Oyster Blog — Farm work

We've been silly busy these past few weeks putting together mail order packages, shucking oysters for holiday orders, doing end-of-year inventories, and just basically trying to keep our heads above water. So we've been neglecting the poor oyster blog, and therefore this post has a little more to do with today being the end of the month than the end of the year.... that is to say, stay tuned for a year-round wrap up soon.  Meanwhile, here's what's been going on in December. The tide's low at night this time of year, so the barge goes out in the early morning. Here's JJ in...

Our oysters come in all different sizes, and yesterday both ends of the spectrum came across the packing table. Teresa documented it with her camera phone. A perfectly small yearling:   And here is an oyster we would call a medium, simply because we don't have a sort called "outrageously large oysters:" On another note: if you want to ship your Thanksgiving oysters using 2day delivery you need to get your orders in before Monday morning. Happy weekend!

Last Friday, 7 am Yesterday, 9 am, with the barge in the distance.

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 float, 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...

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...