As it empties into Hood Canal, the river washes over our tideflats with clear, clean, spring-fed water.
"A great oyster is an estuary flashing a thumbs-up sign"
Rowan Jacobsen, "A Geography of Oysters"
Hama Hama Company is a sixth generation family-run shellfish and tree farm on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Our shellfish beds are located at the mouth of one of the shortest, coldest, and least developed rivers in Washington State, and that purity is reflected in the clean, crisp flavor of the oysters downstream.
We sell our oysters at our farm store and oyster saloon, at pop-ups throughout the Puget Sound and Portland regions, and direct to consumers and chefs across the nation. Our mission is pretty simple: utilize low impact farming methods to grow world-class oysters, have fun, and leave something good for the next generation.
In the 1970’s, Bart Robbins used seed racks to collect wild oyster larvae during spawning season.
When Daniel Miller Robbins purchased property along Hood Canal in the 1890s, he had timber in mind, not oysters. Now, over a hundred years later, Hama Hama is a family-owned and operated sustainable farm, with two businesses: shellfish, and forestry. We owe our longevity to the incredible richness of the Pacific Northwest. This is simply an amazing place to live and grow food.
Through the years, our farm has shaped our traditions and deepened our relationship to both water and woods. And our story is ultimately one that many families share, one that traces an arc from resource extraction, to resource sustainability, to restorative stewardship.
In 2022, Hama Hama Company celebrated its centennial. Read what we have to say about 100 years of being in business with your family.
Nowadays, Adam uses modern growing techniques alongside the old-fashioned natural-catch methods from his grandfather Bart's era.
The Hama Hama Farm is a watershed. Upstream, we work on tree time, stewarding a forest for seven decades before harvesting clear, tight-grained Douglas-fir. We pick mushrooms, raise cattle, and boil fir needles into jelly. Downstream, our schedules are set by the gravitational pull of the sun and moon.
On the beach, we harvest at low tide and bring product to shore at high tide. Above the tideline we produce and nurse oyster seed, wash oysters and clams to sell, and shuck oyster clusters. We don’t feed, fertilize, or doctor anything, and the animals actively clean their environment as they grow. Our farm is an ecosystem, and from forest to flats, from salt water to fresh, from low tide to high, it’s always in transition.
Over the years our oyster farm has gotten a bit more dynamic. We started as a shucking house, added a farm store in the 1970s, created a mail order catalog in the 1990s and turned it into an online store in 2008, held our first farm day in 2008, sold our first Blue Pool in 2010, taught our first shucking class in 2013, and added a restaurant in 2014. We've also expanded our farming practices: adding a seed program and nursery and branching out to explore different growing areas so we can produce oysters that are unique in the market and truly distinct from one another.
Today the company is both a community and a business. Our shared mission is to manage our resources for current and future generations. Nearly 50 people work for Hama Hama, many of them for several decades or longer.
We're united by kinship, history, work, and place… and by the love of these darned good oysters. Check out the videos below to learn more about us, our farm, and this place we call home.
