Feature article
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Shrimp farmers battle hungry herons, cool temperatures
By Fred Sauceman
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| Jay Birdwell sells freshwater prawns every September in Greene County, Tennessee, just a few hundred yards from where they’re raised. |
“They’re a funny creature to try to raise,” says Jay Birdwell, “because you don’t know what you’ve got ’til you drain that pond.”
Those unpredictable creatures are shrimp. Freshwater prawns, some say. Macrobrachium rosenbergii, in lab Latin.
The bottom-dwellers are native to tropical regions like Malaysia, but Jay and his family raise them near the Nolichucky River in southern Greene County, Tennessee, on a farm that’s been in the family since 1857.
Plenty of tobacco and corn have been cultivated on that land, but Southeast Asian shrimp are newcomers. This year’s harvest was the Birdwells’ seventh.
Inspections and analysis of growth occur daily for mainstream crops, but from the time in early June when the Birdwells slide the fingerlings, or “juveniles,” into the four-foot-deep water, until the pond is drained in mid-September, evidence of crustacean occupation is negligible. There’s not much to do in the meantime except feed the shrimp and shoo away hungry blue herons. Shrimp-farming is a waiting game. The Birdwells have no idea how prolific the season has been until it’s time to bag and sell the shrimp.
It takes a little over 100 days for the prawns to get big enough to sell. They’re fed 32 percent protein pellets. Unlike feed for farm-raised catfish, shrimp dinner sinks to the bottom, where it’s scavenged, out of sight of the farmer.
“When the water gets down to 50 degrees, it’ll kill them,” says Jay. “That’s the reason we raise only one crop a year.”
The year before last, the Birdwells drained the pond and discovered that cool weather left them with only a few bags of prawns. They didn’t sell a one.
In the midst of the pond, an aerator runs 24 hours a day to make sure the water contains enough oxygen to support life.
“Prawns live on the bottom, so intensive aeration is required,” says Thomas K. Hill, professor of forestry, wildlife, and fisheries at the University of Tennessee. Kentucky State University in Frankfort also specializes in prawn aquaculture. A web site maintained by the university lists 28 farms in Kentucky that are growing and selling prawns.
It takes about six hours to drain the Birdwell pond. There’s a catch basin down at the bottom. As the water moves toward it, the shrimp follow the water.
“When the water starts getting low, the shrimp start jumping, so it’s a whole lot easier to grab them,” says family friend Drew Carnes, who helps with the harvest. “They end up just driving that Rhino down there in the bottom of the pond and throwing the shrimp baskets in the back.”
Shrimp are hauled out in white laundry baskets. They’re agitated by hand in oval vats of water to clean off the mud, before the weighing begins. It takes about a dozen to make a pound, and the larger ones measure six to seven inches long.
Jay’s niece Amanda Kilday’s favorite way of cooking them is dipping them in a coconut batter, rolling them in coconut and deep-frying them.
“Last Saturday, we did a shrimp boil,” says Jay. “We had a farm trailer here and just dumped them out on it, and that was awful good.”
Karen Smith drove from Kingsport to Meadow Creek for 13 pounds of prawns, some destined for a citrus marinade and a turn on her grill, others for a pot of gumbo.
“This is my first time here,” says Karen, a native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. “I’ve never tried anything but Gulf shrimp, but I know that they’re clean if they’re farm-raised, and they’re fresh, obviously. They’re beautiful, and the drive out here is gorgeous.”
“A lot of your ocean shrimp has mercury and iodine in it,” Jay tells Karen, as he hands over a shrimp-stuffed sweet Italian red onion bag, one of a stack he bought on the Internet. Jay advises Karen to boil the heads to make a stock for her gumbo.
He’s had customers seek him out from an hour away in the Tri-Cities and recently delivered 100 pounds of prawns to a restaurant in Asheville.
“We have a hard time making ends meet with shrimp, but we kindly like to do it and just keep on,” says Jay. “It’s not as hard a work as some of your other farming. We’re the only shrimp farmers left in Greene County. There’s been three or four that’s tried it, but they all quit.”
I ask him why he persists.
“I hate to quit something I started,” he answers.
Hungry herons and cool temperatures aren’t the only factors this shrimp-farming family must work around.
“We try to sell close to the same weekends in September every year, unless Tennessee’s playing Florida in Knoxville. We’ll try to dodge that weekend because everybody will be in Knoxville and not up here buying shrimp.”
Note: For information on purchasing shrimp when the 2008 harvest rolls around next September, Jay’s number is 423-638-3967.
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Food writer Fred Sauceman, author of the book “The Place Setting: Timeless Tastes of the Mountain South — from Bright Hope to Frog Level,” is senior writer and executive assistant to the president for public affairs at East Tennessee State University. E-mail him at sauceman@etsu.edu.
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