Cypress Point Oyster Company & Little Honeys Oysters
Jax is proud to carry Little Honeys, a woman-grown oyster from Jody Houk and Cypress Point Oyster Company.>
Jody also gave Dana Query the low down on their oysters, and process:
"Our Oysters:
Little Honeys | Grown by a woman for women (and me) with discriminating taste and BEST EATEN NAKED (cocktail like Kumamoto and Kusshi)
Otters Choice | Smashingly Good (petite like Beau Soliels and saltier)
Summer Salts | Our sunbathing beauty, worth the wait and typically only available in the summer and early fall months (3 inches of shell full of meat and the saltiest)
My husband started oyster farming as a retirement activity and as a way to do something constructive. We moved to Florida in 2017 to be with our grandchildren, all seven are in Tallahassee and they range in ages from 10 years-old to 6 months.
We decided to focus our farm on sustainable practices, and we have applied just the right amount of technology to give us in-depth insight into how oysters grow here in oyster bay, which is in the St. Marks Wildlife Refuge. That means very few humans to impact our waters.
We have touched over 50,000 bags of oysters and have constructed a data model that can predict growth rates and impacts of various weather conditions. We keep track of every oyster planted by its cohort, so we focus on a “small batch, mindfully grown” repeatable process with our animals. Our goal is to grow them all out to market size, and we have a very small mortality rate for the most part. We have found certain lines of oysters grow better here in our waters than others.
We currently have a team of three plus myself who work the oysters Monday through Friday. Typically we work early in the morning, take a break for lunch (I cook for everyone), then return for the afternoon. Matt is our farm manager - he handles most aspects of the farm when I am away. Adrian has established a separate farm with our help - he is our first micro business/farmer, and he has now grown and sold oysters two years in a row using our gear and our leases. His brand of oysters are Apalachee Aces, and we are very proud of him. Our newest team member is Marcus. He is a trained chef, and he may be interested in the food truck that came as part of the 1960’s motel, marina and restaurant on the property. (It has been closed since Hurricane Michael and we have zero bandwidth to operate it.) Marcus is. also considering if he two wants to start a small oyster farm of his own. We invest in startups of oyster farms because the cost to entry is very high with zero income for approximately 9 months. We are always on the lookout for startup farmers.
In addition to farming we are also a certified processor - that business is called Processing @The Creek and our oysters come with that tag and shell stock shipping number. We are very proud of how we process oysters in compliance with all regulations.
We are thrilled to have our small batch, mindfully grown oysters in the great state of Colorado now and we plan to get out to Jax soon and throw a few back ourselves!"