Jeff and I like to have a little fun. Every year we have a traditional sledding day. Today was that day. It was a gorgeous Spring day to be outdoors!

The cottonwood trees around here sure are big!

Last night the whole sky was lit up by northern lights! We love it when we get to see them, even if we have to stay out till 2am in the freezing cold and wind!

On our first ice fishing trip for pike with Tim he got 2, Jeff got 1, and I got one…here’s a picture of mine and Jeff’s pike side by side. Mine was the biggest!

Here we are on a nearby lake pike fishing with a friend. It was a cold breezy day so I hid behind my machine to stay warm.

We may be done bringing trees to the cabin but we still have lots of chopping and stacking to do! We have logs in a couple of places that need to be dealt with now. Jeff is starting to chainsaw and axe some of the new wood we got and I’m loading up the sled with old logs that were cut and stacked alongside the house years ago. We’ll use the old logs now and once that space is emptied out we’ll fill it back up with the new wood we just got once it’s all cut into firewood and it will cure a couple of years before we use it. Big job ahead!

Winter is the best time to get firewood. It’s easier to haul it through the woods on sleds in the snow by snowmachine than to do it by the 6 wheeler. It takes a lot of firewood to heat the cabin all year long. Jeff likes to get about 5 trees a year. He’s eco friendly and picks on dead or dying birch and beetle killed Spruce which are all over. Some of these trees are massive in size. I can’t chainsaw them but once Jeff cuts them up I can load them into the sled and haul them back to the cabin and unload them there. Jeff can only chainsaw for so long. It’s hard on lyour shoulders so he pulled a number of big sections of trees back to the cabin and they’ll be cut up as he has time and energy. All that wood will still need to be cut up into sizes that fit into the woodstove.

In April the river starts melting and you find more water along the trails as you travel on it. It’s still got feet of ice on it now but probably by the end of April we won’t be able to ride the snow machines on it any longer. As you can see in the last picture there is just a narrow ice bridge going across that section of the trail. When it goes out we won’t be able to use it any longer.

Cooked up some of the burbot we’ve been catching. It’s such a good white meat fish. They call it poor man’s lobster because it tastes a bit like lobster when you boil it and dip it in butter. I just fried it this time and it’s really good this way too!

Caught a few burbot ice fishing in the river!