Hama Hama® Oyster Blog

Gary (see earlier post) also shared these two photos of our own oyster shucking operation in the 1960s… back then we had a conveyor belt to move oyster shell around.

Now we use a forklift and dumptruck, and our shell pile is a lot bigger.

Our neighbor and fellow oyster farmer Gary M. heard about our oyster shack documentation project and stopped by the other day with a collection of old photos to share.

The oyster shack pictured below stands at the mouth of the Waketikeh Creek, the drainage immediately north of the Hamma Hamma. It’s an old CCC cabin that was dragged down to the waterfront in the early 1940s. Between 1943 and 1945 several additions were built onto the building, as you can see in the photos below. The building was used as a shucking shack up until the 1980s, when Gary, who owns the property, decided not to upgrade it to meet changes in State health code.

Joe Leonard Oyster, 1943 (above) and 1945 (below)

Joe Leonard oyster house today:

Our tour of Hood Canal oyster shacks continues with a stop in downtown Lilliwaup. According to John, who grew up in Lilliwaup proper and now shucks oysters for Hama Hama, when this shed was in use back in the 50s and 60s oyster farmers used to anchor big barges full of oysters out front for processing.

Now there’s not a whole lot going on in Lilliwaup bay, and the shellfish beds in the bay itself aren’t farmed anymore because of pollution from a failing septic system upstream.

We’ve been planning this for 5 years, and now it feels like everything’s happening all at once.

Here’s the schedule:

1. We’re going to begin moving equipment out of the old store and into the new one tomorrow.

2. During the moving process we’ll keep the old store open, and if all goes as planned, we’ll open the new store Thursday morning.

3. This weekend, we’re going to tear down the old store.

4. And our grand opening celebration will occur on Saturday, October 31st, otherwise known as Halloween. Start planning your costume now, and stay tuned for more details.

RIP, little old store. Please don’t come back to haunt us.

A few decades ago this was a happening oyster-shucking shack. It’s been sitting idle for a while now, although oysters are still harvested off the beach in front of it.

Check out these colorful oyster shacks of Ile d’Oléron, France, courtesy of Walt.

Meanwhile, last summer residents of Wellfleet, MA decided to preserve Cape Cod’s last historic oyster shack “as tribute to oystering.” Unfortunately the news article didn’t provide a picture of the shack in question.

As we watch our shiny-new shucking and retail facility grow bigger and better every day, we thought we’d take a moment to honor the small, funky, and frequently dilapidated oyster shacks that line Hood Canal’s beaches.

The first building featured in this series is the Union oyster shack, located at the mouth of the Skokomish River. We’re guessing it’s been a while since any oysters were shucked in this building, which is currently abandoned, but has been used in the past as an art gallery.

We took these photos on an oyster-colored day.

This empty building may have the best view on the Canal.