Photo by David Gray
“you can’t cut corners if you’re going to raise the best oysters”
The first thing you need to know is that if you look for Iron Island on a Maine navigation chart, you probably won’t locate it.
On the other hand, if you’re a local, you’ll know where to find us.
#ironislandoysters
our process
Iron Island oysters are grown in floating bags on the surface of the New Meadows River in Maine. It’s not at all ergonomic for us as we work, but the oysters grow best up where it’s warmest, and where food is plentiful. We flip the bags once a week or so to maintain good water flow to the oysters inside.
Since this part of the New Meadows often ices over quite heavily in the wintertime, we put the oysters into cages that sit on the seabed from November or December through early April.
If it sounds like a lot of work to move all those cages and oysters - it is! Oyster farming is still farming, and that means a ton of elbow grease, but you can’t cut corners if you’re trying to raise the best oysters that you possibly can.
seed oysters
The magic all starts here, with seed oysters; these tiny mollusks come to us at about 3mm. The small pile in the photo above actually contains 50,000 seed oysters.
From the time that we receive our new crop of oyster seed (usually late June or early July), it’s about 14 months until we can begin harvesting a few fast growers from that year class. But, commonly we have at least some of each crop through two winters and parts of three summers.
robust, healthy oysters
It’s hard to imagine that seed oysters could grow to full size so quickly. But they do. And our survival rate overwintering is very high, cutting our costs in the spring.
Photo by David Gray
harvest time
To harvest Iron Island oysters, we hand select and wash them on the boat. Then we count, bag, and store market-size oysters immediately on ice. From there, we deliver directly to our wholesalers and to select restaurants.
Regulations do permit us to sell oysters direct to consumers from our homes, too. Give us a call, text your request, or drop us a line and we’ll be happy to arrange it with you.
