PCSGA Tidings

By John Dodge, The Olympian

MASON COUNTY – More than 400 third-grade stu­dents in Mason County have a greater knowl­edge and appre­ci­a­tion of the nat­ural world after a day spent last week at Lit­tle Skookum Shell­fish Farm on the shores of Skookum Bay.

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Envi­ron­men­tal day gets kids up-close with nature

They saw and touched about 15 vari­eties of shell­fish, crabs and other sea creatures.

They made bird boxes as the sound of ham­mers echoed like tap­ping wood­peck­ers through the farm’s for­est, which looks like some low-elevation set­ting in the nearby Olympic National Park with its lush, nat­ural feel.

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From Hog Island Oys­ters, San Fran­cisco, CA

Amer­i­cans enjoy mil­lions of oys­ters per year, all year long. But as June, July and August approach there lurks ancient folk­lore that these tasty bivalves are safe to eat only dur­ing months con­tain­ing an ‘R’. Thank­fully, how­ever, advanced farm­ing and stor­age prac­tices have dis­pelled this myth and nowa­days it is safe and healthy to eat farmed oys­ters through­out the year.

His­tory of the Lore

Accord­ing to Mark Kurlan­sky in ‘The Big Oys­ter: His­tory on the Half Shell’, the first men­tion of this tale in lit­er­a­ture is from William But­ler in a ‘Diet’s Dry Din­ner’, Con­tinue Reading »