Oyster Farming - the rest of the story plus Colonial Downs

A few days ago we talked about oyster farming. Pete and Sue were here dealing with the baby oysters. The other day Tyler (his real name!) showed up to deal with the teenage oysters. We were so excited!! We wondered what was under the floorboards!!

Tyler is a sailor at Norfolk Naval Yard who needs to supplement his income due to the sequester (a phenomenally stupid idea but we won't get into politics here).

Tyler scoops out the little oyster babies and puts them into this screen basket. The ones that are too young just fall out the bottom back into the nursery.

Tyler

little ones fall out the bottom

a baby oyster too small to take away from the nursery

There are a lot of buckets to go through 

Creating a stack of baskets

Tyler stacks six baskets together and ties them up.

He goes to a hole in the floor... then puts the stack of baskets into the hole, attaching them to the side.  

 Tyler repeated this about 20 times or more. I got tired and went back to the boat.

We are eating really well, cooking every night. This was hands down the best thing we made, next to that chicken wrapped in bacon - Pizza rolls. Boy, I will make these again!!

 Rusty is definitely injured. His left back leg is almost useless. It will take a lot of rehab to get him back to normal. He wears his life jacket so we can support his rear end.

 Looking for something different to do, we went to Colonial Downs, the local horse track. It was a blast!! We attended most of an educational class where these two guys talked about the horses and walked us through the betting process.

The rest of the time we just watched the pretty horses run!!

Kermit won $6 on a $4 bet in one race. He lost about the same amount on about 7 races. I lost about $6. Jim won $4 on $6 in bets. That was a hard one to understand!!

Kermit, Joy, and Jim figuring out how to bet

Kermit and Joy enjoy a hot dog dinner

Kermit and Katherine 

Jim and Joy trying to understand how a $6 winning bet
paid out $4 in winnings

We enjoyed our time at Colonial Downs. It was pretty, not very crowded, and totally different from our usual activities.

Tomorrow (Friday 7/12/13) we leave for Irvington VA for The Tides Inn. It is supposed to rain all day with at least 50% chance of thunderstorms but no wind so we are leaving. More later.