A beginner's guide to crawfish

This beautiful sunny Saturday morning Donald and Catherine picked us up with their big F 150 truck and the six of us drove into the fields outside New Iberia to check out Donald's newest project besides being a sugarcane farmer: his crawfish ponds. To call it "ponds" would be a complete understatement, its rather big pieces of shallow water with crawfish cages lined up, marked by red caps or "necks". Donald took two of them out of the water to show us the crawfish, caught inside. Crawfish belong to the same family as lobsters and are usually harvested by flat aluminium motorboats like the one on the pic below.

In between approximately June and September/October the ponds are drained and the crawfish dig into the bottom and hide till the space is flooded again. Sometimes rice is planted in addition, because rice loves the water, too, but Donald doesn't grow rice to harvest yet. There is a special kind of grass (to be seen on pics) growing, which is giving some shade on the water surface. Right now it's harvesting season and Donald and family members are selling a lot of crawfish from several ponds to wholesalers. The ponds are separated by levees and snakes and alligators love the "ambiance". We only saw a little alligator but Donald told us about his regular big "guests". Crawfish farming is good income and occupation inbetween sugarcane planting and harvesting (which would be in late fall).

For lunch we, of course, had to have crawfish, in a "greasy spoon place" called "Le Bon Creole", no real restaurant sign, but a fancy mural outside (pic on left). Fortunately, it was lump meat and not the whole critter, which is not easy to crack and eat.

After all the crawfish and nature experience, it was time for some art: At the Shadows on the Teche, a historic plantation home from 1834, set beautifully among old live oak trees draped with Spanish moss on the banks of Bayou Tech an Arts & Crafts Show was taking place and we stopped by on our way back home. Beautiful setting and local artists who partly sold interesting stuff.

After a short break on Chris & Dave's beautiful patio - which they, strangely for us, not use much – we went out again to dinner, this time at another friend's place, whose patio is really something: swimming pool, TV set, outdoors kitchen, fully furnished with carpets,,, We had drinks and appetizers outside, then a dinner of delicious Mexican chicken burritos and the first Louisiana grown strawberries for dessert.