Not a whodunit, howwouldyoudoit?

[Geowizard]

Cajuns;

Cajuns are descendants of West Canadians...

One of favorite mine camp foods: https://www.allrecipes.com/video/452/sa ... jambalaya/

Good eatin's!

- Geowizard

[Joe S (AK)]

The rest of the story:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cajuns

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Louisiana

[Geowizard]

Cajun Country Revival;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh9CXnoDua4

- Geowizard

[easy goer]

Lache Pas La Patate

Don't drop your potatoes ! Embodies the Cajun spirit, basically means to never give up. Sadly, I wasn't taught Cajun French as a child, all I know is a few cuss words. taught to me by my cousins.

My Dad's second language was English, he learned to speak it in grade school. They would beat them on the knuckles if they spoke French in school. My grandparents could only read French, still had a French newspaper published locally till the late 70's. My grandparents were furious that my dad never taught us French.
My dad, Odrie was one of 7 kids, only 3 made it to adulthood, the depression got his siblings , no money for healthcare. Neither he or any of his siblings had a middle name, he said they were too poor to afford one.
My grandparents were sharecroppers until my grandfather was stabbed in the hip, he was also a moonshiner, he was stabbed by a rival moonshiner during prohibition .
Odrie was the first and only of his siblings to go to college, he graduated in 3 years and served in the Korean war. When he returned from the war his parents finally gotten electricity and a refrigerator.

My uncle worked offshore and continued the family tradition of moonshining, my aunt would make it as well while he was offshore. Actually pretty good and my cousin still makes it too this day.

When I would go to my grandparents during the summer we would have a boucherie nearly every weekend. All of the neighbors would come by and some one would provide a hog, occasionally a steer. We would kill the hog, the kids were responsible for shaving the hair off of the hide. We would make cracklins, hog head cheese, boudin and backbone stew. I think this was where I got my love of cooking and more importantly eating! The men of the family were responsible for cooking all of the wild game, squirrel or deer sauce piquant, gar balls, seafood gumbo and crawfish étouffée. I had no idea at the time how poor my family and relatives were because we sure ate good.

Didn't mean to go off on a tangent, but ya'll started it.

Easy goer

[Micropedes1]

Worked offshore awhile myself, Cajuns everywhere out there. Loved the food. All came from the marsh. Except the gar balls, reminds me of eating cotton balls. Rather have choupique.

[Joe S (AK)]

Big Easy - you forgot *** The Music! ***

Cajun Music is something I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoy.

Makes me wish I spoke French - just so I would know what the words mean.

[Geowizard]

Gettin' on the GOLD;

New 49er's: http://www.goldgold.com/the-basics-of-s ... art-1.html

- Geowizard

[easy goer]

Okay, so I am sampling and sampling, pan after pan moving hither and yon. So I know more is better obviously ! But the real question is how much is enough? Any rules of thumb? I mean even a coonass from La knows three or four golfball size nuggets in a pan might be worth pursuing, its when those golfballs are missing how do you decide when enough is enough?

On the Arkansas in Colorado I can find 20 to 30 pieces in a pan, unfortunately it takes about a million or so to make an ounce. So what is your minimum threshold to keep working an area?

Thanks,

Easy goer

[Joe S (AK)]

Big Easy - How high is high, How wide is wide, how deep is deep? The answer is strictly what you choose it to be.

For some ANY Gold at all is just extra - extra over the beauty of nature, the thrill of the hunt and such. For others there is a certain $ or weight that they feel is the minimum acceptable. Sometimes it's companionship, sometimes exercise, sometimes it's creating wealth with your own hands that is what is wanted.

In the beginning it is simpler to just say pan 'till you drop.

Dig down, layer by layer, layer by layer until something stops you. That could be bedrock, a layer of hard as concrete conglomerate, or a clay layer or maybe even the water level. As a beginning to the hunt just dig a hole/trench as deep as you feel is worth the effort. Lets say you go down 2 feet and find a little bit of Gold on top of a clay layer. OK, remember that. Then keep digging down layer by layer, panning a standard volume of each layer - and remember all those recovered bits of Gold and the best type of layer (write them down). Lets say you go down 3 feet to water and you find the best Gold is down 2.5 feet just under a layer of round gravel. Then go upstream a certain distance - say 20 feet. Do it all over again - paying special attention to the layer that was best before. Maybe a bit more at that level in the second hole. 20 more feet and all over again. After an hour or two or three you will see a pattern and a trend. That would be just like the panner in the Jack London story.

DO NOT final pan to just Gold in each test pan. Count the bits of Gold you see and then dump the 3/4 finish panned out concentrates into a small pail. At the end of the day of panning pan out all the day's test pan concentrates and then take the last 2 Hyper Concentrate tablespoons of Gold and black sand and bring that back to camp to finish reducing later.

Keep on going along test panning from spot to spot until the rate of Gold is being found as you want as a minimum. Tomorrow, or the day after that bring a sluice box and confirm your rate of recovery in whatever increment you like - maybe (there is that word!) so much Gold in an hour's worth of steady shoveling. A small sluice processes about 10 times the volume of a panning run - so see how that works out. Periodically take a break from running the box (and saving your concentrates all day just in a bucket) and punch another test hole 20+- feet further on. Better? Worse? Improvise, Adapt and Overcome.

At the end of the long day of sluicing (but just before your last cleanup, drag that bucket of that day's panning and sluice box concentrates over to the still running sluice box. Slowly re-run those earlier concentrates through the box again and then do a day's final cleanout.

If you had to pan out the entire day's concentrates in camp you would be a tired and hungry Cajun come midnight - BUT - re-running the day's concentrates back through the box again means that only a small amount of concentrates need to be finish panned after dinner.

laissez le bon temps rouler!

[Geowizard]

ADFG...

Pass that bottle of Bourbon...

Before you pull the rope, you need a permit from ADFG.

If there are FISH... It may bump up to an APMA.

The cutoff is February - March.

Might want to refresh those brain cells: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=130



- Geowizard