Oct 14 - a veritable smorgasbord

I'll do this blog in reverse order ...

I went fishing this morning to the crappie place -- you know what I mean -- and although it was obvious that there were many around, they weren't biting. I did get a sunfish though, which went back, and a small pike that is now cleaned and in the fridge.

Last night was the smorgasbord -- two sunfish, a rock bass, a catfish, a perch ... all of which I threw back ... and an 11" crappie. The crappie is in the fridge with the pike to comprise another meal.

We had the fish for dinner last night -- remaining fillet from Alex's pike, the catfish and the three crappie -- we still like pike but the crappie were quite good (and boneless !), and the catfish was good but had a different texture.

Most of my day was spent trying to deal with a tree that fell on the property -- well, almost fell. A hemlock that had died after our construction was due to be dropped this winter -- Jim Matthews was going to help me -- however, it took matters into its own hands, so to speak.

We had a strong wind-storm yesterday morning and the tree snapped about 15 feet from the ground and leaned against a limb from a yellow birch, hanging over the shed. It is probably 10" or so diameter where it broke. It was not safe standing/leaning there so I put a pulley about 25' up in an adjacent hemlock and used the winch from the 4-wheeler to pull at it but no luck. With tension on the rope, however, and the 4-wheeler tied to another tree I was confident that it would not fall if I were to cut it with a chain-saw right at the break. Sure enough that worked and the base of the tree was then suspended over the ground with the top still leaning against the birch branch. I then let the winch out expecting the tree to lower to the ground and the top to fall, hopefully away from the shed. Not luck -- the base is now standing on the ground and the top is leaning against the birch. That's actually not the entire story -- at first the entire tree -- and it's big -- was suspended by its branches snagged on the branch of the birch. That birch branch probably has a diameter of 6". It's quite strong !

What to do now ? Well, long story short, it's still standing/leaning there. I tried to get a rope up the tree as far as possible and pull it over from the other side, hopefully falling and missing the shed. I was not able to manage that with a straight pull from the winch. I probably need to get the rope higher and probably need to use a pulley as well to double the strength of the winch pull. I gave up at that point because I was tired and the black flies were going crazy.

Looking for something mindless and not strenuous, I decided to make some more shotshells, cranking out 130 more shells and using up all the steel-shot wads. Alex and I are now well stocked for the next 2-3 years, probably, with about 275 shells loaded.

Oh -- I did not go fishing yesterday a.m. because it was raining. So ... that's the entire day, mostly in reverse. Today, the 15th, I just got back from town picking up milk, spark plugs, snelled hooks and a bobber ... what a combo ! I may try some more work on the tree since I've got another approach that might work.

The temperature is dropping (thank goodness, that will dispel the black flies) and the wood stove is on. Sandy has been working at the basement baseboards up in the garage -- conditioner, stain & varathane. Next she needs to paint the walls so that I can attach the baseboard that I cut over a year ago. She promised to do her part this year and she's just squeaking under the deadline !

That's it !