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Hello, neighbors, and hello to anybody else who has found their way here. This is the page of the
Birch Hollow Lake Association, which is 86 families with cabins and homes around Birch Hollow Lake,
plus a few friends from town who fish it. We keep an eye on the water, the fish and the loons, we
throw a boat parade every Fourth of July, and once a year we argue politely at the town hall.
I'm Hazel Stratton. My husband Ernie's folks bought our cabin on the east shore in 1958, and
Ernie and I spent every summer vacation here for thirty-odd years while he ran machines at a plant
in Milwaukee and I worked the front desk for a dentist. When we both retired in 1994, we put in
insulation and a real furnace and moved up for good. Our kids thought we'd last one winter. This is
our sixth. Ernie takes the water clarity readings and I write the page, which my grandson set up for
me and which I have now figured out mostly by myself.
Summer 1999 News
Our Loons
Two pairs nested this year, same as last: the North Bay pair in the cattails by the old beaver
lodge, and the Island pair on the west side of Birch Island. The North Bay pair hatched one
chick around June 20 and raised it all summer. It's nearly as big as its parents now, gray-brown
instead of black and white, and diving on its own. The Island pair's nest failed in early June; the
eggs were gone one morning, and we suspect a raccoon, though a wake may have washed them out first.
So: one chick fledged. Not a bad year for a lake our size. The adults will leave us in October,
and the young one stays on a few weeks longer before it heads south on its own. It always amazes me
that it knows where to go.
Please, and I say this every year: give loons plenty of room, at least a couple hundred feet.
Don't chase them for a picture, don't circle them in the pontoon, and slow down near the North Bay and
the island in June when they're on the nest. These are our loons. All right, they're the lake's loons.
But we've watched them for a long time.
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Milfoil Watch at the Landing
Good news first: no Eurasian water milfoil has been found in Birch Hollow Lake. Bad news: it has
turned up in other lakes in the county, and it travels from lake to lake on boat trailers and
propellers. Once it gets in, it grows into thick mats that choke out native plants and make swimming
and boating miserable, and you never really get rid of it.
This summer twelve volunteers took turns at the public landing on weekend mornings, talking with boaters,
handing out pamphlets and helping check trailers. James Dipaolo runs the watch. Before you put in, and
when you take out:
• Pull every plant fragment off the boat, trailer, motor and anchor.
• Drain the bilge, live well and bait bucket away from the water.
• Never dump leftover bait in the lake.
Eurasian milfoil has feathery leaves in whorls of four around the stem, each leaf with a dozen or more
pairs of thin leaflets. Our native milfoil has fewer pairs. If you see something that worries you, bring a
sprig to James in a plastic bag and he'll take it to the DNR office to be checked.
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Walleyes and Wakes
Walleye: Last October the association paid for 3,400 extended-growth walleye fingerlings, six to eight
inches long, stocked off the landing under a DNR permit. Sherman Mabry says a few people have caught
little ones this summer and let them go, which is exactly right. If they do well they'll be keepers in
three or four years.
Slow-no-wake: A reminder that the town's ordinance makes the whole lake slow-no-wake before 10:00 a.m.
and after 7:00 p.m., and state law says slow-no-wake within 100 feet of any pier, raft or marked
swimming area at all hours. Most folks are good about it. You know who you are if you aren't.
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Fourth of July Boat Parade Winners
Twenty-three boats this year, the most ever, circling the lake counterclockwise from the landing at 2:00
on the Fourth with a good crowd on the piers. The judges sat on the Wests' pontoon with a cooler of
lemonade and took it very seriously.
| Award | Winner |
| Most Patriotic | The Hershbergers' pontoon, done up as a Revolutionary War ship with a cardboard cannon, three grandchildren in tricorn hats, and a fife |
| Best Decorated | Joni Cochrane's family: a giant birthday cake for the country, with a candle you could see from shore |
| Funniest | The Gervais boys in a rowboat dressed as "The Loon Patrol," with paper beaks and a megaphone |
| Best Kid Crew | The Mabry grandkids, who paddled two canoes lashed together the whole way around |
| Oldest Boat | Rudolph Pender's 1952 wooden runabout, varnished like a piano |
Fall Reminders
- Get piers and boat lifts out before freeze-up. Moving ice will wreck a pier, and it
usually happens the week after you said you'd get to it. Most of us aim for mid-October.
- Seasonal folks: shut off and drain your water lines, and leave the cupboard doors open under the
sinks. Let us know if you'd like somebody to look in on your place this winter; there are eleven of us up
here year-round now.
- Fall turnover. Sometime in October, when the water on top cools down to the same temperature
as the deep water, the whole lake mixes from top to bottom. For a week or two the water can look a little
murky and smell a bit swampy at the shore. That's normal and it's healthy; it brings oxygen down to the
bottom for the winter.
- Rake your leaves away from the shore, and please don't burn them at the water's edge. Leaves
and ashes washing in feed the algae next summer.
- Dues for 1999 are $20 per family, and 79 of 86 families have paid. Thank you! If you're one of
the seven, Irvin Hannon would love to hear from you.
The Spring 2000 Ice-Out Contest
Guess the day and the hour the ice goes out of Birch Hollow Lake next spring. A dollar a guess, as many
guesses as you like. The closest guess wins half the pot, and the other half goes into the loon fund.
The official rule: the ice is out when Ernie can row from our pier to Birch Island without touching
ice. Ernie is the sole judge, and he has been known to row out at six in the morning to check. His
decision is final, as he keeps reminding me.
Guesses with your dollars to me (Hazel) by March 1. Last spring the ice went out April 16 at about 3 in
the afternoon, and Emily Dunagan won $93 with a guess of April 16 at 9 a.m. You can study every ice-out
since 1975 on the lake data page, though I can tell you it won't help much.
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Officers and Committees, 1999-2000
| President | Harris West |
| Vice President | Andrew Gervais |
| Secretary | Linda Endicott |
| Treasurer | Irvin Hannon |
| Directors | Margie Raynor, Fred Hershberger, Joni Cochrane |
| Water Clarity | Ernie Stratton |
| Loon Watch | Hazel Stratton (who else?) |
| Milfoil Watch | James Dipaolo |
| Fish | Sherman Mabry |
| Boat Parade | Paige Bostick |
Pictures: Ernie took a whole roll of the loon chick from the canoe with the long lens,
from a respectful distance, which means most of them are of a small dot. The good ones are going in
the newsletter, and here once my grandson shows me the scanner at the library.
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