Holidays on the Cape (holidays from NY are coming soon!)

Here is the first of the holiday update told by photos- this one mostly involves stories from our time on the Cape with Jay's family. My family update will follow!

Jay's sister, Allison (Lee), and Daron celebrated their recent marriage with friends and family on the Cape a few nights before Christmas. They are a wonderful couple, it was a wonderful evening, and love was in the air.  =) We are very happy for both of them!

 We went on a chilly walk to the beach near Allison's house and enjoyed a lovely sunset (until the cold wind blew us back into the protection of trees).

Time with friends is always rare, but very important to us. We were able to meet up with some of Jay's buddies from the Cape - Geoff, JR, and Geoff's fiancé, Stef.

Here is the entire family all together! Allison, Jim, Jay, Julie, Allison (Lee), and Daron

We left Cape Cod on Boxing Day and celebrated Christmas on the 26th with my family in NY. Our nephews, Henry (right) and Jackson (left), continue to entertain and delight with their energy and funny antics. I can't wait to tell more stories..... they will come when I'm not about to get my butt kicked by my parents in a game of Mexican Train. Happy New Year everyone!

December days

I'll update you on December stories with photos. I've been working a lot with the geoduck fishermen again, and this time around I was able to bring home a siphon (the "neck" of the clam) for Jay to try because we were both curious about the geoduck hype. After all, the fishermen  make $25 per lb. off of geoducks. Remember these are huge clams, each weighing an average of 1 1/2 lbs.....so these clams are like gold. If a guy brings in a couple hundred pounds a day, well...do the math. It is an insane amount of money! But if the siphon is broken off the shells, they can't sell the clam. So, I get to go home with a siphon for Jay to try. Apparently Jay didn't think they were worth all the hype....I guess it was really rubbery. We found out later that he may have cooked the meat the wrong way. Oh well! 

Jay was able to head south to Belize again last week. He spent a week at Carrie Bow Cay (a Smithsonian field station) studying how marine reserves affect reef health. He is the coral dude who identifies and counts all the coral species (this is not a simple task).  When he came home he suffered from some serious jet lag (or was it the rum?). Lester decided he had jet lag too and they took a nap together. 

We didn't get a real tree this year, since we will be heading east tomorrow. So I made a "tree" of lights and we hung ornaments off of that. Not bad eh? Darwin liked it - see him at the bottom of the picture?

Lester and Darwin are the best gift ever. So is Jay.

Uh oh.

Olympia oysters and Thanksgiving

All oyster shots were taken by Derek King.

Jay and I spent Thanksgiving Eve out in the intertidal with an awesome woman, Betsy Peabody.  She is the Executive Director of a wonderful non-profit called the Puget Sound Restoration Fund. I'm collaborating with her and our friend Dr. Paul Dinnel in Anacortes on a native oyster restoration project on the Swinomish Reservation. So what was the goal of a few nutcases going out late at night on a low tide hours before Thanksgiving? To collect a bunch of happy adult Olympia oysters and bring them back to a hatchery where technicians would convince them to spawn. The "seed" (think tiny baby oysters) will then be brought back to the Reservation this summer and "planted" (this means you just throw down oyster shells with the seed attached to the shells) at specific spots on the beaches.

Betsy, Jay, and Julie

Why bother with all of this? Aren't there a ton of oysters in Puget Sound? Well, yes....but the vast majority of oysters in Puget Sound are non-native. That's right - all the oysters grown and harvested here are actually from Japan. Olympia oysters are special because they are native to Puget Sound. But (here is a quote from the PSRF website) "pollution, habitat loss, and overharvesting have taken their toll; it is estimated that less than 4% of historic core populations...remain in Puget Sound." So Betsy has been working on restoring Olympia oysters at various sites throughout Puget Sound. Last year, Betsy and Paul approached me because they were interested in restoring a few spots on the Reservation and I jumped at the chance to work with them on such a cool project. Furthermore, Olympia oysters served an important role in Native American traditions throughout Puget Sound, and restoring their population on the Reservation will hopefully bring back more than a healthy ecosystem...it should help restore some of the Tribe's connections with their history and culture.

 Olympia oysters are much smaller than the Pacific oyster most people associate with Puget Sound.  There are about 500 individuals here, all going to the hatchery for some lovin'.

After harvesting all those oysters, we went down to Kirkland (just north of Seattle) and hung with Ralph and Jackie at Jackie's parent's house (they were off on a cruise) for Thanksgiving.  Ralph and Jackie had gone up to a turkey farm a few days before the holiday and picked out a free range turkey. Then they slaughtered and dressed it themselves and served it up! I didn't eat it because I'm a veggo, but I was proud of my friends and their healthy, sustainable choices.

We had quite the spread! Everyone brought stuff, Cleo the pooch tried to eat all the stuff, and we had a great time! I brought a potato, garlic and smoked mozzarella strudel as well as a homemade apple pie and rustic homemade bread. Leo and Melissa brought tasty brussel sprouts and pumpkin pie (with fresh whipped cream mixed with rum). Jackie and Ralph had the turkey, mashed taters, gravy, and a great veggo stuffing with chanterelles! We all played mad-libs while cleaning up the kitchen....this should become a tradition as it makes Turkey Day clean-up much more fun.

 Note Cleo the pooch....

The rest of the Thanksgiving weekend was kinda lame because I worked the entire time for the geoduck fishery!  But one day involved bad weather and Jay came down to where I was staying (in Kingston on the Kitsap Peninsula) and we spent the day wandering around the very cute town of Bainbridge.