Hama Hama® Oyster Blog

 A couple of weeks ago we put the beginning touches on our very first tumble farm.

The tumble farm is an energy-friendly oyster pruning device. We spend our days working around the tide, and here we’ve put the tide to work for us. Each of the bags pictured above is filled with oyster seed and attached to a buoy. As the tide comes up, the buoys floats, and the bags flip up and tumble the oysters. The fragile new growth gets broken off in the tumbling process, and in response the oyster forms a deep cup instead of growing long and skinny.

Tumbled oysters don’t necessarily taste any better than a wild oyster, but they have a more consistant shape… they are a nugget of oyster, brimming with brine, and perfect for eating on the half shell.

Sounds good, huh? Stay tuned for availability.

(Read our earlier post about oyster conformation here).

Yesterday we noticed some farm visitors taking a picture of the bulldozer that’s perched atop our giant oyster shell platform. The shell pile isn’t growing up, it’s growing out, and the machine is there to spread the shells around and make turnaround space for the dump truck. It also doubles as a tow truck whenever the dump truck gets mired in the loose oyster shell:

If you live within reach of the oyster farm you can come buy some oyster shell and help put a dent in our massive supply. The cost is $25 for a pickup truck load if you load it yourself, and $50 for a pickup truck load if we load it with our machine. And trust us: it’s worth the extra $25 bucks to have us load it. Half-crushed clusters of interlocking oyster shells are nearly impossible to shovel. Call the wholesale office 360-877-6938 to schedule a shell pickup.

Whose idea was it to designate August 5th National Oyster Day? Is there an Australian prankster embedded in the Bureau of Obscure Food Holidays who’s sabotaging our ability to truly celebrate our nation’s most valuable bivalve?

If you haven’t already heard: August is an iffy month to consume raw oysters. They might make you sick, and they might be spawny.  But maybe August is a fantastic time to be an oyster? The water’s warm, the sun’s out, you and all your friends and neighbors are spawning, and there’s less risk that you’ll be harvested and eaten.

Tomorrow we’ll be celebrating National Oyster Day by doing what we always do this time of year: frantically trying to recruit as much oyster larvae to our beach as possible.

The beach crew spent the morning bagging oyster shell. Later, during the oyster spawn, we’ll put the bags out on the beach to collect oyster spat in hopes of getting a good oyster set.

Spawn, spat, set. Read more about it here.

And we are unofficially naming February 5th National Oyster Day, observed.

It was a gorgeous sunny and clear day, not too hot, and the tide was low at 1 pm.

The Brothers.

Looking south down the canal.

Judith, Sarah, Raquel, and Dave spent the day breaking apart bags of last year’s cultch  and piling it on the barge. Later this week we’ll move the cultch to a grow-out area. (Cultch = semi-crushed oyster shell covered with naturally-recruited oyster seed).

Nearby, Dan and Dave were picking single oysters.

Upstream in the picnic area two boys, upon discovering that our landscaping isn’t quite level, turned one of the boards into a teeter-totter:

Later in the day a group from the Puget Sound Orca Network came by with Kitsap Tours and took a tour of the oyster farm. They were going to head south to Hoodsport Winery and then swing back up north to visit Finnriver Farm.

And after the tide work was done the crew gathered in the new plant to wish bon voyage to Dan R., who’s retiring from single picking after 17  (or 18, he couldn’t remember) years on the beach.

Dan has the black jacket slung over his shoulder. He’s standing between Teresa, who’s eating delicious cake and Olympic Mountain coconut ice cream, Jim, former HH manager, and Dave, who has picked singles alongside Dan for many a night tide.

Last week we received a certified letter from the Highway Department telling us that our tree cookie sign is illegal. Even though it’s located on the same property as our store, it’s too far from the store to satisfy the scenic byway highway requirements.

To that we said boo.

But after brainstorming several creative responses to the situation we decided the best bet was to just remove the offensive object. The sign, cut from a 400 year old Douglas fir tree, had been up since 2008. And, truth be told: the wood wasn’t weathering very well. In its illegal and illicit location the sign had a lot of southern sun exposure, and now, two years later, it’s starting to crack up. Read about its construction here.

Terrible, just hideous.

In other news: our old barge is up and running. You can see it in the photo above, enjoying life back out on the water. So the earlier post (“Last Run of the HH Battleax”) was a little misleading. The Battleax lives!

Saturday we trucked ourselves and a bunch of shellfish over to the first Saturday Bellevue Farmers Market of 2010. It was a beautiful and fun day at the market, and the smoked and pickled oysters went over like a helium balloon.

So, from now until October, we’ll be in Bellevue every Saturday hawking clams in the shell and oysters four different ways: smoked, pickled, shucked and in the shell. Come on by for a sample! www.bellevuefarmersmarket.org

We’ve been concocting some grand schemes these past few weeks! Our quest for world domination is well underway in the following locations:

1. Olympia: Live in Oly and want fresh Hama Hama oysters without the drive or the shipping charges? Our shucked, shell, smoked and pickled oysters plus our steamer clams will be available for pickup on Mottman road on Thursdays through a new CSA-type venture called Olympia Local Foods.

2. Kitsap Peninsula: Monica’s Bakery is organizing a Culinary Tour that will stop by the oyster farm on May 15th (same day as our Open Farm) to tour the flats, learn how to harvest and prepare shellfish, and then eat a delicious Hood Canal inspired meal. It’s going to be really fun. For more info visit Monica’s blog. There are only 30 tickets available and they’re selling fast!

3. Bellevue: We’ve finally bit the bullet and are diving headfirst into the Farmer’s Market scene. Sorry for the metaphor overload, but this has been a long time coming. We’ll be at the Saturday Bellevue Farmers Market starting June 5th. If you attend that market and want to pre-order anything feel free to give us a call 888-877-5844.

4. Eldon: We’re also bringing the farmers and the market to our very doorstep… starting tomorrow we’ll be hosting the Friday Hood Canal Evening Market. We’re inviting local farmers, musicians, and arts and crafts dealers to come show their wares from 2 until 5 pm. If you are a farmer or have something to sell contact market organizer Howard Leggett at 360-898-1717.

pst: We just received a load of really cute local coonstripe shrimp… they’re miniature spot prawns and just as tasty!

We’re heading into Seattle in just a wee little bit to serve smoked and pickled oysters at the third-ever Foodportunity. The event, located in Tom Douglas’ Palace Ballroom, is a gathering of people who love to prepare, write about, and eat food. The only hitch is that we’ll miss the low tide this evening. But that’s the life of an oyster farmer.

A low pressure system has created extra high high tides and disarmingly high low tides for the past couple of days. Basically, the water hasn’t gone out as far as expected… which makes work on the beach either wet and hurried or downright impossible.

Juan, John, Roberto and Pina shuck oysters, with Miguelito on forklift.

The shucking room is refrigerated, hence the hats, jackets, and the bit about short sleeves.