As a child, the Shrimp Festival was always a reminder to me that Mother’s Day was coming soon and I’d better find something nice for mom because I wouldn’t get another chance to go to town.  When I was off in college it was a chance to go back home and cut loose McClellanville-style.  And now it’s a time when my in-laws come visit and brighten my wife’s day.  They just love the down-home feel of McClellanville, our perfect climate, and all that the Shrimp Festival has to offer.  Last year they got to ride out on one of the shrimp boats during the blessing (while I filmed from across the creek) and had a blast.

It’s sometimes hard to remember that all this fun is for two great causes.  First, the event is put on by and benefits Archibald Rutledge Academy.  And while some people may think of the blessing as just a small part of the whole days events,  it’s truly the most important part.  It’s sometimes hard for those of us that aren’t in the shrimping business to remember the struggles of McClellanville’s biggest industry.  But by taking a moment to bless the fleet as they start off a new season of hard work and long hours spent away from family to bring us home those tasty crustaceans and try to make a living, we are giving them our prayers and best wishes for a successful and prosperous year.  So Just Say No to Imported Shrimp!

Let me know if you want to make a weekend of it and need a place to stay in beautiful McClellanville.

Past Shrimp Festival Articles:
31st Lowcountry Shrimp Festival
32nd Lowcountry Shrimp Festival
33rd Lowcountry Shrimp Festival

Friday, December 4 (Tonight) from  5 p.m. -8 pm

Saturday, December 5 from 10 a.m. – 5 pm

Enjoy holiday shopping, dining and visiting artist’s studios along Pinckney Street in the Historic District of McClellanville. Find original reasonably priced treasures including antiques, collectables, paintings, drawings, woodcut prints, jewelry, pottery, photography, books by local authors, handmade baby fashions, sculpture and much more…Participating Shops, Restaurants , Artists and other Venues

Aaron Baldwin Studio
Another Time – Vintage Kitchen Ware
Cassena Studios: John McWilliams and Nancy Marshall
Elizabeth Bronson Studio
Grillmaster Barbecue
Lee Arthur Studio
McClellanville Art Center
Pinckney Street Kitchen with Sarah Scott and Sheila McClellan
Pluff Mud
Sassafras – A Creative Department Store
The Yellow Shop  – Art and Antiques
Thornhill Farm- Our Local Foods and Adaptive Gardens
T.W. Graham Seafood Restaurant
Village Museum
And many more McClellanville Artists & Craftsmen

Directions:  from Mt. Pleasant on Hwy 17 North, turn right onto Hwy 45- follow the curve to the LEFT where it becomes Pinckney Street. Keep left and  proceed to the Historic District.

“Deerhead Oak” copyright  2009, McWilliams & Marshall

All that aside, I’ve got to say that I love a good oyster roast.  It’s such a great excuse to get bundled up, go out and see friends you haven’t seen in a while.  There are also, of course, OYSTERS and if you enjoy those slimy boogers (yes, I said it) then you’ve got a lot to look forward to this weekend.

In addition to the Village Museum’s Annual Oyster Roast, which is always a blast, Thornhill Farms will also be holding “Local Music on the Farm” benefit with oysters.  No need to choose, because they’re on different days.  The Village Museum Oyster Roast which is held under the Town Hall is Saturday, November 7th at 6pm and also includes great home-made deserts, soups, and chilis (which I usually consume a dozen or so bowls of).  It’s free to museum members or $20 donation at the door.  BYOB and BYOOK – that’s Bring Your Own Oyster Knives for those that haven’t been to many roasts.

Thornhill Farms event will be Sunday, November 8th from 12-5pm and feature live music, barbercue and oysters.  Proceeds go to benefit the Adaptive Gardens of the Lowcountry and the cost is $25 for adults and $10 for children.  All the details are on the images and you can click them to see a bigger picture.  If I can kick this nasty cold, I’ll see you there.

For those of you that weren’t “born and raised”, oyster season couldn’t be easier to remember.  The rule of thumb is that oysters are only harvested (and therefore consumed fresh) in months with an “R” in them, so starting around SeptembeR and going to ApRil oysters are typically harvested.   Small batches of  oysters can be cooked on a baking sheet in the oven or broiler until the pop open.  The preferred local method, however, is to wait until the weather gets a little colder for a good excuse to break the cabin fever.  Build a rip roarin’ fire (outside) until you’ve got a nice stock pile of coals and then place a sheet of metal (a rusted sheet of tin or slab o’ steel work well) over the coals.  Shovel on the oysters and cover with a dampened burlap sack or towel and cook for around 15-20 minutes or until they’ve all popped open.  Around here you don’t even have to send out invitations, people just wander from out of the woods with oyster knives in hand.

It doesn’t matter if you harvest them yourself, have them delivered, buy them at a market, or pay a professional as long as you’re getting local Bull’s Bay Oysters and enjoying them with friends, it can’t go wrong.

I’ll be posting more about Hurricane Hugo and hurricane preparedness later, but to prepare for the coming anniversary I would like to gather pictures of the village after Hugo in order to prepare a slideshow.  Fallen trees, muddy floors and streets, damaged homes and boats, volunteers, National Guard, cleanup efforts, whatever you have that will add to the story.

If you have a scanner you can scan and email your photos to me.  Otherwise I will be scanning pictures.  You can submit them at our office and I will scan them and get them back to you as soon as possible.  Be sure to mark them with your information so nothing gets mixed and they are returned to the right place.  You can submit individual pictures or packages and I will sort through them and choose the best. Through this effort, we will be preserving these images forever.  If we get enough images I will even prepare a slideshow presentation for the town and make CD’s available.  All credit will be given to the original photographers, so please feel free to submit your best images.

We have a whole new population in the village that didn’t live through this experience that forever reshaped the way we viewed life.  Many have seen scrapbooks from one person or another, but few know the whole story.  An event like this can pull us together as a stronger community as we share our past experiences.  As the eyes of the nation fall on us again I propose that we present an image fitting the way that we banded together after Hugo to repair the Village.

There is no denying that it was a horrible experience.  A decade later, we still used “before Hugo” and “after Hugo” as the major time indicator.    I know some suffered enormous financial loss, but I dare say that McClellanville is a better place because of those tragedies because of what we learned about ourselves in the rebuilding process.  We learned the generosity of the human race as volunteers poured in to help a small town they had never heard of but saw only glimpses of on the news.  FEMA was probably less helpful than their dreadful performance in New Orleans after Katrina, but nobody gave up and begged for a handout.   We rebuilt.

If you ask most people you’ll find that the biggest tragedy wasn’t the shrimpboat in their front yard, 6 inches of mud in their house, or even their missing roof…it was that grandma’s quilt was missing or the ruined wedding album.  These are the things that we lost that we’ll never get back.  I was only 9 at the time of Hugo and couldn’t grasp that at the time (it was a big adventure for me, since there was no school for weeks and weeks and tons of new things to see) but I realize this now.

So dust off your scrap books and share your stories as we remember a part of our history that helped make us the town we are today…Who’s with me?

Update: These picture provided were used to create a gallery in my McClellanville: 20 Years after Hurricane Hugo posts

Shrimpboat picture courtesy of Mike Burton.

Ken Burger had a great article in the Post and Courier about being “Raised by a Hundred Mothers“, a feeling I can definitely relate to having grown up in McClellanville.  I’ve written about the it-takes-a-village mentality before, but Burger puts it best with this line, “Looking back, there were truly super women. They worked full time, sang in the choir, volunteered at the school, taught us to dance, held our families together and somehow found time to raise a village full of children.”

The Post and Courier also reported on one of our own this weekend, St. James Santee Episcople Churches minister, Jennie Olbrych.  I adore Jennie.  She is an amazing woman who is passionate about God’s word and always willing to help members of the community despite not living in McClellanville.  You can spot her in the videos on my most recent Shrimp Festival article as she has been responsible for blessing the fleet the past few years…come rain or shine.

Finally, I’d be remiss to not take a moment to acknowledge the two mom’s that make my everyday life possible.  My Mom, Susan Bates, lives just around the corner from me.  I can literally see her house through the woods (do I get credit for not being a momma’s boy if I told you that I lived away from home for 8 years?).  My mom is a strong, confident, and beautiful woman. My wife and I both have a great relationship with her (and my dad) and eat dinner with them almost every week (Thursday’s are Survivor night at the Bates house).  She’s also been a Godsend the past two years watching our son while we work and even allowing the occasional date night and I’m so happy he has someone like her to take him out in the garden, tromping in the woods, and crabbing.

My wife, Josie is my rock!  We were friends before dating and as a result know each other very well and compliment each others weaknesses.  She is an amazing mother with the perfect amount of discipline and love for our son.  She keeps me grounded but always supports me a rare thing to find.  She works hard and always has a smile on her beautiful face.  I definitely couldn’t do all the things I do without the help from these two great women and I often call upon them to review my articles, so my website wouldn’t be the same without them either.

PS – Charleston Painter, Katherine Muschick, wrote a great article about the McClellanville Arts Council’s Youth Art Show, so please check that out and leave a comment on her site.  Congratulations to the great local artists as well!

A few miles north of McClellanville on Highway 17  you’ll find Patriots Farms, or as it is more commonly known, “the strawberry farm”.  The strawberries have just ripened and will only be in season for another month or so, so be sure to go get some soon.  You may want to give them a call and listen to the answering machine message for their times as it may change depending on the availability of the crop. If you’re picking your own ($7.50 per bucket), I’d recommend the morning while it’s still cool. You can easily fill a bucket in twenty or thirty minutes worth of picking…even with a 2-year-old robbing a few.  Or you can pick up a bucket of freshly picked strawberries for just $10.  They also have strawberry jams and honey.

Not only is strawberry picking a great summer activity, but they’re of course a tasty treat that can be prepared many ways.  They’re great as a snack all by themselves or on cereal or shortbread with whipped cream or baked into a cobbler.   I personally love to cut the tops off and lay them on a baking sheet and freeze them.  From there you transfer them to zip lock bags and keep them year round.  Use them like ice cubes, a cold treat, or blend them up in daiquiris!

 

This was the 33rd year of the annual event, which includes vendors, games, silent auction, live music, dancing, and of course seafood.    Overall, it was a great day for kids of all ages, except for a brief shower right in the middle of the blessing of the fleet.  The Lowcountry Shrimp Festival is organized by and profits Archibald Rutledge Academy.  Both these new websites are courtesy of MCVL.net – Lowcountry Blogging Network – contact me today to get your own website).

 

Just before the blessing I escaped across to the other side of Jeremy Creek to film the blessing of the fleet from a different perspective.  I’m going to try to incorporate more videos into my posts in the future, but it’s all a learning process.

Looking for the 2010 Lowcountry Shrimp Festival in McClellanville?

Pinckney Street Kitchen, The Yellow Shop, Pluff Mud, Elizabeth Bronson Studio, Cassena Studios: John McWilliams and Nancy Marshall, Lee Arthur Studios, Sassafras, Another Time, Ma-King Concrete Works, McClellanville Arts Center, T.W. Graham Seafood Restaurant, and The Village Museum. For more information or to participate call Sarah Nell Scott at 887-4001. The wreaths featured here are some of my wife’s and will also be for sale as well.

Last year, Village Museum Director, Bud Hill was bestowed the Order of the Silver Crescent.  What will happen this year?

Update: November Means Oysters in McClellanville

This Saturday, Sept 20th, is Beach Sweep / River Sweep Day. Volunteers will be cleaning up Jeremy Creek from 10:00am to 1:00pm in participation with International Coastal Cleanup . Cheves Leland and Sherry Browne are once again heading this event up and Nature Adventure Outfitters will be graciously providing kayaks and canoes free of charge to those who do not have one. My wife and I participated in last year’s Creek Sweep and had a great time paddling around in our big old canoe scooping up trash. Here’s a picture of the 40+ bags of trash collected last year, lets see if we can top it this year!

There will also be raffles for prizes as well so be sure to check in at the boat landing before you start.

Also coming up on October 4^th is the Josh Thomas Memorial Creekslam. This is McClellanville’s 17^th Annual Inshore Fishing Tournament, which has been renamed in loving memory of former Archibald Rutledge Academy senior who was an avid fisherman. For much more information on this event please visit www.CreekSlam.com . If you register before September 19^th , you will get a free T-shirt.