Fishing oysters and lobsters is hardwired into the Hardy bloodline. Leslie Hardy, owner of Leslie Hardy and Sons Oysters, his father, brothers, four sons and one of his daughters are hooked on the family business, established over four generations on Lennox Bay in East Bideford, Prince Edward Island. Many of Hardy’s 36 grandchildren are also involved in the farming of Malpeque oysters, some of the most sought after PEI oysters.  “My father passed the farm onto my older brother. But after a while he wasn’t interested in it anymore, so I bought it from him,” recalled Hardy. “I was a school teacher once, and so was Shirley [his wife], but I gave it all up for this, the adventure of being on the water, the freedom of doing my own thing.”  In this age of automation and mechanically-processed foods, oysters are still a hands-on operation (albeit gloved hands). For the Hardy family, there is no “tonging,” a method of scooping oysters from the bay floor with a hand-operated dredging basket. Instead, the Hardys sort each and every oyster by hand.  The family has also have developed a method for raising higher-quality oysters in less time. The traditional ready-for-market oyster matures at seven years, but the Hardys can grow them to full size in three years and with a rounder shape, which is an attractive quality for raw bars. Their oysters are shipped all over North America, from PEI to Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Boston, Montreal and Maryland.  Gordon Hardy is the youngest of Leslie’s eight grown children who, in addition to being an integral part of the oyster business, also farms mussels on the other side of the bridge that divides the bay. “On this side we kill the mussels, and [we] grow them on the other,” explains Gordon. In discussing his life as an oyster farmer he says: “[I] never did anything else; only made it to the 10th grade, but I like [farming oysters]. Some folk ’round here go out west, Alberta ways, working oil. I wouldn’t want to be that far from home. This is where I want to be, with my family.”  — Text by European Press Agency  Nicole Crowder is the photo editor for the Washington Post’s photography blog, In Sight.
Off Lennox Bay on Prince Edward Island, a small family operation has been farming oysters for over four generations.