot. This is our greatest cost saving item for heat, however it is also ’labor intensive’. I try to get the trees down and cut to 9’ lengths in the spring before the mosquitoes hatch and also before the sap gets up in the tree. They will dry much better and burn hotter if harvested when the sap is down in the fall, winter or early spring.
Then we have to cut the logs into 18” pieces and split them on the wood splitter. I used to split wood with a splitting maul, but after a couple hernia surgeries, back surgery and other physical problems, those days are over. We now use a good gas powered wood splitter.
As heat, wood has warmed and comforted millions of common people for as long as we have been on this globe. In nearly all countries of the world, wood has, at least in the past, been as necessary to survival as food and water. I like doing things in a way that I know my remote ancestors also did. I certainly got the better end of the stick, when it comes to the technology used to harvest firewood. The axe was the traditional method going back to biblical times. Even the crosscut saw is a relatively late invention in its use for felling trees, in this country it was late in the 19th century when the narrow crosscut design began to be used for felling, prior to the invention of a narrow blade the trees were chopped down with axes, then bucked up (cut to length) with a wide blade crosscut saw.
When you think of the pioneers having to mostly use an axe to gather firewood, no wonder we read about them building fire places that were up to 6 feet wide. Stories are told, which I have no reason to doubt, that some pioneers would drag a 6’ piece of log into their dirt floor cabin with a horse and then roll it into the fireplace! I am thinking that log would burn for awhile, if you could keep it burning. For wood does not dry very well in large log form, it needs to be split to dry properly.
As to the details of using wood as heat, it is usually a “learning experience” for the first few years. One will quickly realize that the specie and quality of your firewood will make a considerable difference in your comfort. Some wood, cotton wood for example, or Norway pine, will nearly put your fire out if at all green. Cotton wood, which thrives in western MN and ND and I am sure many other places, when freshly cut is will latterly drip water, it has a very high content of moisture. Then if it is well dried it will give off fair heat, but like many other soft textured woods, it will burn up very fast, almost like paper.
The best woods to use for firewood are the harder dense hardwoods. Hickory being one of the best, but that does not grow in central or northern MN. Our most common good wood is either white oak or red oak, followed by birch and ash. We do have in places and our farm is one of them, a specie of ironwood that rivals hickory when it comes to heat production, but they generally do no grow very big before they die. We have a few that are around 8 or 10” at the stump and still living, these are ‘huge’ for an ironwood tree. There is another specie of ironwood which has a different bark and purple wood on the inside, but that is properly called ‘hornbeam’; of course, the names of some of these trees are dependent upon the “authority” you talk to. Hornbeam is more of a ‘shrub’ and does not get very big at all that I have ever seen and generally rots before it even falls over.
Another thing about wood heat that should always be stressed when speaking of the subject, is safety. Many of houses burn to the ground yearly from wood heat. There are lots of causes, some just plain carelessness and others are sometimes things hard to control. Other than being careful in general, the best policy is to keep you chimney cleaned of creosote buildup. A chimney fire is a dangerous situation and has been responsible for a lot of fires. What happens is that by having greenish wood or keeping a low fire the heat is not enough to burn the wood clean, thus as the by products go up the chimney they cool and cling to the inside of the tiles or pipe, depending on the kind of chimney one has.
We make a habit of cleaning our chimney with a stiff chimney brush several times during the winter and always in the spring and fall, plus cleaning the stove pipes more often than that. It is in the stove pipe that many chimney fires get started and then set the creosote in the chimney itself on fire. By making certain creosote is not building up in the pipes is one way to help prevent a chimney fire. That said, it is still always a risk when one must take in heating with wood. That is why insurance companies hate woodstoves in houses. I understand their concern. But on the same hand I am willing to pay for the extra risk I cause them in order to heat my home the way I want.
The old saying that “firewood will heat you twice” is not quite accurate, in my experience. Certainly not the way we put up the wood. If we speak of trees that we take from our own woods. First, no matter how you do it, you are going to get warmed up running a chainsaw to drop the tree or if it is downed by the wind, cut it to lengths than can be gotten out with a tractor. Second, then you must cut it to 18” firewood length. Third, you split the wood and stack it on pallets that can be handled with the forks on a tractor. This is so it can be set out in the open air to get the benefit of the wind and sun to dry good before putting it into a shed for winter. That is the ‘fourth’ handling of each piece of wood. Fifth, you move the wood from the woodshed to the woodstove, usually with a stop by the wood box on the closed in porch before it actually gets to the stove and ‘makes heat’. By my count that wood will warm you anywhere from 5 to 6 times! It surely is more than twice.
On a cold snowy winter evening, it is a pleasure to sit before a glass door of a good woodstove, watching the fire while sipping on a cup of hot tea and reading a good book. When you choose to live in the country away from any semblance of city or town life, nor TV, the simple joy of a warm woodstove is something that I would not want to give up. Nor would I trade places with any of the ‘rich and famous’, who, though they may be able to afford a grand fireplace with ‘easy bought wood’, it is nearly assured that they cannot appreciate or enjoy their fire more than I do. For I am reaping the direct reward for my own labor, and that, without the cares of worries of a rich man.
This is a quote from William J. Dawson in “The Quest of the Simple Life”, published in 1907, it hit’s the point when we speak of ‘simple living’;
“It would seem that the anxieties of getting money only beget the more
torturing anxiety of how to keep it.”
While I set by my woodstove this evening, I won’t be bothered by such ‘anxiety’.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Deep Cold and Contentment
We are having a more normal January day. It was 4° this morning with the northwest wind still a-howling strong. I think it got up to around 13° this afternoon, with that wind still ‘on the job’. It is one of those days when I am glad I don’t happen to be working out on a lumber pile, but know I will see many such days and much colder ones, before my career is over, at least I would hope to work for many years to come yet.
There is something ‘exotic’ about deep cold, which we have not seen yet this winter, but we have a couple months left and might get some before it is over. When you grow up much further south as I did, it was only a few times that we ever reached as cold as -20° , until we moved to MN.
In our early years here, late 80’s, we came to expect a lot of nights far below -20° . I think the coldest we have recorded was -59° and I took a picture of the thermometer that morning, just so folks would not call me a liar! Cold is a relative matter. Most generally when you reach about -30° or colder, the wind just does not blow. The humidity in the air also drops, I suppose it simply can’t exist and freezes, falling to the ground as ice fog very quickly. I have always observed that when it reaches deep cold that they atmosphere does not seem as cold as it really is. Not that you want to bare you hands very long, they will stiffen up in a big hurry, nor do you want to remain motionless for a long period of time. But if one is working steady, it is not a serious matter to keep warm, once you get your blood flowing to the extremities of you fingers and toes. Then, if you keep a steady pace and don’t overheat, it is not that miserable to work at -30° .
Some things about cold that many people don’t know. One is that a match, unless kept in a warm pocket will not strike at -30° . A portable propane heater will not light much below -20° , unless the tank is warmed up first.
That reminds me of a funny story on a friend I was working with one time. We had a sawmill set up just outside the Red Lake Indian Reservation. I would go up a couple days a week and grade lumber. One of the fellows was working there all week and was living in an old camper, on the back of a pick up truck. One night it reached -40° and Glen said his propane heater quit working and he was getting cold. He knew that his propane tank had frozen up, so in desperation he went out and brought it inside and put it under the covers with him until it was warm enough to operate again. I really laughed about his “cold bed partner”, but he simply said it was better than the alternative, which was freezing to death.
The coldest day I recall working outside was -40° one winter day near Menahga, MN. None of the crew wasted any time getting things done, that you can be sure of. But that was not the coldest I have been on a job. That distinction goes to a day we graded lumber near Enderlin, ND around 1989.
The Red River Valley on ND is not really fit for human habitation, in my humble opinion. That country is as flat as the ocean on a calm day and very few trees to block the wind. I think we were inspecting the lumber from the last stand of trees within miles of where we were. It was only -20° and did not warm up, but the real problem was the wind, it blew at a steady roar the whole time we were working. Once we got the job started we did not stop for breaks at all for 7 hours, for we knew it would be hard to get going again if we stopped. That was a serious cold day. In fact, after the job was done, I got in my little S-10 pick-up and started the 150 mile drive home. But that little truck could not put out enough heat to get me warmed up to anything like “reasonable”. I got to Fargo and found a cheap Motel and got a room. Before having supper or anything, I cranked the heat as high as it would go and piled on all the covers they had in the room and crawled in bed. I suppose it took me more than an hour to get warmed up that time. J I have never been as cold as I was in the Red River Valley of ND.
Since that time I have done some work farther north in the area of Cavalier, ND, which is only a very short distance from the Canadian border. But that country is more rolling and the humidity must be lower, for although it was very cold a couple times, we never suffered the cold like we did around Enderlin. The difference has to be in humidity and wind.
I have read stories of people in Siberia who, in the 1800’s lived on the great vast tundra areas who lived much like Eskimos. In their Caribou parkas would think nothing about living and working in deep freeze temperatures for months at a time, even their huts only reach barely above freezing, but they seemed to have acclimated to the cold that they showed no signs of suffering.
It reminds me that so many things are relative to what we become acclimated to. Whether it be in our environment of heat and cold, or the food we eat, etc. What becomes ‘normal’ can vary a great deal and very quickly. Habits can be formed, whether good or bad, in a very short period of time. What most of us forget is that we have a ‘choice’ in how we live. Even contentment and happiness to a great degree is a “choice” we make. It matters not if every detail of our lives are lined up to suit what we imagine to be “ideal”, if we choose to accept things that are, as reality and live with it, we are generally more content, than if we are always discouraged and distressed that things and people we deal with, don’t always meet our expectations.
It is a wise policy to learn the difference in what we can change vrs. the things we cannot. A general guideline is this; I can change myself and my reaction to other people. Sometimes I can change “things” to better fit into my life and activity, but it is seldom that we can “change other people” and in some way force them to be what we want or think they should be, sometimes the problem is not in other people but my own perception of them.
Our lives would be enriched if we could learn the fine art of training ourselves to be ‘content’ with things the way they are. Not that it is always a mistake to attempt to make needed changes in people or things. But when it comes right down to ‘reality’, all we really have a choice about is ‘ourselves’ and how we decide to live.
I choose to be ‘content’, at least until such a time as I have opportunity or ability to improve on any situation.
There is something ‘exotic’ about deep cold, which we have not seen yet this winter, but we have a couple months left and might get some before it is over. When you grow up much further south as I did, it was only a few times that we ever reached as cold as -20° , until we moved to MN.
In our early years here, late 80’s, we came to expect a lot of nights far below -20° . I think the coldest we have recorded was -59° and I took a picture of the thermometer that morning, just so folks would not call me a liar! Cold is a relative matter. Most generally when you reach about -30° or colder, the wind just does not blow. The humidity in the air also drops, I suppose it simply can’t exist and freezes, falling to the ground as ice fog very quickly. I have always observed that when it reaches deep cold that they atmosphere does not seem as cold as it really is. Not that you want to bare you hands very long, they will stiffen up in a big hurry, nor do you want to remain motionless for a long period of time. But if one is working steady, it is not a serious matter to keep warm, once you get your blood flowing to the extremities of you fingers and toes. Then, if you keep a steady pace and don’t overheat, it is not that miserable to work at -30° .
Some things about cold that many people don’t know. One is that a match, unless kept in a warm pocket will not strike at -30° . A portable propane heater will not light much below -20° , unless the tank is warmed up first.
That reminds me of a funny story on a friend I was working with one time. We had a sawmill set up just outside the Red Lake Indian Reservation. I would go up a couple days a week and grade lumber. One of the fellows was working there all week and was living in an old camper, on the back of a pick up truck. One night it reached -40° and Glen said his propane heater quit working and he was getting cold. He knew that his propane tank had frozen up, so in desperation he went out and brought it inside and put it under the covers with him until it was warm enough to operate again. I really laughed about his “cold bed partner”, but he simply said it was better than the alternative, which was freezing to death.
The coldest day I recall working outside was -40° one winter day near Menahga, MN. None of the crew wasted any time getting things done, that you can be sure of. But that was not the coldest I have been on a job. That distinction goes to a day we graded lumber near Enderlin, ND around 1989.
The Red River Valley on ND is not really fit for human habitation, in my humble opinion. That country is as flat as the ocean on a calm day and very few trees to block the wind. I think we were inspecting the lumber from the last stand of trees within miles of where we were. It was only -20° and did not warm up, but the real problem was the wind, it blew at a steady roar the whole time we were working. Once we got the job started we did not stop for breaks at all for 7 hours, for we knew it would be hard to get going again if we stopped. That was a serious cold day. In fact, after the job was done, I got in my little S-10 pick-up and started the 150 mile drive home. But that little truck could not put out enough heat to get me warmed up to anything like “reasonable”. I got to Fargo and found a cheap Motel and got a room. Before having supper or anything, I cranked the heat as high as it would go and piled on all the covers they had in the room and crawled in bed. I suppose it took me more than an hour to get warmed up that time. J I have never been as cold as I was in the Red River Valley of ND.
Since that time I have done some work farther north in the area of Cavalier, ND, which is only a very short distance from the Canadian border. But that country is more rolling and the humidity must be lower, for although it was very cold a couple times, we never suffered the cold like we did around Enderlin. The difference has to be in humidity and wind.
I have read stories of people in Siberia who, in the 1800’s lived on the great vast tundra areas who lived much like Eskimos. In their Caribou parkas would think nothing about living and working in deep freeze temperatures for months at a time, even their huts only reach barely above freezing, but they seemed to have acclimated to the cold that they showed no signs of suffering.
It reminds me that so many things are relative to what we become acclimated to. Whether it be in our environment of heat and cold, or the food we eat, etc. What becomes ‘normal’ can vary a great deal and very quickly. Habits can be formed, whether good or bad, in a very short period of time. What most of us forget is that we have a ‘choice’ in how we live. Even contentment and happiness to a great degree is a “choice” we make. It matters not if every detail of our lives are lined up to suit what we imagine to be “ideal”, if we choose to accept things that are, as reality and live with it, we are generally more content, than if we are always discouraged and distressed that things and people we deal with, don’t always meet our expectations.
It is a wise policy to learn the difference in what we can change vrs. the things we cannot. A general guideline is this; I can change myself and my reaction to other people. Sometimes I can change “things” to better fit into my life and activity, but it is seldom that we can “change other people” and in some way force them to be what we want or think they should be, sometimes the problem is not in other people but my own perception of them.
Our lives would be enriched if we could learn the fine art of training ourselves to be ‘content’ with things the way they are. Not that it is always a mistake to attempt to make needed changes in people or things. But when it comes right down to ‘reality’, all we really have a choice about is ‘ourselves’ and how we decide to live.
I choose to be ‘content’, at least until such a time as I have opportunity or ability to improve on any situation.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Our Work Is Worth More To Us Than Just A Paycheck
Most of us don’t think about the “value” of our jobs, beyond the paycheck. But truthfully, when we have been unable to do our jobs for a matter of weeks due to illness we begin to realize that our work has more benefits than merely the pay we receive. Not that we would or could work for nothing, but rather that we learn to look at our work as an important part of who we are.
I was reminded of that today. It was the first day I have graded lumber since having the gall bladder surgery. Obviously in a physical job, the first day back after about 3 weeks has its own challenge, but it also is satisfying to know that I can still get the job done, even if it was not so ‘graceful’ and a bit slower than normal.
There are a lot of folks who are out of work despite their best efforts in the current economic mess we are in. Those of us who have work should be thankful, I am. If you are unhappy with your job, just imagine yourself without any income at all, then your job might not look so bad after all.
Our MN weather has taken a change. This morning when I left home at 5:30 AM it was 33° and snowing hard. The snow did not last long, but then the northwest wind came up and the temperature dropped throughout the day. The last I looked it was 12° and they are forecasting near 0 by morning. Quite a change from the 52° we had yesterday! But still well above what we can generally expect at this time of year.
I was reminded of that today. It was the first day I have graded lumber since having the gall bladder surgery. Obviously in a physical job, the first day back after about 3 weeks has its own challenge, but it also is satisfying to know that I can still get the job done, even if it was not so ‘graceful’ and a bit slower than normal.
There are a lot of folks who are out of work despite their best efforts in the current economic mess we are in. Those of us who have work should be thankful, I am. If you are unhappy with your job, just imagine yourself without any income at all, then your job might not look so bad after all.
Our MN weather has taken a change. This morning when I left home at 5:30 AM it was 33° and snowing hard. The snow did not last long, but then the northwest wind came up and the temperature dropped throughout the day. The last I looked it was 12° and they are forecasting near 0 by morning. Quite a change from the 52° we had yesterday! But still well above what we can generally expect at this time of year.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Amish Ice Houses, Chickens & Wild Turkeys
The same weather pattern continues to be with us, 48° on January 9th, unbelievable, but very welcome. They do say we will have some cooler weather by mid-week, maybe near zero. That is nothing to what a MN January normally looks like!
It is probably a common thing in people that excessively mild weather has a way of throwing us off, in that it does not seem possible that it can be approaching mid-January already! We have no snow on the ground, we had a little but it is all melted. By the ‘feel in the air’ it could just as well be late October, but by the calendar we are forced to accept it is January.
As I have observed before, “time is not our friend”. The days, weeks and months go by too fast to keep up with. Before we blink our eyes it will be springtime, the time of year we in MN so long for. But, so far, this year we just keep enjoying the longest fall in MN history.
Even the livestock and wildlife seem to be in awe of the mild weather. I saw today a herd of cows that was out grazing on some brown grass like it was the best thing they had ever seen. I also observed a flock of wild turkeys in a neighbors yard, they appeared to be feasting on acorns that were not taken by squirrels and buried. We have a local flock of them that hang together which we see quite often. Among them there is what appears to be a half-breed, in that this bird has every other feather black and white. At a distance it looks to be grey, but up close you can see that it is simply a mixture of white and black. I have to wonder if it is a mixed breed or if it is simply a color variation that sometimes occurs in wild turkeys?
When we had the little snow on the ground, there was signs of our “enemy” a weasel about the place. Last winter the murdering varmint got a bunch of our chickens. We trapped one, but during the summer another one came in and killed the last of our chickens in a matter of minutes at mid-day. Bold murdering little rascals, weasels.
This gives me a project to do as soon as spring does come. That is to build a new chicken coup that is closer to the occupied buildings and make it as weasel proof as possible, which will not be easy since they can practically go through a keyhole. The coup will sit close to the dog house where the “vicious beagle” can at least raise a ruckus if a weasel comes about.
Keeping chickens to most people is more trouble than it is worth. I freely admit that from a purely economic consideration, it is cheaper to buy eggs than keep chickens. But what is life without some “principles”? One of our principles is to provide as much of our own homegrown food as we can and store bought eggs don’t hold much attraction, once you are used to ‘farm fresh’ eggs. Besides, chickens can be entertaining to watch. Nothing short of a pig can scratch, at seeming bare ground, and find something to eat like a chicken.
We don’t raise chickens for meat. For starters, I despise cleaning chickens, though I have butchered a great many from time to time. Nothing takes away my appetite for ‘chicken meat’ as does the smell of warm, wet chicken feathers! It just does something “bad” for my desire to eat one of those birds after having scolded and plucked it’s feathers. Then another problem is that our daughter loves chickens and makes pets of them, each having a special name. She will tame them and pick each one up by name and talk to it everyday. You have a hard time killing and consuming “pets”. J
For a Monday, it has turned out to be a productive day. I spent much of it on the road making some delivers of lumber to some Amish customers. They too seem to have taken courage with the mild winter. Most winters it is remarkable how hard life can be for some of the Amish folk, especially the ones who hold to the “old order of things”. Imagine cutting firewood with a one-man crosscut saw in this day and age. Although most of them do rig up some sort of gas powered saw rig, a few I know still cut up slab wood with their crosscut saws.
A lot of what they do is admirable, even if it does make their lives seem “hard”. One thing many of them do, that I believe is a very good practice to at least know, is they fill an ice house with ice so they have it for summer use. Some of them get ice from a nearby lake, but the problem with that plan is that, these days, you would not want to put that ice in you water for drinking. Most of them will build a framework out on the ground with 2 X 12” material in the flattest place they can find. Then they line that with a huge sheet of plastic and wait for a good cold snap. Then they use their well water and fill the pond with water to about 10” deep. If the weather is cold enough, this will freeze to a good clear ice in a couple days time. Then they have gas powered ice saws that are built especially for the purpose. These have a large set of steel wheels and a saw blade running off the gas motor. They cut to a depth of about 8”. In this manner they will cut their whole pond of ice into blocks that can easily be broken apart with an ice chisel. Then they load the ice onto sleds about the size of hay wagons to be pulled by a beautiful pair of well trained draft horses up to the icehouse. I got the opportunity, by accidentally being on hand when one of these operations was in progress last winter, to ride one of these sleighs. I was surprised how fast a good pair of horses could pull that empty sleigh with just me and a driver. We went zooming up a well worn trail of ice and snow in such a manner that made me think, that travel by horse sleigh in the old days was much smoother than a buggy would have been. Simply because a frozen road stays smooth much better than dirt, which will get ruts in when muddy.
Once they are loading the ice blocks into their ice house, they separate each layer of ice with clean sawdust. This adds extra insulation for keeping the ice froze and also prevents the blocks from freezing together whenever some melting does occur. In this manner the competent Amish have good clean ice to last all summer, plus they have refrigeration to some extent for food.
Personally, I could do without a lot of things modern, but a cold drink of water is one thing I would sorely miss if for some reason I had not electric power. One of my first projects would be to build one of those ice houses if necessity required me to live without electricity.
We marvel and enjoy an “easy life” brought about by modern inventions, but when we see the “old ways” up close and personal, we also marvel how our ancestors did have ways of making their hard lives a little bit more pleasant. It is worth noting that there are a lot of “old skills” that should not be lost, even if we never need to put them into practice for basic living.
It is probably a common thing in people that excessively mild weather has a way of throwing us off, in that it does not seem possible that it can be approaching mid-January already! We have no snow on the ground, we had a little but it is all melted. By the ‘feel in the air’ it could just as well be late October, but by the calendar we are forced to accept it is January.
As I have observed before, “time is not our friend”. The days, weeks and months go by too fast to keep up with. Before we blink our eyes it will be springtime, the time of year we in MN so long for. But, so far, this year we just keep enjoying the longest fall in MN history.
Even the livestock and wildlife seem to be in awe of the mild weather. I saw today a herd of cows that was out grazing on some brown grass like it was the best thing they had ever seen. I also observed a flock of wild turkeys in a neighbors yard, they appeared to be feasting on acorns that were not taken by squirrels and buried. We have a local flock of them that hang together which we see quite often. Among them there is what appears to be a half-breed, in that this bird has every other feather black and white. At a distance it looks to be grey, but up close you can see that it is simply a mixture of white and black. I have to wonder if it is a mixed breed or if it is simply a color variation that sometimes occurs in wild turkeys?
When we had the little snow on the ground, there was signs of our “enemy” a weasel about the place. Last winter the murdering varmint got a bunch of our chickens. We trapped one, but during the summer another one came in and killed the last of our chickens in a matter of minutes at mid-day. Bold murdering little rascals, weasels.
This gives me a project to do as soon as spring does come. That is to build a new chicken coup that is closer to the occupied buildings and make it as weasel proof as possible, which will not be easy since they can practically go through a keyhole. The coup will sit close to the dog house where the “vicious beagle” can at least raise a ruckus if a weasel comes about.
Keeping chickens to most people is more trouble than it is worth. I freely admit that from a purely economic consideration, it is cheaper to buy eggs than keep chickens. But what is life without some “principles”? One of our principles is to provide as much of our own homegrown food as we can and store bought eggs don’t hold much attraction, once you are used to ‘farm fresh’ eggs. Besides, chickens can be entertaining to watch. Nothing short of a pig can scratch, at seeming bare ground, and find something to eat like a chicken.
We don’t raise chickens for meat. For starters, I despise cleaning chickens, though I have butchered a great many from time to time. Nothing takes away my appetite for ‘chicken meat’ as does the smell of warm, wet chicken feathers! It just does something “bad” for my desire to eat one of those birds after having scolded and plucked it’s feathers. Then another problem is that our daughter loves chickens and makes pets of them, each having a special name. She will tame them and pick each one up by name and talk to it everyday. You have a hard time killing and consuming “pets”. J
For a Monday, it has turned out to be a productive day. I spent much of it on the road making some delivers of lumber to some Amish customers. They too seem to have taken courage with the mild winter. Most winters it is remarkable how hard life can be for some of the Amish folk, especially the ones who hold to the “old order of things”. Imagine cutting firewood with a one-man crosscut saw in this day and age. Although most of them do rig up some sort of gas powered saw rig, a few I know still cut up slab wood with their crosscut saws.
A lot of what they do is admirable, even if it does make their lives seem “hard”. One thing many of them do, that I believe is a very good practice to at least know, is they fill an ice house with ice so they have it for summer use. Some of them get ice from a nearby lake, but the problem with that plan is that, these days, you would not want to put that ice in you water for drinking. Most of them will build a framework out on the ground with 2 X 12” material in the flattest place they can find. Then they line that with a huge sheet of plastic and wait for a good cold snap. Then they use their well water and fill the pond with water to about 10” deep. If the weather is cold enough, this will freeze to a good clear ice in a couple days time. Then they have gas powered ice saws that are built especially for the purpose. These have a large set of steel wheels and a saw blade running off the gas motor. They cut to a depth of about 8”. In this manner they will cut their whole pond of ice into blocks that can easily be broken apart with an ice chisel. Then they load the ice onto sleds about the size of hay wagons to be pulled by a beautiful pair of well trained draft horses up to the icehouse. I got the opportunity, by accidentally being on hand when one of these operations was in progress last winter, to ride one of these sleighs. I was surprised how fast a good pair of horses could pull that empty sleigh with just me and a driver. We went zooming up a well worn trail of ice and snow in such a manner that made me think, that travel by horse sleigh in the old days was much smoother than a buggy would have been. Simply because a frozen road stays smooth much better than dirt, which will get ruts in when muddy.
Once they are loading the ice blocks into their ice house, they separate each layer of ice with clean sawdust. This adds extra insulation for keeping the ice froze and also prevents the blocks from freezing together whenever some melting does occur. In this manner the competent Amish have good clean ice to last all summer, plus they have refrigeration to some extent for food.
Personally, I could do without a lot of things modern, but a cold drink of water is one thing I would sorely miss if for some reason I had not electric power. One of my first projects would be to build one of those ice houses if necessity required me to live without electricity.
We marvel and enjoy an “easy life” brought about by modern inventions, but when we see the “old ways” up close and personal, we also marvel how our ancestors did have ways of making their hard lives a little bit more pleasant. It is worth noting that there are a lot of “old skills” that should not be lost, even if we never need to put them into practice for basic living.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Confessions of an Amateur Outdoorsman-1
One of the delights of my life has been various outdoor activities. The range of my interests are about as broad as the outdoors themselves, so I have at one time or another attempted many things related to outdoor affairs, not all of them very successful.
I know a lot of very competent outdoorsmen and women. These are the people who take their pursuits seriously and are mostly very successful whether they are hunting, fishing, trapping, backpacking or any of the other numerous outdoor activities people are involved in.
Personally I have had some nice successes, but to be honest, I have had some humiliating failures also, or you might just call them misadventures. I recall one such occasion when deer hunting in southwestern KY sometime around 1982 or 1983. That country was not exactly ‘thick’ with deer and there was not a lot of public hunting land, that I was aware of. This friend, whose named happened to be Jimmy, said he knew a perfect place for us to go hunting, it was covered with deer, so he said. But the one catch was that we had to get in there before daylight and set up on a hillside at the edge of some trees. I was game to try anything that might get me a deer.
What Jimmy failed to tell me was that we would be “trespassing” without permission, nor did he tell me the condition of the “trail” that we would be trying to drive his old Chrysler on. You know those Chryslers from the ‘70’s, about the size of a small ship, only heavier and low to the ground!
We started up this steep, water rutted hillside in the predawn of a November morning, with the headlights off of course. That is when my friend Jimmy explained to me about the “lack of permission” to be hunting there. But he went on to say that he was “sure the old fellow would not mind, as long as he didn’t know we were there”. I was not sure how that logic worked, but I was along for the ride and kept my thoughts to myself. I did feel sure it was very unlikely that “anyone” would be where we were!
As we climbed in that old Chrysler on up the hillside, making fairly good progress considering the state of the trail, we were doing well until we were about ¾ the way to the top where Jimmy wanted to hide his car in the trees. Then it happened. I felt the sudden drop of that ‘big boat’ as it dropped into a deep water rut, I could also tell, in a flash, that we were not going any farther, from the sound of gravel and dirt tearing at the mainframe under that car. We were “bellied out” with both drive wheels hanging in the air while the mainframe sat on “high ground”.
A quick look confirmed our suspicions. But, since we were more interested in deer hunting than extracting that beast from its current home, it was decided we would ‘hoof it’ on to the top of the hill, about ¾ mile away and worry about getting the car out after the hunt.
We took off up the trail that was steep enough for goat traffic to be slowed down. Finally we reached the top where the woods began just ahead of daylight. My favorite method of deer hunting has always been from a tree stand, naturally we did not have a stand on this strange hillside, but as I looked around in the dim light I spotted a big oak tree that was leaning out from the tree line and looked easy enough to climb. Perfect, I thought. Not having a shoulder strap on my old .30-30 rifle I handed it to Jimmy so I could climb up to a fork that looked comfortable to make my stand. Once there, I must have been about 10 feet off the ground because it was all that we could do for Jimmy to hand my rifle up to me, but in order to reach it I was compelled to hold on to a limb and lean over the side of the tree to reach the end of the gun, which did not have a shell in the chamber for safty reasons.
When I climbed that tree I noted that there was an old barbed wire fence attached to it, which happened to be exactly where Jimmy was standing to reach my rifle up to me. I had just gotten hold on the rifle barrel when to my great ‘disappointment’ I felt that tree limb I was holding to with the other hand “snap”! The results were quite predictable. I gave a warning shout to Jimmy that I was on my way down, while at the same time thinking of that barbed wire fence that I wanted to avoid at all costs if possible! With the last bit of control I had on the tree I threw myself just enough to clear the fence, but not enough to make a controlled landing. (Which incidentally, is a landing where you hit feet first and roll to break the momentum and hopefully do no harm to yourself.)
Having lived with one leg slightly shorter than the other, due to another mishap, I have been well practiced at the drop and roll method of ‘biting the dust’. People with a leg just slightly short are prone to stepping in a low spot and have their ankle turn, to keep from harming the ankle I always just went with the flow and let myself drop and roll. It looks a bit ridiculous in public places for a grown man to suddenly drop like a rock and roll on the ground, but it better than having a sprained ankle, trust me. J
Ok, I digress again. Since I did not have much control of my decent, I landed at a poor angle with my right foot taking the brunt of my weight. Snap! I heard, not to mention felt, something give in that foot and assumed it was not going to be a “good deal”.
Jimmy, only being somewhat alarmed, ask me if I was ok. I assured him I was not badly injured. He said, “get back up there, we will try again.” I laughed a little and told him that sitting at the foot of this tree would be ok, I really did not want a rerun just yet.
After assuring him that I was all right, we agreed on a time to meet back at the car, which still had to be jacked up and gotten out of the hole it was in, and Jimmy went on around the hillside to make a stand.
It did not take too long for nature to begin taking its course on my right foot. The longer I sat there the tighter my boot got and the more that thing “throbbed”. Soon it became apparent to me that my foot was very likely broken, it was certain that I was not going to be able to walk on it. Since I had given up the ideal of shooting a deer, I turned my attention to how I was going to make it back down that hill to where the car was stuck. I needed a crutch.
Looking around I found a small tree that would fit the bill, so I took my hunting knife out and went to work making a makeshift crutch.
When I got it done, I went ahead and started hobbling toward the car. Knowing Jimmy as I did, there was no reason to expect him to show up any earlier than we had agreed too unless he shot a deer. It was obviously going to take me some time to make the trip.
When me and Jimmy had both finally arrived at his car, it was then time to figure a way to get it’s tires back on solid ground. This was accomplished by jacking the car up and putting logs, rocks and anything else we could find under the tires until we could get free and turn around. Needless to say it took many attempts at jacking that thing up and putting all this stuff underneath the tires before we were free.
Not having been to a doctor in KY up to that time, I was not sure where I should go. A friend recommended an “old doctor” that he said was one of the “best in the country” and would not charge me an ‘arm and a leg’. Well, I don’t recall if he charged very much, but I do remember looking at the x-ray and saying to myself that a ‘normal’ foot does not have the bone sticking up about an half inch, right on the top of it. The old doctor assured me however, that it was not broken and a few days of staying off of it would make it right. Sure it would. But like a fool I let it at that. Now I am reminded daily of a misadventure that happened nearly 30 years ago. Every time I walk more than a few hundred yards that old bone lets me know that it was not in the right place.
But then, if I had not busted that foot, maybe I would have forgotten about Jimmy and his grand hunting spot by now.
It is strange how we can dig up memories even in unpleasant ways, but yet cherish the little adventures we had long ago, in another world.
I know a lot of very competent outdoorsmen and women. These are the people who take their pursuits seriously and are mostly very successful whether they are hunting, fishing, trapping, backpacking or any of the other numerous outdoor activities people are involved in.
Personally I have had some nice successes, but to be honest, I have had some humiliating failures also, or you might just call them misadventures. I recall one such occasion when deer hunting in southwestern KY sometime around 1982 or 1983. That country was not exactly ‘thick’ with deer and there was not a lot of public hunting land, that I was aware of. This friend, whose named happened to be Jimmy, said he knew a perfect place for us to go hunting, it was covered with deer, so he said. But the one catch was that we had to get in there before daylight and set up on a hillside at the edge of some trees. I was game to try anything that might get me a deer.
What Jimmy failed to tell me was that we would be “trespassing” without permission, nor did he tell me the condition of the “trail” that we would be trying to drive his old Chrysler on. You know those Chryslers from the ‘70’s, about the size of a small ship, only heavier and low to the ground!
We started up this steep, water rutted hillside in the predawn of a November morning, with the headlights off of course. That is when my friend Jimmy explained to me about the “lack of permission” to be hunting there. But he went on to say that he was “sure the old fellow would not mind, as long as he didn’t know we were there”. I was not sure how that logic worked, but I was along for the ride and kept my thoughts to myself. I did feel sure it was very unlikely that “anyone” would be where we were!
As we climbed in that old Chrysler on up the hillside, making fairly good progress considering the state of the trail, we were doing well until we were about ¾ the way to the top where Jimmy wanted to hide his car in the trees. Then it happened. I felt the sudden drop of that ‘big boat’ as it dropped into a deep water rut, I could also tell, in a flash, that we were not going any farther, from the sound of gravel and dirt tearing at the mainframe under that car. We were “bellied out” with both drive wheels hanging in the air while the mainframe sat on “high ground”.
A quick look confirmed our suspicions. But, since we were more interested in deer hunting than extracting that beast from its current home, it was decided we would ‘hoof it’ on to the top of the hill, about ¾ mile away and worry about getting the car out after the hunt.
We took off up the trail that was steep enough for goat traffic to be slowed down. Finally we reached the top where the woods began just ahead of daylight. My favorite method of deer hunting has always been from a tree stand, naturally we did not have a stand on this strange hillside, but as I looked around in the dim light I spotted a big oak tree that was leaning out from the tree line and looked easy enough to climb. Perfect, I thought. Not having a shoulder strap on my old .30-30 rifle I handed it to Jimmy so I could climb up to a fork that looked comfortable to make my stand. Once there, I must have been about 10 feet off the ground because it was all that we could do for Jimmy to hand my rifle up to me, but in order to reach it I was compelled to hold on to a limb and lean over the side of the tree to reach the end of the gun, which did not have a shell in the chamber for safty reasons.
When I climbed that tree I noted that there was an old barbed wire fence attached to it, which happened to be exactly where Jimmy was standing to reach my rifle up to me. I had just gotten hold on the rifle barrel when to my great ‘disappointment’ I felt that tree limb I was holding to with the other hand “snap”! The results were quite predictable. I gave a warning shout to Jimmy that I was on my way down, while at the same time thinking of that barbed wire fence that I wanted to avoid at all costs if possible! With the last bit of control I had on the tree I threw myself just enough to clear the fence, but not enough to make a controlled landing. (Which incidentally, is a landing where you hit feet first and roll to break the momentum and hopefully do no harm to yourself.)
Having lived with one leg slightly shorter than the other, due to another mishap, I have been well practiced at the drop and roll method of ‘biting the dust’. People with a leg just slightly short are prone to stepping in a low spot and have their ankle turn, to keep from harming the ankle I always just went with the flow and let myself drop and roll. It looks a bit ridiculous in public places for a grown man to suddenly drop like a rock and roll on the ground, but it better than having a sprained ankle, trust me. J
Ok, I digress again. Since I did not have much control of my decent, I landed at a poor angle with my right foot taking the brunt of my weight. Snap! I heard, not to mention felt, something give in that foot and assumed it was not going to be a “good deal”.
Jimmy, only being somewhat alarmed, ask me if I was ok. I assured him I was not badly injured. He said, “get back up there, we will try again.” I laughed a little and told him that sitting at the foot of this tree would be ok, I really did not want a rerun just yet.
After assuring him that I was all right, we agreed on a time to meet back at the car, which still had to be jacked up and gotten out of the hole it was in, and Jimmy went on around the hillside to make a stand.
It did not take too long for nature to begin taking its course on my right foot. The longer I sat there the tighter my boot got and the more that thing “throbbed”. Soon it became apparent to me that my foot was very likely broken, it was certain that I was not going to be able to walk on it. Since I had given up the ideal of shooting a deer, I turned my attention to how I was going to make it back down that hill to where the car was stuck. I needed a crutch.
Looking around I found a small tree that would fit the bill, so I took my hunting knife out and went to work making a makeshift crutch.
When I got it done, I went ahead and started hobbling toward the car. Knowing Jimmy as I did, there was no reason to expect him to show up any earlier than we had agreed too unless he shot a deer. It was obviously going to take me some time to make the trip.
When me and Jimmy had both finally arrived at his car, it was then time to figure a way to get it’s tires back on solid ground. This was accomplished by jacking the car up and putting logs, rocks and anything else we could find under the tires until we could get free and turn around. Needless to say it took many attempts at jacking that thing up and putting all this stuff underneath the tires before we were free.
Not having been to a doctor in KY up to that time, I was not sure where I should go. A friend recommended an “old doctor” that he said was one of the “best in the country” and would not charge me an ‘arm and a leg’. Well, I don’t recall if he charged very much, but I do remember looking at the x-ray and saying to myself that a ‘normal’ foot does not have the bone sticking up about an half inch, right on the top of it. The old doctor assured me however, that it was not broken and a few days of staying off of it would make it right. Sure it would. But like a fool I let it at that. Now I am reminded daily of a misadventure that happened nearly 30 years ago. Every time I walk more than a few hundred yards that old bone lets me know that it was not in the right place.
But then, if I had not busted that foot, maybe I would have forgotten about Jimmy and his grand hunting spot by now.
It is strange how we can dig up memories even in unpleasant ways, but yet cherish the little adventures we had long ago, in another world.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
America's Best
For those of us living in MN, we cannot get the mild weather out of our conversations or even our minds. Today (Jan. 5, 2012) in the early afternoon my temperature reading is 52 degrees! Now that would be about 5 degrees above most of the area, since we live in an unexplained “hot spot”. However you look at it we cannot believe our great good luck. Call it what you want, we in MN, most of us anyway, are very happy to have a mild winter. It don’t happen all that often and we can expect “hard winters” in coming years.
Naturally, this one is not over yet. If we suddenly go into a ‘nasty spell’, all this will be quickly smothered in the reality of a MN winter.
On other subjects. I had a visit with my surgeon today and she told me that all seemed well and I should plan on being able to resume a normal work load in another week. Using ‘pain’ as my guide for how quickly I can become “load bearing” again. So my ‘medical leave’ vacation is about to come to a halt. That means I must get myself afoot and start walking in order to build up my stamina before I actually find myself atop a lumber pile. It is a remarkable thing how quickly the body can go “soft”, but from too much experience in “recoveries”, I also know how quickly we can regain our strength by a daily concentration of simply walking. All the more reason to be thankful for the mild weather!
It is only January, the fall elections are not until November, but if other folks see it the way I do, we are already tired of hearing politicians feed us a pack of lies about each other, the current resident in the White House (although they don’t have to lie to make him look pathetic, but it is their nature, just to stay in practice I suppose) but worse than everything else, not only do they lie “to us”, they lie about us. They would like us to believe that we Americans, would shrivel up and die if it were not for their kindness in giving us ‘permission to breath’! I can only listen to them for but a few minutes and then get a “doomed” feeling. If these over inflated egos are the best the USA has to offer us for a President, we are in deep trouble. The only consolation I have is that I know for certain “the candidates” for the presidents office, are not the smartest most important people in America.
America's best are “working” day and night to improve on a bad situation that the professional politicians have gotten us into. Our “best” are the everyday people who go about their chosen employment with ambition and honor. Our “best” are the men and women of our military that risk life and limb to keep us free. Our “best” are business men, who in spite of vicious attacks from self serving politicians, are continuing to provide the goods and services the nation must have to keep moving. Our “best” are seen daily, usually early morning and late evening, commuting back and forth to real jobs that produce income so the economy does not totally fall in on itself. But “Our Best” are up against our “elected officials”, who more often than not, stand in opposition to success and demonize ‘wealth’, all the while they fleece the “working people”, whether rich or poor, of every last cent!
It is my dream that one day, “Our Best” get the better of these bums called politicians! How? By sticking to the capitalist system until at some point, the majority of American people understand that we can have a thriving economy again. But it will not be “provided” by “Big Brother Government”, rather a strong economy is driven by honest Americans producing goods and services at a fair price that people want and are willing to pay for.
It is a confessed fact that I am not smart enough to explain how we are suppose to “by-pass” an ‘overbearing federal government’ to reclaim our “once” thriving free enterprise system. I suspect it will only come about after enough of us, reach the point of “having nothing left to loose” and then “in mass” begin to simply “ignore” Washington and go about our businesses without asking for their “high and holy” permission. At this point in time that can’t be done. Just read any newspaper and you will find stories of businesses “shut down” due to some violation of federal code. Most often the owners failed to ‘grease the right palms’ in Washington. Cynical, yes, but tell me it is not true.
I will grant that there are plenty of sleazy business people who should be ‘out of business’, but most often, those kind of people get their due without government action.
Oh my, how did I get so far into this rant? J At this point the only thing you and I can do is to pay at least some attention to the issues involved in this next falls election. Then, having educated ourselves, we are bound by pragmatism, to vote for who we really believe will do the “least harm”. It is a fact of life that more people are capable of destroying a house, than are those competent to ‘build a house’. The “Destroyers” have been on a rampage, ‘we the people’ will, at some point, have to rebuild if we are to have a land free, proud and brave.
Naturally, this one is not over yet. If we suddenly go into a ‘nasty spell’, all this will be quickly smothered in the reality of a MN winter.
On other subjects. I had a visit with my surgeon today and she told me that all seemed well and I should plan on being able to resume a normal work load in another week. Using ‘pain’ as my guide for how quickly I can become “load bearing” again. So my ‘medical leave’ vacation is about to come to a halt. That means I must get myself afoot and start walking in order to build up my stamina before I actually find myself atop a lumber pile. It is a remarkable thing how quickly the body can go “soft”, but from too much experience in “recoveries”, I also know how quickly we can regain our strength by a daily concentration of simply walking. All the more reason to be thankful for the mild weather!
It is only January, the fall elections are not until November, but if other folks see it the way I do, we are already tired of hearing politicians feed us a pack of lies about each other, the current resident in the White House (although they don’t have to lie to make him look pathetic, but it is their nature, just to stay in practice I suppose) but worse than everything else, not only do they lie “to us”, they lie about us. They would like us to believe that we Americans, would shrivel up and die if it were not for their kindness in giving us ‘permission to breath’! I can only listen to them for but a few minutes and then get a “doomed” feeling. If these over inflated egos are the best the USA has to offer us for a President, we are in deep trouble. The only consolation I have is that I know for certain “the candidates” for the presidents office, are not the smartest most important people in America.
America's best are “working” day and night to improve on a bad situation that the professional politicians have gotten us into. Our “best” are the everyday people who go about their chosen employment with ambition and honor. Our “best” are the men and women of our military that risk life and limb to keep us free. Our “best” are business men, who in spite of vicious attacks from self serving politicians, are continuing to provide the goods and services the nation must have to keep moving. Our “best” are seen daily, usually early morning and late evening, commuting back and forth to real jobs that produce income so the economy does not totally fall in on itself. But “Our Best” are up against our “elected officials”, who more often than not, stand in opposition to success and demonize ‘wealth’, all the while they fleece the “working people”, whether rich or poor, of every last cent!
It is my dream that one day, “Our Best” get the better of these bums called politicians! How? By sticking to the capitalist system until at some point, the majority of American people understand that we can have a thriving economy again. But it will not be “provided” by “Big Brother Government”, rather a strong economy is driven by honest Americans producing goods and services at a fair price that people want and are willing to pay for.
It is a confessed fact that I am not smart enough to explain how we are suppose to “by-pass” an ‘overbearing federal government’ to reclaim our “once” thriving free enterprise system. I suspect it will only come about after enough of us, reach the point of “having nothing left to loose” and then “in mass” begin to simply “ignore” Washington and go about our businesses without asking for their “high and holy” permission. At this point in time that can’t be done. Just read any newspaper and you will find stories of businesses “shut down” due to some violation of federal code. Most often the owners failed to ‘grease the right palms’ in Washington. Cynical, yes, but tell me it is not true.
I will grant that there are plenty of sleazy business people who should be ‘out of business’, but most often, those kind of people get their due without government action.
Oh my, how did I get so far into this rant? J At this point the only thing you and I can do is to pay at least some attention to the issues involved in this next falls election. Then, having educated ourselves, we are bound by pragmatism, to vote for who we really believe will do the “least harm”. It is a fact of life that more people are capable of destroying a house, than are those competent to ‘build a house’. The “Destroyers” have been on a rampage, ‘we the people’ will, at some point, have to rebuild if we are to have a land free, proud and brave.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Natural Resources
We have a lot of debate in our country about the uses of various natural resources, and it is only ‘right’, that when we use the resources that God has put before us, we do so responsibly and with common sense.
It does appear that the debate always diverts away from any “helpful discourse”, and ends up in a “shouting match” between those who are ‘preservationist’, and everyone else. As far as believing we humans have no right to use ’natural resources’ is concerned; all I can think of is for such a person to go dig a hole, if they dare harm the ground, and crawl in it. It can only be the height of stupidity to believe that in the great cycle of life, “humans” were meant to be left outside of it. Every living organism lives from others and ultimately gives its life in sustaining the next generation.
I think of the great Salmon runs in the Northwest and Alaska. The Salmon live for one purpose, return to the place they were born to spawn. Lay their spawn and then die, to be fed upon by bears and a whole environment of life that depends upon them.
It is doubtful, in the final analysis, whether we humans are much different, from a purely biological standpoint. I am not addressing our spiritual natures and how we different from other creatures, only our biological ‘life’. We are born into families, where our parents raise us. At some point we leave the nest and have children that we raise and in the by and by, we return to the dust of the ground.
The passing upon this earth by me, does not make me especially relevant among all the life forms on earth at a given time. There are a great many creatures that would rather turn me into pure ‘protein’, given the chance, than they would run from my presence. Thank God for firearms!
If, perchance, we imagine a world of living organisms, who are all trying to get the maximum use of the natural resources that surround us, and imagine secondly, that I need to chose a ’winning side’ in this battle for resources; I am choosing mankind, humans, homo sapiens, that would be, you and me, verses Trigger my dog or any other creature. So far, from all historic observations I have made, recent and ancient, we humans are the only ones who have materially lifted ourselves up by the invention of tools, machinery etc.
The only advancement I see taking place in the animal world, is that which they enjoy on our “coat-tails”. Because my life is better, so is Trigger’s, but I observe without prejudice, if it were not for me, old Trigger would not be one bit better off than his ancestors of a thousand years ago. He would still be killing any and everything he could get his teeth into, including me, to merely survive. By the natural fact that God has created man as his “special creature”, we have every right to use the resources of nature to survive and thrive.
That being said, we would be quite foolish to destroy all natural resources in a ’quick grab’ for one or two generations, and then be left with nothing to live on. To some extent I will agree with those who point to the great harvest of our virgin forests in the 19th century, as being an over-kill. Yet, it was all that timber that built the great cities of American in less than 100 years (between 1800 - 1900).
We have the ongoing debate about ’fossil fuels’ and the importance they play in our lives. Some claim we have reached the point that there will not be enough energy for future generations at our current level of consumption. To be honest, I have no way of knowing the true facts or uncovering them.
A couple thoughts I have is this. One, are the doomsayers taking into account ongoing advances in more efficient use of such energy sources? Even if it is true, that our current use of fossil fuels cannot be sustained, does that mean there will be no inventions that are made which will greatly extend the supply of fossil fuels? Two, much of the gloomy predictions seem to be made in the name of ’political grandstanding’, so that one party “benefits” from scare tactics. This throws their whole “box of evidence” into question. So me, a common person, has no real grounds to make a judgment as to what is the best course of action.
Move from fossil fuels to wood. Now you are in an area I know some little about. It would seem that the over harvest of timber in the 1800’s would have taught Americans a lesson to make reasonable use of our forests. But I, who have made my living from the harvest of timber, observe that we are still making some “bad choices” when it comes to timber use.
I respect the MN DNR a great deal and have followed their publications and statistics for nearly 25 years. But what becomes obvious to me is that we are leaning too heavily upon certain species of low value trees, simply for a “quick fix” to a temporary problem. Our native hardwoods, oak, ash, birch etc. have been neglected and almost left to live or die in the midst of a rush to replant nearly every harvested track of timber with Aspen (popple) or Pines. The specie that stands out as being grown for a quick harvest is Aspen of one sort or another. The big uses for this has changed over the last 8-10 years. Before the housing bubble exploded, it was pressed wood or chipboard that much of the Aspen was going into as a building material for homes. It was quick, cheap and fast to build with. It is also a less than “quality” material to build with.
On June 17, 2010 an F-4 tornado hit Wadena, MN, a town about 18 miles from us. Upon touring the destruction caused by that horrible event, I was struck with one major impression. You could drive down a street lined with houses on both sides, some were gone completely, others were standing with seemingly little damage. But I noticed a pattern. All the houses left standing seemed to be houses that were built from around 1950-1970. There were very few houses left that had been built since 1990. It struck me that the only difference, had to be in the construction methods and/or materials. I am not an expert in building standards, this is just an observation, but I can’t help but think we should ‘rethink’ some of our practices.
Since the housing has gone into “depression”, other sectors of the economy might be in “recession”, but the whole housing industry is in depression and let no politician tell you otherwise. The main use for all this Aspen has now gone to make ethanol or fuel for power plants. Now ethanol is a “touchy subject” in my neck of the woods, simply because a lot of people are profiting by its production. These folks I do not fault in the least on a personal basis, the problem is that ethanol cannot stand on its own feet as a reliable fuel source. Some reports have determined that it actually takes more than a gallon of “fossil fuel” to produce a gallon of ethanol! If that be true, we really are insane! Because it is not only wood that is being consumed by the ethanol industry, but corn on a much greater scale. “Corn” is food! We are taking our “food” supply and burning it in the name of ‘political correctness’, that is what this amounts to. In the attempt to create some “homegrown” energy we are in affect, “shooting ourselves in the foot”.
Everyone is aware of the soaring food prices over the last few years and most are aware that much of this is because of the drive up in the price of corn because of the ethanol industry. Again, I don’t fault the farmers, Lord knows they needed ‘something’ to boast their industry, but I am almost certain that the nation as a whole is suffering more due to the cost of food, not to mention the tax money we have sunk into ethanol (right out of Americans pockets), than the benefit’s the farmers have received in higher corn prices. In fact, the farmers costs to raise their crops have almost, if not entirely, ate up the extra increase they get for their corn. Fertilizer, fuel and equipment costs have nearly crushed them, despite high crop prices.
So the bottom line comes right back to basic economics. Whether these “highly educated” planners and promoters of ethanol were blinded to the consequences of using corn for their dream fuel, or whether they knew what it would do to the rest of the economy is another question, I have no way of finding an honest answer to. If it was ‘unintended consequences’, then I am thinking they were not so “smart” if they could not see what was coming for food prices. If they “knew” food prices would soar, they were ruthless and dishonest.
The answer to our nations energy needs must be in an approach that makes some kind of sense. First, for the short term at least, we ought to be maximizing every domestic form of oil drilling we can in order to avoid the necessity of always being in a war in the middle east. But this is being held hostage to “politics” by the extreme environmental movement. We ought to be working with our neighbor Canada to buy oil from them, at least they are not using the money we pay for oil to buy weapons to attack us. Second, for long term we ought to let “free enterprise” invent and come up with more efficient ways to use our energy until the technology advances to new forms of practical power sources.
The worst thing we can do is to let “big government” find the solutions. That will bankrupt us all! Besides, I don’t see where governments are very reliable partners in business, they somehow always find a way to “run off with the money”, leaving behind a bankrupt company.
It does appear that the debate always diverts away from any “helpful discourse”, and ends up in a “shouting match” between those who are ‘preservationist’, and everyone else. As far as believing we humans have no right to use ’natural resources’ is concerned; all I can think of is for such a person to go dig a hole, if they dare harm the ground, and crawl in it. It can only be the height of stupidity to believe that in the great cycle of life, “humans” were meant to be left outside of it. Every living organism lives from others and ultimately gives its life in sustaining the next generation.
I think of the great Salmon runs in the Northwest and Alaska. The Salmon live for one purpose, return to the place they were born to spawn. Lay their spawn and then die, to be fed upon by bears and a whole environment of life that depends upon them.
It is doubtful, in the final analysis, whether we humans are much different, from a purely biological standpoint. I am not addressing our spiritual natures and how we different from other creatures, only our biological ‘life’. We are born into families, where our parents raise us. At some point we leave the nest and have children that we raise and in the by and by, we return to the dust of the ground.
The passing upon this earth by me, does not make me especially relevant among all the life forms on earth at a given time. There are a great many creatures that would rather turn me into pure ‘protein’, given the chance, than they would run from my presence. Thank God for firearms!
If, perchance, we imagine a world of living organisms, who are all trying to get the maximum use of the natural resources that surround us, and imagine secondly, that I need to chose a ’winning side’ in this battle for resources; I am choosing mankind, humans, homo sapiens, that would be, you and me, verses Trigger my dog or any other creature. So far, from all historic observations I have made, recent and ancient, we humans are the only ones who have materially lifted ourselves up by the invention of tools, machinery etc.
The only advancement I see taking place in the animal world, is that which they enjoy on our “coat-tails”. Because my life is better, so is Trigger’s, but I observe without prejudice, if it were not for me, old Trigger would not be one bit better off than his ancestors of a thousand years ago. He would still be killing any and everything he could get his teeth into, including me, to merely survive. By the natural fact that God has created man as his “special creature”, we have every right to use the resources of nature to survive and thrive.
That being said, we would be quite foolish to destroy all natural resources in a ’quick grab’ for one or two generations, and then be left with nothing to live on. To some extent I will agree with those who point to the great harvest of our virgin forests in the 19th century, as being an over-kill. Yet, it was all that timber that built the great cities of American in less than 100 years (between 1800 - 1900).
We have the ongoing debate about ’fossil fuels’ and the importance they play in our lives. Some claim we have reached the point that there will not be enough energy for future generations at our current level of consumption. To be honest, I have no way of knowing the true facts or uncovering them.
A couple thoughts I have is this. One, are the doomsayers taking into account ongoing advances in more efficient use of such energy sources? Even if it is true, that our current use of fossil fuels cannot be sustained, does that mean there will be no inventions that are made which will greatly extend the supply of fossil fuels? Two, much of the gloomy predictions seem to be made in the name of ’political grandstanding’, so that one party “benefits” from scare tactics. This throws their whole “box of evidence” into question. So me, a common person, has no real grounds to make a judgment as to what is the best course of action.
Move from fossil fuels to wood. Now you are in an area I know some little about. It would seem that the over harvest of timber in the 1800’s would have taught Americans a lesson to make reasonable use of our forests. But I, who have made my living from the harvest of timber, observe that we are still making some “bad choices” when it comes to timber use.
I respect the MN DNR a great deal and have followed their publications and statistics for nearly 25 years. But what becomes obvious to me is that we are leaning too heavily upon certain species of low value trees, simply for a “quick fix” to a temporary problem. Our native hardwoods, oak, ash, birch etc. have been neglected and almost left to live or die in the midst of a rush to replant nearly every harvested track of timber with Aspen (popple) or Pines. The specie that stands out as being grown for a quick harvest is Aspen of one sort or another. The big uses for this has changed over the last 8-10 years. Before the housing bubble exploded, it was pressed wood or chipboard that much of the Aspen was going into as a building material for homes. It was quick, cheap and fast to build with. It is also a less than “quality” material to build with.
On June 17, 2010 an F-4 tornado hit Wadena, MN, a town about 18 miles from us. Upon touring the destruction caused by that horrible event, I was struck with one major impression. You could drive down a street lined with houses on both sides, some were gone completely, others were standing with seemingly little damage. But I noticed a pattern. All the houses left standing seemed to be houses that were built from around 1950-1970. There were very few houses left that had been built since 1990. It struck me that the only difference, had to be in the construction methods and/or materials. I am not an expert in building standards, this is just an observation, but I can’t help but think we should ‘rethink’ some of our practices.
Since the housing has gone into “depression”, other sectors of the economy might be in “recession”, but the whole housing industry is in depression and let no politician tell you otherwise. The main use for all this Aspen has now gone to make ethanol or fuel for power plants. Now ethanol is a “touchy subject” in my neck of the woods, simply because a lot of people are profiting by its production. These folks I do not fault in the least on a personal basis, the problem is that ethanol cannot stand on its own feet as a reliable fuel source. Some reports have determined that it actually takes more than a gallon of “fossil fuel” to produce a gallon of ethanol! If that be true, we really are insane! Because it is not only wood that is being consumed by the ethanol industry, but corn on a much greater scale. “Corn” is food! We are taking our “food” supply and burning it in the name of ‘political correctness’, that is what this amounts to. In the attempt to create some “homegrown” energy we are in affect, “shooting ourselves in the foot”.
Everyone is aware of the soaring food prices over the last few years and most are aware that much of this is because of the drive up in the price of corn because of the ethanol industry. Again, I don’t fault the farmers, Lord knows they needed ‘something’ to boast their industry, but I am almost certain that the nation as a whole is suffering more due to the cost of food, not to mention the tax money we have sunk into ethanol (right out of Americans pockets), than the benefit’s the farmers have received in higher corn prices. In fact, the farmers costs to raise their crops have almost, if not entirely, ate up the extra increase they get for their corn. Fertilizer, fuel and equipment costs have nearly crushed them, despite high crop prices.
So the bottom line comes right back to basic economics. Whether these “highly educated” planners and promoters of ethanol were blinded to the consequences of using corn for their dream fuel, or whether they knew what it would do to the rest of the economy is another question, I have no way of finding an honest answer to. If it was ‘unintended consequences’, then I am thinking they were not so “smart” if they could not see what was coming for food prices. If they “knew” food prices would soar, they were ruthless and dishonest.
The answer to our nations energy needs must be in an approach that makes some kind of sense. First, for the short term at least, we ought to be maximizing every domestic form of oil drilling we can in order to avoid the necessity of always being in a war in the middle east. But this is being held hostage to “politics” by the extreme environmental movement. We ought to be working with our neighbor Canada to buy oil from them, at least they are not using the money we pay for oil to buy weapons to attack us. Second, for long term we ought to let “free enterprise” invent and come up with more efficient ways to use our energy until the technology advances to new forms of practical power sources.
The worst thing we can do is to let “big government” find the solutions. That will bankrupt us all! Besides, I don’t see where governments are very reliable partners in business, they somehow always find a way to “run off with the money”, leaving behind a bankrupt company.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
New Batteries Sometime are Dead
Today was not what I call a "nice winter day", rather it was a nasty windy, cold day. Despite that it reached almost 30 degrees. It started off around 7' with a very stiff south wind that hits our farm 'dead on'.
I was preserving my energy to help my mechanic when he came to work on the truck, since I was convinced our brand new battery was no good. Turned out I was right to. So we were spared having to buy a starter, but I got the job of returning the new battery to one of my least favorite hardware stores and explaining to the man that they really should check a battery before they sold it to a woman. Now I have a battery that I checked before he took it from the shelf and my mechanic will come back and put it in the truck. A job that I could do in 5 minutes, but not with a "cut gut"!
That was my day.
I was preserving my energy to help my mechanic when he came to work on the truck, since I was convinced our brand new battery was no good. Turned out I was right to. So we were spared having to buy a starter, but I got the job of returning the new battery to one of my least favorite hardware stores and explaining to the man that they really should check a battery before they sold it to a woman. Now I have a battery that I checked before he took it from the shelf and my mechanic will come back and put it in the truck. A job that I could do in 5 minutes, but not with a "cut gut"!
That was my day.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Sunshine and Beagles
Second day of the New Year and I am wondering where the last week went. The pain medication they give out these days may work good for ‘pain’, but they sure don’t do anything for the memory.
I was sleepless late last night and while I sat reading, it occurred to me that a friend had visited me in the hospital on the day of my surgery, that I had not remembered. I ask my wife and she knew nothing about it. So I had to check the facts and sure enough, said person was there and it had not occurred to me for almost a week! Right then I pulled the plug on the medication.
There is not much that can lift ‘downed spirits’ as a bright, cold, sunny MN day (7° at daylight). Just a few inches of snow with the gale wind laying down, made a most agreeable time to break out for some fresh air and locomotion. Walking back and forth across the house just does not cut it, when you are an outdoor person at heart, I don’t care how big the house is!
Have some friends that have been ice fishing and the reports are good. They are kind enough to send me pictures of great northern pike laying on the ice and walleye, fresh out of the water. It is enough to make the mouth water and start eyeballing the portable fish house hanging in the rafters!
In a few weeks me and some fishing buddies will be up on the Lake of the Woods trying our hand. Usually we get good eating and sometimes we hit it just right and catch hundreds of fish. Either way it will be nice to continue a ‘tradition’ that four friends have kept up for over 20 years.
There are some benefits to being ‘laid up’ for a few weeks in January, not many. One is that I can relax a little and enjoy the beauty of some fresh fallen snow that was not enough to require my attention with the tractor and snowplow, that would have been inconvenient in my weakened condition.
This morning I had the treat of watching our beagle “Trigger”, pull our daughter around the driveway on a sled. Beagles are not known as sled dogs! But this little fellow is ‘game’, all she has to do is throw a treat about 30 feet in front of them and away they go. It is good, though, that I did not witness the cat chase, I don’t think my incision is up to that much of a belly laugh, especially when the cat went under a low building, too low for the child on the sled! J
No one knows what this new year holds, except God, and He ain’t telling, that I know of. But one thing is certain, I made it through December, even though my wife adds, “barely”, when I make the statement. Either way December of 2011 is history. We might have deep cold yet in January and February and piles of snow in March and April, but the days already are getting longer hours of daylight and by February the pace picks up and before one is aware of it, another year will be well on its way.
I was sleepless late last night and while I sat reading, it occurred to me that a friend had visited me in the hospital on the day of my surgery, that I had not remembered. I ask my wife and she knew nothing about it. So I had to check the facts and sure enough, said person was there and it had not occurred to me for almost a week! Right then I pulled the plug on the medication.
There is not much that can lift ‘downed spirits’ as a bright, cold, sunny MN day (7° at daylight). Just a few inches of snow with the gale wind laying down, made a most agreeable time to break out for some fresh air and locomotion. Walking back and forth across the house just does not cut it, when you are an outdoor person at heart, I don’t care how big the house is!
Have some friends that have been ice fishing and the reports are good. They are kind enough to send me pictures of great northern pike laying on the ice and walleye, fresh out of the water. It is enough to make the mouth water and start eyeballing the portable fish house hanging in the rafters!
In a few weeks me and some fishing buddies will be up on the Lake of the Woods trying our hand. Usually we get good eating and sometimes we hit it just right and catch hundreds of fish. Either way it will be nice to continue a ‘tradition’ that four friends have kept up for over 20 years.
There are some benefits to being ‘laid up’ for a few weeks in January, not many. One is that I can relax a little and enjoy the beauty of some fresh fallen snow that was not enough to require my attention with the tractor and snowplow, that would have been inconvenient in my weakened condition.
This morning I had the treat of watching our beagle “Trigger”, pull our daughter around the driveway on a sled. Beagles are not known as sled dogs! But this little fellow is ‘game’, all she has to do is throw a treat about 30 feet in front of them and away they go. It is good, though, that I did not witness the cat chase, I don’t think my incision is up to that much of a belly laugh, especially when the cat went under a low building, too low for the child on the sled! J
No one knows what this new year holds, except God, and He ain’t telling, that I know of. But one thing is certain, I made it through December, even though my wife adds, “barely”, when I make the statement. Either way December of 2011 is history. We might have deep cold yet in January and February and piles of snow in March and April, but the days already are getting longer hours of daylight and by February the pace picks up and before one is aware of it, another year will be well on its way.
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