Post by Ringulf on Jun 17, 2011 15:18:58 GMT -5
It was one of the first of those balmy days of spring. These were the days that Djolimar loved the most in the marsh.
The winter had been long and cold, oh yes he had enjoyed the first half as he and his father took advantage of the tremendous amount of migrating waterfowl.
They were full to the rafters with goose down for pillows and mattress stuffing, as well as flight feathers to trim and dress for fletching. This was one of Djolimar's way of making some pocket coin for himself, as he would then sell his harvest to the many Fletcher's, Rangers and Wardens in the fief.
His Pa had brought him several times to Marshwood Port's open air market when he sold his fowl, and Djolimar would come home with a tidy sum from the feathers.
This year he had set aside some of the more perfect long flight feathers and brought them to Willoughby to sell to the Scribes guild who were always looking for quills. It was a rather successful venture and they paid as well if not better than the Fletcher's for the right ones, and Djolimar didn't even have to dress them!
His Pa "Fowler" made some remark about the pen being mightier than the sword, whatever that meant, but it must have been funny to grown-ups cause everyone he told it too busted a gut laughing.
The second half of the winter aside from hunting and trapping Djolimar had been having allot of fun screeching around the frozen marsh in his newly made iceboat, well it wasn't a boat like we would call a boat it was really two planks fastened like a cross that had a place to sit over the crux and three metal skates he had nabbed from the blacksmiths waste pile and a forth at the back attached to a tiller to make a steering skate or rudder.
He had to make a new sailing rig as the rig from his punt was much too big for the winter winds and the small craft but it had come out rather nicely and on the whole he felt like it was one of the fastest scooters on the marsh!
There was no sign of snow or ice today though!
In fact, as he unrolled his dip net and tied his little creel to his waste and set it in the water behind him, he was starting to break a sweat.
That would not last long as he got into the water.
It was still rather cool for all the bright sunlight. He donned his wide brimmed hat and put the sun to his back, then he took the two poles one in each hand that supported the large square dip net and started to make his way along the banks in water up to his butt. The hat did double duty. It protected his neck and back from the sun but it also acted like a canopy that cast a shadow upon the water and in its shade he could see below the surface without the reflection of sun and sky.
He saw the myriads of little bait-fish darting about and knew just the way to approach them as he stayed out from the bank a bit then turned in to drive his quarry toward land and trap them.
When he raised his net hundreds of tiny fish made a silver wriggling carpet upon the device that reminded him of the knights chain mail he had seen at Tournament, glistening in the sun. ,
Folding the net in half to make an open ended pocket he then poured the catch into the floating creel and shut the lid.
Djolimar would do this for miles on end and he would fill many creels making lots of trips back and forth to the wherry were he housed the bait. All the fishermen from the whole of the south road knew just were to get the freshest bait unless they wanted to spend the time collecting it themselves.
But the guides of Westmarsh and Willoughby for the most part felt it was an industry better left up to the youth and encouraged their participation in the economy.
It taught them industriousness and and a bit about commerce as well as keeping them occupied and supposedly out of trouble. Well that was the theory anyway.
Djolimar new plenty about commerce and about making his subsistence off the land. He and his father had been doing so for his entire life and the profession of Marshmen stretched back in his family so many generations that it was very hard to even remember the ones who did not live this way.
A marshman was an all around opportunist. He spread his weight upon the cycles of nature and gleaned his bounty not just from one source or skill but many. There was always another season to be ready for and over the years they had become very much in tune with the signs and indicators of what was happening and when.
From Yule to thaw hunting and trapping, when it was too bad to spend time outdoors they skinned and tanned and made items from the many raw materials that they had collected through the year.
In the spring, bait-fish and shore birds, through the spring, fish of all sorts were caught.
Summer was a time for frogging and hunting the great snapping turtles that infested the marsh but one had to be very careful doing that or getting near the monsters at all. They could grow to a very large size and even when the were small could bite a spear in half. Coupled with the most grouchy, cantankerous nature God ever put in a beast.
They were to be avoided unless you were of a serious mind and singular skill.
Fowler was one of those. He was one of most respected Turtlemen in all of Marshwood.
The creatures provided excellent meat, superb leather and remarkably hard shell for making all kinds of things including natural armor plates.
When formed and polished, the turtle shell made a beautiful motley amber streaked with browns and blonds and was highly prized for jewelry and combs and doodads for women's hair among other things.
Next in the late summer came snapper season. not snapping turtles, but little bluefish that snapped up your bait as they started their life cycle in the marsh and were just starting to fatten themselves up in preparation of their life at sea.
The voracious little things would bite three or four at a time and for two solid weeks Djolimar and many of the other kids as well as many of the village folk up and down the river would be busy hauling them in till their arms hurt.
These were taken and smoked and dried for the winter.
Now in the end of summer the crabs had gone through their last molt and were large enough to harvest, so Djolimar would spend many evenings as the sun set with a long pole net and a jack light at the bow of his punt, as Fowler rowed and poled. The pole nets were long and had a foot on one end to pole with and a large round loop on the other that was strung with a "pouch" of netting. One could pole along and when the crabs were seen coming to the surface to investigate the jack lights, pop! In they would go, scooped up into the net to be deposited on the floor of the punt.
The little square boat had a small deck on the bow and stern so the crab hunters could stand above their catch, a good haul meant you could not step off the decking or you would crush the chitinous little creatures or worse, get a nasty pinch from their angry little claws!
They were delicious though, and some of the ones who had just molted their outer shells as they grew were still soft.
These soft shell crabs or "softies" could be boiled and eaten whole!
Put on two slices of bread or a small role with a bit of sauce and Djolimar would be looking at one of his favorite delicacies.
The fall was filled with more fishing...and eel spearing. The eels were speared with long poles at the end of which were many tined, barbed forks. Like miniature tridents. Eels were speared, captured where they lay, in the soft black muddy bottom. These too were smoked and stored or made into remarkable chowder.
Now chowder! that was the focus of another industry that fed and profited the marshman, almost all year around.
Shellfish of many types, clams scallops, muscles oysters were to be harvested much of the year if you knew where to look.
The type of shellfish you harvested needed to have a very special environment to live, so one had to know were to find them.
Clams in the soft mud or the spitters on the flat sandy banks, scallops on sandy bottoms and muscles affixed to tidal banks that bared there shiny black colonies as the tide went out.
There were also conch and whelk that were large aquatic snails and they could be scooped right from the bottom by a net or dived on by a good swimmer, each one offering a meal of meat by itself and a very beautiful and useful shell. One could set traps for these that worked well enough for the crabs too and running a trap line could profit a man hansomely.
This was normally practiced further toward the mouth of the marsh in more open waters and the competition and territorial nature of the trappers was legendary.
Many a tale of fights and even feuds over trap lines and territories abound and where a source of conversation among the men in the taverns at night, as they spun their Yarns and recounted the seasons activities.
Finally with the waxing of autumn came the season for water fowling.
As with shore birds, the ducks and geese and swans came through on their way north to breed and have there clutches of young and the marsh was one of the primary stopping points along the east coast of Araluen.
The hunters readied themselves for the harvest. Thousands of arrows were made, bowstrings were constructed and waxed to be set aside in reserve and every hunter had several to spare. they were kept individually in a section of thick reed and were coated in bee's wax. A cork plug jammed in the top made them virtually waterproof. A snapped bowstring without a backup could mean the difference between making it through the winter by the skin of your teeth on smoked fish, or having a plentiful harvest and coin for next year.
Long bows, short and re-curved bows, even crossbows for the more sport-minded hunter, Sometimes the market hunters, like Fowler, had many crossbows affixed to his water-fowling punt and were rigged so the hunter had only to pull the cord and spray a flight of barbed death upon a flock of birds. All these hunting tools were constructed, refurbished sold and traded. A Harvest fair was held in Marshwood in the end of October that included tournaments for the marshmen and their dogs, and other tests of skill in archery and thrown spear and javelin. This year Djolimar would enter having started to train with Fowler to use a real bow instead just his whipbow.
Between his javelins and his whipbow he had always done right well for himself bringing down shore bird and small game, but to do any real fowling one needed to use a proper bow in order to have the power to kill the resilient birds and not just wound them. Their was nothing more tragic or wasteful than watching a bird fly off wounded with your arrow embedded in a non vital area, and it was a source of shame when someone returned your arrow to you after taking a bird that you could not.
Every man had his own mark upon the wrapping of his arrows and there were several volumes of these marks stored in the library in Westmarsh that could be referenced. it was a marshman's form of heraldry as most marks were very distinctive and important to their bearers.
The waterfowl season ran through the end of the year into the first month or two of the next, however most abandoned the pursuit of game to the harsh weather of the marsh at this time, to hunt again in the more sheltered forests for game and thus start the cycle anew.
Djolimar's thoughts were interrupted by a hearty voice calling him from the cabin. He rolled up his net and emptied his creel stowing the equipment on the dock and looked landward toward the south road and the cabin he called home. Fowler stood on the covered porch with two plates in his hands. as he raised them up for Djolimar to see he called,
"Hey DJ! If you are done stomping around in mud for the day come get some grub!"
He did not have to call twice, Djolimar was halfway up the grassy slope to the cabin by the time Fowler had set the plates down.
"I worked up quite an appetite! I hope there is enough for you Pa!" DJ said, not in complete jest.
"The marsh is our mother, she has been bountiful and generous, and she always provides." Fowler recited in a prayer like blessing to his boy, as he had so many times before a meal.
Djolimar said nothing, for his mouth was full.
The winter had been long and cold, oh yes he had enjoyed the first half as he and his father took advantage of the tremendous amount of migrating waterfowl.
They were full to the rafters with goose down for pillows and mattress stuffing, as well as flight feathers to trim and dress for fletching. This was one of Djolimar's way of making some pocket coin for himself, as he would then sell his harvest to the many Fletcher's, Rangers and Wardens in the fief.
His Pa had brought him several times to Marshwood Port's open air market when he sold his fowl, and Djolimar would come home with a tidy sum from the feathers.
This year he had set aside some of the more perfect long flight feathers and brought them to Willoughby to sell to the Scribes guild who were always looking for quills. It was a rather successful venture and they paid as well if not better than the Fletcher's for the right ones, and Djolimar didn't even have to dress them!
His Pa "Fowler" made some remark about the pen being mightier than the sword, whatever that meant, but it must have been funny to grown-ups cause everyone he told it too busted a gut laughing.
The second half of the winter aside from hunting and trapping Djolimar had been having allot of fun screeching around the frozen marsh in his newly made iceboat, well it wasn't a boat like we would call a boat it was really two planks fastened like a cross that had a place to sit over the crux and three metal skates he had nabbed from the blacksmiths waste pile and a forth at the back attached to a tiller to make a steering skate or rudder.
He had to make a new sailing rig as the rig from his punt was much too big for the winter winds and the small craft but it had come out rather nicely and on the whole he felt like it was one of the fastest scooters on the marsh!
There was no sign of snow or ice today though!
In fact, as he unrolled his dip net and tied his little creel to his waste and set it in the water behind him, he was starting to break a sweat.
That would not last long as he got into the water.
It was still rather cool for all the bright sunlight. He donned his wide brimmed hat and put the sun to his back, then he took the two poles one in each hand that supported the large square dip net and started to make his way along the banks in water up to his butt. The hat did double duty. It protected his neck and back from the sun but it also acted like a canopy that cast a shadow upon the water and in its shade he could see below the surface without the reflection of sun and sky.
He saw the myriads of little bait-fish darting about and knew just the way to approach them as he stayed out from the bank a bit then turned in to drive his quarry toward land and trap them.
When he raised his net hundreds of tiny fish made a silver wriggling carpet upon the device that reminded him of the knights chain mail he had seen at Tournament, glistening in the sun. ,
Folding the net in half to make an open ended pocket he then poured the catch into the floating creel and shut the lid.
Djolimar would do this for miles on end and he would fill many creels making lots of trips back and forth to the wherry were he housed the bait. All the fishermen from the whole of the south road knew just were to get the freshest bait unless they wanted to spend the time collecting it themselves.
But the guides of Westmarsh and Willoughby for the most part felt it was an industry better left up to the youth and encouraged their participation in the economy.
It taught them industriousness and and a bit about commerce as well as keeping them occupied and supposedly out of trouble. Well that was the theory anyway.
Djolimar new plenty about commerce and about making his subsistence off the land. He and his father had been doing so for his entire life and the profession of Marshmen stretched back in his family so many generations that it was very hard to even remember the ones who did not live this way.
A marshman was an all around opportunist. He spread his weight upon the cycles of nature and gleaned his bounty not just from one source or skill but many. There was always another season to be ready for and over the years they had become very much in tune with the signs and indicators of what was happening and when.
From Yule to thaw hunting and trapping, when it was too bad to spend time outdoors they skinned and tanned and made items from the many raw materials that they had collected through the year.
In the spring, bait-fish and shore birds, through the spring, fish of all sorts were caught.
Summer was a time for frogging and hunting the great snapping turtles that infested the marsh but one had to be very careful doing that or getting near the monsters at all. They could grow to a very large size and even when the were small could bite a spear in half. Coupled with the most grouchy, cantankerous nature God ever put in a beast.
They were to be avoided unless you were of a serious mind and singular skill.
Fowler was one of those. He was one of most respected Turtlemen in all of Marshwood.
The creatures provided excellent meat, superb leather and remarkably hard shell for making all kinds of things including natural armor plates.
When formed and polished, the turtle shell made a beautiful motley amber streaked with browns and blonds and was highly prized for jewelry and combs and doodads for women's hair among other things.
Next in the late summer came snapper season. not snapping turtles, but little bluefish that snapped up your bait as they started their life cycle in the marsh and were just starting to fatten themselves up in preparation of their life at sea.
The voracious little things would bite three or four at a time and for two solid weeks Djolimar and many of the other kids as well as many of the village folk up and down the river would be busy hauling them in till their arms hurt.
These were taken and smoked and dried for the winter.
Now in the end of summer the crabs had gone through their last molt and were large enough to harvest, so Djolimar would spend many evenings as the sun set with a long pole net and a jack light at the bow of his punt, as Fowler rowed and poled. The pole nets were long and had a foot on one end to pole with and a large round loop on the other that was strung with a "pouch" of netting. One could pole along and when the crabs were seen coming to the surface to investigate the jack lights, pop! In they would go, scooped up into the net to be deposited on the floor of the punt.
The little square boat had a small deck on the bow and stern so the crab hunters could stand above their catch, a good haul meant you could not step off the decking or you would crush the chitinous little creatures or worse, get a nasty pinch from their angry little claws!
They were delicious though, and some of the ones who had just molted their outer shells as they grew were still soft.
These soft shell crabs or "softies" could be boiled and eaten whole!
Put on two slices of bread or a small role with a bit of sauce and Djolimar would be looking at one of his favorite delicacies.
The fall was filled with more fishing...and eel spearing. The eels were speared with long poles at the end of which were many tined, barbed forks. Like miniature tridents. Eels were speared, captured where they lay, in the soft black muddy bottom. These too were smoked and stored or made into remarkable chowder.
Now chowder! that was the focus of another industry that fed and profited the marshman, almost all year around.
Shellfish of many types, clams scallops, muscles oysters were to be harvested much of the year if you knew where to look.
The type of shellfish you harvested needed to have a very special environment to live, so one had to know were to find them.
Clams in the soft mud or the spitters on the flat sandy banks, scallops on sandy bottoms and muscles affixed to tidal banks that bared there shiny black colonies as the tide went out.
There were also conch and whelk that were large aquatic snails and they could be scooped right from the bottom by a net or dived on by a good swimmer, each one offering a meal of meat by itself and a very beautiful and useful shell. One could set traps for these that worked well enough for the crabs too and running a trap line could profit a man hansomely.
This was normally practiced further toward the mouth of the marsh in more open waters and the competition and territorial nature of the trappers was legendary.
Many a tale of fights and even feuds over trap lines and territories abound and where a source of conversation among the men in the taverns at night, as they spun their Yarns and recounted the seasons activities.
Finally with the waxing of autumn came the season for water fowling.
As with shore birds, the ducks and geese and swans came through on their way north to breed and have there clutches of young and the marsh was one of the primary stopping points along the east coast of Araluen.
The hunters readied themselves for the harvest. Thousands of arrows were made, bowstrings were constructed and waxed to be set aside in reserve and every hunter had several to spare. they were kept individually in a section of thick reed and were coated in bee's wax. A cork plug jammed in the top made them virtually waterproof. A snapped bowstring without a backup could mean the difference between making it through the winter by the skin of your teeth on smoked fish, or having a plentiful harvest and coin for next year.
Long bows, short and re-curved bows, even crossbows for the more sport-minded hunter, Sometimes the market hunters, like Fowler, had many crossbows affixed to his water-fowling punt and were rigged so the hunter had only to pull the cord and spray a flight of barbed death upon a flock of birds. All these hunting tools were constructed, refurbished sold and traded. A Harvest fair was held in Marshwood in the end of October that included tournaments for the marshmen and their dogs, and other tests of skill in archery and thrown spear and javelin. This year Djolimar would enter having started to train with Fowler to use a real bow instead just his whipbow.
Between his javelins and his whipbow he had always done right well for himself bringing down shore bird and small game, but to do any real fowling one needed to use a proper bow in order to have the power to kill the resilient birds and not just wound them. Their was nothing more tragic or wasteful than watching a bird fly off wounded with your arrow embedded in a non vital area, and it was a source of shame when someone returned your arrow to you after taking a bird that you could not.
Every man had his own mark upon the wrapping of his arrows and there were several volumes of these marks stored in the library in Westmarsh that could be referenced. it was a marshman's form of heraldry as most marks were very distinctive and important to their bearers.
The waterfowl season ran through the end of the year into the first month or two of the next, however most abandoned the pursuit of game to the harsh weather of the marsh at this time, to hunt again in the more sheltered forests for game and thus start the cycle anew.
Djolimar's thoughts were interrupted by a hearty voice calling him from the cabin. He rolled up his net and emptied his creel stowing the equipment on the dock and looked landward toward the south road and the cabin he called home. Fowler stood on the covered porch with two plates in his hands. as he raised them up for Djolimar to see he called,
"Hey DJ! If you are done stomping around in mud for the day come get some grub!"
He did not have to call twice, Djolimar was halfway up the grassy slope to the cabin by the time Fowler had set the plates down.
"I worked up quite an appetite! I hope there is enough for you Pa!" DJ said, not in complete jest.
"The marsh is our mother, she has been bountiful and generous, and she always provides." Fowler recited in a prayer like blessing to his boy, as he had so many times before a meal.
Djolimar said nothing, for his mouth was full.