From a distance it looks as if Sally Andreola might be praying. She is kneeling in the few inches of water left behind by the receding tide at Mants Landing in Brewster, and her head is bowed. As you get closer you can see her lips are moving. “One, two, three, four,” she quietly mouths. “Five, six, seven, eight.” Is she praying? Is she sorting oysters, counting out one hundred to a bag? Or is she doing both?
Andreola and her husband, Scott Leonhardt, work Mant’s Landing Oysters, a grant set against a backdrop of shoreline that can make them look as if they’re figures in a giant Impressionist painting. She is a retired schoolteacher and quite correctly insisted on including the possessive apostrophe in her company’s name. Mant’s Landing Oysters is one of the farthest and also was one of the first grants off the town beach at the end of Robbins Hill Road. She’s been working the same half-acre for 15 years. “I could have requested more, but a half-acre seemed liked a good place to start,” she says. “With just Scott and me working the farm, we really couldn’t handle more.”
Andreola and Leonhardt tend approximately 170 trays that sit a foot, more or less, off the sand during low tide. Over time, the sands have shifted so now she and Scott have a longer walk to the grant, and can be working in a few inches of water depending on the tide when they get there. The advantage, though, is that Andreola’s oysters stay in the water, receiving nutrients longer between tides. Each year she orders 100,000 seed oysters, and harvests from 60,000 to 80,000 full-grown oysters that she sells to Big Rock Oyster Company in Harwich and Island Creek Oysters in Duxbury. What she doesn’t harvest she winters over and hopes they survive into the next year. Here on Cape Cod it takes an oyster sometimes three years to grow to the legal limit of two-and-a-half inches for farm-raised oysters, three inches if caught wild.
Because of the small size of her farm, Andreola is able to move her oysters around constantly, something she can do more easily than what can be done on larger grants. It’s the “small is beautiful” approach to the world that somehow got left behind in the ‘70s. “Each time I go out I’m sorting by size, giving the smaller oysters a better chance to grow,” she said, “I clean barnacles and algae from the cages that compete for food and impede the flow of water.” Left to its own devices, an oyster would grow as flat as a perfect skipping stone, and increased handling causes the edges of the shells of the growing oysters to chip away, causing the shell to form a deep cup, something that chefs and restaurants look for.
Andreola and Leonhardt work the grant, seemingly in their own thoughts even when next to each other. Over the course of a few hours, they rarely speak. Before they go out they’ve worked out the specific jobs they each have to do.
“It calms me down,” Andreola says about working Mant’s Landing Oysters. “It makes me happy. I’ve always liked being near the ocean. I was a Jersey shore kid growing up and being by the ocean gives you a certain perspective. It doesn’t matter how bad the day is, it’s like meditating or yoga and that probably affects the way I farm. I feel I’m in my proper place in nature, and for that reason I probably farm more slowly and meticulously than other farmers.
“I have an Italian heritage, which means I have a heritage surrounding food,” she continues. “The preparation, the sitting down and eating, is important to me. One of my earliest memories is going into my grandmother’s garden with a salt shaker and eating tomatoes. I guess it’s the reason I grow oysters today.”
Andreola and her husband, Scott Leonhardt, work Mant’s Landing Oysters, a grant set against a backdrop of shoreline that can make them look as if they’re figures in a giant Impressionist painting. She is a retired schoolteacher and quite correctly insisted on including the possessive apostrophe in her company’s name. Mant’s Landing Oysters is one of the farthest and also was one of the first grants off the town beach at the end of Robbins Hill Road. She’s been working the same half-acre for 15 years. “I could have requested more, but a half-acre seemed liked a good place to start,” she says. “With just Scott and me working the farm, we really couldn’t handle more.”
Andreola and Leonhardt tend approximately 170 trays that sit a foot, more or less, off the sand during low tide. Over time, the sands have shifted so now she and Scott have a longer walk to the grant, and can be working in a few inches of water depending on the tide when they get there. The advantage, though, is that Andreola’s oysters stay in the water, receiving nutrients longer between tides. Each year she orders 100,000 seed oysters, and harvests from 60,000 to 80,000 full-grown oysters that she sells to Big Rock Oyster Company in Harwich and Island Creek Oysters in Duxbury. What she doesn’t harvest she winters over and hopes they survive into the next year. Here on Cape Cod it takes an oyster sometimes three years to grow to the legal limit of two-and-a-half inches for farm-raised oysters, three inches if caught wild.
Because of the small size of her farm, Andreola is able to move her oysters around constantly, something she can do more easily than what can be done on larger grants. It’s the “small is beautiful” approach to the world that somehow got left behind in the ‘70s. “Each time I go out I’m sorting by size, giving the smaller oysters a better chance to grow,” she said, “I clean barnacles and algae from the cages that compete for food and impede the flow of water.” Left to its own devices, an oyster would grow as flat as a perfect skipping stone, and increased handling causes the edges of the shells of the growing oysters to chip away, causing the shell to form a deep cup, something that chefs and restaurants look for.
Andreola and Leonhardt work the grant, seemingly in their own thoughts even when next to each other. Over the course of a few hours, they rarely speak. Before they go out they’ve worked out the specific jobs they each have to do.
“It calms me down,” Andreola says about working Mant’s Landing Oysters. “It makes me happy. I’ve always liked being near the ocean. I was a Jersey shore kid growing up and being by the ocean gives you a certain perspective. It doesn’t matter how bad the day is, it’s like meditating or yoga and that probably affects the way I farm. I feel I’m in my proper place in nature, and for that reason I probably farm more slowly and meticulously than other farmers.
“I have an Italian heritage, which means I have a heritage surrounding food,” she continues. “The preparation, the sitting down and eating, is important to me. One of my earliest memories is going into my grandmother’s garden with a salt shaker and eating tomatoes. I guess it’s the reason I grow oysters today.”
