Monday, March 2, 2015

On Frozen Pond




Not a whole lot to do today except a little planning, designing and watching the snowman that the wife made me help her build yesterday melt. The snow has pretty much made the outside less than inviting for any of the projects I had been working on.

I am planning on scaling back the garden a bit this year so I have more time to focus on fencing and a few other repair and grooming projects. I think rather than allow half the garden plot to go to weeds or keeping it tilled I might just plant a quarter acre plot of Buckwheat in it and see what happens. The bees will love it and no matter what happens it certainly won't go to waste.

Anyway more on that later.

I read an article this morning about a child that drowned down South of us a ways when he fell into a frozen over pond. Frozen water seems to be an especial paranoia topic here in Missouri. I am sure it is probably as much of a danger in other spots but somewhere North of the Small-Hold it seems to take on an entire different aspect. I noticed when I lived either up in South Dakota or in Wisconsin that I had what the natives considered an un-natural fear of iced over bodies of water. Especially flowing bodies of water like rivers. I was taught you never, never, ever walk on ice when the water is flowing under it.

It took hours for a couple hunting buddies of mine to convince me that pheasant hunting along the banks of a small frozen river was the best way to bag some birds up in the Dakotas in the middle of the Winter, and my complete reluctance to attend a tail gate beer party on the frozen Fox river in Wisconsin was a topic of much amusement to my friends and family up that way for years. I still get reminded of it occasionally today.

The people up that way just didn't seem to have the same fear of ice and water as we do here. Some of those crazy bastards would be out driving on that stuff while it was cracking under their vehicles.

Not me thank you very much.

One night they tricked me and told me we were hanging out in a field until I noticed a large stress fracture and then I could even hear ice popping. They didn't think it was funny when I unloaded one of the coolers and held on to it all night in case the ice broke though.

Around here walking on ice is rarely if ever a safe proposition. In fact it is so rare I would say very few seem to ever even attempt it. Maybe further North it happens some but not in Central Missouri.


I am not sure what the magical factor is for how long it has to be below freezing to get enough ice to support your weight. Many old timers assure me that we used to get Winters cold enough to walk out on the ice but I can't remember it in my lifetime unless it happened while I was away.

One night up in Wisconsin this lady was making me say different things so she could hear my accent or so she said. She kept asking me the names for things and one of her questions was "What do you call those things you fish in". I knew she wanted me to say shack or shanty or something like that but I looked her in the eye and said "Lady, Where I am from we call those boats cause you don't go out on the ice in Winter".

She got a laugh out of that.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!!


20 comments:

  1. Preppy, after 45 years in Missouri, I have the same healthy respect for frozen-over ponds. Folks walk, hike, hunt, trip, fish, and skate on ice up here all the time. The answer isn't "When somebody heavier than you walks out there first."

    It has to be at LEAST 4" thick, and I'd personally want to double that.

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    1. RP - Ya 4 inches doesn't seem like a lot especially over something I knew was deeper than I could stand up in and a warm building was far away. I tried walking across a stream once that was only about three feet deep and the ice broke and I thought I was going to lose my feet before I got home :)

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  2. Considering it only takes a few minutes in freezin water for hypothermia to set in, I'd say it is a good "fear" to have. Once in awhile we lose a smowmobiler because once you're in for more than 5m your body shuts down and you get sleepy. Esp. With all that cold weather gear on.

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    1. fjord - And there is that too!!! I never even thought about the hypothermia really. I was more worried about the falling in and not being able to find the hole or crawl back out....

      More reasons to stay away from hard water :)

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  3. When I lived in Huron, South Dakota my buddies would try to get me out ice fishing or hunting across frozen ponds and rivers and I wouldn't go out on them, I a Oregon, same way there, you may have a layer of ice on that still pond, but it ain't enough to support a cats weight let alone your weight. I even have an uncle in Michigan that would try to get me out on Lake Michigan when it froze up to ice fish... I stayed on the shore.

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    1. Cederq - I lived in Herreid, SD. and it took them a long while to convince me to walk on the stream that meandered around the area. They were right though it wasn't deeper than I could stand up in and late season those pheasant did tend to congregate on the stream edges. It took a lot of convincing though to get me to try it.

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  4. I don't care how far North I would go, or how many ice shanties or trucks on the lake I would see, there was no way in hell I was getting on the ice. Irrational? Maybe. But still. I'd be sitting with you on the shore, don't care how many stinking northerns or crappie they bring up through that HOLE in the ICE.

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    1. Carolyn - I am reminded of a few years back when it seemed we kept hearing all those stories about several dozens of people and their cars being stuck on a mini-iceberg in the great lakes. I am like you that's an experience that I KNOW I won't have to live through :)

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  5. Anxious to hear about your Buckwheat honey. Just read about it last night. Article said it was very dark, like molasses. Trying to get nephews to plant buckwheat cause bees enjoy it but don't know about the market for dark honey and don't want my ignorance to sabotage their crop. Any info? Peg in Florida

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    1. Anon - I planted, or helped to plant, a few acres of buckwheat around my hives back in 2012 for the food plots since the ground was in CRP. The bees really loved the blooms and worked it hard but that was the year we had the drought and we lost most of the buckwheat before it really got going. I am not sure what kind of a dent my 1/2 acre or so will make but we will see and I will certainly keep everyone abreast of the situation. Thank you for the interest.

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  6. There is never a good reason to walk on frozen water that is not in an ice rink - or at least, I cannot think of a good one. Well played Preppy.

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    1. TB - I think there has to be a line. Call it the ice line, that is akin to the Mason-Dixon line where ice fishing actually starts. I am interested enough I want to find this line now :)

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  7. I grew up in Wisconsin on the Wolf River, not too far from the Fox, about 30-40 minutes. I was never a fan of ice fishing myself, and the ice constantly cracking always gave me the creeps. But, I have crazy relatives that have an ice shack they set up each year out on the lakes and rivers when it finally freezes over. All to often though you hear about someone losing their prized Ford F150 to the deep blue bottom.

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    1. Izzy - I can imagine. One thing that did fascinate me about the ice up there was when the ice shove started and moved all that ice on top of itself into Lake Oshkosh and it would form those huge ice stacks. Really creepy.

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  8. When the kids were still at home and the garden was much larger there was always a large plot of buckwheat. I sometimes harvested it for making flour, but most often planted it as a cover crop to keep down weeds and tilled it in as green manure. Great stuff! And it was always covered with bees.
    Some of the lakes up north have so many ice houses on them in the winter that they set up road signs, you can have pizza delivered to your ice shack on some lakes! lol

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    1. NS - That is pretty much my exact plan for it. Supposedly it will choke out the weeds too but we will see. I have heard such rumors before about things and seen em fail miserably when it comes to Missouri weeds.

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  9. PP - you'll cringe when i tell you that as kids, during the winter, our favourite past-time was called "squishing". basically, you go down to the ocean and hop from one iceberg to another, the icebergs floating in the water and bobbing in the waves. we didn't lose many kids due to drowning but just about everyone fell in the water at least once a winter. man was that cold water! but, we'd just run that kid to the nearest house and whoever's house it was would take them in, get the clothes off of them, warm them up, feed them and then send them home. i swear some kids fell in on purpose just for the attention! it was good that there were so many houses littered along the shore.

    as for ice fishing, the guys up here use an auger on the lakes, streams and rivers and then measure the ice. 10 inches is enough to set up a hut and 12 inches can take a medium truck. everyone up here ice fishes - even me! (well, i just drop a line and then mingle with the other people. but then, that's what ice fishing is!)

    much love bro! your friend,
    kymber

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    1. Kymber - Was there any fish kissing involved? :) Sorry I couldn't resist...

      That's crazy stuff though. I would be on the beach cheering. What about the tide currents didn't they present a danger?

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    2. sorry bro - no fish kissing involved. fish kissing is a deeply meaningful and spiritual ritual - you can't just kiss fish for any old reason!

      as for tides...i don't think any of us thought of that. and because all of our parents had grown up playing the same game - they just let us do it as they knew they couldn't stop us.

      more good winter fun saw us running to the back of a car when it was at a stop light and grabbing the fender and hanging on for as long as we could. ah. the memories!

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  10. I've ice fished as far south as Highway 36 in Missouri. That's probably as far down as I'd want to go.
    In Kirksville the Depart. of Conservation stocks a trout pond and lots of folks catch the trout through the ice. I saw a few guys out there last weekend.

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