Oh yeah, the oysters.

The last blog posting was titled 'Oyster Fest' and while I did describe the St. Michaels oyster festival some, as my dear Uncle Larry pointed out in the comments section I never mentioned how the oysters were.

I'm not a huge oyster fan but the few that I tried were pretty good, if you like that sort of thing. Certainly at the festival a ton of oysters were consumed, mostly raw but also in stews and fritters, and people seemed to like them.

Sheila braved the long line to taste 6 samples of oyster stew from local restaurants and vote on her favorite (sample D). We'll have to check which one won.

I was more impressed with the various traditional boats used to harvest oysters. For example, at the festival the museum relaunched the restored skipjack Rosie Parks, originally launched in 1955 :

Apparently these restored skipjacks are not just museum pieces. When we cruised from St Michaels to Solomons yesterday I was pleased to see another skipjack out in the bay, being propelled by its pushboat :

A while later I was really surprised to see yet another skipjack working as intended - pulling an oyster dredge :

As we learned in the museum, oystering in the Chesapeake is a pale shadow of what it was even 25 years ago but it still goes on, albeit with big restrictions on when and where harvesting is permitted. We've seen a few areas posted as oyster nurseries, meaning no harvesting allowed there.

 

 

 

 

 

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