Watch This Baby!

[Judy Harder]

Judy, I've aways been part fish and comfortable around water also, but I want to hear about your adventures as a "mussel snatcher." Tell all please, I love mussels.

Diane these were fresh water mussels.
I worked for a guy(Louis Britain) here in the area who  bought mussels and harvested the meats and sold the shells to a company who makes jewelry and uses pieces of the shell to produce pearls in oysters.

I can't remember which company bought from us/him. I started to guess at the name, but it just wont come.
Mainly I stayed home (at Louie's) and bought shells from harvesters here.
The rivers around Kansas are good sources for some great ones.

Now this was back around 1989 when I last worked with them.
But, we all had to have license's to go to river and harvest them. Then take them back to Louis' and steamed the shells and took out the meats (saved them for later) and sorted them by the type and stored them until we had enough to call a semi to come and get them for this company.

I only got to go once or twice. Most of the people were guys and not all  of them liked having a woman around with them.

My fun time was spent wading through the water and finding them with my foot. I had river shoes on and felt good when I could sense them and pull them up. (also found leech's, Ugh)

When we had the shells sorted, we went through the meats and collected the fresh water pearls that were  there.

Now for the gross-out. We did all of this in a rural area.....( for you locals it was on the outskirts of Oak Valley) and we just kept the meats in buckets till we had time to work them.  This means fly's were awful.......bugs were bad..........the meats spoiled and we still had to go through the meats one at a time.......and by the time we would get to the end of a batch.......the maggots and other types of nasty critters would  be pretty gross.

It was just 3 of us cooking the meats with Louis being around to carry the shells and tell us when a shell wasn't a good one.

this man was the last of his  breed, meaning he was born one century too late..........would have made a super trapper and explorer back in the 1800's. His place was pretty rough. but, I didn't mind at all.

I loved working outdoors.......and the guys watched out for me. Now this might have been what got me injured enough to get arthritis.......but I would do it again.

I can't explain all that this involved........you wouldn't believe it anyway.  Out of all these mussel meats we harvested that summer we fattened 6 hogs. I found out the only good hog is when he is in my freezer.

[Diane Amberg]

 Fascinating!  I think there still may be some fresh water mussels around this area, but I haven't seen any in many years.  I remember seeing them occasionally in White Clay Creek when I was little.  The raccoons would get them and the crayfish.

[Judy Harder]

Since I worked with them, the shell harvest has really gone down hill.
some type of parasite got into the rivers and seemed to get them.

I keep wondering if the polution that goes down rivers has something to do with it.

Like I said I enjoyed it and am so glad I had the expierence..

Out of this for about a year or so, Louie had a combination jewelry shop with crafts on the side here in Longton and that gave Randy and me a place to work for the winter.

Didn't last of course, as small towns go, just wasn't enough people coming in to make it work.

Hugs and God bless