The Fruited Plain

I hope you have time to take a ride with me today.  We're not going anywhere in particular.  Let's just take a ride in the country.  We'll go off the beaten path and see rural America.  We'll see the landscape.  There's no traffic jams or road rage where we're going.  We'll wave at farmers on tractors and little old ladies walking to the mailbox.  We'll see people sitting in rocking chairs on their front porches having coffee before it gets too hot outside.

We'll see spacious skies.  Now, there are no purple mountain majesties here in South Louisiana - far from it.  The land is flat.  But there are amber waves of grain.  Here is a field of wheat waving in the gentle breeze.  It's ready for harvesting.

Would you look over there?  Some grateful soul painted a mural on the side of their barn that says, "God Bless our Farmers."  How about that?  It shows a combine harvesting rice and a farmer walking on the levee with his shovel resting on his shoulder.  Despite high prices, farmers are out doing what they need to do to keep America (and the rest of the world) fed.  God bless our farmers, indeed.

On the same building, there's an American flag painted on the side.  Can you see it?  The shrubs have almost taken over it.  In a metaphorical sense, some parts of the American dream, as well as the innocence and greatness of our country have almost been overtaken, but if you look closely, the pride and work ethic is still there.  I'm praying her greatness will be restored and the overgrowth of apathy and division will be pruned back.

Right down the road we see crop dusters busy taking off from landing strips, broadcasting fertilizer on the rice fields.  The drone of their engines wake you up in the morning as they fly over your house and continue all day.

Here's another barn in which some skilled painter painted a bold red rooster standing proud against the golden rays of morning sun.  It's time to get up and get to work, the rooster tells his rural neighbors.

Thousands of acres of crawfish ponds surround us and we watch as crawfishermen in their boats cross the flooded rice fields, emptying their traps.  Onion sacks full of crawfish will be caught and delivered to local restaurants and wholesalers who distribute crawfish nationwide.

Cattle lazily graze on tender grass.  They'll eat until it gets hot and then will meander over to a shade tree where they'll sit in the shade and swish flies with their tails and chew their cud.  In the evening, however, they'll head back out.  There's grass to be eaten.  That grass is turned into milk to feed their calves.

Rice fields are just receiving their first shot of nitrogen, boosting their growth and turning their foliage so green it's almost blue.

You can notice by the road noise, we've turned off the paved road.  We're on a gravel road heading back home.  The dust billows up behind us.  We pull up to the house just in time to see old Rosie eating grass as the sun tucks itself below the horizon.

Perspective is everything.  Sometimes it is just refreshing to see that there is still good out there.  All you gotta do is make a turn on the road less traveled.  It's been a relaxing drive today.  I'm glad you accompanied me.  

When The Water Is Runnin'

In years past, I've posted about picking dewberries out of the ditch right across the street from our house.  Now that that land is being developed, scavenging for food from the ditch is gone now out of the question.  Or is it?  Maybe for berries it is, but there are other edible plants and creatures out there waiting in the ditch!  Things like crawfish!

As a sidenote, about 15 years ago I was farming rice and crawfishing for a living. Those were good times and I may dig up some pictures and post about that at some point, but back to our story. One thing about crawfish is that when rains come and the water is running, the crawfish follow the water.  As a crawfisherman, I would hate to see all the crawfish leave my ponds, go into the ditches and swim away...

For passersby, though, it is like manna from the sky.  All you have to do is go pick it up.  That is exactly what Benjamin and his friends down the road did for several days during recent rains.  They would go out with nets and buckets and scoop up hundreds of pounds of crawfish.  A sack of crawfish is roughly 35 pounds.  One day they caught 5 sacks, the next day 3 sacks, and so on and so on.  They would boil them up and feast on them at each others' houses.  On the final night they came to our house.  Here's some of the catch all washed up and ready for boiling:

With plenty of seasoning added to the water, along with lemons, onions, potatoes, corn on the cob. garlic, and the live crawfish were poured into the water boiling atop a propane burner.  I love the smell of crawfish boiling!

In mere minutes, the crawfish were ready to eat.  Benjamin and all of his crawfishing buddies sat down around a table covered with newspaper and the spicy, hot crawfish were poured on top of the table.  Everyone began peeling and eating.  Those guys can eat some crawfish!  We were thinking that we would have to freeze some, but by the end of the evening, there was not a single crawfish remaining.

The dewberries in the ditch across the street may be gone.  However, after a rain when the water is running right, you can drive down country roads and find an abundance of crawfish to pick up, bring home, and boil.