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Idaho Aquaculture Practitioner Leo Ray © 2009 Guy Hand
Hand: I’m Guy Hand and this is Edible Idaho, an exploration of local foods.
Ray: There’s a big one about 11, 12 foot long that’s just breezin’ out in the pond.
Hand: Leo Ray is proudly pointing out a pair of half-submerged eye balls drifting through a reedy pond here in Hagerman, Idaho. Those eye balls are attached to a very long, very real alligator.
Ray: These gators here were put here so the public could come out and see them if they wanted to, but also in hopes that they would get old enough to reproduce. We have not had any of them build nests and reproduce yet and they are at the age now that they would just be starting here in a year or two. Hand: And how long have you had alligators. Ray: ’94 was the first ones.
Hand: Leo Ray and his wife own Fish Breeders of Idaho, a fish farm that raises trout, catfish, talapia, sturgeon, and alligator in the famously clear geothermal water around Hagerman. Leo has sold alligator meat throughout the west and hides to Gucci and Ralph Lauren. But as one of his gators fixes its gaze on me, I wonder if it understands which end of the food chain it’s suppose to be on.
Ray: The alligator to raise him is really not dangerous . . . the accident rate is lower for raising alligators than raising fish. You just don’t get in with them.
Hand: But you haven’t had too many problems with these? Ray: No. We have had no accidents here. (No escaped gators?) No escapees. . . . Below this chain link fence is 2 feet of concrete.
Hand: Apart from this chain link fence, Leo’s gator ponds, with their tumbling waterfalls and lush, green growth, look like an Idaho style Everglades. The searing July heat helps.
Hand: It looks like, I mean it’s surprising to me because it looks what I would imagine to pretty good gator habitat with these little ponds and the cattails . . . Ray: We built to be as close to a natural habitat as we can and the reason so many weeds grow there is they like that to hide in. . . OK, you can see them over there. Hand: Oh, wow. How many are there? Ray: There are about 40 in there scattered out and they’ll stay hid as much as possible . . . There whole habit is the conservation of energy, just laying there and soaking up the sun. Hand: Sounds like me n the summer. Ray: Good lifestyle. Hand: Here’s one over here just poking his head out. Ray: And those cattails and reeds are what they like to lay around in and when they build a nest that’s what they use to build a nest.
Hand: Leo Ray grew up on a small wheat and cattle farm in Oklahoma, but started down the road to fish farming while studying invertebrate zoology at the University of Oklahoma. In 1973 he came to Idaho and began raising catfish, then talapia, trout, alligators, and most recently sturgeon.
Ray: There’s some of the big mammas ready for caviar. . .
Hand: At another part of the farm, huge, prehistoric-looking sturgeon swim silently down a hundred foot long concrete raceways.
Ray: That fish is about 7, 8 feet long, weigh about 200 pounds . . . The biggest one we actually processed weighed about 250, 275 pounds. Hand: That’s amazing. Those are big fish. Ray: They’re really fun to work with because they’re not afraid of you. You get in there and they’ll swim around you.
Hand: Unlike the alligators, sturgeon are native to Idaho. And Leo’s fish are the descendants of nearby Snake River sturgeon. Through a program developed by Idaho Fish and Game and the College of Southern Idaho, native sturgeon are captured and spawned. Fish and Game uses most of the eggs to bolster the native population and the rest are sold to people like Leo, who then raise the fish for meat and caviar.
Hand: They do look a little prehistoric. Ray: Yea, and see the sturgeon has no bone. It’s all cartilage. When we handle these fish we have to handle them with quite a bit of care . . . We have stretchers so if we want to move them we put them in stretchers, two people on it packing them . . . Very enjoyable fish to work with. And again it’s a new species so everything you do you’re learning.
Hand: Leo likes trying new things. Only last November he made his first batch of caviar, but he’s already gotten requests from as far away as Israel and Australia. George Bush Sr. recently served a batch of Leo’s caviar at a party.
Hand: This is not usually what I expect from a farm. Ray: Well, that’s what makes fish farming so enjoyable . . . You’re working in a very clean environment, a very enjoyable environment working around fish. There’s a romance to fish . . .
Hand: This isn’t exactly the kind of agriculture I’d have expect to find in arid Idaho, but I wouldn’t have dreamed of alligators on the outskirts of Hagerman either.
Hand: For Edible Idaho, I’m Guy Hand
This episode of Edible Idaho is brought to you by Idaho Preferred, a program of the Idaho State Department of Agriculture.
A Tin of Idaho Caviar © 2009 Guy Hand
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Guy Hand is a writer, public radio producer and photographer specializing in food and agriculture.
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