Oyster Blog — Oysters

We are very happy to announce that we've finally started selling our new brand of oyster, the Blue Pool.  The name Blue Pool is inspired by a cold, quiet place on the Hamma Hamma River that our family has enjoyed for generations. While most Hama Hama oysters grow directly on the beach, Blue Pools are grown in bags that rise and fall with each tidal cycle (read more about our tumble farm here). This action rolls the oysters around, breaking off their new growth and pruning them into the perfect half-shell shape, with a flat top shell and a pronounced deep...

This thing came across the packing table today. Whatever it was, it must have gotten trapped inside an oyster and then covered with nacre. Diana suggests it might have been a barnacle... and despite the fact that barnacles are especially difficult sea creatures to relate to, the thought of being swallowed alive by an oyster and then slowly encased in shell is pretty creepy. See our earlier "ugliest pearl" entries here. And it says a lot about the quality of pearl produced by Pacific oysters that we haven't bothered to start a "most beautiful pearl" contest...

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!

Indian summer weather is here, and we love it. This weekend we'll be celebrating fall with some DIY food prep: picking wild chanterelles, pressing apple cider,  and eating everything out of the garden before the caterpillars do.   The hub-bub of summer seed processing is over and tourists are getting scarcer, so the farm has seemed very peaceful of late. And, just in time to miss most of our summer business:  raw oysters are back in season.  Last Sunday we were lucky enough to go to a muscadet tasting at Campagne restaurant in Seattle, where Chef Daisley Gordon paired muscadet with oysters from yours truly and...

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...