No Time to Fish

Dealing With the Rust on My Salem Ice Cabin

Boy, isn't that a sad headline, No Time To Fish.  Unfortunately this is true but I do have some good excuses!  First of all my Ranger remains at Frankies to get the rest of the insurance work done from the time when some low life's broke into my boat and literally ripped out my flush mount electronics. Although I got my rig back functional, there still needed work to be done on the dash pieces that the electronics were mounted into.  The bow dash was broke so we riveted it together, and the console was scratched up pretty bad, nothing that would affect my fishing but it seemed like a good time to get the boat in and get this stuff finished up. Although the bow trim is relatively easy the console replacement isn't that quick, and because I want it done right....if it takes a couple of weeks so be it, I just want to make sure it's ready to go by September 16th so I have time to get everything repack in the boat for our trip to Lac Seul.  My other excuses are that Mille Lacs Lake has been reclosed to walleye fishing last week as well, the river has been running high and fast due to the recent rains.  Of course there is plenty to do around the house, getting ready for the upcoming Ice Fishing Season, namely fixing the huge amount of rust on my Wheel House frame.  I had LimoJoe stop by and with his dustless sand blaster, he removed most of the visible rust from the frame.  It's sort of a mess but it works really good by cleaning the metal completely free of rust.  After he was done with the actual sandblasting he rinsed off the sand with a mixture designed to remove the sand and deposit it a temporary coating to prevent the bear metal from starting to rust.  Using a new product I was unaware of, PDR15, it really worked good in coating the trailer frame, however it sticks to your hands and does not come off!  I got the first coat done and am planning on giving it a finish coat next week.  It is some pretty amazing stuff and it looks like new again!

A pre 1930's corn processing machine

Sunday used to be the day when my younger brother Steve and I would go motorcycling around the La Crosse, WI area.  Well, since the motorcycle was totalled in 2014 I have directed my attention to the Fountain City Farm Fest.  It is quite interesting as they have a number of old turn of the century farm implements such as very large Steam tractors which ran a number of interesting machinery. They had a huge steam tractor which ran an old time sawmill and were actually cutting rough cut lumber, quite interesting.  Most of the real old machinery was belt driven as you can see in the picture of this core schuker.  When the harvest cam around farmers would actually cut the corn plants at ground level then tie them up in a vertical stack called Corn Sheaf.  After drying in the field, they would get a wagon and stack these sheafs on it then take it to a machine like this.  One could throw an entire sheaf into the hopper and out the left end would come totally husked corn cobs and on the right it spit out nice chopped corn stalks to be uses as cattle feed and bedding. Now days they simply take a $650,000 combine, put a corn picking head on it and the combine cuts the stalks, removes the ears of corn, then they remove
the kernels of corn, from the cobs.  Shelled corn is easy to dry, easy to store and one man can do the work of 30 men Years ago.  Farming is big business these days as I stood among over $1,000,000.00 in equipment, all GPS/computer controlled, nothing like 40 years ago when I used to help bale hay back in Eleva during the summers.

Hopefully next week I'll have the boat back which should give me time to get it read for Lac Seul. Saturday is the Annual Kramer Open, a 100 bird sporting clays shoot that I use to go with my dearly departed friend Tom Emmons, it's good to go as it serves as a good tribute to Tom and the times we had together.  The wheel house needs another coat of PDF15 and put back together,  the pears are close to be picked and the Pole Shed need a good cleaning.  Dang, there will be snow pretty soon! It's a good time to think about my friend Tim Smith and his house on the beach in Naples Florida.  You can be assured that this Hurricane Irma is going to raise some hell with it as the storm track has it right in the bullsye.  I guess we should be thankful that we only deal with very narrow Tornados and not a 20 mile wide cyclone!