Rice Season

The days are warm and the evenings cool; Canada geese make their noisy appearance and the hummingbirds are fueling up for their journey; acorns have fallen and the leaves begin their colorful decline; and, oh, yes, the rice birds (Virgina rails) are calling. It must be ricing season.

Before Kurt arrives to hone his ricing skills and report on our own folly, allow me to share our friends, the Oehler's, experience. (Dick, for reasons that soon shall become apparent, will become a regular contributor to this blather, whether he knows it or not!)

Harvesting Wild Rice 2005 – Oehler style

Judi panted excitedly, her eyes dewy with anticipation! My brain took in the vision before me, my pulse quickened and I trembled with excitement. The lake was full, the rice was ripe and we were eager to begin this year’s harvesting.

If my description has caught you up in the passion of the harvest, be forewarned, there are some items that can be off-putting to the more delicate gender (No, I don’t necessarily mean female!). There are bugs. Lots and lots of bugs. Lady bugs, Gnats, Caddis flies, little Spiders, BIG spiders and other bugs only a PHD entomologist could identify. In a few hours of ricing, it’s not uncommon for our canoe to contain 30 lbs of harvested rice and 10 lbs of bugs. While Judi and I tape our pants cuffs with duck tape to keep things from crawling upward and underward, we still find strange debris lodged in our underwear at the end of the day. Of the flora and fauna I found in Judi’s underwear recently (No, she wasn’t wearing them at the time!), some were plantlike, some insect like, some dead and some, regrettably, were not-quite-dead. If that makes your body tremble, but not with excitement, remember that harvesting wild rice isn’t a passionate experience for everyone.

Some times we aren’t the only people panting excitedly at the canoe landing of a good ricing lake. It’s not uncommon for us to come upon another couple, complete with canoe, push pole, ricing sticks and duck tape, launching at the same site. We exchange pleasantries, locally referred to as rice lies. A conversation typically begins with my commenting, “Hi, nice day eh?” The response, “Yes, except that….here select from phrases like, “The rice obviously isn’t ready; It’s too windy to rice today; It’s too sunny to rice today; I wouldn’t advise going out now because the - bees, hornets, mosquitoes, are terrible and a ricer died from a bite just last week!” The idea is to try and get the lake all to yourself before the other canoe(s) work through all the best places. Last week, as I used a special Karate’ move to shove an old lady and her elderly husband out of the way so we could launch our canoe, the old bag had the audacity to say, “You should try Pickerel Lake over near Three Lakes sonny because the rice is real good over there!” Nice try old lady but everyone knows that Pickerel Lake has never had rice growing in it.

The harvest was fairly poor this year but we got enough to warrant processing. It’s a two hundred fifty mile round trip to the processor in Hayward. With gas being about as expensive as beer, this year’s finished rice turned out to be pretty pricy. The rice processing team, a woman and man, do this for about six weeks during every fall harvest. It’s neat to watch their home-built machinery roast, hull and winnow our rice. While they are working with our rice we listen to the advice that is passed along by other ricers. Of course everyone who harvest’s wild rice is an expert and we hear comments like: “You should only harvest the north end of a lake when the wind is coming from the southwest, the moon is full and the ducks are flying in an inverted V out of an eastern cloudbank.” “You mean only use a sixteen foot push pole? That’s all wrong! You should use a twenty-three foot pole made from a balsam taken from the south side nof a west leaning oak that has no more than 2,398 leaves.” “You don’t really use the Minnesota method, do you? No wonder you and your wife look so old!” “That’s your rice? Well I guess some people will eat anything.”

Judi and I have been doing this for close to twenty years and figure our method is about as good as any. A short time ago a young man, planning on taking his son out ricing for a father / son bonding experience asked us for advice. I told him, “Just make sure you go out after a full moon when the ducks are flying in an inverted V over Pickerel Lake down near Three Lakes. Oh, and do you think your son would be able to count 2,398 leaves on a south leaning oak?” I think the guy decided to bond with a six pack and a Packer game instead.

Dick