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.