How Louisiana’s Biggest Crawfish Farm Sells Three Million Pounds of Crawfish Every Year — Dan Does

crawfish are a legendary freshwater crustacean typically harvested in louisiana about 40 years ago rice farmers like mike forget stumbled onto the fact that the two-year growing cycle of crawfish synced up perfectly with the two-year growing cycle of their rice crop now many of louisiana rice fields are seeded with baby crawfish every other year which has created an entirely new source of food and income for farmers in the bayou today i'm in branch louisiana at fruge aqua farms to figure out how cajun crawfish produces over a million pounds of crawfish every year hi welcome to dan duz so what stage are we in right now you're in the early summer okay and we're in the canopy stage of the rice crop we've got cooler water down at the bottom we've got a canopy on top to protect the the crawfish and now we can introduce crawfish to this field if you just came out in this field when we first planted it and just dumped crawfish out here with no cover the birds would get them all in a matter of hours right or the heat would get them so it's more like the rice as a crop just provides the perfect habitat for the crawfish and that's kind of how they came together yeah in a few months the rice will grow out of the canopy stage and be ready for harvest from there the fields are flooded to about two feet of water to get ready for crawfish harvesting once the crawfish are harvested the fields are drained all the way down and another round of rice is planted and the cycle continues this is the boat that we are going to take out to harvest crawfish what is this device here all right so this is a this is a push boat so we used to have a fleet of mechanical boats it took way more energy to repair the fields those mechanical boats dig a rut wherever they go there's a root even though it takes more labor to harvest it's more efficient in the long run because you're not uh having to go back and repair the fields so we went back to walking it's a greener version of crawfish farming so what we have here is a bag of artificial bait so it's basically little biscuits you know we put one or two of these per trap okay we'll grab a trap sort it and then refill the trap with the bait correct so why do we need the gloves because the crawfish are nippy they're nippy sorry i should have helped you yep you're fine this is called a pyramid trap doesn't look like much but this is high-tech crawfish farming me and my brother and a few people around here sort of invented this top believe it or not the way the trap works is you have these flumes right and the crawfish crawl in they go to the bait and theoretically they can't crawl out see my boat's getting away from me okay so it's it's a dance it's a dance well the guys that do this every day they know exactly how to hold this boat they got a down pat i suck at it because i don't do it every day you're an office cat now i'm on office cat exactly harder than a shopping cart i'm just saying yeah harder than a shopping cart so i'm actually kind of nervous so i'm going to pull this thing out fill that drop and then flip it and flip it holy crap jesus you got it you got a load right there that's crawfishing okay you can just take that bait put it back in there take both pieces here you go cause this is a hot spot right yeah so then i push them in so that was a good load then right yep that was a good one as you're pushing along you can you can swipe them and that's oh gotcha swipe as you're pushing [Music] holy christ bugs oh yeah i can really feel it nipping on my gloves [Music] you got to hold on to your boat away no hands he's doing it all by himself why not cover this floor in traps we've learned that you catch most of the crawfish right next to a levee okay it's actually quite uh pleasant here out on the boat [Music] mike i feel like i'm doing honest work here you are this is about as honest as it gets right here lost the boat i've lost the bait oh no it's gone don't worry about it everything's just flying away from me here i wasn't scared they're like very sustainable right because like there would be nothing growing here if not them that's correct you're kind of creating protein from nothing yeah we're converting rice into protein and we're all keto so you know there you go all right so once you've got a full bag you close the little door yep and you pull each section of the chop okay so this is when it starts being some heavy yeah so we're gonna tie that bag off and we're gonna lay it down in the bottom of the boat [Music] all right so now we wrap it in this in this burlap sack here yeah so from here someone's going to come by with an atv bring these back and then we'll sort them correctly and we'll cook off a few of them that's correct thanks guys from here the crawfish are brought back to the processing facility where they're washed graded by sized and then packaged to go out to customers all right mike we're back we're in the processing line now yeah we're in the processing line who's it man here this is ed guidry director of operations over here ed runs the whole plant actually runs the whole form him and another guy just like this yep and then spread it yes just spread it over the top just like that wow this is like that let's shake them out and clear it in little bugs right a little different okay and the mood how fast you want to do it oh you can do it faster than that you want to keep the belt full okay so this machine is not moving very fast but it's moving a little bit faster to you right when you when you harvest the crawfish out the feel yeah everything gets in the trap small and large that's what the next machine does is separate those by size all right let's cruise on so there's essentially three three different sizes right here this is going back for seed correct that's a medium to large and that's the lord so the way that the grater works is there's a series of tubes along this line and they slowly spread out as they get to the end they're getting wider and wider so here only the little guys are let in and these ones are going to go back to seed to set up for next year's crop and then the middle and the large are here these are the ones that are going out to uh to the customers this is one of the final stages he's sorting by eye to make sure what there's no dead ones no headaches no fish no turtles you know the snail's a bad problem this time of year we're standing here to look for ones that are banged up and ones that are dead and when they're dead you cost them in the rejects then you don't look down you look up okay you look up before they get here so you can spot them out before they get it once they fall on the tail it's kind of hard to see them yeah see that you see how that and it's not moving there you go just like that that's what you want to look for you got a crack one right here that one right there okay see the tail broke off after you do it for 35 years you get a to knowing what to look for there's so many crawfish so what's going on on this last step they're actually rolling up the belt yep falling in the sucker and it weighs up about 30 pounds at the time when they get 30 pounds it'll shut off and spin and the mana catch it they'll take them from here and they're going to load them up straight on the truck how'd i do good hired oh yeah i think so these are the little guys that are going back into the rice crops correct to get ready for next year for next year oh hell yeah so we'll go see them dump off we're going to go watch them dump them out yep we spent all that time catching them like we did this morning right then we go sort them out and we move them to another place someday i guess we'll figure out an easier way to do it for right now it's just a lot of hard work all right [Music] this far enough yeah that's good now that the cycle is complete it's finally time to see how some louisiana locals cook up and peel the crawfish dan this is mark my brother want frugae dan nice to meet you markster farmer yeah i'm the salesman he does all the work i sell everything he likes the pr work yeah i'm the pr guy we're gonna boil up some crawfish yeah we're gonna ball up some crawfish we got a little custom boiler right behind you oh you guys make this too so this is some of our private label seasonings don't ask me what's in the recipe i forgot that's so long ago how long now about five ten minutes about five minutes ten minutes you ready to dump yes all right you put it all yes you're trying to kill me [Music] give him some corn there you go [Music] now perfect so the first thing you want to do is find the biggest one in your platter basically you put your thumb under the tail you're going to push in a little bit [Music] twist that's hot going to pull it out you squeeze the bottom of the tail and you wiggle it out i've already butchered it right no no you could i'll get there there you go you're starting ripping already yeah i'm just pulling them out i'm i'm just letting mark demonstrate while i eat it's like the best part of lobster and shrimp pretty much exactly wow and now we just sit in silence and so now you you drink a beer or you drink water or whatever you talk a lot if you talk a lot big family here you said when you guys first started crawfish were just like a thing that someone would occasionally have right and now it's now it's a job it's an industry thank you guys again for uh for having me out here you're very welcome we really enjoyed having you guys

Channel: Eater

Views: 6,610,927

Keywords: Crawfish, Crawfish farming, Crawfish farm, Crawfish harvesting, crawfish boil, how to boil crawfish, louisiana crawfish, louisiana crawfish boil, crawfish traps, how to peel crawfish, how to catch crawfish, how to eat crawfish, how to boil and eat louisiana crawfish, cajun crawfish, cajun crawfish boil, louisiana boiled crawfish, how to, seafood boil, louisiana, crawfish boil louisiana style, crawfish trap, eater, eater.com, food, dining, food show, Dan Does, Daniel Geneen

Id: _bggaA5AURA

Length: 11min 5sec (665 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 19 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/dcfrenchstudent]

FYI. This is how rice farming traditionally happens in asian countries from Japan to India. The fish, eels, and crabs come in with the water when the fields are flooded.

[u/djr0549]

As a Cajun I assumed all rice was grown like this 😂 I guess I take it for granted that all my rice comes from within 20 miles of my house 🤷

[u/CriticismExact2429]

Cool.