Diary of a Shellfish Farmer

Wow, I can’t believe that fall is finally here - the summer really flew by! We have been busy all season harvesting and thinning out our oysters for market, and our new crop of seed has been growing really well. We already need to start thinking about our plan for the winter! I also want to take this opportunity to let everyone know to check out the latest issue of Country Woman magazine. There is a feature article on our farm! Thank you to Ann Kaiser and her husband Louie for visiting - we had a great time with them.

Have a great fall season!

The summer is really flying by already - I can’t believe it’s July already!  Our oysters are growing well, and we have been selling them on a regular basis to the Oyster Company up in Dennis.  So if you have a chance, go check out the restaurant and have a few oysters on the half - I know Sunday nights are their jazz nights, too!  We also received our new batch of oyster seed a few weeks ago, and those little ones seem to be growing in leaps and bounds - we’ll keep our fingers crossed for those! 

We hope everyone has a great holiday, and come and say hi to us if you’re out off of First Encounter Beach!

Boy, time really flies by once things get going on the farm!  I can’t believe next weekend is the “offiicial” start of the season with Memorial Day arriving.  Luckily, our oysters have started to put on new growth (this can be seen by the new, razor sharp edges on their shells) and our customers have been asking about when we will have product available.  All good things!  We hope to start selling our oysters by the beginning of June (and enjoying taste testing a few along the way, too).  Since the weather is getting nicer, it will be much more pleasant to spend the low tide out on the farm rather than battling to stay warm!

Well, as luck would have it, it seems that we’ve got our own March Madness out on our farm!  Bill visited our farm over the weekend, and apparently the ice decided to plow right through our site.   Luckily, in the past few years it has missed us.  Currently, all of our PVC pipe is damaged or gone, with some of the pipe looking like plastic pretzels all bent at funny angles!  It appears that all of our oysters are out there (with the exception of one tray), and we have also lost some of our Aquatrays to the winter winds and ice.  We just never know how things are going to look after the winter!  Since the ice moved over the sand on our site, some of the area is extremely soft  - almost like quicksand!  We are trying to think of creative ways to get our critters back out there since it looks like we won’t be driving out on the flats with the sand in that condition.  Next weekend will be the “big move” of our animals back out in the water - it’s time!  We are excited since some of our customers from last year have called us to see when our oysters will be ready to sell.  We’d love to have more of those calls!

Bill and I just got back from a week in San Antonio, TX at a conference for the National Shellfisheries Association (www.shellfish.org).  Every year, NSA has an annual meeting of its members; however, every three years, NSA, the World Aquaculture Society (www.was.org) and the Fish Culture Section of the American Fisheries Society (www.fisheries.org) have a larger triennial meeting like the one we just attended.  We saw many good talks from both industry and academic folks; we also had some incredible Tex-Mex food, too!  San Antonio itself was a great place to visit - there was an interesting mix of several different local cultures.  We also happened to be in town for the 171st anniversary of the Alamo.

Well, I’m glad we got our oysters all in.  Not only is Cape Cod Bay getting plenty of ice, but we’re due for 2-5″ of snow tonight and tomorrow!  That’s ok though - it leaves plenty of time to finish filing last year’s paperwork with the state and town AND start making decisions for the upcoming year, like where we’ll get our oyster seed from!

We’ve been meaning to set up a blog for Beth for some time but honestly these are the types of projects that get put on hold until the winter.  Well, it’s winter alright, with recent overnight temperatures around 7 degrees F.  More importantly to us, our seed oysters (the ones from 2006) are stored in a seed pit, where they’ll ride out the winter in (hopefully) a cold, damp ‘cave’.  Believe it or not, oysters can survive over 3 months in pits like this.

What we hope to do here is have a place for Beth to record and share what goes on with a shellfish farm.  Though our farm is currently a second job for us, we both love it, and certainly it will give you some sense of what’s involved in this ‘business’.  We’re both new to this software so we may work out some bugs as we go!

Welcome!

Bill, Beth and Cameron