Rena and I are back in Manitoba for the winter.  Muzzleloader season opened today and the deer are just starting to make some sign up here.

All of my life, I have lived near the lake.  I did not learn until I was older that Finlanders always live by a lake.  This business is a perfect fit.  Lakes and fish are part of my life year round.  Growing up on the farm in Manitoba, just a mile from Lake Manitoba, we hunted geese and ducks on the lake, fished the lake, swam in the lake and played hockey on the lake in the fall.  Since the diversion of way to much water into our lake by the Manitoba government this spring and the lake flooded to epic proportions,  the lake has changed.  The water has pushed at least a half mile in in our area and more than that in others, the shore along the lake has been  eroded and either pushed up on shore or sucked out into the lake.  Acres of hundred year old elm, birch, maple and oak trees are dying and the sandy soil beneath them is eroded away and the roots are exposed.  Swamps and muskrat houses exist now where farmers have hayed the land for many years.   They are building a ditch in order to relieve the pressure but it will be many years until the land is usable once again.  The water has started to retreat.  This is the first time I have seen it.  Everything was normal when we headed to Red Lake in the spring…