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Many people who live in America’s WETLAND live by the seasons, meaning that they acquire many of their food needs by harvesting Louisiana's bountiful natural resources. This is a very important part of our culture, and in important ways defines our way of life. Examples include:
- fishing in the summer
- picking blackberries, dewberries, and thistle in spring
- crawfishing in the spring
- picking Gran au Volait (lotus) in June and July
- collecting alligator eggs in mid-July
- harvesting alligators in September
- hunting squirrels and rabbits in October
- hunting deer in winter
- duck hunting (to fill the freezer) in fall and winter
- trapping in December-February
- "cooning" oysters (picking them from the water, named after raccoons that do the same) during cold fronts, low tides, December-February
The following figure is an interesting graphic presentation of how people in the Chenier Plain (coastal southwest Louisiana) live by the seasons. This is from a 1998 book by Gay Gomez (A Wetland Biography. Univ. of Texas Press. 0-292-72812-3).
The following table is another graphic illustration of how Cajuns live by the seasons in the Atchafalaya River swamps (from Greg Guirard’s book Cajun Families of the Atchafalaya, p 29).
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