Yesterday she cut and stacked firewood for four hours. Then she went ice-fishing on a farm pond.
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| In an experiment in southern Michigan, it only took one year for the bluegill standing biomass to flatline from fifty pounds per acre of breeding stock. The majority of the standing biomass five years after the start of the experiment were in 1" to 4" long fish. |
I was surprised to learn that the current recommendations for harvesting bluegills/sunfish/bream is 10 pounds per acre of pond if the fish are not fed. That is from 350 pounds of bluegills per acre. That just seem very light.
One could make a credible case for a gillnet that catches 2.5"-to-3.5" bluegills and stocking predator fish that could keep a lid on 1.0"-to-2.5" numbers. I wonder if the bones on 3.5" bluegills would soften enough to be edible if treated like sardines.
Wood
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| Fence posts |
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| Wedging pieces into an old tire save a lot of bending over and chasing after stray pieces. The tire also does a nice job holding them up and presenting them to the splitting maul. |
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| Our fireplace insert does not like big wood. |
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| Staghorn sumac growing in an old barn foundation |
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Bluegill and Crappie hit their limits pretty quickly. And I'd just cook and eat them, rather than trying to turn them into sardines.
ReplyDeleteThat tire trick is neat, I'll keep it in mind.
ReplyDeleteThere are a handful of factors at play when it comes to having eating sized panfish in a pond. In the case of this particular pond, not knowing many details, I'd probably stock an appropriate number of appropriately-sized bass to thin out some of the bluegills.
ReplyDeleteIn my teen years I worked moving barges as they loaded corn down a huge semi- truck sized chute 24 hours a day.
ReplyDeleteSince I worked 2-2, I was able to watch a guy use a throw net to fill rubber trash cans with corn fed carp.
I asked my grandmother if she wanted some since they were offered.
I spent 4 hours cleaning carp, which she pressure cooked, bones and all.
She would then mix with corn meal and fry up fish patties. Wow were they tasty with some hush puppies and iced tea.
Several years ago I bought a ‘kindling cracker’ stand for my husband to use splitting wood indoors during the winter. Doesn’t hold all the wood a tire does, and it’s pricey, but we find using a 4 lb hammer much easier than splitting with the maul.
ReplyDeleteSouthern NH
There's not an easy way to split firewood. There's some less hard ways to do it, but it's still work.
ReplyDeleteFiskers makes a really nice splitting axe. Worth every penny!
Somebody gave me an electric over hydraulic log splitter a couple of years ago. It's a mantis brand. Pretty stout for what it is. It'll split 6" elm and 8" sweetgum. I highly recommend a hydraulic splitter. Especially if your old and decrepit! Axe work is a young mans job.