Monday, February 16

Mon Feb 16th… Winter is hard on EVERYTHING in it’s path……

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Winter isn’t only hard on people as we try to function on a daily basis…… looking at the pictures I took this morning, you can see that the devastating cold of this winter has affected far more than the human’s inhabiting the north. These pictures were taken at our neighbor’s pond, just 100 yards from his summer cottage. Tony and his wife were up over the holiday weekend with his daughter, her husband and two kids, and somewhere along the line, his grandson was at the pond and noticed the fish frozen in and under the ice at the edge of the pond. The fish on top of the ice, were under it near the edge and after breaking the ice, they pulled them out and after inspecting the dead fish, the kids threw them out onto the ice for the birds and foxes to devour. This could be a fluke occurrence or…..it could be nature’s way of thinning the population of fish in a small pond, by this happening every so many years. I think the fish died in the shallows trying to get oxygen from the edges where spring water seeps into the pond. The ice was thick enough and snow covered long enough that photosynthesis probably ceased to occur as usual, due to the continued darkness caused by the snow. If this occurred, there would soon be a depletion of oxygen in the water for the fish and they would suffocate. I know the feed stream was frozen solid, so the only new water in to the pond would have been spring water and the edges were frozen to about sixteen inches down.
I hope that our pond was not affected this way, because it is sixteen feet deep in the center and adjoins the spring fed stream that flowed even when everything froze over, because there were slivers of moving, unfrozen water in the center of the stream and our pond is at least seven feet deep where the stream flows into and out of the pond, so our fish could get plenty of feed and oxygen there. They actually need very little of both to survive this time of the year, because their metabolism has slowed greatly and I believe they really don’t even feed below forty degrees, so our fish should have been ok. I hope so anyway, but it’s a shame that Tony’s pond suffered such a loss of really nice bass, crappie and sunfish. It will replenish this summer, because there is a channel tie between Tony’s pond and the huge beaver lake which lays about 50 yards beyond his pond and even though the wildlife will dine on them, it’s a shame about the fish dying.
It’s still too cold to actually work outside normally, so we will busy ourselves getting ready for Vick’s family’s arrival here later for dinner. Vicki is at this moment, preparing, preparing, preparing and until she is done……… will have enough food to feed several families, TWICE!!
I may venture out to play with wiring or the gate……… you know… all the stuff I keep threatening to do on a regular basis, but never seem to get accomplished. I did, however get a rear light fixture installed and on a dusk to dawn control, so we would never have to stumble in the dark behind the barn again, but I have more lighting to install as time and weather permits, so who knows…… maybe I’ll get some done today…… We’ll see………

































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