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SUNBURG, Minn. - When you no longer have faith that you can move the bog, turn the job over to 10 farmhands.

With three motor boats, a pontoon boat and a chainsaw with a three-foot bar, Kevin Lundberg and his crew of 10 farm workers removed a 20- to 30-foot-wide section of the bog that has plugged the channel or pass linking Norway and Games lakes since last summer.

"A win-win for everybody,'' Lundberg said. The opening is wide enough to allow passage by motor boats and pontoon boats, he said.
With rain keeping them from farm work, Lundberg said that he and the workers from Lundberg Farms decided Tuesday, June 19, to take a stab at removing the bog.

They were able to cut parts of the bog into approximate 20-foot by 20-foot pieces and tow them with hooks of their own making to a site in the southwest corner of Norway Lake. The pieces are staked there but will be placed on state-owned land with the permission of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and eventually removed.

Lundberg said they estimate that they have removed about 10 percent of the bog, which had plugged the access like a cork in a bottle. He is planning to return at month's end with Oscar Oakes of Oakes Lawn Services, Spicer, and volunteers to take on the task of removing the remainder of the bog.

Now that there is a channel, it is possible to get behind the bog with watercraft and push on it. That should make it possible to finally remove the bog, Lundberg said.

Oakes has a motor-powered barge that will be put into service. After a busy and hectic spring, Oakes had experienced mechanical difficulties with the barge and wasn't able to put it to work on the bog earlier this June as initially planned, Lundberg explained.

With the channel opening, boaters once again enjoy water access between Norway Lake and its 2,152 acres and Games Lakes and its 521 acres of water. Recreational boaters and anglers have used the channel linking the lakes since at least the 1930s, according to Forum News Service archives.

A floating bog estimated to be the size of a football field had first entered the narrow channel between the two popular recreational lakes in Kandiyohi County in 2016. Boaters made an attempt to reopen the channel last year, but without much success, according to Rollie Nissen, a member of the Kandiyohi County Board of Commissioners.

"A never-ending saga," said Nissen of the efforts to reopen the channel in the past year.

Lundberg is a lake resident and member of the Norway/Games Lake Improvement Association board of directors. Since January, he and Nissen have been making a series of contacts in hopes of getting help in removing the bog.

"Every time we turned around it was more bad news,'' Nissen said. Contacts were made with two different operators with machines that could shred the bog. For different reasons, those options fell through, Nissen said.

Lundberg had heard from many lake users frustrated by the loss of access between the two lakes. There was an economic impact as well. Beth Lief, co-manager of the Games Lake County Park, said many boaters on Norway Lake like to use the channel to reach the county park store to enjoy ice cream cones and other treats. And on Sundays, many would also boat over from Norway Lake for church services, she said.

There's still a lot of bog to remove, Lundberg said, and there is always the chance the channel could get plugged again until it's all removed. But for now, people can get through the channel, and that's what's important.

"All the credit to Kevin,'' Nissen said. "He figured out how to tackle it and got some of it out of the way.''