Oyster farming: Growing rocks for a living.

Our name came out of those brutal first years: wrong equipment, bad processes, not enough help. Night sweats from stress, sore everything, one too many neck operations and a whole lot of dead oysters.

These deceptive little buggers start the season so small that a million of them fit into a mesh bag the size of a cantaloupe. By Thanksgiving they will crush the spirit of any man unable to keep up with their growing call on his dwindling reserves of time and energy.

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Sustainability

The oyster is sustainability in action and a keystone species in the ecology of the Chesapeake. The farmed oyster, like it’s wild counterpart, requires no outside food input, cleans the water in which it lives (filtering up to 50 gallons/oyster/day!!), and is fundamentally responsible for an explosion of diversity of aquatic life in areas where oyster reefs or oyster farms exist.

Additionally, and no small matter, these farms provide sustainable jobs for the men and women who call oyster farming their profession.

Mission

But, there has to be more to life than just proving we have the stubbornness to endure. We know we are called to be our brother’s keeper and it’s easy to look no further than our local area (plenty of needs here) but we wanted to do something more.

So, inspired by the oysters, who spend every moment cleaning the water they live in, we decided to do a little water work of our own. That’s why we donate a portion of our revenue to help build wells that provide safe, clean drinking water for our neighbors in Africa. So far the efforts have funded 5 wells. The money goes to a Well Driller we know here on the Eastern Shore who has made it his business to drill over a thousand wells in Africa for those who have been dying from a lack of this most basic need. You can see their operation at lifetimewellsinternational.org. The mission is clear, just like the water.