BY MICHELE RUSSELL
VIRGINIA BEACH — When Chris Ludford was a boy, he and his father fished, crabbed, and gathered oysters and mussels in the marshlands of the Lynnhaven River. His family kept their boat behind an old man’s house on Crab Creek, but they didn’t live on the river.
“My mom tells me I was nine or 10 when I told her that somehow I’m going to live on the Lynnhaven,” Ludford said.
He spent 25 years in the fire department and recently ended his career as battalion chief – a position which temporarily paused the oyster business he started in 2010. Now retired from the department, oyster farming is back on.
Today Ludford lives on Great Neck Lake, which empties into the Lynnhaven River. He raises oysters on leased marshland near Pleasure House Point by the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Pleasure House Oysters sells the mollusks to local restaurants.
Cages and boats are expensive, so the Virginia Marine Resources Commission leases marshland to oyster farmers for only a dollar an acre. The state wants oysters on marshland because they clean the river water of pollution and algal bloom. Ludford said he is one of around six commercial oyster farmers on the Lynnhaven River.
Having fulfilled his childhood dream, Ludford’s enthusiasm for his occupation was infectious. Restauranteurs started asking to hop onto his skiff and visit his farm.
They helped him set out the heavy cages that protect his oysters from mink and otters. They helped him pave the marsh mud with the shells of the same oysters their customers had been eating the week before. And then they got to eat right from the river while Ludford shucked the oysters.
When he started, he said, he was one of only two oyster farmers on the East Coast with tour businesses. And his schedule fills up fast.
“I don’t do automated booking,” he said. “I work around the tides. I talk, on average three times, and we are booked.”
As with all entertainment businesses, Ludford realized that his oyster tourism business could go high end. In warm weather, Ludford anchors his boat on his farm, and with the wide sides of his 26-foot Carolina skiff serving as their table, customers stand in the water and eat a full course oyster dinner with white wine.
Crossing over the Lesner Bridge by Pleasure House Point, a driver sees cloud-like islands of grass in the middle of the Lynnhaven River. The grass is brown this time of year, but it’s green and sometimes in bloom in the springtime.
On the tour, looking closer, it was a different story. At low tide, partly submerged on the marsh beds, were formidable metal cages the size of sofa cushions. Inside were the rock-like oysters living undisturbed. The cages contained oysters too large to fit through the metal weave. Behind the cages were dozens of otter paw prints in the sand.
“I’m not going to pull any out right now because I don’t want to stress them because it is super cold,” he said.
When the oysters grow big enough, he puts as many as fit into the cages. Oysters don’t mind being in cages.
“There’s no competition for them in those cages,” he said. “They just eat algae.”
Generations of oysters land on and thrive on the shells of their ancestors.
Most of Ludford’s caged oysters, however, will be eaten relatively young, a size prized by restaurants.
On this early February tour, the setting sun filled the channel where Ludford stood.
He looked down.
“We’ll pull them right out of the water and shuck them,” he said. “I’m fired up. I haven’t eaten one in probably two weeks.”
Some of the oysters he served his guests came from cages, but the largest ones were wild. He plucked them right out of the Lynnhaven, swishing them in the water to clean the muck off them, then shucked them with a knife whose blade looked like a short letter opener.
Several of the oysters were almost the size of his hand. Inside they were a light yellow, and the meat was so large it almost filled the cavity of the pearly shell.
For information about tours or Ludford’s oysters, call him at (757) 663-6970.
The nonprofit Lynnhaven River Now hosts its annual oyster roast fundraiser — featuring Ludford’s oysters — from noon to 3 p.m., Saturday, May 6, at Southside Marina. Visit lynnhavenrivernow.org for more information about Lynnhaven River Now.
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