(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.
