(classical music)
(water hissing)
(oysters rattling)
- [Earnest, Sr.] We're in Harris Neck, Georgia
a little town on the water coast.
We do oysters.
We farm 'em and wild picking.
This is a nice oyster,
for a wild oyster.
We work anywhere from, two to 3000 a day.
It's something that grows on you.
That passion for it, it grows on you.
(engine humming)
- Well today we're gonna go harvest some oysters,
and check on some farm oysters.
(upbeat music)
Well, we're here at the nursery.
- Huh, this is good exercise.
(water splashing)
Shake them in the bag and keep 'em loose.
If you leave them there, then what they do,
they have a tendency to grow together,
and stick in there, start looking like a wild oyster.
It don't take long for it to do that.
So we pull 'em out, we shake the bag.
Make sure you shake the sand or mud out of them.
The more you can keep 'em clean,
the more flow of water that can get to that shell.
See how deep that oyster is, right there?
That oyster got a cup, deeper the cup,
more meat and more flavor in there,
more of the juice in there for you to eat it, you know?
And what causes that is coming out here,
and shaking them around to get that cup, to grow.
You have to do 'em like a baby, you know what I mean?
You have to take care.
If you don't take care of it, then you're gonna lose them.
So that dark mark on this pole over there,
the tide, get that high.
It takes like six hours before you get a high tide.
It's low tide, now.
When I got started it was like 17 crab boats,
and oyster boats down there.
And over the years all the older ones died out,
and so it just left just a few of us here now.
It's now become a part of me.
This oyster right here, that's a wild oyster.
That's a farm.
(bucket rattles)
This is what you call wild harvesting here.
That wild harvest, mother nature pretty much does it all.
You know, they sit there and grow in the banks,
and it's up to the harvester to go out there
and pick the right thing.
I don't know, I'm pretty picky about my oysters,
because I want it to be right.
My father, he's been at it all his life.
Started in 1978, and I fell in love with it,
and I asked him, "Think I can do it for myself?"
He said, "Yeah."
So now, I've been at it 45 years.
Oh yeah, I love it.
(tool clinking)
It gets in your blood.
(tool clinking)
This is a nice oyster, for a wild oyster.
You find them nice like that here,
because we work this bank a lot.
If you are up on top of the bank,
then you're going to get the clusters,
and they're good for roasts,
but you can't use them in a restaurant, or grocery stores.
You know, you gotta have a single oyster.
- [Earnest Jr.] People love wild, people love farmed.
But all our oysters grow in the same exact waters.
So we produce three types of oysters:
a wild single, a farmed single, and a cluster.
And don't think you're just walking on shells.
'Cause you rake up, see you got one there, it's a single.
You know when I first started, pop's like,
"You gotta have the eye of the eagle, ah."
Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
And look at it there, you pop him over, look, beautiful.
He's got that shape on him.
Ah.
(tool clinking)
That's a cluster.
You got one, two good ones right there, right?
Ah, he's a dinner.
Two nice, beautiful oysters.
From being in it, from nine years old,
it's kind of like fun to me. (laughs)
You come out here with me, we're competing, bud.
(bucket rattles)
You ain't gonna beat me at when I do the best. (laughs)
You know? (laughs)
(classical music)
- This is my daughter, she's the newest one
on the the crew right now.
It ain't new to her 'cause she heard it all her life.
I'm glad for her to be here with us.
- I didn't learn to appreciate this until I got older.
I used to cry. (laughs)
It's too much water. (laughs)
I got it now, daddy. (laughs)
- But my son, he went into boat captain.
He learned a lot out there in that field,
and he been going places I didn't even want him to be,
going 50 miles off shore by himself.
- So you're a skipper before you're a captain, right?
So that means you know everything from the gunnel on out,
before you even become a captain.
Yeah, well this is the collector site.
This is a high-larvae area,
'cause this is the mouth of the the biggest river,
in this point in all of the larvae have to hold onto
something before they get out the ocean.
And that's why this area is just so productive for us.
- Oysters grow from larvae.
It'll float around in the water column,
until they finds something hard to attach on.
- We take these and knock 'em off,
so they can actually breathe,
'cause I don't think nobody can breathe too much
with like five or six people together.
- Oh, yes! (laughs)
(larvae cracking)
You see how they're falling off there?
When you leave them then you come back,
they'd be a nice beautiful single oyster.
When you break 'em apart then they're going to really grow.
- You gotta be actually present on site, every day.
You have to do small things
that don't make sense to the next person.
There's no farmer that farms the same.
Never.
Everybody got their own recipe to their own madness,
and that madness is normally beautiful. (laughs)
(gentle music)
Well now we are going to head back to wash and process.
- [Earnest Sr.] We bring them back here,
and we'll pressure wash and clean them real good.
It's a different life for me,
after 45 years of seafood, working crabbing and all that.
My son's been working with me a long time.
I didn't realize that he was
really watching me and learning.
He knows everything about it.
So now we've been farming oysters for eight years now,
and every year you learn something different.
See, it's got that deep cut
here, and across here.
They pretty much like them small like these
for raw bars.
People come around and think about putting sauce on 'em.
We say no, try it without the sauce,
and they fall in love with it.
We got a good clean water right here, now.
You know, so I don't know how long it will last,
but for years it's been like that.
Got a sweet, mellowness taste to it, got a good texture.
If you eat one, you want another one. (laughs)
Put 'em in bags and tie 'em down,
and put the tags on them, and the date.
- [Earnest Jr.] We just work hard to keep things
looking good and well for them,
the chefs, to be happy.
It's going to the The Grey's, Mashama, 300 count.
- McIntosh oysters fresh off the boat.
- [Earnest Sr.] We started with her,
it goes pretty deep with with The Grey's.
We get along with all of them,
and we got love for all of them.
- [Trevor] These are McIntosh oysters,
from Harris Neck, Georgia,
and these are the most local, coastal Georgia oyster.
We have a really close relationship
with the McIntosh family and we serve them every day.
You can see how beautiful they are,
and they get that green hue 'cause,
they're from the marshy Georgia coast.
When we first started working with them,
they would bring us clusters,
and he's been developing them every year,
like they look more beautiful every year.
Where now they look like this beautiful,
select cup kind of oyster.
It's cool to see the different ways they are.
Like, I'm from New York.
Oysters are very briny up there.
These are a little like, more rounded.
We're gonna make a pickled oyster.
This is a classic snack from the restaurant.
We start with making a pickle brine,
with apple cider vinegar, allspice,
mustard seed, very kind of aromatic.
Today we're gonna use some Benton's ham.
So these are oysters that we pickled overnight.
You can see they firm up a little bit,
and we roll them in the ham.
It's just a really fun bite.
We'll usually serve this at the beginning of the meal,
kind of wake people up a little bit.
So we're gonna roast you some oysters today.
Kind of classic Lowcountry-style.
Yeah, so let's steam 'em,
until they sort of open up like that.
Burlap sack is like, super traditional and you know,
lemon, cocktail sauce.
And we'll have parties in the yard here,
and give people little shuckers,
so they can just pop 'em open and we'll leave
the sauces out and just kind of have a party.
- The Grey's is one of the first in our heart.
We started with her, Mashama Bailey.
She is a loving person and she is a great chef.
Oh, she can cook. (laughs)
- We are doing little oyster hand pies.
What we're gonna do is we're gonna fold this over,
and turn it into like, a little bit of a Hot Pocket.
We have peas, we have asparagus,
we have some hakurei turnips with the bechamel.
Put a little bit of cayenne on there,
well, maybe a lot of cayenne and then a little bit of salt.
Once you kind of get everything mixed in together,
what we'll do is we'll start to fill our hand pies.
So I wanted to focus on something that was from the region,
and I did some research on hand pies in the South,
and a lot of people would make them,
and put 'em in their lunchboxes.
What we have here are the shucked McIntosh oysters.
One of the things that is interesting,
about Savannah is that it has this place called Pin Point.
It's an old oyster community where a lot
of Black folks lived and worked.
People shucked oysters, farmed oysters,
in order to provide a living for their family.
It was really just a very proud thing for me to learn,
is that, you know, Black people were behind
this very kind of like, nuanced ingredient.
Since then, that oystery has closed down,
and really now, the McIntoshes are one of the only
remaining Black oyster farmer families,
in the region and maybe even in the country.
I'm gonna brush these with egg,
and then we're gonna take these down to bake 'em off.
(classical music)
If you've seen them on the water, that's hard work.
You know, I think more people need to know about them.
I think the best part about working
with the McIntoshes is that, it's collaborative.
We've kind of grown up together,
by redefining some of these ingredients
and techniques and how they're being used in the South.
These are McIntosh oyster hand pies.
- Ooh.
- For the McIntoshes!
(everyone laughs)
- Just taste one.
- Great. - Oh, it's so good.
- [Mashama] Good, good.
- So is an oyster like in a pot pie?
- [Mashama] Uh-huh.
- Oh my God.
(everyone laughs)
- Uh-huh, it's like oyster in a pot pie.
- This is good.
- Yeah, good, good.
We're taking good care of your food.
- Yeah, how does that feel, brother? (laughs)
(indistinct)
- You raised something so small,
like a grain of sand,
and you see it grow up as big as the palm of your hand.
It just has to be something that you love.
I mean, you're on the boat, just you and sky, you know,
in the water and you see something beautiful all the time.
Just you and the good man.
You know, you and God.