Life is change. Life is routine. Regardless of which one of these poles we are naturally drawn to, most can find truth in these sentiments. 

In operating any business, especially one that relies on Mother Nature, a balance must be struck between the two. That is precisely what the Hama Hama company has done over the past 100 years. 

What began as a logging company five generations ago has become a family-owned and operated sustainable farm with two businesses: oysters and forestry.

Over the last century the farm has intentionally shaped their traditions and deepened their relationship with both water and woods—tracing an arc from resource extraction, to sustainability, to stewardship. 

While Hama Hama today is far from what founder, Daniel Miller Robbins, set out to do when he purchased this property along the Hood Canal in the 1890s, embracing change is what has enabled this family business to thrive.

As Hama Hama says, “Our farm is an ecosystem, and from forest to flats, from salt water to fresh, from low tide to high, it’s always in transition.”

In a recent interview, Lauren McCool from Hama Hama oysters, sat down with Kinute to discuss farming methods, a century of change, and the elusive art of oyster tasting.

Hama Hama oyster harvest barge. Photo by David Malosh, courtesy of Hama Hama Company

Tell us about Hama Hama’s history.

Hama Hama Oyster Company is a fifth-generation oyster farm. Technically a young sixth generation—a couple of the current kids have their own kids, so hopefully they'll be the next ones to take up the shucking knife. We've been around for 100 years, this year. It did start as a timber farm, that was why the land was purchased. It includes the tide flats; Washington state is the only state where you can privately own the tide flats connected to your land. Oysters were not the main show at the beginning, it was just timber. Oysters didn't get going until the 50s or 60s. The family was just farming for the local community, selling at a little roadside stand. It really [took off] in the 80s when more and more folks were looking for oysters, clams, and mussels. That’s when they began actively farming the estuary, building a processing plant, and then started doing a little bit of shipping—mostly up and down the Puget Sound region. Now we’ve expanded to selling oysters across 48 states.

When oysters began coming on board was that purely a response to the demand, or was logging tapering off simultaneously?

A little bit of both. Logging was tapering naturally because of changes in forestry companies doing bigger business. Some things changed with Hama Hama logging because of new generations looking at more sustainable practices. As we all say at Hama Hama: leave something for the next person. So that became more of an importance than just what logs were coming down the river. The oysters being grown there were being sold to local restaurants, local hotels, and things like that and more and more folks were looking for oysters. I wouldn't say it was a pivot, but an addition.

Oysters harvested manually from the tide flats. Photo by Sam Luvisi, courtesy of Hama Hama Company

Tell us about the area where the farm and forestry operations are located and what makes it geographically unique.

It's such a beautiful place. Hama Hama is at the foothills of the Peaks of the Brothers—which is part of the Olympic Mountain Range. We're on Hood Canal, which is part of the Salish Sea, but not technically part of Puget Sound. It's a separate skinny, very deep body of water that separates the Olympic Peninsula from the rest of [Washington] state. It's technically a fjord. And we're at the base of the Hama Hama River, which is one of the shortest, coldest, and cleanest rivers flowing out of the Olympics. We hugely benefit from that river itself. It starts in Olympic National Park, flows through national forest and then right onto Hama Hama family, private property. The oysters are benefiting from everything coming down that very short, cold river—lots of snow melt, rain minerals, Alder fall, Doug fir, salmon spawn. It's really unique [and] fairly remote. We’re about an hour from any major city. 

Hama Hama states that a part of their mission is to: utilize low impact farming methods to grow world-class oysters. Can you tell us about these farming methods?

Our namesake oyster, the Hama Hama oyster, grows right on the tide flats where the Hama Hama River dumps into Hood Canal. There are hundreds of acres of estuary where they grow. A crew walks out onto the beach when the tide is low with large mesh bags, and they hand pick the oysters. Those bags are left out on the beach, bound up top and tied up with a buoy. Then, we let the tide come back in, those floats pop up and a barge goes out with a big hook and picks up all those bags of oysters. We call that a beach grown or tide flat grown oyster. Of course, tides change, so it could be at 2:00 AM on Christmas Eve or it could be middle of the day in July. 

Our other main oyster we grow at that location is called Blue Pool. It’s the name for this really gorgeous, very deep, glacier blue pool that's up the river. We call them Blue Pool because the flavor is like the clean crispness of jumping in that pool. They are called a tumbled oyster, so they're going to look and taste differently because of that, but they're also farmed differently as well. They start with the same seed, but they don't go onto the beach. They go onto these floating, black mesh bags that allow water to flow through them, so the oysters have room to grow and feed in there. They hang off a single line [and the movement of the] tide is tumbling them around like a rock tumbler. So instead of growing with all these frills and fluted edges like a Hama Hama would grow, all that new shell growth gets chipped off and smoothed because they're bumping into each other as they're floating around. So, a little more effort than Hama Hama. We’d call that our premium oyster offering.

A third one we use commonly at a different farming location is called bag on beach, which is kind of a combination of the two. Those are our three main methods. Again, it's farming. It's a lot of work, but we're trying to let Mother Nature do the most because she does the best.

Beach work on Hama Hama Farm. Photo by Jenn Repp, courtesy of Hama Hama Company

How long until the oyster becomes a harvestable size?

Eighteen to 24 months is the average. 

Can you walk us through how to eat an oyster and what you're tasting for?

There's so much history on this and books written about it. I won't do it as much poetic justice as others have done. Let's picture it's already shucked and ready to go. An oyster naturally has a teardrop shape. You want to put the round, or bill, end up to your lips and kind of tilt it back. It's always about smell and feel, then texture and temperature, and then the after taste. As you're tilting it back, of course it's near your nose, you're getting this nice smell like what should be fresh ocean air—like a misty ocean morning. So, a lot of salt, maybe hints of seaweed or vegetation. You tilt the rest back and it's really cold, which is great. Then you get brine first thing and that washes over your mouth. Then of course there's the debate, do you chew it? If it's a certain size I usually don't chew, maybe give it a chew, and then swallow. After that all the flavors really start to pop. You get different kinds of sweetness—a carrot sweet or grass sweet or cucumber—or salt and cucumber, watermelon, umami, mushroom. There are so many different tasting notes with oysters, which is great because oysters from each different place have their own thing going on. It also changes during the season, so that always keeps it interesting as well. It's kind of like a little moment in time that you're eating. When you harvest an oyster, it closes up and encapsulates whatever the water was doing that day, whether it had been rainy or sunny. It's like tasting a particular moment of a particular day.

Oyster transport on the Hama Hama barge. Photo by Jeff Scott Shaw, courtesy of Hama Hama Company

That’s beautiful. How do farming practices, seasons, and the environment impact that flavor—how can you track some of these changes?

That's another great question. There's always a part of oysters that are just elusive, which is interesting when you're running a company. Flavor, and differences in them, is really a lot about rain and snowmelt—especially for us, being at the end of that river—and then of course temperature. The tide also changes what the oysters are feeding on. More rain means less salinity, of course. Winds coming up Hood Canal from the South will often push up deeper, saltier currents. When we get a big southwind it’s exciting because that means the Blue Pools are going to be extra salty, which I think is fantastic. In springtime you get all the new growth, which means lots of leaves and tree fall coming down. All the eelgrass and sea asparagus will definitely influence flavor—you get a lot more carrot sweetness and grassy sweetness, especially with Hama Hamas. When we're going into September and October, you're coming out of salmon spawn season with lots of steelhead spawning up in the Hama Hama River. We'll get those bits of salmon washing away down the river, so the oysters are getting all those bits of flavor too.

Working the tide flats. Photo by David Malosh, courtesy of Hama Hama Company

Can people visit Hama Hama?

Yes, and please do. We love visitors. We have an oyster saloon. It's an outdoor restaurant with little A-frames and roofed, open air cabins where you can sit out there and eat and drink. We even have what we call the stump bar—again, outside. It's all these big old cedar stumps that are tall enough to stand next to and put your drink on so, very cool, very fun. You can stand up there, Bald Eagles flying around, watching the tide come and go—it's quite lovely.