Maine Oyster Festival brings the brine to shore in Freeport

FREEPORT — Flo Edwards and Alexus Bond have been shucking oysters under a tent and serving them to mollusk enthusiasts from all over the country for three days. 

Their bounty is helping the 5th annual Maine Oyster Festival reach a new record for oyster sales, which is predicted to be well over last year’s 40,000. 

The event started in 2021, when a group of oyster farmers approached Visit Freeport to ask about a statewide oyster festival, lead planner Margaret Hoffman said.

“They really desired to have a festival in Maine that was free and open to the public, low cost, broke down barriers, because people think oysters are this kind of exclusive thing that you can only eat in fancy restaurants,” Hoffman said. The farmers also wanted an event that welcomed farmers from anywhere in Maine.

Dozens of restaurants, artists and marine specialists take over the parking lot behind the iconic L.L. Bean flagship store in Freeport. At any given time during the three-day event, 20 of these tents represented oyster farms.

“The best office I’ve ever worked in is out on the water during the daytime,” Edwards — whose main gig is dentistry — said. She and Bond, a logistician, started their business, Indigo Oyster Co., three years ago.

Indigo is a two-woman job, the lifelong friends said. They had spent years bonding over their shared love of oysters until one day they asked each other: “Should we try this?” Then, they started their farm in Yarmouth.

“Usually women who look like us are in the factories where they’re just shucking or canning, like not taking part in the ownership,” Bond said. 

They chose the name “Indigo” because it honors Bond’s Asian heritage and Edwards’s African heritage. Taking the leap to launch a life on the water meant an opportunity to highlight women and people of color — two underrepresented populations in oyster farming, Bond said.

This was their first year at the festival, and it went well. Some visitors even saved their last oyster ticket to return to the booth, labelling Indigo oysters as their favorite of the weekend.

Hoffman said turnout this year has been great thanks to the weather and the offerings, with some farms selling out on the second day of the festival. She met one woman who said she had driven from Arizona just for the event.

Freeport welcomed farmers and educators from as far south as Eliot, and as far north as Brooksville, all eager to teach visitors about the world of oyster farming.

Most oyster farmers in Maine use a top culture method, where oysters are harvested in a cage at the surface of the water. Top culture harvesting is relatively fast, and produces small oysters, said John Clapp, the owner of Mimi’s Oysters. 

“We’re really focused on dive harvesting and working on our bottom sites,” Clapp said. They are one of a few farms in the state that uses both top and bottom culture.

All of Mimi’s oysters spend an entire season on the surface, but the largest get planted directly on the bottom where they grow for another two years. Bottom culture makes for a bigger oyster and a more complex flavor palate, Clapp said. 

“Despite the extra time that it takes to get there, we feel that the, you know, the more time you spend with the oyster, the better product that you’re getting in the end,” he said.

Clapp and his team came to the festival with 4,000 oysters. After selling 2,400 on Saturday, the crew was confident they’d sell out of their remaining 1,600 Sunday.

Between sampling dozens of oysters, browsing the goods for sale and listening to live music, visitors had the opportunity to watch the festival’s culminating event on Sunday; an oyster shucking competition.

No two oysters are the same, and no one knows that better than the professional shuckers who competed this year.

Spectators gathered as Kelly Punch, Firat Kocan and defending champion Chad Michael Egeland carefully slid their shucking knives between each oyster shell. Any leftover grit or cracks in the shell resulted in a penalty.

Egeland finished first, followed by Kocan and Punch. After a few minutes of inspection, judges wrote down final scores on the lid of a paper takeout box, crowning Egeland winner for the second year in a row.

The oysters were slightly dry and gave the competitors some trouble this year, Egeland — who is also the raw bar sous chef at Portland’s Scales — said. But, he couldn’t be happier with his win.