NEWSLETTER # 2

Nov. 15, 2006

We had a great visit from the Slow Food N.S. group on Sunday, Nov. 12^th. Over 30 people came to the farm, we went out to the leases on our barge and looked at different year-classes of mussels. The weather was wonderful, especially for November and I enjoyed the genuine interest that the group had for knowledge about mussels and mussel farming. We completed the day by cooking mussels at our favorite Mahone Bay cafe, the Biscuit Eater. A great account of the visit can be found at www.slowfoodns.ca.

We finished putting our new mussel seed in the water last week and I was very pleased with how smoothly the job went, especially when we had to get the seed back in the water quickly because of bad weather. The spat was of really good quality and very small which we like as we get more mussels in a given volume than if the spat is larger.

We once again have had a very significant oversettlement of tunicates, (Ciona intestinalis) and it is quite depressing to see mussel ropes completely covered with these tunicates, also called sea squirts. Now we are hoping for a cold and severe winter, which hopefully will set the tunicates back as has happened in the past. We also see lots of ducks back for the winter with our two nemeses in significant numbers, scoters and old-squaw (cockawee) ducks. They are for the moment staying on our outer leases where we are hoping they are eating the oversettlement of naturally set mussels which can be almost as bad as tunicates. It is nice to have, at least for the moment, a relationship with the ducks that is mutually beneficial and that helps make all of us more sustainable.

I met today with Brian Ives. We have started down the road to becoming Certified Organic and Brian helped me to understand the process a little better. Our certifier will be Ecocert Canada and we are using the Quebec Reference Standards for Organic Production. I am enjoying the process and enjoying the people in the Organic community. Of course we hope to eventually attain a market advantage by being the first Organic Mussel producer in Canada. Organic mussels are produced in both New Zealand and Ireland and probably other places as well. I don’t think that we will have to change many of our practices, but we will have to do more documentation of what we are doing. The Farm HACCP that we developed several years ago that helps us ensure that our food growing practices are safe, is a big part of the job done with the new emphasis being on an environmental management plan. Thank goodness for the longer evenings in the winter.

Next week, (Nov. 20 and 21) is the annual meeting of the Aquaculture Association of Canada and they are meeting in Halifax this year. I hope to be able to attend and see old friends and meet new ones and get up to date on aquaculture research.