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| Five inches of ice on a small, nameless southern Michigan lake. Based on Junior's expression, Mom is catching more fish than he is. |
These pictures are from one of my neighbors. Faces are obliterated except for the smiles for the sake of privacy.
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| A nice mess of fish |
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| First Mom shows them. Junior has done this before. Missy is hamming it up for dad and the camera. |
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| Just off-hand, what percentage of the American public over age of 20 knows how to filet a fish? My guess is the very, very low single-digits. |
I have boundless respect and admiration for the intentional way my neighbors are raising their children. For example: They cleaned the three smallest fish "old-school". That is, scaled-and-gutted. Then they showed the kids how to pull the dorsal fins and lift the skeleton off the meat on one side, flip the skeleton sans half the meat over and then lift it off the other side.
Each kid got to practice on one half of a fish. It is the kind of trick you do when you want to recover every molecule of meat...like when you are hungry and/or when the fish are small but you want to eat them anyway. The heads can go into soup stock.
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| Hunger is the best sauce. Nothing makes you hungry like fishing all day in the cold and then watching your mom cook up the fish. If you want to be really cruel, you can fry bacon to get the fry-grease before you start frying the fish |
My neighbor specifically asked me to give Drake's Crispy Frymix a plug. It is made in Marshall, Michigan and is a great product.
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| This is how you do it when the pond is filled with stunted fish. You have to harvest the fish to reduce the numbers or you will always have stunted fish. It is a sin to waste food. The filets look like postage stamps and are fussy-fiddly things to get off the fish. This solves a lot of problems. |
It is heartening to know that there are parents out there actively raising their kids.
I think there are more than we know. They keep their heads down and focus on raising resilient, resourceful kids. What is notable about these pictures is that the kids are SMILING. Please take a minute and embiggen each one. It is a joy to see.
I am privileged that my neighbor trusted me enough to send these pictures and gave me permission to share them with you.
Well done to them! And now I want some fish camp Catfish... sigh
ReplyDeleteSeeing how we have such a long friendship, I am willing to mail you a package of Drake's Crispyfry.
DeleteWhaddya say?
Hold out for the fish to put inside the fry mix Jim.
DeleteDrive a hard bargain. You know some fresh fish would be delicious mid winter.
We used to bring the perch home from ice fishing in five gallon buckets. Took forever to filet them all.
ReplyDeleteIt is encouraging to see this family. So different from what we usually see now. I hope you are right and there are more around. Thanks for the smile. --ken
ReplyDeleteFamily pictures like that reveal the hope and a future for the human race and western civilization.
ReplyDeletePart of a homeschool community. 250 kids at a dance Saturday night. They do English Country Dance which is very much like a fancier square dance. My daughter is the fish whisperer. They just jump into her bucket. Son got "first fish" out sailing last week out of Seabase. Went to a wedding in Dakota. The young couple is bringing cattle back to his family's farm after a generational hiatus. Bright smiling faces undaunted by the clouds. Another wedding this coming summer. They are the fifth generation on that land. We will make the trek because "family sticks together". That is the lesson my kids hear.
ReplyDeleteWe are in a golden age for home-schooling. The internet makes it easy to find educational materials. The internet makes it easy to find like-minded parents so resources can be pooled.
DeleteIt used to be if the primary teaching parent was weak at Math or Foreign Languages the kids were doomed. No longer.
The ease of finding like-minded parents also makes it easier to cut ties to groups that drift away from what you want...or to seek other like-minded parents if your own thinking evolves.
ERJ, I think you are right that there are a lot more families and individuals out there like this than we know. Most of them neither seek attention nor promote themselves; they just go about their business (it is us bloggers with our endless need to catalogue things that do this). It is a very encouraging story and thank you for sharing it.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, they are out there even though you don't hear about them much.
DeleteHomeschooling and traditional families are growing like crazy; their opponents don't like it, so they don't cover it.
Home schooled or kids, oldest is 40 and youngest is 32 now. They grew up learning skills like how to; hunt, gut, skin and butcher a deer or rabbit, etc... We helped out at a local butcher doing deer, hogs and beef. They all grew up moved away and Mom and I eased off some of these things eventually moving to a 30 acre farm. We started with chickens then goats and a couple of steer. When I asked about splitting the cost of having one butchered my oldest said that we could do it ourselves and all agreed to come to the farm and do it. He was raised that we do things for ourselves and it came back to us in spades. Raise them up in the way and they will always have it
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great post! Those folks are doing things right. I'm forever thankful to my dad for bringing me up hunting, fishing, and gardening. It is so satisfying to turn a critter or some produce into a meal from start to finish. It's been ages since I've fished through the ice, but I spent many winter days staring at holes in the ice, yanking out bluegill. My hands would get numb filleting the fish since they were about frozen solid after sitting out on the ice. We used to fillet them on newspapers, and the smell of the newsprint, cold fish slime, and snow combined to create a unique and memorable smell.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations to that family as they build memories and tradition.
ReplyDeleteThose fried fish in photo #6 look mouth-watering.