Last Saturday we went to one of the local farmer's ponds to watch him harvest his fresh water shrimp. He dug a lake to raise the shrimp. It was pretty neat how they get them out. They un-cap a pipe in the bottom of the pond, and out they come...
right into a metal cage where they are scooped up into buckets, weighed,
(That's Harry on the right. It's his pond.)
and put on ice. Within 15 minutes they are "asleep".
Look how big this sucker is!
Here Dad and Julia are watching the pond drain:
Towards the end there is more shrimp then water.
You can't tell from the pictures, but this a big event and there was quite a few people who showed up to watch. A brave few went down into the pond to get the remaining stragglers, but first they had to get the snapping turtle out of the way.
(That would be the snapping turtle in his hands as he is putting it in the bucket by it's tail.)
They ended up harvesting 114 pounds, and were set up for an "on the spot" shrimp fry. Talk about fresh and local! We didn't stay for that, but maybe next year...
