-34 & chicken noodle soup

this morning is a chilly one! we woke up to the sound of the 12volt beeper this morning - the generator had died and left us powerless at 6:45am. it was a cold, but beautiful morning to loose power - clear and starry, the sky lavender in the east, where the sun would eventually rise. it turns out that the generator had actually over heated of all things! i assume the draw must have been greater due to the cold, and it just got to hot inside the shed. it took travis longer to suit up to go outside, then it did to actually figure out what was wrong!

this morning travis is going to go help william (a trapper down the lake) set his net. he helped him set one yesterday and he drew me a picture of the whole contraption when he got home - it amazing! i've never seen the set up for netting fish under the ice and have often wondered about it. if you have a net, you obviously have to have it strung out, from A to B under the ice - and doing this is what i wondered about. the way they do it is to drill a big hole and put a board with a contraption on it and a rope attached to that into the water. when you pull the rope over and over it grabs onto the ice under the water and pulls it self across. once you've pulled it far enough, you clear the ice off, drill a hole and there it is! you take the contraption out, attach your net to the rope, and pull it through. its pretty darn cool!

travis and william are setting a net near our place this morning, coming here for lunch and then going back to check the one they set yesterday. the one they set yesterday may have some pickerel in it, where as the one they are setting closer to hear is mainly for whitefish. if its not too cold this afternoon i might go with them, well have to see.

last nights roasted a chicken is simmering on the stove with veggies and spices as we speak. the windows are all fogged up and the house smells lovely! william brought us some groceries the other day, when he came in from cross lake. we were running low on potatoes and didn't have any many veggies for soup so it was nice to get topped up. the potatoes were protected well enough to not freeze over the 170km trip, but the carrots and celery didn't make the trip unfrozen. its just as well though, they are only for soup, so i'll just keep them frozen and pull out what i need when i need it.

well, my coffee cup is empty, and the sun it up - so i should do my part as well!