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How to Gather Oysters (Tools & Tips)
Oysters are a seafood delicacy and with a little work, they can be sustainably harvested in a short amount of time with the right tools.
March 16, 2021
When I began shellfishing in the mid-90s, there were enough wild oysters around for a decent harvest, but a few years later, the Northeast was hit with the perfect storm for the destruction of our oyster beds. A severe case of the fatal Dermo virus took hold of the oyster stocks, and then two severely cold winters in a row took a major toll on the last survivors. Many bays froze over, killing the oysters in shallow water, which is where most of them live. To make matters worse, there was also an outburst of oyster drills, where whelks survive by drilling holes through oysters’ shells and eating them alive. Our oyster beds were decimated.
It would be fair to describe the great English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy as a Renaissance man, although he may have had a more somber viewpoint than many.
Born on June 2, 1840, near the market town of Dorchester, England, and son of a stonemason and builder, Hardy lacked the funds to pursue a top-tier education. Instead, he learned architecture, for which he exhibited prodigious skill. In 1862, he enrolled in Kingâs College in London, where he won prizes from the Royal Institute of British Architects and others for his work on a church and railway station.
With his plebian upbringing, Hardy never felt comfortable with the social class divisions evident in London, and he moved back to Dorset after five years. He designed and built the red brick Queen Anne-style home called Max Gate, where he lived until his death in 1928. It is now managed by the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest.
As the cold days of winter become increasingly imminent and thoughts of seasonal turkey dinners become a memory, cravings turn to comfort foods and a vegetable laden Irish stew may just be the ultimate warming meal.
Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin was a woman ahead of her time. Born in 1777 to wealthy textile industrialist and politician Ponce Jean Nicolas Philippe Ponsardin in Reims, France, she grew up in the luxurious Hotel Ponsardin where her next-door neighbors were the Clicquot family.
Philippe Clicquot ran a successful textile business in competition with the Ponsardins. In an effort to eliminate competition, the two fathers arranged for the 21-year-old Barbe-Nicole to marry the young Francois Clicquot in 1798, thus amalgamating the two businesses.
Although the marriage was arranged, Barbe-Nicole and Francois hit it off and developed an interest in wine, which both families dabbled in as a side business. Their love of wine did not translate into success, and the business struggled financially early. In 1805, young Francois succumbed to typhoid fever, leaving Barbe-Nicole a widow at 28. Veuve is the French word for widow, so Barbe-Nicole became known as the Widow Clicquot, or Veuve Clicquot.