Processing the Harvest

Colne, you could have left the post, members would have found it interesting. Gardeners Corner has members from all over the world although it is a British site. I gather from the subjects you are interested in apart from gardening and wildlife, they could be a bit 'heavy duty' to some members, but you could start on the lighter side if you want to discuss something in the 'General Discussion' forum away from the gardening side here.

 

I was our at the harbor last night and a couple very serious young fishermen were out - all they go for are bull reds - like the one in the picture above and larger; 20 to 50 lbs. I felt the call to go out night fishing with whole mullet heads and do the same. When the Mississippi Sound gets a break from rain and becomes salty again I will. A week ago we had eight inches of rain in one day! And heavy rains all winter

The oyster season is closed all the time when ever large amounts of runoff occur because the increased bacteria risk. (we have a huge inshore, small boat, commercial oyster harvest here. A couple hundred hand tongers and small dredgers working right off shore six months of the year. It, like every bit of fishing in the State of Mississippi, is regulated and enforced to a degree unheard of in Britain. Many people make their living here off small family owned boats 25 to 45 foot shrimping and oystering and very large amounts do some recreational food fishing. I get really disgusted at British inshore fishing policy! They need to have Mississippi law enforcement give them lessons on setting limits, seasons, and enforcement and there would soon be small family inshore fishing again. Close the big boat harvesting, have lots of really hard assed marine cops checking all the catch and doing regular surprise boardings, make the sport fishermen have licenses so they get represented and thus get assigned their quota of the catch when laws are made...... Our fisheries cops are full policemen with all powers of arrest and carry guns. They will check you if you fish often, They will check every commercial boat, showing up anywhere - and they have ZERO tolerance - write tickets for every offence, and the fines are high, with bans and occasional jail. It makes it easy when the State requires a license (which goes directly to the cops pay), gives everyone a booklet of regulations, and you know you will not talk your way out if wrong.

The British small boat inshore commercial and recreational food fishing has all been given to the EU massive harvesters. Jobs, small family businesses, family recreation, bringing home healthy, self caught, food - mostly gone so Spanish trawlers the size of factories can hoover it up. This ability for regular people to catch food fish - fathers and sons, friends, couples, at the seaside has been mostly lost in England. We garden to get our foods - it is in the human genes to hunt and gather, and fishing, like say berry picking, is a wonderful way to keep that tie with the natural world and ourselves as creatures.

I learned to fish in London where I was a member of a fishing club so had older men to give me advice (I had fished all my life but in London got much higher skills because the fish are so sophisticated) Then we would go to the coast and fish and there were still some fish. Over the next thirty years when back - and I spent a fair bit of time on the coast - and the fishing was finished. The EU killed it! Only the factory boats got consideration. A wicked thing to do to an island people. One more interaction with nature closed.

 

This is the harbor facing West, I fish here a lot in the autumn - that is my cooler, bait bucket (the yellow thing), landing net and fishing rod. I net live shrimp and go for flounder and a fish called spotted sea trout - although having no relation to freshwater trout.

 

I am having another cup of coffee - a very lazy day because my wife is off with a friend and I do not wish to begin the project we will tackle when she returns - and no one posts so I will carry on anyway, but Ratties!

Keeping chickens means rats. The more free and casual the keeping the worse the rats, and my chickens are kept pretty free and wild and we get rats at just controllable numbers - using no poison means traps and dogs. (stop reading if you are a sensitive urbanite)

I was getting some tiny goldfish for my pond at a pet store March 27 a year ago when the local dog shelter had dogs outside on the pavement trying to give them homes - I saw this one, I named him Jack, and walked up and said 'I always wanted one of those' - a rat terrier/Jack Russell, mutt, shag thing. He has very little fur, you can see his skin, and is a funny thing, and I picked him up - gave then the $37 they wanted, and took him home.

They said he was a year old - he was abandoned on the streets of a nice neighborhood by someone who did not want him anymore. Jack was kept well past the time dogs are usually kept before being euthanized because he was so lively and friendly - but the clock was running out. I wanted him for a rat dog. He knew no commands at all, was just a very friendly, wild animal. Just a Southern yard dog. I house trained him very quickly - he wants to please, but is very, very, headstrong so the other commands were harder. I have dogs with me 24 hours a day - for over twenty years - they go to work with me, go in my boats, lived in the bush with me..........so I almost speak dog. And now Jack is excellent. We never use dog leads and they go every where I go, so I expect a lot of my dogs.

The whole pack goes on ratting hunts, but Jack is exactly the ratter I saw in him, he is great at it. He has the violent shaking which kills them instantly down pat - totally instinctive; they were bred for it - they were vital agricultural tools, the ratters. They love it so!


here he is looking all innocent on my house steps (my house is on pilings 13 foot above the ground because of floods)





And here he is yesterday with his ratty. He kills about one a day this week, we hunt them as a pack but Jack is the master rat catcher. He is a great little dog. He then will give it to me and I fling it into the bayou. Flora dog is my closest dog, she is brain damaged (really) and is very clingy - the big white lab, and she is my total sidekick - but Jack is totally one of us too - he was supposed to sleep outside so he could chase anything off that was coming for the garden or chickens, but instead he sleeps on my bed and is asleep behind me on the sofa with the pack.

 

Scrungee - you are amazing, could you tell us about your chickens? How you keep up with egg production as I can see you are capable of anything. Also your fishing....and pictures? Sorry if I ranted too much about recreational food fishing being in decline in Europe. My parents always kept a second home on the coast in Kent so I could see how the fishermen who were local - and probably not too experienced - always did poorly. In the 1970's we could actually catch some fish. Please show some fishing pictures.

We had rain again last night so the whole Mississippi sound is brown and very fresh so I will not bother fishing now - you can watch gar from my porch right now - but they seem to not bite now either. Like your needle fish they are unusual. I remember the green bones from needle fish - gar have soft meat and are used for fish cakes - the flavor is good. It takes sheet metal shears or a machete to open them though.


This is a 18 pound gar or so from a long wile ago, just behind my house - when Flora dog was a skinny, sick, little puppy (healthy now but still brain damaged a bit - my main side-kick though - we nursed her back to health, adopted her when she was near death)



Louisiana commercial gar fishermen, down the coast from here.

 

We got a fishing forum here as well @colne

http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/forums/hook-line-and-sinker.64/

Looking forward to the Mackerel coming back later this month

 

Want me to put it back?

 

Thanks zigs. No need to repost it, just seeing if I fit in or was over posting on my own place rather than being into the replying to questions and asking questions.

Here we get Spanish Mackerel in late summer from the harbor - I do miss the Atlantic mackerel you get, a nice fish, I caught quite a few of them in England over the years.

I was back in London last October and as always the fecundity of England is amazing. Just in the alley behind my parents house we picked blackberries and tiny black grapes cascading over a fence which my mother makes into a sauce to pour over yogurt, crab apple trees were weighted down (I thought how much my chickens would love bags of them) Even in London proper one can collect foods - amazing. England is extraordinary in how plants just explode into life, I am always dazzled when I get back - go to gardens and just look out of the windows of trains and busses - and remember my young years there of being out fishing, hunting, and always being in the woods. How even London has greenbelt everywhere, and parks and such.

Anyway I guess I was just using this thread for any harvesting - fish, fruit, veg, poultry, I may even hunt a bit this autumn and would include that. let me know if I should avoid this quasi blogging here.

My bayou at sunrise looking East from my porch at low tide. I am in the town, but mostly in the woods because the land is so low so not very built on. (colors not enhanced - sometimes the light here is dramatic)

 

May as well mix it up


An old picture of some of my chickens. The top, center, brown rooster - a banti, is still with me and is my main rooster, as are 7 of the hens - the rest eaten. But I have raised more by letting hens sit eggs, and bought the two Americana, and a production red, chicks who are not in the picture.

I never pluck a chicken, what a chore that is! I just skin them and butcher then with a pair of loping shears and a sharp knife. If all goes well with the eggs I set incubating last night I will make a video of how to do a really quick killing, butchering, and packaging of a back yard chicken. I had looked on youtube for any tips and was amazed how cumbersome they all make such a terribly simple thing. Every one of our not very distant women ancestors could have done it without even thinking. The last time I did a couple roosters I walked out, killed two roosters, butchered them, cut them up - cleaned everything up and put stuff away, and noted it had taken 45 minutes in all. Not bad.

I am good at butchering, I hunted most of my life, getting my first shotgun at 9 and an air rifle before that. But we have not hunted for the last ten years - first we lived in the bus, then here I just never looked for somewhere to hunt. Mississippi does have a lot of public lands one may hunt on for about $25 a year. My reticence is I really dislike being around the common hunter because they are not too safe, and private land is not a possibility. Deer are plentiful, and hogs too if one gets into rough places. There is no limit on hogs - as an invasive species, brought in by the Spanish 500 years ago. You are allowed five deer, but it takes some work to get even one - scouting, then sitting still at a good spot for a few mornings and evenings. my wife also shoots deer so our chances are doubled.

We both love deer meat, I an good at cooking it and she is especially into it because she does not like any industrial farmed meat - and I also lean that way. I bought a marked down frozen turkey yesterday and it has been injected with 8% saline - I do not want that, artificial, frankenmeat stuff - but still - a good quality turkey for $14 - a big one, will be delicious.

So here is the incubator $39, still air - so would have terribly uneven heating, hand egg turning required. I put in an old fan out of a broken laptop (had to tear it apart to get I out - but I had to anyway because I wanted the hard drive from it - they can be a chore to get open) in the inside lid and made a rack egg turner with a handle outside you pull, or push, to roll the eggs. I used it the first time just a bit ago and the eggs rolled perfectly.



The thermostat seems to wander a bit - will be watching that, hatching eggs takes very consistent temp and humidity and egg turning. I should have bought a cheap thermostat, a light bulb for heat, and made my own possibly. A proper thermostat is $15 - only then you have shipping - so I bought this being lazy. Spent more for less quality, but it was so easy, and this is all pretty, with windows and the thermometer.

 

If you're going to put up butchery videos it's probably best to hide them with spoilers @colne

Not everyone is going to like that, best give them a choice.

 

It's interesting to see that the deer you can 'take' differs from the area my sons father-in-law lives in. He has two homes but hunts in West Virginia and is only allowed to take three a year. I presume this is decided by the individual states?

 

Not a problem about the videos Zigs, I would just post a link to them - it sounds like they would have low interest anyway. But I personally am somewhat hardened - I have seen too much to be easily troubled. I just thought it would be something some would wish to see, to learn about.

I always think of life and what it is; and what that signifies. From being around I have come to believe in Karma, the plus and negative points we accumulate, and the travails or ease that come, or will come, as we behave justly or otherwise.

But it is not like one would think; a nice person gets no points for being nice - everyday they are rewarded by the positive side being nice brings. Mostly they were born nice, had nice family and friends, are nice without credit to themselves. Bad people, they are born and made bad; probably much more have had badness thrust on them than chose to be bad. Their typical bad behavior brings no negative karma points because their life is already a punishment. Bad people are not happy - the hurt they casually throw out hurts them as it does the actual recipient.

karma is a difficult, actually un-comprehensible, but we should think of our actions, all of them carry ripples out, and many of the effects caused will be laid at our feet during any reckoning.

We are in physical life; we are on the great wheel. There are only two rights in existence, the right to die, and the right to live till you die - all else is a privilege granted by our society and happenstance. To raise, or take, a beast for our natural utility carries no bad energy if we are decent to it. Life is given, then we, the ones with self awareness, have free will so the chance to be good and bad. Beasts do not have this, they are innocent.

An example is euthanasia. In humans it has serious problems because the person may not have reconciled with their karma, may have not repented or made amends, they should not go before it is their time. Animals do not have that obligation. The only way to avoid an animal's death is to prevent it being conceived.

To raise an animal, to kill it, to use it - there is no bad in that. We should not completely disassociate ourselves from knowing of life and death. Being overly squeamish or artificially sentimental disrespects the reality of life and death; one we are part of ourselves.

Meat eating for a human is not immoral. We are what we are, on the wheel of life - hunters and gathers, animals ourselves but so very much more too. It is good for us to not turn from the most absolute truth of life -> death. To think ourselves above that, better than that, is ridiculous. Death is the most natural thing in this world and we should not hide it, despise it,
contemplate it. Growing an animal for the table is not ugly or cruel or immoral.

But I would not to want to upset people who are extremely uncomfortable with killing an animal. I would have provided clear warning. My reason for making such a video would be to show humane killing method, and easy processing to make the experience a positive, and the meat the most usefully butchered.

I would have hoped some would have wanted to see the process even if they will never do it themselves to see. Instead maybe they will have read this poorly written post and wonder what they actually think of killing and butchering an animal - and why.

 

Sheal. You asked about deer limits and how they are set in USA.

States are semi-independent units, they set prison sentencing including death penalty, welfare, state income and sale taxes, and wildlife take limits unless the Federal laws have superseded them. An example is migratory birds - the Federal Wildlife laws set duck, dove, goose, offshore fish, and some other hunting seasons and quantities.

Usually hunting deer limits change in a state by region as more does are added or reduced to the bag limits as the herd is managed; deer need aggressive culling or they will suffer quickly from overpopulation with big cost to themselves and humans. (overpopulated deer cause vast numbers of car accidents because they are moving about so much looking for food - just one thing for example)

In USA the weird paranoia that has swept the West - that children need to be inside and under watch or they will come to harm - means the new generations are less and less outdoors inclined. Hunters are decreasing in numbers every year here because of that; and so limits keep increasing as fewer have to do the culling.

 

Well, pardon the thread killer above, but I do think about such stuff - and pardon this picture if it is offensive, let me know if I am out of place zigs; there will be a lot of pictures of fish and seafood and things on here if you care for me to stay; harvesting things is something I do - and my garden extends into my bayou in a couple of ways.

But just a bit ago I went out and checked my crab trap I had put out to see if the first crabs of the season are showing up and got some gar instead. The gar are here in numbers as they are in spring, one hears them splashing about at like dinosaurs wallowing at night. And here is the trap



This is the shell path behind my house; gar are good to eat but take tin snips to open. They can get very large but the small ones go into the trap - and then mostly just about now. I will make fish cakes from these.

Flora dog likes fish, all my dogs eat fish regularly, my chickens eat it almost daily.



When the crabs do show up they will be this kind, the blue crab. We eat a lot of crab, I trap them all the hot months and pick the meat for soups mostly, and stuffing for flounder and things - crab cakes. This picture is set up though, the 5 traps emptied into this one. Mostly I cannot put the crab traps off my land, so take them 1/3 mile away in my boat, because the otters will pull them apart and get the crabs - otters love crabs! I love to watch my otters shrimping because they dash about like torpedoes in the shallows catching them and then eat the shrimp with an amazingly loud chomping noise.

 

Thanks for your reply about the deer Colne.

You've given us a brief introduction to your life and looking at the post and pictures above I would assume you are living in the wilderness, there's very little of that left in Britain, it's gradually turning into a concrete jungle! Have you any pictures of the area that surrounds your home? It would certainly paint a picture for us. I'm not asking for an album full but just a few to give us a glimpse please.