Last year I heard protests from my oystering companions that merely mentioning the location of our favorite oyster flats would attract ravenous oyster-nappers from up and down the East Coast. OK, so since I fish at their pleasure (I don't live in their town; they have the appropriate license and I benefit from the short time it takes to get a limit), I won't say where this marvelous beach is. Suffice to say that it's within a day's drive of my house in Falmouth. Well within a day's drive. And it's on the water. In the water, in fact. (Well ... it's a beach. What did you expect?)
And loaded with oysters this year. It took four of us about a half hour to get two half-peck baskets of carefully chosen oysters. (We had two licensed town residents with us, hence we were entitled to two half-peck limits.)
The day was glorious with the newly-risen sun, a cloudless sky, not a breath of wind and a surfeit of shellfish. And shellfisherpeople. (I'd prefer "shellfishermen," which I think used to cover every gender taking shellfish from the ocean, but it's 2010 so what are you going to do?)
It was a lovely morning and we were off the beach in about 45 minutes, which included Mike kneeling on the sand packing the baskets with as many legal-size oysters as possible.
Now, what to do with them?'
Photos: Top, Josh Albright and myself, on a photo break from the hard labor of oyster-harvesting. Bottom, Mike Race at work picking the best oysters to be layered carefully into the half-peck baskets.
8 comments:
Looks like life the way it is supposed to be! Lovely. Save a bucket of those yummy little fellows for me!
PS. I'll try to get up to see Bruce Martin, it will be a real treat.
PPS... "Fishers"... that's the label for fishermen out here these days... Also, every one that treads the boards of the stage is an "actor" now, but I do note that a midwife... is still a midwife! I suppose that a "birthing facilitator" would be less explosive from a gender politics point of view!
you guys and gals know how to eat up there.
And you are good at keeping secrets!
You could 'set them free'! 'orrible slimey creatures...
I believe we have a basic disagreement about what is to be done with oysters, Daniel.
Your day looks lovely and well spent !
The tag lines we get hung with are quite the thing to some people... most often, not the people doing the work. I am a potter and a farmer. Not a farmette nor a pottist - sound foolish, eh ? yeah, too early to be thinking clearly !
Your day looks lovely and well spent !
The tag lines we get hung with are quite the thing to some people... most often, not the people doing the work. I am a potter and a farmer. Not a farmette nor a pottist - sound foolish, eh ? yeah !
A guy was walking on the beach one day and spotted someone standing alone with his head bent down. He approached and found the guy staring at his hands.
"Whatya doin' there?"
"I'm thinking about eating this oyster."
Guy takes the oyster and gulps it down.
"That's how you eat an oyster."
"Damn. I tried swallowing it three times, but every time, it just came back up."
Ewwwwwwwww ....
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