If a garden isn’t just in your yard, but your home…

It might be that the world is your garden too!  We had put some crab pots out almost two weeks ago and I was really hankering to pull ’em before… well before it was pointless.  So my stubborn self picked up the kids at 3:30 from school (I was going to go before they got out of school but you can bring more crab home with more people in the boat) ran us all home, hooked up the boat trailer to the Jeep… which died.  I swear I asked the mechanic to change the oil when he fixed my brakes… Put some oil in the Jeep and had the boat with children inserted in the water by 4:00!  Feeling proud of myself.

I have never pulled one of these pots before.  These particular pots are commercial pots, ie: intended to be hauled with mechanized device, not bare hands.  No problem!  My daughter takes the till and off we go, wind in our face happy smiles, excitement mounting, and guesses to how many Tanner crab are in the pots.

I am optimistic, I have a girl trick a girlfriend set me up with yesterday, I got this.  The trick is not slick, not sure it’s a trick. First pot is not in good shape, was that me or some other force?  I am going with other force, my boyfriend assures me it was ‘other force’.  Nonetheless, messed up pot = no crab, well and that took 30 minutes, yay.   The second pot I decided to lift with pure girl power, no tricks, no gimmicks. Okay I used my brain a little since it was clear that pure brawn was not an option for me.  An hour later and I have re-baited the pot and have 4 Tanner crab on board. Disappointing? Nope.  Perfect. I left the third pot where it was, we can deal with that on Saturday.

Tanner Crab harvested on our last outing... I was too tired to take pictures of the ones we got today.

Point?  We had fresh from the sea crab 20 minutes after it left the water steaming on the deck in the crab cooker.  Fresh, sweet and nutrient rich.  A product of my suburban farm that happens to be on the edge of a rich wilderness full of harvests for my table.  More effort than I would have liked? Maybe, but worth it today. Tomorrow I am going to shop for lighter crab pots, or a davit, or both.