This is a conversation with crawfish farmers Bill & Janice Cheek at Stelly’s Restaurant in Lebeau, Louisiana.

We talk about the important things like crawfish, crawdads and mudbugs as lingo…. but seriously, we talked about the red swamp & white river species that are raised commercially and the difference between them and the small crawdads people see in creeks. 

The programs at the LSU Ag Program does a lot of research into the crop. And there are a few other areas of the US where crawfish are grown. 

Bill provides a lot of historical and cultural context on crawfish from the Louisiana perspective. We talk about creating new markets for the crop, hosting boils, what goes in the pot and the family’s favorite ways to eat crawfish at home between boils. 

For so many Southerners, a crawfish boil is a primary means of get togethers during crawfish season (most of the winter & spring). It’s a lot like a barbecue or cookout, but there is a decidedly Southern, spicy vibe. We put up a table with a trash can in the center and pour crawfish, corn, potatoes and more right out on the table. The mixture of added foods really shifts around from family to family. Corn and potatoes are pretty common but things like mushrooms and onions are also getting pretty common. But word to the wise, those mushrooms soak up a lot of spice! Potatoes are much better at helping you temper your temperature if you aren’t too used to all the spices. One of the benefits is the amount of time you can kill standing around and eating the yummy crawdads! 

We also talk a bit about Stelly’s, the restaurant Janice’s grandparents started years ago and that served as our meeting place. You may enjoy a post of photos from inside Stelly’s Restaurant on the Grounded by the Farm website. 

And don’t forget to check out the video shot of the Cheek’s crawfish ponds we shot after this interview because I have to tell you, I was amazed! 

The post Red & white crawfish? Who knew? A conversation with Bill & Janice Cheek appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

As someone who craves crawfish and spends a lot of time plotting how I will get access to the good stuff since I currently live in the Midwest, I am a natural for finding an excuse to get to crawfish ponds. And luckily I have friends who were willing to help make that happen while I was in Louisiana. I was giddy. Giddy for days. Bill & Janice Cheek probably weren’t sure what hit them!

From the road, crawfish ponds look like a rice field but very few rice fields are flooded this time of year. So I have driven by a bunch and have wondered what I should look for, but without a farmer on tap to explain, I kept driving. Bill did a great job of talking through things and we captured some of that on video.

A Tough Spring

Spring 2019 was a rough one for farmers in several areas and that included Lebeau, Louisiana where Bill produces crawfish. That wet spring not only kept him from planting the rice he normally would, it kept him from getting his backup crop of sudangrass planted too! So he decided to go ahead with natural vegetation as the feed.

The process of putting out traps and working a boat in the shallow ponds remains intriguing, but Bill’s explanation of cutting trails into the field before he flooded it with water made absolute sense.

The number of birds I saw was amazing. And Bill’s stories about the others took things up a notch further! But it was probably the explanation of the crawfish reproductive cycle that left me truly in awe… but when Janice teted me photos… well, I can’t show them to enough people! I mean to see a crawfish with eggs or baby crawfish attached to the underneath of a tail? That’s mindblowing! And they make it out of mud burrows with that? Dang. Check them out!

The post Trails, Birds & Burrows Get Attention at Crawfish Ponds appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

When I interviewed Bill & Janice Cheek about their crawfish farm, it was done on location at Stelly’s Restaurant in Lebeau, Louisiana. (It’s confusing to me, Janice Person to write about another Janice, but I’m slowly getting the hang of it.) Stelly’s is definitely memorable!

I was glad Bill mentioned that Janice’s family started the cafe, store and gas station when we talked by phone. See I arrived ahead of them and went on in. Gotta say the gators on the wall grabbed my attention! However when the Cheeks arrived, getting their attention was tough… seemed everyone who crossed their paths wanted to catch up!

We met inside the restaurant, the grocery store was next door. And we actually took a seat alongside what I later learned was Janice’s family dinner table when she was growing up. Her family was a big one and the table made room for all the siblings. I couldn’t help but grab a photo of it along with the wall of deer hunting trophies, cooking supplies, pots and pans, etc. There are even photos of the original owners — Janice’s grandparents!

The family’s farming side was also represented as a crawfish trap hung from the ceiling!

There was a steady stream of people coming in, many coming in from a morning of deer hunting. People took time to say hello, study up on the menu, etc. I decided to go with the shrimp po-boy and have to tell you I loved it!

Although I have to say that Stelly’s is really unique, the sense of community there is amazingly familiar as so many small towns around the United States have cafes that offer a homebase of sorts for locals. Finding that as I travel is always something I enjoy too!

The post Taking a Quick Look at Stelly’s appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.