Oyster Blog — Farm work

In no particular order, here are the top 12 most memorable moments from 2010, as seen on the Hama Hama Farm. 1. Creating a tumble farm, so that we can offer boutique tumbled oysters to some of our higher-end clients. 2. Spring & Summer Open Farm Days, where we invite the public onto our beach to learn about oyster culture and harvest their own shellfish. This year we had about a hundred people show up in March (when it was sunny) about 10 people show up in April (when it poured) and about 150 arrive in May (when it was...

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...