Waste, Waste Not

What is waste?  I think the definition of waste can be all over the map.   Take my lovely Sunday expedition to a local salmon fishing hot spot with my man and boy, we brought home ZERO fish. We did however bring home some fun pictures, smiles all around, and the wonderful memory of little man catching his first king salmon (to small to keep, barely) and another picture to prove it.   So, is that a waste?  I don’t think so, others might argue that we wasted fuel to do that, but then I can argue that the semi driving across the entire US carrying GMO negative value food, harvested by giant carbon burning equipment, processed beyond recognition by more machines has way less value than that very fun and important time spent with my family. Then, what is waste, what do you bring to the dump?  A table and chairs?  Really!?  Well guess I have two chairs I can paint brightly for the outdoor dining area!  (the table and other two chairs were smashed by other dump stuff)  Now I just took someones waste and gave it new life!  Along with some corks for the subsistence hooligan net.  A small gillnet set in the river held up by corks that quickly catches the little tasty morsels:

 

These little oily fish are good dried, smoked, salted, baked, or boiled but the very best way is floured and fried!  Can’t wait to be sitting around the campfire here real soon frying up the days catch up the lovely Stikine River.

So here I am dreaming of the river, hooligan frying in the pan on the campfire, early morning sun – but not yet!  First I have to salvage these corks off of the various discarded nets up at the dump!  They are frozen to the ground and each other, arg, and I forgot a knife.  So I walk away from the dump with two chairs and 20 corks for five bucks. Ehh, not bad!  I will update when I get the net done!  I have to go weed my kitchen now.  I really don’t want to though, I want to go up the river!  Happy first day of spring, folks!

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.