Hama Hama® Oyster Blog

It really pays to do business with girl scouts.

We love cookies.

Last week a group of girls from Camp Robbinswold came down to tour the oyster farm and exclaim over the geoduck. This week we received the thank you card and box of Samoa cookies.

Robbinswold is a beautiful, 400+ acre camp north of us on the Canal that is named after our matriarch Helena Robbins. Helena and her husband Harry (then president of Hama Hama) helped create the camp in the 1920s when they arranged for the company to sell the land to the Scouts and then funded the sale themselves. (At that point they weren’t the sole owners of Hama Hama, so they couldn’t just donate the land directly.) It’s a beautifully & wonderfully maintained property and girls have a ton of fun while at camp.

One of the Robbinswold lodges:

Good Life Charters is going to offer guided Hood Canal shrimp hunts this spring. So if you really want to go shrimping, but don’t really want to buy a boat or a pot, call Captain Jerry Spencer at 360-531-3319 or email him at goodlifecharters at hotmail.com.

Jerry is running his boat out of Pleasant Harbor, one of the few deep water marinas on the Canal and site of the Pleasant Harbor Deli, which serves excellent pizza.

Recreational shrimp season starts on May 1st. For more about shrimping, read our how-t0-shrimp guide here.

Somewhere in Lilliwaup…

Noctiluca, the dinoflagellate that caused a red algal bloom in the Canal last month, courtesy of Pete Becker.

Oyster larvae, courtesy of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.

She IS a cute lady!

On an unrelated note: we also like these photographs that Lee Rentz took of the Dosewallips River, big sister to the Hamma Hama. Here’s a sample:

And on an even more unrelated note: Dosewallips turns out to be a surprisingly popular name for dogs. (We’ve heard of at least three doggie doseys). On the right in the photo below is a prime example of a canine Dosewallips. She was raised by mini dachshunds, and quickly earned herself the nickname Dodie Waddles:

Today our friend Preston stopped by with some wild morel and porcini mushrooms he’d recently picked somewhere east of the Cascade Mountains. Preston– who probably knows all of the Olympic Peninsula’s sweet spots for both wild mushrooms and good surf–  runs a local gourmet food supply company called Wild West. He stops by once a week to deliver fresh halibut and salmon from Neah Bay and the Quilleute River. He also picks up HH oysters to sell to restaurants and farmer’s markets on the north end of the Peninsula.

Close-up of porcini mushroom gills.

Since it was lunchtime, and we were hungry, we pan-fried some morels in a little oil, then added oysters, salt, pepper, and eventually eggs.

Our kitchen is set up to fillet fish, not mushrooms, and we were a little short on paring knives.

Last night the Hama Hama Hammers, two-time defending champions in the Olympia Parks and Recreation volleyball league, took a serious digger, losing against Airborne in the semi-finals to finish 3rd.

Fortunately for all involved, it’s just a silly adult volleyball league… right?

…is headed back to Mongolia for a  full year!

Tom will be conducting forestry research on a Fulbright grant, navigating his way past treacherous bogs in the permafrost, and cultivating his taste for fermented mare’s milk.

Here are some pictures from his last go-round:

If anyone happens to find themselves in Ulaanbaatar, say hi to the guy in the green coat!

Yesterday we were inundated with hordes of 6th graders from nearby Hood Canal School. The kids were on a field trip to learn about salmon and shellfish. They travelled to local rivers to see salmon spawning, and then came down to HH to tour the facilities and learn about how important it is to prevent water pollution.

A few of the braver kids even sampled some of the raw oysters.

Below: we’re assuming this was her first raw oyster…