Processing the Harvest

Neither of you have! I'm trying to talk myself into getting on a plane, in fact several planes next year.

 

Well, I actually did what was planned yesterday - when my wife got home at 4 pm we ran the big machine through the forest making trails. Amazing, it is a forest lawnmower - 650 pounds in weight, a V twin Honda engine, a 50 pound blade which will easily knock down a 4 inch diameter, 20 foot tall, tree and chop it to chips - like a garden mower can do a tall thistle. One point I ran it through a 5 foot deep, solid, wild rose tangle leaving the prettiest walking trail. Then went trout fishing and caught a bunch.


This where I took off from, the compost pile. I had to shovel out a track in the edge or it just sank in. Wild! One can just run through a totally brushy, viney, forest leaving a trail that looks like it has been there for years. I will be making wild life food plots in some glades.

I own none of this land and wonder what the repercussions would be if the owner was unhappy with me farming his bit of land. This was a failed real-estate development made in the 1950's. 2000 lots were subdivided, 45 X 90 foot in size, and all owned by different people who pay their $10 tax every year (the land is appraised at $500 a lot, but is basically worthless - much of it has been sold and resold for unpaid taxes - I own 5 lots that way.) Right when they were doing their huge marketing campaign (buy a retirement plot on the Gulf, retire in paradise) A massive hurricane hit and it went bankrupt. Then what houses were built were removed by the disastrous hurricane Camille in 1969 - the worst USA hurricane prior to Katrina (which then destroyed any houses rebuilt - 27 foot of water) So the thousand tiny lots sit on this low, wet, land where about 10 times a year the roads in get water covering them. Now one has to build 20 foot in the air, and insurance is getting tough - so no building should happen soon.

USA is so different to England this way. You could buy a drab, but safe and pleasant, building lot around here, on higher land, for under $6,000 - a big one, with water, sewer, and electricity to hook up to. Then it would cost $70 a square foot to have a contractor build a finished house - flooring, kitchen, bathrooms all finished. So a 3 bedroom, two bathroom house, land and all for about £55,000 for a cheap, but OK, house in a nice enough street, good schools, no crime, all amenities available from hospitals to shopping. America is as mad as UK. Loads of people who are quality, and would add to the country would love to migrate here - retired Germans, Indians with some money, are denied........... The only ones allowed to migrate here are the rare engineer or professional, that is sponsored by a corporation - then lots of unskilled weird third worlders who applied for - and win a slot on, the immigration lottery (quotas for all the third world are given on a lottery basis); and unskilled illegals, and disaster refugees (masses of Somali), make almost all the huge amounts of immigrants.

I talked for hours with a London woman who lives in Milwaukee 6 months a year, which she loves - the maximum one is allowed on a tourist visa. She has her own business which she conducts wile here. Her time has to be in two 90 day sections - and if she ever overstayed by a day would never be allowed back - or say got a drunk driving. She has done this for years, and after 10 years of this she may apply for full time residence, and she makes a good living. Madness!

So my quota of words is used up and the site is slowed to a crawl - I had lots of outdoors stuff to talk of, but this is all GC allows on a post - a sign in even. I left and got a glass of water wile this sentence slooowly appears.

The praying mantis who lives in the papaya.

 

It's so frustrating to hear the prices of property in America. Your £55,000 three bedroomed house is non existent here, just a good plot of land would cost three times that but with no real size to it.

 

Runner Beans and more runner beans, you just would not credit how many runner beans you harvest from just 15 plants,Have salted 3 huge jars for starters in early July then have had to resort to freezing, picking 5lbs twice a week
They are covered in flowers still, I do water them frequently, Never ever had a crop like this, Unwins Moonlight The Bambo canes just collapsed under the weight of them. Dear husband has promised to make up a decent structure for next year

 

I know. I have thought long about housing in England, my parents live in London - and I spent my teen years hunting and fishing in London - I knew all the rivers, canals, streams, woods, golf courses, green belt, ponds and lakes in my area. And I have come to the conclusion that Green belt lands should be released for building. I feel owning ones house is a right in a fair society and cannot believe stopping so much land being developed is fair. I would put a massive tax on huge windfalls made by property owners - and require the developing be fitting for the community. It would be a terrible thing, but I would put the people's right to their castle above the greenbelt in London. And I speak from huge knowledge of what the reserved lands are like.

My main concern would be to not build social housing where it would lower quality of life for residents, like almost everywhere. London has all the poor people it needs and attracting more would be terrible.

Also that £ 55.000 house, is a low grade one, starter and low income home. Here is a listing for a central Mississippi coastal house - the map is interesting because it shows the neighbors estimated value. http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/115-Shady-Grove-Ave-Long-Beach-MS-39560/77979740_zpid/

Also I know contractors and the wholesale build (what a builder would charge a developer - but will do it for you too - but watch them or they would do a poor job) runs about $70/sq ft finished, low grade finish.

But back from fishing - a nice catch, it is so lovely out on the water at night with the light letting you see the fish chasing shrimp - or an occasional black drum (fish) up to 50 pounds lazily swimming past. We got about 6 specks over the 13 inch size limit and a dozen white trout. It will make 4 - 5 pounds of fillets.

Way to go with the beans! A massive crop is always great. Blanch and freeze. My bad chickens ate all my green bean plants but 3 little ones - and flying squirrels ate my yard long bean plants.

 

I love the sea, it is in my blood - I have spent so much time on it, it just calls to me. And nights for outdoor pursuits is so much better than days in one very strong way. The darkness makes man's works disappear, or become minimized. In the forest at night buildings are gone, the darkness gives the mood of being a creature again because all you are aware of is the forest - a forest in London green belt at night is the same as the forest in some primeval land. I spent my teen nights in those London green belt forests hunting squirrels, pigeons, and rabbits. We could see in the dark, and almost never used a light, that is a trained thing - using ones peripheral vision that has the rods. Special forces soldiers are trained to function in the dark without light, it can be done with time in the dark woods and heath.

(rods, the eye sensors which do not see colour but are hyper sensitive to motion and low light and form the bulk of the peripheral vision - why nocturnal animals, dogs and deer, do not see colour - because they just have rods. We have a very high percent of cones in the center focal part of out eye - giving us colour vision, but are no good in dark; thus seeing something in the corner of ones eye. The rods are very good to see movement, and thus warn us of something approaching, even in low light. This is why a dog can run in the forest at night; all rods in their eye.)

And this night fishing is so amazing in its aesthetic, stars, clouds; no moon now to dim the stars (today is the new moon, no moon visible - neap tides, or no tides, just highish water. The moon in its cycle is now 90 degrees to the sun in its orbit so they do not jointly pull at the oceans making the tides. And the cycle will swing in the next two weeks to the sun and moon being in the same line and the tides will flow and the moon will build to (waxing) full again)

But fish jumping, fish chasing huge shrimp across the water; which go skipping across the surface in the air, the reason a shrimp is all tail. Sea breezes, gentle Mississippi Sound waves, the odd big fish swimming on the surface like a dinosaur, fish coming up on your hook - beautiful fish, and into your ice filled cooler, or thrown back if under the size limit - jellyfish, schools of small fish, pods of mullet......All visible into the water by the powerful light at ones back and above, lighting the mouth of the harbor for boats, and all else dark but for the many boats and ships way off with their lights on the dark sea, the lights of the other town's harbours to the East and West, and the lights of the beach road which stretches off to those. Just gorgeous. And still warm enough for only a light shirt, but a cold front has come, giving a feel of coolness coming. Summer ending and fall and winter here very soon - too soon.

This is me 7 miles off the coast of Vancouver Island, where we spent one winter in the bus; burning our fires in the wood stove and staying warm inside, fishing and walking during days in the cold weather. I am in my Zodiac, which I have had on all sorts of waters but now sits in its bag in the shed and the motor in another shed. I just show this one because it was handy. That sail boat towed us for a good wile, then we got in the Zodiac and came back to the harbor we were living in, riding large North Pacific rollers as we approached the bay of Victoria where we were camped. A gratitutious picture - but imagine the Island off miles distant, and the tiny boat with me, my wife, my big dog, (who always was with us) and a friend. The ocean has such a feel of strength beyond our understanding when on it in a small boat; one thinks of man's smallness.



Today we plant trays of winter crops and walk our new forest trail scattering the wild life seeds.

 

Gonna need a bigger Solar Drier....

 

Zigs - tell us about drying fish! I have bought salt cod many times. I lived and worked with Jamaican men for years and salt cod is a traditional food there, and I learned to cook it from their talk of home. Food was a big part of our life then, living on the road and having to take on 3000 - 4000 calories a day for the work we did. (it was a big part of the Caribbean slave plantation trade cycle, New England sold salt cod to make protein for the plantation workers in exchange for molasses to make rum, which then traded to Africa for slaves) Also in Spain we loved the salt cod (bacalao). When Cabot discovered America (Newfoundland) and claimed it for the British throne he sailed through the Spanish and Portuguese cod fishing and drying fleets to get to land. They had been harvesting, and salting,the New England cod in secret for years.

Louisiana first developed its shrimp business drying them for the Chinese market. Louisiana has huge shrimp populations, I think the biggest in the world possibly, but before refrigeration (and epically before Captain Birds Eye - who really developed the frozen fish industry in the 1950's) they had no market. But Chinese found about them and they made huge drying platforms on poles in the marshes and traded them back home. It was a big fishery for the time and place. ("Dancing the shrimp" when the shrimp dried whole, head, shell and all - then the entire family would put on canvas shoes and do a shuffling dance on the shrimp which would shuck off the shells leaving the meats to be separated wile the elders would play Chinese stringed instruments for the rhythm.



Zigs, I need to learn to dry fish and shrimp. Tell us how to dry, and what to do with them, and how they affect the driving.

 

I berried the fillets in salt, first batch for 2 days, but I don't think that was long enough as the turned brown.

Second batch were left in for 2 weeks, they've stayed white so far, been drying for 3 days now

Put them in an airtight container once dried or they'll absorb moisture from the air again ( made that mistake with tomatoes last year)

Doesn't really affect the driving unless i'm moving

 

Hi, Jane - tell us what you are making. That actually looks a bit like the pepper gumbo soup I make most days (I make just a two serving batch though - then add the peeled shrimp and smoked sausage - trace amounts, but enough to give it zip.)

I have been shrimping; a long haul, leaving at 7 a.m., such a pretty trip out to the shrimp grounds - the sun just up and all is quiet - crickets still singing, this is this morning - the electric motors are so nice, being silent.



I netted a couple ribbon fish - amazing teeth, and a dazzling silver, no tail, an extremely beautiful and striking fish. I also get pogies large and small, I kept a dozen big ones for the crab traps even thought we have lots of trout skeletons, pogies are a strong attractant and I like both in the trap. Then pin fish, mullet, odds and ends..they all go back alive. (jelly fish are the jelly looking stuff)


I netted till after noon - my wife drove out to a dock near by where I picked her up and she came out for two hours between jobs to hang out on the water - and I filled the cooler; basically that is the limit per person, fifty pounds, or a medium cooler full, per day. Back home by 1 p.m. but a tiring day - throwing that big net from my small boat for over 4 hours is a work out.



There is ice in there, shellfish must be kept cold. When back home I went to the local ice machine just down the road (we are a marine town) where a 20 pound load of loose crushed ice is dumped into your bin for $1.50 - or a bagged 16 pound load for the same price. Great deal! And all automated like a huge coke machine (it makes and dispenses the ice and takes your money - 24 hours a day) I have a small ice machine in my refrigerator freezer as everyone does here, which makes 10 pounds a day - and I took out 20 pounds from that - but back home it is time to really ice it to freezing temps, most of the ice I took would be melted by then after cooling the shrimp off. The bayou water is 32C, 90F, so the shrimp are too. You can see why shrimp are a huge part of the cuisine here.

I give Flora as a size reference, she is standard Lab sized, 65 pounds - The freshly iced shrimp.



Tomorrow we will head and tail them and freeze them - I have some rectangular 1 US gallon ice cream tubs which hold about 8 pounds of cleaned shrimp each (I pack it in 1 pound bags, 8 packed together neatly in a tub - will take 3 tubs.

Lots of things to say about the day but I have fish to fillet and it is getting dark.

Tonight will be this - a favorite: fish and shrimp coated in Zaterans (the huge New Orleans seafood brand of cooking stuff) corn flour/meal and pan fried in a very small bit of soy bean oil. I will make more than this though - my dogs are always mad about fish and get a bite too. I make a tarter sauce - and my garden soup, a salad - and I just took a double chocolate brownie with lots of walnuts and pecans out of the oven - and will have it warmed with vanilla ice-cream to finish.

 

Green tomato chutney