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!!!!