Pages tagged Massachusetts
Barnstable Harbor
Cape Cod sand flats opened to farming in the mid-1990s. By 2010 about 52 town grants worked 100 acres, on ten-foot tides that flush the harbor twice a day.
East Dennis
A Cape Cod Bay oyster grown since 2003 by John and Stephanie Lowell on two acres of flats off Crowe's Pasture. In winter the stock goes into an insulated trailer.
Eastham
Wellfleet's southern neighbor on the outer Cape: 26 aquaculture licenses, a first grant dating to 1928, and a harvest that tripled between 2014 and 2018.
Megansett Harbor
The Buzzards Bay harbor where Dan Ward, an aquaculture PhD, has grown Fiddler's Cove oysters since 2012 on ten acres of exposed sandy bottom.
Puffer's Petites
A small Wellfleet oyster from the Puffer family's Mayo Beach grant. Very salty first, then a savory depth that one writer compared to cured Italian meat.
Standish Shore
Ben Lloyd's Duxbury Bay oyster: nursed in bags, tumbled three or four times, then spread loose on the bottom. Ready in 18 to 24 months.
Sweet Neck
One of Katama Bay's oldest farms, founded by Jack and Sue Blake in 1996. Oysters grow under a raft with a wind turbine and reach market in about 15 months.
Aunt Dotty
A petite, dense Massachusetts oyster from trays on the Saquish flats, named for the great-aunt who kept the family business going off-grid in the 1940s.
Cotuit
One of America's oldest oyster brands, from a Cape Cod bay where oysters once went by wagon and rail to Boston and New York.
Duxbury
A small bay inside Cape Cod Bay where about twenty licensed growers farm oysters in water that never held wild oysters.
Katama Bay
A Martha's Vineyard bay behind a barrier beach that storms break open every decade or two, home to about a dozen independent oyster farms.
Moon Shoal
A boat-access-only farm in Barnstable Harbor's Great Marsh, grown at low density and hand-harvested. Sweeter than most Cape oysters, say the growers.
Wellfleet
Cape Cod's oyster town since Champlain named its harbor after oysters in 1606. Farmed grants, a wild fishery, and a festival every October.
Wianno
A Barnstable oyster grown two ways: bottom-planted in West Bay near Osterville for shell strength, and caged off the bottom in Barnstable Harbor.
Island Creek
A Duxbury Bay oyster from a farm started after a parasite wiped out one man's clams. Cold, full-salinity water in a bay that never had wild oysters.