I had the pleasure of interviewing Beth Simonds, who currently runs the small oyster farm “Stonington Farms Shellfish” with her husband and children. Beth has lived in Stonington for her entire life, and told me that the best part about living in Stonington is that “everything you could want is here”: in the summer you can swim in the ocean, and in the winter you can appreciate the beauty of the surrounding area. You can take a short drive to either the coast or farther inland to the woods, because different ecosystems exist close together.
Beth’s great-grandfather was a fisherman, and her grandfather and uncle were both lobstermen. With her family history and the fact that she grew up on the water, it was only natural for her to follow in their footsteps and also work in aquaculture!
For Beth, Saturdays during the oyster season are the busiest. She and her family wake up before the sun in order to be on their boat at sunrise. Raising oysters begins with seeding them in bags, which float downriver as the oysters grow. Each Saturday, they have to perform maintenance on each of 200 hundred bags by pulling them out of the water - and each bag weighs 80-120 pounds!
Once out of the water, the oysters are run through a tumbler, which is essentially a long tube with holes of increasing size that spins the oysters around to sort them by size. At this point, Beth and her family will also remove any oysters that did not survive or any organisms that made their way into the bags, such as blue mussels and blue crabs.
All of this work takes 12-14 hours and is very physically demanding! While it is tiring, Beth really enjoys the opportunity to work together with her family and the reward of a job well done. After they are done for the day, everyone gathers together for a large dinner together as a reward for their hard work.
It is sometimes difficult to be a small, family farm. Each time oyster bags are seeded, they have to invest $100,000 into cultivating oysters that will not reach a size they can be sold at for two whole years. Additionally, many local restaurants prefer to purchase oysters from outside of Connecticut because of state regulations: CT oysters need to be 3 inches long to be sold, but other New England states like Massachusetts and Rhode Island do not have these restrictions. As such, restaurants prefer to purchase smaller, cheaper, more palatable oysters from other states. Out-of-state farmers can also see profit on their investments in one season instead of two. Beth would like to see these rules changed and for local restaurants to invest in local farms instead of outsourcing to other states.
When asked if she has noticed any environmental changes in the area over the course of her lifetime, the first thing Beth told me was that each year seems to be windier, and that winds stay around for longer. As an oyster farmer, she has also noticed that blue crabs never seem to go away despite the old fisherman’s tale that their populations fluctuate on a seven-year cycle. Each year, she and her family seem to find more and more blue crabs, and they also find them during the winter when there used to be none around. Because of this, they have to wait longer to put out juvenile oysters each season until they are large enough to not be eaten by the crabs. Water quality is also poorer and water fails bateria testing more often.
Although oyster farming takes up a lot of time, other activities Beth participates in include hiking, spending time with her family, and taking time to go to the beach outside of the work context. She also loves horses and grew up horseback riding, starting in kindergarten. It provided her with an outlet for excess energy once a week and also gave her an opportunity to work with horses. At some point, she would potentially like to get back into it! Additionally, Beth really likes wildflowers and will purchase seed packs to plant for the spring. She loves the surprise involved, because you never know which flowers will grow until they bloom.
Beth enjoys working with the Alliance for the Mystic Watershed when she gets the chance. She loves the focus on teaching children about our environment, and participates in it herself: she holds field trips on the farm in conjunction with local schools to teach kids about the oyster farming process. They learn about the farming process, how to shuck oysters, food safety, and more. Beth is passionate about including different types of people in the industry, from children to women and people of color: “there’s gotta be a way we can increase the diversity in aquaculture”. She hopes that her efforts to teach kids about oyster farming can help to achieve this goal.
Information compiled from an interview conducted by Monica Doherty with Beth Simonds