Episode 32: Of Oysters, Cheese and Aquaculture: A Conversation with Justin Trosclair of Lady Nellie Oyster Farm

The confluence of Oysters and Cheese, with Justin Trosclair of Lady Nellie Oyster Farm

In this episode of OYSTER-ology, Kevin sits down with Justin Trosclair from Lady Nelly Oyster Farm to explore his fascinating journey from cheese-making to oyster farming. Justin shares his unconventional entry into the world of oysters and how a chance encounter with some outstanding Grand Isle oysters ignited his passion. He discusses the intricacies of running a small-scale oyster farm and his innovative solutions to farming hurdles. They also discuss  the nuances of terroir and merroir, and how they impact the flavors of cheese and oysters respectively.Throughout the conversation, the parallels between cheese making and oyster farming are highlighted, revealing how both crafts rely on natural processes to achieve extraordinary flavors. 

00:00 Introduction: Cheese and Oysters

00:18 Guest Introduction: Justin Trosclair

00:37 Justin's Background in Food Industry

01:41 The Spark: Discovering Oysters

02:33 Transition to Oyster Farming

04:04 Life as an Oyster Farmer

06:44 Challenges and Innovations in Oyster Farming

11:30 Farm Setup and Operations

18:39 Oyster Quality and Market

23:19 Health and Safety Concerns

26:23 Balancing the Risks of Eating Oysters

28:33 Event Catering and Jazz Fest Success

29:10 Challenges of Offering Farm Tours

30:17 The New Guarde of Oyster Farming

30:46 From Cheese to Oysters: A Unique Journey

31:29 The Art and Science of Cheese Making

37:10 Cheese and Oysters: A Surprising Pairing

44:35 Biggest Challenges and Triumphs in Oyster Farming

47:41 Future Goals and Reflections

Links:

Lady Nellie Oyster Farm’s Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/ladynellieoysterfarm/

Grand Isle , LA Information website: https://www.explorelouisiana.com/cities/grand-isle

New Orleans JazzFest 2026: https://www.nojazzfest.com/

Little Moon Oysters website: https://www.littlemoonoysters.com/

The Wandering Shuckers website: https://www.thewanderingshuckers.co/

Little Debbie Snack Cakes website: https://www.littledebbie.com/

Please be sure to Like and Follow OYSTER-ology wherever you listen to podcasts, and tell others about it. Every positive mention of it helps more people find the podcast!

Transcript

Transcript: Of Oysters, Cheese and Aquaculture: A Conversation with Justin Trosclair of Lady Nellie Oyster Farm

[bubbles]

[00:00:00] 

Justin: To say cheese and oysters or cheese and seafood don't go together, as almost every rule, is an oversimplification. You know, rules are pretty useless like that, in my opinion.

 [bubbles]

Kevin: Welcome back to OYSTER-ology, a podcast about oysters, aquaculture, and everything from spat to shuck. I'm your host and he Foodwalker, Kevin Cox. When most people think about what to pair with oysters, they usually turn to wine, beer, or booze, but the question of cheese is often overlooked. My guest today is Justin Trosclair, an award-winning cheese monger who turned his sights to oyster farming and started the small but outstanding Lady Nelly Oyster Farm in Louisiana.

 Justin tells us about his journey into oyster farming and the challenges that a new entrant to the oyster aquaculture world experiences. He talks about solving his problems, the trial and error way, and storms, bacteria, and growing the perfect oyster. And he talks about cheese. See, [00:01:00] Justin loves making cheese as much as he loves farming oysters, and he compares making it with oyster growing. Our interview is sort of a twofer today because as much as we marvel at Justin's ambitious oyster cultivation, we also hear about his award-winning adventures with cheese, and of course, how the two fit together.

So shuck a few half shells and set them on your cheese plate while we hear about DIY oyster farming; the secret of little Debbie Snack Cakes; dependable dads; just who is Lady Nelly; cheese terroir versus oyster merroir; manipulating milk and the myth of mold; the perfect cheese plate; the perfect oyster; and the marriage of the two together, with cheese monger-turned-oyster farmer and a model of aquaculture's independent New Guarde, Justin Trosclair.

Kevin: Justin Trosclair, it is so great to have you as my guest on OYSTER-ology. Welcome, man. I am so excited to get to know you and learn about what you're doing at Lady [00:02:00] Nelly Oyster Company. I know you have a fascinating background in cheese, and I believe there's gotta be some kind of confluence between cheese and oysters. So we're gonna talk about that a little later. But before we do that, tell me a little bit about you and your background and how you became involved in this world of oysters. 

Justin: Yeah. first off, Kevin, thanks for having me. big fan of the podcast. So. it's a little random how I got into oysters. I don't have a background in oysters or seafood really, besides, growing up in an area where people fish and my dad shrimped back in the day. I mean, only for about, five years of my life. But, I came in through it, through the food industry in general, specifically cheese.

So I've been in the food business since 2005. unless you consider, Little Debbie Snack Cakes, food or the food business, which I have been doing basically my entire life until my dad retired. My dad was a Little Debbie, delivery guy. and I helped him from about, since I could walk, he had me out there, working with [00:03:00] him. He would literally wake me up at three o'clock in the morning on school days. We'd go work for a couple hours and he'd drop me off at school I'd get home and I'd basically been working in food some way or another, almost my entire life. So that's a little tangent. 

So yeah. Anyway, I'd say my first sort of like oyster moment, the sort of thing that put the spark in my brain about this was during COVID. I was working a pop-up market with a wine shop that I worked at. I was doing the cheese program and this fellow named Scott with Louisiana Oyster Company brought his oysters to the market. And I tried one and I said, man, that's the one of the best oysters I've ever had. Where's that from? And he said, Grand Isle. and I was like, well, you know, like, why does it taste like that?

You know, growing up in New Orleans, it's all we've really had where the, I don't wanna say all, I don't want to, you know, diminish them, but we had the big wild oysters, you know? And this one just tasted so different, and it just put that sort of little worm in my brain. I mean, I hadn't figured it out.

He told me [00:04:00] they did aquaculture and this and that. None of that meant anything to me at the time. I just knew this oyster tastes really, really good. So, fast forward a little bit. I leave, I get out of cheese completely. leave Louisiana, come back. kind of went through a transitional period where I felt like I had left the food industry.

Coincidentally enough. Went back to little Debbie. My dad had retired his little Debbie route, so. Bringing it back. That wasn't so much of a tangent to begin with. Um, he retired. He said, Hey man, you should, uh, just run this route for a little while. Save a bunch of money and then, you know, figure out your next step.

little Debbie delivery route is a very lucrative career. Weirdly enough. it's a very coveted route as far as food distribution goes and you're independent and It's a lot of physical work, but mentally very easy. It was a nice little break for me after coming outta the food, the cheese biz and the food biz, which can be really taxing. You work a lot for the, money that you make [00:05:00] in that business. 

Kevin: Doing deliveries and that sort of thing? 

Justin: Just waking up early, driving a truck, doing deliveries, going home, finish. You finish by two or three o'clock, boom. You got the rest of the day. Weekends off. No stress, you know, banking money. 

Kevin: Wow. 

Justin: Just don't even, can't even spend the money that I'm making. So, saving money, kind of hating it though. I just, I'm, I'm not a person who can turn the brain off and just make money and be happy with it. You know, I'm determined to have a career that I actually like doing, which is a blessing and a curse, to be honest. Yeah. So anyway, that, that lasted about a year, until I couldn't take it anymore. in the meantime, I had been fishing with, Ryan Anderson of Little Moon Oysters, and he was starting his oyster farm in Grand Isle.

At the time. They were giving some grants out, so there were a couple guys that had just started up, and he was one of them. And he was telling me everything he was doing. I thought he was so cool. He kept saying, you should do it, man. You should do it. Well, you know, I [00:06:00] had missed the grants, I had missed the grant thing.

So I was like, well, I'll wait till they do another round of grants. And I waited long enough, and I just got tired of waiting. So, I quit Little Debbie and just threw every dollar that I saved into the water in Grand Isle. So that's why I'm here. 

Kevin: So, you're in Grand Isle, Louisiana right now. where is that in relationship to New Orleans 

Justin: It's about two hours south. It's the only inhabited, barrier island in Louisiana. 

Kevin: Really? Wow. 

Justin: It's a very, very unique place. 

Kevin: Do you live there as well or do you still live in New Orleans, or…

Justin: I live in New Orleans. I drive down and I stay for two or three days and just I see work two or three really hard days and, and then come back. you can get enough done in two or three days and then let your oysters rest and then come back and do it again. And it usually works out. Now I'm running a fairly small farm. If I try to grow a million oysters I would need to be down there on the farm every single day. I'd have to have a team of people. The only way you [00:07:00] can do what I'm doing is if you have a relatively small farm. 

Kevin: Tell me a little bit about your farm. Do you have a lease for the bottom or do you own it or how does that work? 

Justin: Yeah, so there's one state park where the majority of the oyster farmers are, and then there's one private park, which I'm on, and that's again just shy of Grand Isle. So I rent from a fellow who owns the bottom rights of a park that is zoned for oyster farming. 

Kevin: How large is the area that you rent? 

Justin: I'm a half an acre. 

Kevin: Nice. Very concentrated. 

Justin: Yes. 

Kevin: And is it kind of a marshy area there? So do you have shallow water or does it drop off deep?

Justin: Shallow, shallow, shallow. my whole area is shallow. I can park my truck on the side of LA1 walk to my farm through the water and not hit any deep spots. I mean, as long as you know, there are some deep spots, but there, they're artificially dredged out deep spots. The marsh I'm in is all naturally shallow. Now you go to the other farm on the backside of the island, [00:08:00] you know, you're dealing with more natural sort of tidal channels and whatnot. There's a giant pass right down the road past, um, Caminada Pass. But where I'm at, it's all pretty shallow.

Kevin: So then, it's all off bottom or do you have, any kind of on bottom reef sort of growth? 

Justin: No, I'm a hundred percent off bottom. I first started using just the square mesh bags with two torpedo floats on each side. the area that I'm in,it has a lot of barnacle growth, so I was getting this flush of barnacles and I found the torpedo floats weren't keeping the cages up above the water high enough to where just flipping them would desiccate the barnacles off desiccate just meaning drying and killing the barnacles.

So I just couldn't keep up with the barnacles situation. I was constantly scraping barnacles. So, there was this, fellow that was trying to sell these big 11 liter floats. He had a bunch of 'em. He had like 300 of 'em. So I just bought all of them had this idea, if you [00:09:00] zip tie two 11 liter floats, crosswise of the torpedo floats, when you flip your bag, you can flip the bag completely out of the water so you can fully desiccate anything that's growing on the outside of that cage.

So it that was my solution. And this is another thing that's born out of not being able to be on the farm every single day. I need a way to, within two or three days, to be able to do everything that farm needs, kill the barnacles, desiccate, the cages, you know, we have a lot of mud worms down here.You know, hopefully try to mitigate the mud worm situation by just flipping that bag up and letting it dry off. And, you know, letting the sun do a lot of the work for you basically. 

Kevin: I'm trying to picture it. Yeah. So you've got a basket or a grow out container that's holding your oysters. You've got torpedo floats on either side, parallel to one another, and then you've got two more torpedo floats going the opposite direction and holding the whole thing up out of the water when you have it on that side. 

Justin: [00:10:00] Exactly. So when it's on the regular side, it sits exactly like it would if it had torpedo floats. And then you flip it up and then boom, those 11 liter floats are holding it completely out of the water. as long as the cage isn't so heavy that it pushes down into the water. So as long as you keep your cages run at the appropriate level, it'll hold that bag out of the water. Basically. I just recreated, you know, those six packs, the basic your, metal six packs.

I tried to recreate that 'cause those are some serious, floats that can hold that thing out of the water. Right. I can't use those six packs too much, or, some of the guys on the private farm that I'm on do, but they're in a little bit deeper water, like the backside of my farm.

In the wintertime, talking two feet, sometimes lower than two feet, you know, it gets really, really low. So those six packs are a little bit much for me because they ride a little low in the water. So I basically just tried to recreate that. The other thing about the six packs, that don't really work for me is, so I don't have a Tumblr, I don't tumble my oysters mechanically. Everything is done [00:11:00] by hand. So you know, when those cages are light, I can lift that cage out of the water physically and just shake it. And you can't do that with a six pack, you know? 

Kevin: Wow. That is fascinating. So you have. Seeing the problem, seeing the manufactured solution, realize that that doesn't really work for you. So you basically improvised and kind of invented your own arrangement. That does work, right? 

Justin: Yeah, I guess so. You know, the big problem, Kevin, with the system that I've created is, is, and I think about this constantly, I mean, just always thinking about what can go wrong. You know, for hurricanes, you sometimes you don't want your stuff to be super floaty. And my cages are now like triple floaty than they were, right. So let's say a hurricane comes, what do I do? Do I go clip the double floats off of, 300 cages and have to put 'em all back on again? Do I leave it and hope for the best? I mean, you know. 

Kevin: What do you do? 

Justin: You just try not to think about it, I guess. yeah. 

Kevin: Because if you clip the zip ties or whatever you're using to hold everything together and let the cages [00:12:00] drop, they're gonna be sitting in the mud, so you're gonna have to hurry after the storm has passed to kind of get them up out of there. 

Justin: Yeah. And that's okay. I've asked a dozen people, Hey, what do you do to, what should I be doing? What should I be thinking about for like, storm preparation and like, man, everybody's kind of got a different thing and some of the things are the exact opposite of the other thing. And I think the best answer I've gotten is like, there ain't a whole lot you can do, man. Like, you know, for Hurricane Ida, which was the last really big storm we had, it's kind of neat, a lot of the people at camps in Grand Isle have these cams on their camps, so they just show, the water, like ripping through and it's when you see the intensity of that water. I know it in your heart how damaging it is, but when you see it visually, how hard and fast that water rips through for something like that. I don't know what you could do. You just hope for the best and you go collect everything you can after the storm and you try to rebuild it, 

Kevin: How do you attach your floating gear? Do you have a line and you've attached it to it, or do you [00:13:00] have each, kind of basket attached individually into the ground?

Justin: We have a line. So we have two augers at each end of the farm. A hundred feet long, a hundred foot long rope, and then clips on the rope to clip the cages in. 

Kevin: Right. So this is amazing. you've built this farm by hand and improvised to suit your environment as you've gone, it sounds like.

Justin: Yeah. I don't know what I would be doing if I hadn't thought of that double float thing. I might have thrown the towel in, to be honest. Because I mean, the amount of time I was spending just managing gunk buildup and barnacle buildup on the cages was untenable for growth. And I didn't need to grow a whole lot. I'm not trying to be a giant farm, but my first year doing it, I had only tried to grow like 50,000 oysters or something. I had another job at the time, so it was more of a part-time gig.  And, but I knew that if I went forward with it and tried to grow the farm, I could not be doing it like that.

Kevin: When did you start the farm? 

Justin: Two years ago. 

Kevin: And today, how many [00:14:00] oysters do you have growing in there? 

Justin: This year I put down 300,000 seed. 

Kevin: Wow. 

Justin: Hoping to grow 150 or more, you know. 

Kevin: So the name Lady Nelly Oyster Company is interesting. who is Lady Nelly? 

Justin: Yeah, lady Nelly is my grandma. My momo Nelly. So, like I said I didn't come from a seafood background but it's kind of a little bit not true. my dad and brothers and Grandpa shrimped for a living, when I was growing up they were all sort of giving it up. So within my lifetime I didn't see a whole lot of it, but I did get to go out with my dad a few times on the shrimp boat. He had more of a small skiff, just kinda like a, just this, uh, you run it by yourself and you know, you hope you make a living. And he did. But he quit and it takes a lot of time and energy away from your family. So I think that, um, there was an altar, uh, altermatum at some point from my mom. Like, you gotta stop doing this. But my uncle Keith basically had the big boat in the family and he called it the Lady Nelly after my momo Nelly. [00:15:00] So that's the lady Nelly. bringing it all back around to the roots of the family, you know?

Kevin: I love that personal connection. Do you have a boat right now or are you shallow enough that you're doing everything just, kind of on your own feet? 

Justin: No, I have a boat, small, you know, 14 foot, just small, almost like a John boat. I do most of my work in the water. So. I don't need a very big boat. You know, I have a boat with a cover. It gives me shade for, I have, I built a little platform, a little floating platform that I work right next to the boat and kind of tie it onto the boat so it doesn't float all around. Everything I do is done in the water 100%. 

Kevin: Right. 

Justin: it's a strange place. There's no real launch. We're launching from these sort of rustic launches on the side of the road. you just kind of have to figure it out. You start to have to figure out what your system is and just do the best you can. You know? Yeah. I'm, but I say that like, it's like, I'm like, it's a compromise. But, you know, I think we're farming in some of the best water out there. So I'm happy to do what I need to do to get into that water and [00:16:00] grow oysters in these waters out there. 

Kevin: You know, when you first started your farm, you must have said to yourself like, how am I gonna do this? So how did you learn enough to actually take that plunge? 

Justin: Two things. One, Ryan was super helpful. Any question I had was gracious with answer. Spent as much time with me on the phone as needed be, you know, I didn't work with him very much. I think I went out just two shifts or something. To see how he did it. And you know, like I said, I had another job, so I didn't really have a lot of time. So my strategy was to keep it small and to just sort of figure it out on a small scale before I went full board and said, this is gonna be my only job. So I did that for about a year of just like, playing around out there.

 just trial and error, you know, does this work? Does that work? You know, the other thing is when I'm farming on Ryan's farm, it's a different scenario than where we are. 'cause he's on the backside of the island. It's a little bit deeper. You know, they're running different cages now, you know, so you [00:17:00] start running a different kind of cage.

You gotta re-figure out the learning process. How does this cage react in the environment I'm in, you know? Does it hold the oysters up? Does it, blah, blah, blah. How many oysters can I put in there? Even if you do have training, you still have to refigure based on, you know, where you end up growing oysters.

Kevin: So how far would you say you've progressed in terms of how well you're growing your oysters and that sort of thing since you started a couple of years ago and today I imagine it's was a pretty steep learning curve, right? 

Justin: It's a very steep learning curve. I would say I progressed maybe like 70%, you know, 'cause I learned so much, so quickly. And I think the last percentages are gonna come slow and steady. if I have to predict it, you know, this is the third time I put oysters down. Every time I put oyster seed down, I'm like, oh my God, thank God I know this now and I that I didn't know last year. Yeah, and I'm only a couple months off of having put oyster seed down, maybe like three months. And I'm already like kicking myself like, [00:18:00] oh my God, you know, why didn't I think of this? Next year's gonna be year where everything comes together. So there, there's always next year, you know. 

 Kevin: I seem to be hearing kind of a common theme, and that is that floating gear and non-bottom, non-large oyster kind of aquaculture down there is a relatively new thing that people are still trying to figure out. Regulations are still trying to form around. What's your experience in that? is this kind of the new frontier for growing oysters in the Gulf in your view?

Justin: I hesitate a little bit because I definitely don't have all the info on this. I know generally speaking, they've kind of squished us in our regulations just into the Reef guys regulations. So, you know, like we fill out these forms for the Department of Health. A lot of that, a lot of times don't really apply to what we're doing, but we just fill 'em out and they come and check 'em and everything's okay.

I think we're [00:19:00] starting to take it a little more seriously and the state is starting to take it a little more seriously. I don't know how much more it's gonna grow. I don't see any more grants, on the horizon at this point. the state farm is pretty full. Are they gonna open more spots to farm at this point? There aren't many spots left, if any. To start a farm, so, It's kind of a question mark right now. Like, one of my biggest curiosities is like, where's all this gonna be in five years? How's it gonna look? Are people gonna stick with it or is it gonna grow? Is it gonna kind of thin out and only the, super dedicated people stick around. I have no clue right now, as of now. 

Kevin: Yeah. 

Justin: Yeah. Louisiana has been a little bit hot and cold as far as like how much they embrace it or not. You know, they kind of didn't know what to do with it. And of course we have a huge wild reef,contingency down here. So, you don't wanna step on those guys either. I mean, they've been doing this a long time and it gets, a lot trickier out here because of the traditional wild reef fisheries and you [00:20:00] don't wanna over embrace the aquaculture guys just 'cause it's all a new thing. We're sort of seeing what happens, I guess. 

Kevin: Tell me a little bit about the oysters that you grow. 

Justin: Yeah, so I buy six millimeters, so six millimeter seed, put 'em in spat bags, or I have some five millimeter cages. and then they graduate to one, one cage larger than that. And I spread 'em out. And like I said, I hand tumble 'em. not having the Tumblr is for better or worse, I guess like a, a kind of defining,element of our oysters out there. So like, you have to do everything by, hand, if you want your oysters to, to be tumbled and grow nicely. You're just, you're dumping bags and champagne baskets and just like tumbling the heck out of them. And believe me, you can only do about 50 or 60 of those a day before you're wiped out. And I can only do 50 or 60 because I'm conditioned to do it. When I first started, I might have been able to do, you know, 20 or 30.

Kevin: I would imagine that because you've got gear that's [00:21:00] floating, you're getting, you know, whatever wave action you have there. but that's probably, I helping kind of break off the new growth, the little fingernails as we like to call them. How are you finding that? Is it kind of doing half of the job for you? 

Justin: It does a little bit of the job. I think if I just left them, it wouldn't be enough at all. You know, we have a lot of sediment in the water so that sediment, attaches to the shell and it kind of like prevents those oysters from moving around a whole lot. It almost kind of like locks 'em in place. So you could tumble the oysters and get all that sediment off of 'em and put 'em in the water. Three days later they'll be covered with sediment and just kind of like glued in place a little bit, you know? Yeah. I mean it's obviously, it's gonna do some amount of,agitation, but you really gotta just like, shake the cages and work them in champagne baskets. You gotta do it. Um, so everything's hand tumbled and, uh. I'm trying to grow about a 2.5 - 3 inch oyster. I don't like a tiny oyster. I like kind of a medium sized. growing up here, we just, that's all we had. Were like [00:22:00] giant oysters really. So that's what I ate before any of this came along.  I had some hog islands one time on a cheese trip back in the day that I don't remember at all. but besides that, I had not eaten an east or west coast oyster outside of, you know, just growing up. we didn't have 'em, or unless you went to like, really fancy restaurants, we had wild reef, Gulf Coast oysters, so they're big. So I prefer more of a mouthful of an oyster The market is turning to a smaller size, so I kind of split the difference. I try not to sell the tiniest oyster and I try to sell the biggest oyster somewhere. Somewhere in the middle, which with a deep cup and that sort of thing, right? Yeah. I love oysters like that. But at the end of the day, the number one thing is does it taste good?So, yeah, I'll take an ugly oyster that tastes great over a beautiful oyster that doesn't taste great. 

Kevin: So how would you describe the flavor of your oysters? 

Justin: The area that we're in is pretty salty. it stays salty. We don't have a lot of influence from the Mississippi [00:23:00] River. And, this summer, I've been above 25 parts per thousand pretty much the whole summer. So, we stay pretty salty and, uh, so I'd say salt up front. Um, sometimes oftentimes we'll get a little minerality and a little bit of like tenness in the middle. And then I think the, one of the defining factors of our oysters is the sweet finish. It doesn't just stay salty and mineral, it ends on a little bit of sweetness. 

Kevin: Now the virginicas you're growing there are these diploids, triploids? 

Justin: I have, this year I put a hundred thousand diploids and 200,000 triploids down. 

Kevin: Really? 

Justin: Yeah. So it's just, you know, I sometimes think I'm just gonna do all triploids. They grow faster. They take up much less space. You know, for every cage of triploids, I'll need a cage and a half probably of diploids. They just grow slower. they grow more shell before they're harvestable. They just take up more space, more time, more energy. Space is limited. Cages are limited. So [00:24:00] sometimes I think, oh, I'm just gonna grow all triploids. But the beauty of it is they grow so much slower. So it, you know, we're here in warm water where we're putting down our seed in, spring and summertime, and, that's our shot for the season.

So like we have to do everything we can to try to time 'em out. So we have oysters all year instead of just having a bunch for four or five months and then having none. So that's where the diploids help that operation. For instance, I do jazz fest. last year was the first year I had a booth at Jazz Fest and I'll be doing that again. Last year I ended up serving almost all triple Lloyds for Jazz Fest because they were the, the. Jazz Fest is in, April, and that's what I had, you know, most of my triploids were grown and sold, so I had the diploids and thank God I did. That'll probably happen again this year.

Kevin: Yeah, that's interesting. Um, one of the things that I hear from time to time is that given the constant warm water in the Gulf that, you know, it's a little riskier to eat oysters there because of bacteria, vibrios, that sort of [00:25:00] thing. Have you had any kind of experience with those issues? 

Justin: Not me personally. there's never been a Vibrio,illness traced back to grand area aquaculture. Not to say that we're immune from it As long as you stick with the time and temperature standards, no matter how you grow that oyster, you're at the same amount of risk. that risk is not zero. It is always something. That's why we have to print that warning label on every single bag of oysters that we sell, right? The warmer the water, the more risk you do have. We did have a couple more cases this year than we normally did. It's tricky. A lot of the cases were from just people, you know, swimming in salt water, which that's, you know, you get vibrio like that, you get Vibrio fishing, you know, you cut yourself. one of the fellows in Mississippi, I think Mississippi or Alabama, you know, he got, he got back and he scraped his leg on his boat trailer and got it.Yeah, it is pretty, pretty gnarly. You know, you gotta take it really seriously as a producer, you know, you gotta meet those time and temperature, standards and do everything you [00:26:00] can to mitigate that. You know, like I said earlier, I do desiccate my oysters. So when it's really, really hot in the summertime, I'll desiccate 'em overnight rather than in the middle of the day. every little thing you do to help, that vibrio not multiply. 'cause as you know, Dr. Andy and your podcast said it's the vibrios. The Vibrio is often there. You're just trying to keep it from multiplying. So once you harvest that oyster, your whole goal is to get it into refrigeration as soon as possible, which we have one hour in the hot months to get it into refrigeration and then get it down you know, get it cold as quick as you can. To stop that Vibrio from multiplying, 

Kevin: So how do you deal with that on your farm? If you're driving from home to your farm and you're, you're kind of pulling up beside the farm and wading into the water, how do you deal with time and temperature? 

Justin: Yeah, great question. we all have, uh, coolers in the back of our truck, so that's our, our businesses are actually licensed to our vehicle, like to our cooler, that is our wholesale cooler, basically, which is great because I could park that thing where I [00:27:00] launch my boat, it's about a third of a mile from my farm. So I am so close to refrigeration. it's not even funny. We have an hour to get up in there. I always get 'em in there under, 40 minutes typically. 

Justin: So if there's any, benefit for Aquacultures is, is being able to control that, having that cooler right close to you. But to be honest, the wild reef guys have the same situation set up often as well. Like they'll have a refrigeration boat that goes out there and as they're harvesting the boat just, they're just putting 'em in that boat, you know, they're just dedicated refrigeration boat to get 'em in there. Right. You know, I, I do, I I do hear this around town, like, oh, they're, aquaculture so they're safer, you know, and believe me, I want to just say, yeah, they are, they're safer, they're aquaculture. But that's, that's an oversimplification, which is very complicated. I, recommend everybody that's interested in this. Go listen to your episode with Dr. Andy. 'cause he explains it better than anybody can. And, it's one of these things you want to say, Hey, if you're healthy and you [00:28:00] have a, you're not immune compromised and you don't have a chronic illness like you want us to say you're gonna be, oh, you're gonna be okay.

But you can't say that a hundred percent. 'cause there's always that one in a million case. and then the, our biggest problem is lack of education. Especially from this standpoint of  the news. It's called flesh eating bacteria. They just can't, they can't resist reporting on the flesh eating bacteria, and you can get it from oysters and it's just a, you know, it's too easy for those guys to blow it out of the proportion. 

Kevin: It's really true. a little bit of knowledge is sometimes a dangerous thing, so you wanna learn as much as you can. I mean, this was an issue that quite honestly, I struggled with a little bit when I was talking to Dr. Andy DiPaola I didn't wanna put something out that was going to create unreasonable fear of oysters to people, but at the same time, I believe that knowledge is power and you should know these things.It was like, okay, how do I present this so that people are learning what they're eating and the [00:29:00] risks, but also balance it because if you're not immunocompromised or something like that, the likelihood of you getting sick from this is very, very small. So to me, it's worth the risk. That's a difficult balance though. 

Justin: Yeah. And I see it from the other side too. you don't wanna over blow the risk. You also don't wanna undersell the risk too, if you are immuno compromise, maybe, don't ever eat raw oysters. Just skip it, man. Yeah. There's plenty of other good stuff to eat out there, you know? Right. so you, you have a situation down here where a lot of these old timers. that have been eating oysters forever. they buy like gallons of already shucked oysters and just eat 'em raw, and they don't know that those guys are dealing with different time and temperature standards than we are. So yeah, that person probably needs to be scared a little more of vibrio and most people probably need to be scared a little less of it. 

Kevin: That's a really good point that I hadn't considered. And that's another reason why, barbecued oysters are so damn good. So, you know, you can solve that problem [00:30:00] easily enough. I think so. Exactly. you mentioned, jazz fest, which I know these kinds of festivals are a blast. do you do a lot of events or catering or anything like that? 

Justin: Yes, I do. I have kind of a three prong, outlet, for sale. So wholesale restaurants direct. Home delivery and events. And events has another three tiered branch, which is a weekly popup that I do at a brewery around the corner. Private events, and then Jazz fest. So Jazz Fest was my first year last year, sold about 30,000 oysters. hope to do it again. 

Kevin: You're a busy guy. 

Justin: Yeah, very busy. 

Kevin: So do you ever get requests for like farm tours or anything like that? 

Justin: I do. I get it. I get it a lot. I'm not really set up yet for that. I don't know how to address this inquiry. 'cause I want people to come out there and see it. I think it'd be great. But I got a little small boat man. And it's, you get out there and it could be a buggy day, super [00:31:00] hot. I work in the water, like are they gonna get in the water? I mean, when you're in the water, crabs are pinching you. Little fish are biting you. That's not for everybody, man. You know, so it's like, I don't think people understand what they would be getting into getting out there. Plus it's a, from New Orleans, it's a two hour, 10 minute drive, right? And then it's such a quick tour. It's like five minutes, here are the cages, you know, I mean, I could stretch it to about 30 minutes. You got a good 30 minutes of talking. Here's a small oyster, here's a big oyster, let's taste some oysters. so what I've been telling people, because I'm so close to the road and it's so easy to access, honestly, if they're up for it, just walk through the water and come meet me at the farm. But if not, bring a kayak and like bring a fishing pole and come out and see the farm and then, fish the rest of the day. make a whole day out of it. But so far nobody's taken me up on it. 

Kevin: I think that there is this movement of people who are saying, you know what? I want to do this too. I wanna start this. And, you know, have kind of figured it out as they've gone and started small, what I call the New Guarde [00:32:00] and, I see you fitting into that category. And it's really, really impressive to hear what you're doing and how you're doing it.

Justin: Yeah. Well, thank you. I don't feel like I know what I'm doing at all, but I appreciate all the support I can get. 

Kevin: Well, you're doing something right. so now I wanna shift gears a little bit and talk about your cheese background. And it's not just because cheese I find absolutely fascinating and would love to learn everything I can about it, but also because I believe that there is a space for oysters and cheese somehow working together. I mean, we all know oysters and wine works together. You hear a lot about, the merroir versus the terroir and how, they're kind of compatible. We have the incredible Oyster Master Guild, which is really formalizing that whole wine and oyster process. But tell me a little bit about your cheese background, what you did, and how you feel it relates to oysters, if at all.

Justin: Yeah. [00:33:00] Um, I had quite a long career in cheese. 20 years now, if you, I, I still consider myself sort of in the cheese business. started in 2005. again, just out of FA lot of my food jobs end up out frustration of trying to do anything but food. But, you know, specialty food, I just attracted to it, like a moth to the flame. So there was a new Whole Foods that was opening and I did an open interview, wasn't applying for any specific department. They said, what do you know about food? So I started just kind of rattling off, well, I know this, I know that I like this. You know, I cook at home. And they said, oh, you'd be good in the cheese department. So they threw me in the cheese department. Hurricane Katrina hits about three months after that. at that point I'd already kind of caught the bug. I had a great team leader. shout out John Hannon, wherever he's at. Anyway, one of the best guys to start sort of pique your interest on cheese. 'cause he just, he was so excited about it and every, everything we got in, he was so excited to tell you about it. And boy, that's all you need sometimes is just somebody. Excited about something. It doesn't matter what it is. It could have been anything. It could have been, butchery, it could have been charcuterie, whatever. Right? If you got somebody [00:34:00] like that, you're like, you're, you're, you're in, you know? Oh 

Kevin: yeah. Yeah. 

Justin: So I had no particular affinity to cheese more than anybody else. Cheese is delicious. Most people like cheese, you know? But I tell you what it was just so intriguing. 'cause at that point I had known quite a bit about food and, um, it's like, well, cheese, I don't know anything about cheese. Cheese is kind of like the final frontier of food. It's like, you know, even, even for chefs, like chefs figure out how to cook. They figure out the ingredients. Maybe next they'll go like wine. You know, some chefs get into wine, some don't, some know nothing about wine. Then after wine, maybe some chefs get into cheese, you know, with cheese is just this real like, sort of left field wacky thing to dedicate your life to at the time, at least in 2005.You know? So I was like, this, this sounds great. So I caught the bug very quickly. You know, again, Katrina hits and I had a great, friend at the time. he was actually my piano teacher. he moved up to Boulder, Colorado after Katrina. He said, man, you should come up here. I said, man, that sounds pretty good right now. You know, I I, I don't know what I'm [00:35:00] going back to. I'm, I'm not super established yet at Whole Foods, but, so I'm doing it. So I go up there and I take a farm tour at, uh, haystack Mountain Goat Dairy, and just at the end I was like, you, you guys hiring by any chance?

They said, yeah, we actually are in the cheese room. So they threw me in the cheese room and I learned how to make cheese. And I did that for a couple years. eventually got promoted to head cheese maker and, that's where the cheese love sort of, you know. It was, it was kind of like driven into me deep in my soul, right? I'd already had the bug and then making cheese was like, oh my God, this is amazing. I love making cheese. I would've stayed making cheese forever if New Orleans didn't call me back, you know? And I didn't move to Colorado as a choice, a hundred percent of a choice there. It was a lot to do with the fact that Katrina had, you know, destroyed a good bit of New Orleans industry, I think if I had to pick a different career path, I would've probably just  stayed making cheese forever. I loved it. I loved it so much. And then, came back to New Orleans and then hooked up with, St. James Cheese [00:36:00] Company and did my almost decade long cheese monger stint and started competing. And, yeah, that's my cheese background. 

Kevin: Indeed, I believe you've won some Cheesemonger awards in the process, right?

Justin: Yeah. Just one. So I competed in 2012, got second place, 2013, got first place at the Cheese Monger Invitational out in New York, uh, put on by the great Adam Moskowitz. Uh, one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had in my entire life. and then I competed, In France, two years later at the Montreal New Fage, which is like the world competition. Placed middle of the pack. I think fifth out, 10, maybe six. I don't really remember. one of the most intimidating and terrifying experiences of my entire life. But so glad I did it. I was definitely underprepared for it. the French also compete on a level that is like very foreign to American cheese mongers. So you kind of have to figure out their style to like win that one. 

Kevin: So, the thing that I find absolutely incredible about cheese, it's basically three [00:37:00] ingredients, right? And from those three or four ingredients, you can create these amazing varieties of cheeses and flavors and textures and all of that sort of thing. is that kind of a overly simplistic way of describing it? 

Justin: That's actually overly complicated. You really just need the one ingredient. So if you have raw milk from an animal, cow or goat or sheep, and you heat that milk. Enough. it will curdle. if you let it sit overnight, the lactic acid bacteria that is already in that milk will eat lactose and produce acid and coagulate that milk, and you will have cheese the next morning just based off that one ingredient, which the milk has everything needed to make cheese, but it'll be a soft, like ricotta or a chev or something like that. The goat farm that I worked on, we produce a lot of chev. Chev is a real simple fresh goat cheese. We use pasteurized milk. So we had to add back in lactic acid bacteria. When you pasteurize milk, you kill all the good bugs in the milk and [00:38:00] the potential bad bugs. and then you have to add it back.

But if you have raw milk, it has the lactic acid bacteria in it to make the cheese. So you really just need one ingredient milk to make cheese. 

Kevin: That's so fascinating.

Justin: Yeah, another thing I wanna clarify. I hear this over and over and I don't understand this, where this came from or what this people say, oh, cheese is mold, so it's okay. You know, mold is okay. 'cause cheese is mold, cheese is not mold, cheese is milk. You don't need mold at all to make cheese. 

Kevin: Right. Yeah. I mean, I've heard it's milk, rennet I think it is. And salt and maybe some other cultures or something. 

Justin: Yeah. You need the culture, you need the bacteria culture. 

Oftentimes you don't need rennet depending on what cheese you're making. 

Kevin: Wow. Yeah. I see cheese as a relatively simple concept in terms of making cheese with just a few ingredients, and then letting the natural process take over and create this cheese under your own guidance. To me, that sounds very much like growing oysters [00:39:00] where basically you're taking these live seed, and you're creating an environment where it can be safe and thrive, and then letting the natural process take over. Do you see kind of parallels there? 

Justin: Uh, yes, totally. I see a lot of parallels in production as far as what you just said about just letting the natural process take over. I think oysters are a little more, in more just let 'em go, let the water do its job. they feed themselves. Cheese can sometimes be a little bit like jamming that milk into submission. you can make cheese very simply and just get raw milk and treat it very simply, low intervention and make a nice, beautiful ricotta.

But, the process of making like a wheel of cheddar, that's not very natural. It's, you're doing a lot to that milk to try to get it to, taste like that, you know? really? Yeah. It's almost like cheese, it's so weird. It's such a weird thing to eat cheese. You know, you're almost kind of like duplicating the natural thing that happens in a calf. Okay. So a cow, has a calf, and that calf [00:40:00] has that rennat enzyme in its stomach to be able to, break that milk down. It only has it when it's a calf, just like humans. We're really supposed to lose it after we are off of mother's milk and we lose that enzyme and boom, we don't really drink milk again. You know, it's kind of an unnatural thing for humans to drink milk as adults. 

So anyway, back to the animals. A cow has a calf, calf drinks the milk, breaks the milk down in its stomach with that enzyme. So now that we humans want that milk, we say, get outta here calf. I'm taking that milk from your mom And then we're like, well, how do we coagulate it? Well, we need that enzyme and that little, calf's stomach. So we take, we take the enzyme, and we take the milk and we put it together in a pot. And we just basically, you know, kind of like in a weird way, recreated what was happening naturally, you know? But now for our own consumption. this is why, you know, vegans are not eating cheese. It's pretty, it's a pretty messed up, um, situation. 

But, growing oysters is a lot. You're just basically taking the oyster off the bottom and [00:41:00] putting it in a nice little cage and saying like, eat all you want oyster.

Kevin: But there are issues like merroir with oysters and everything that it is consuming influences its flavor. Is there some sort of similar kind of concept like that about cheese? 

Justin: As far as terroir and memoir go, to me, oysters are the most direct. You put oysters in this water, it's gonna taste like that. Uh, cheese. It's less direct. Even, probably even less direct than like wine maybe. So a big part of like the terroir of cheese is like, what did that animal eat? Did they eat grass? Did they eat hay? does that grass have wildflowers in it like they do in, you know, the Alps in Switzerland, That'll definitely influence the taste of the milk. Do you pasteurize it? But then you can do a lot with that milk on the processing side of it. There's a lot that goes into cheese making. You can manipulate those flavors quite a bit. And then the raw milk guys are like, no, it's all about, you know, with that cow ate or with that animal ate. And I'm just gonna like low intervention, let that milk shine. there is a fork in the road there, I think people don't talk about terroir as much for cheese. But there is, regional terroir for sure. But [00:42:00] it's not as dialed in as the wine guys where like, oh, this is a shade facing side of the mountain, so it's gonna taste different than the sunny side of the mountain, you know? 

Kevin: Right. What's your thought about cheese matching or being compatible with oysters? 

Justin: Two categories of cheese and oyster situations. Number one, the hard Italian cheeses. They often get a pass when you say no cheese and seafood, it's like, yeah, but Parmesan, you could do that, you know, Especially down here in New Orleans. And you tell every, Creole Italian person down here, no cheese, no par on your seafood -- they would disagree wholeheartedly. It certainly makes it really nice and it goes perfectly with those flavors. do you lose a little bit of the pureness of the oyster? A hundred percent. But you get the gestalt of all the things blending together, you get a whole nother thing. So you just gotta switch your brain.

I'm not eating a raw oyster here. I'm eating a charbroiled oyster, you know? So there's that. And then the second part is like. And what I've sort of tried to do is incorporate [00:43:00] oysters into the cheese board world. Okay?So when I first started this farm, I was working at,a wine shop called Really, Really Nice Wines. Shout out to Berian and Darren and it was a natural wine place. we had a bar, and we wanted to do just like a small kitchen. I'm not a chef, but I know my way around the kitchen just, you know, some real easy stuff. And I was like, well, why don't we do like cheese plates, oysters, and then have a couple other like little do dads to like fill the menu out, but mostly have to be driven by like cheese plate and oysters.

And, it works great. You know, when I first started the farm, you know, I'd have people over, I always have cheese when I have people over. So then all of a sudden I have oyster farm, so I'm gonna have oysters too. we're having cheese, we're having oysters interchangeably.

Not like coursed out now, like, okay, here's the oyster course and now we're gonna move on the cheese. No, we're eating them all together. here's a little piece of a nice soft cheese, get a little piece of prosciutto. Here's a oyster kind of going back and forth. It works so well. I think it fits in seamlessly. So, you know, to say no cheese and oysters or cheese and seafood don't go together as almost every rule is an [00:44:00] oversimplification. You know, rules are pretty useless like that, in my opinion. Right. 

Kevin: Would you say in your experience there's a particular cheese or style of cheese that goes especially well with a raw oyster?

Justin: If you're doing that sort of back and forth, you know, a little bite of this, a little bite of that. I would say I would want to just stay away from like super duper big, bold, like blue cheeses maybe. You know, or just really, really funky cheeses that kind of dominate your palate for a while, you know, that just sit on your palate and affect the other things that you're tasting. But besides that, I think it's not about pairing. Cheese plates really aren't about having cheeses that go together. They're having cheeses that taste different from one another, right? You don't want three cheeses that pair together. If you're getting a cheese plate, right? You want three cheeses that are distinctly differently flavored, right? 

Kevin: Yeah. 

Justin: So pairing gets really complicated really fast, and I think it's a little bit overrated. [00:45:00] I'll put a hypothetical out there. Somebody says, Hey, you know, I want a three cheese plate and gimme a wine that pairs with that. It's like, well that's gonna really limit your cheeses. I'm gonna have to put three cheeses that all similarly pair with that wine. It's gonna limit the range of flavor on your cheese. If you just let me make the plate, the cheese plate, without considering the wine, I'm gonna put three really different things. I'm gonna put a blue cheese and I'm gonna put a, maybe a stinky soft cheese and then maybe a hard like sheep's milk. You can't, it's hard to find one glass of wine that goes with all three of those cheeses. You kind of just have to mix and match and co-mingle, you know? Yeah. I think pairing can get a little bit overrated, and I don't think that's how we eat naturally. I don't think people go to the store and say, I'm gonna have this. I mean, yes, sometimes we do. we're eating steak, we're having a red wine, but for the most part, it's not how we really eat. You know? Everything doesn't have to go perfectly with everything. It could all just be like a little fun little mix and match 

Kevin: That contrasting flavor and texture can make a big difference in a meal… 

Justin: Yeah, [00:46:00] exactly. Yeah. 

Kevin: You're really making me hungry for both oysters and cheese right now, I have to say. what would you say are some of the biggest challenges that you've faced in starting your farm and kind of growing it to what you've grown it to now? 

Justin: Yeah, so the challenges are it being such a small farm and having to run the whole thing pretty much by myself and with my dad. You know, not really being able to leave. I haven't been on a proper vacation since I started the farm. Really. being tied to it and not, you know, not having a team. And that's number one. That's for, that's number one for my health. 

Number two for the oyster side of things is, just kind of figuring things out. You know, not really having a handbook, you know, when I work out there, there's, I don't have a lot of farm neighbors that I'm seeing what they're doing and we're communicating regularly. Just trying to figure things out the hard way. I feel like I had to figure every single little thing out the hard way. Everything has had to break and I've had to figure out a better way before, you know. [00:47:00] Things have systematized, basically. So it's basically been two years of that and I feel like I'm on the better side of it, hopefully. But, um, yeah, it's been a lot. it's been two pretty tough years. 

Kevin: What would you say are your biggest triumphs and your proudest moments in all of that? 

Justin: JazzFest was the proudest moment. 

Kevin: No kidding. 

Justin: Yeah, because I was, you know, theoretically I was over my head on that. But when you're offered a booth at JazzFest, you gotta, you just don't say no, you gotta try to do it. You gotta try. 

Kevin: So did you have somebody helping you shuck or were you just …

Justin: Yes I did. Thank God. at first I thought, well, I'll be I'll shuck. I'm getting pretty good at this and I'll get a couple people to help me. And like, I'm really glad I didn't do that. I met, uh, Rutvik Patel of the Wandering Shuckers at, Oyster South.  So I was so green. I didn't even know the good Shuckers in my own backyard, So I met him at Oyster South. I said, Hey man, if I any chance, you know, you want, you wanna shuck for JazzFest? And he was [00:48:00] like, yes, I do. I love Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam was playing at the time through this year, that year, and he is like, yeah, I wanna do it. and then he put together a team. He brought local Shuckers in Lindsey Alday, who would now I work with pretty regularly, Peyton from Superior Seafood, Spoo from Sidecar, which is one of the best programs, obviously programs in the city. Corey from Florida, you know, we had, I gotta say Julian. I didn't mean to list everybody out, but I can't leave anybody out at this point, so anyway, he brought in his team and they were beasts. I mean, they just were shucking machines.

We'd have a board full of, 12 dozens, you know, and they were just shucking not even breaking the sweat. It was amazing just watching these guys work. So that's all I had to do was really manage and coordinate. My dad was helping me. He was doing the farm side of things. He would call me, say, Hey man, how many did y'all sell out today? You need more. And he would shoot down the grand owl if need me. I mean, it was, it was an operation, but it was amazing. And we pulled it off and we didn't have long wait times. We were, we were shucking dozens with like very minimal wait. And I was just so proud of us [00:49:00] to pull that off. And I was so relieved that we actually did it. That was easily the, the craziest and. Most proud thing I've ever done.

Kevin: That's incredible. What a great story. Um, So where is, Lady Nelly oyster gonna be in five years? 

Justin: Uh, I don't know. this year is gonna say a lot or this season is gonna say a lot. So this is the most oysters I've put down so far. My goal is to see how many oysters I can grow the way that I want to grow 'em. How many oysters can I grow well. The whole idea going into this was I wanted to be a non-growth motivated business and just a quality-motivated business. and I know that's maybe a little bit too idealistic. I'm not sure, and I'll figure that out in the next five years. But if I could just supply JazzFest and sell a couple thousand wholesale and events every week and rinse and repeat and get a little bit better at it every year, that's ideal to me.

Kevin: I really admire the quality -motivated, over [00:50:00] growth -motivated approach you're taking. I think that is the key to making great oysters and also from just sort of moving this whole oyster aquaculture world forward in the right direction. So congratulations on all you've done.

This has been so fascinating and I could talk to you for hours, man. I'd like to talk to you more about oysters and cheese, 

Justin: Thanks, Kevin. I really appreciate it, man. And you know, you keep up the good work too. 'cause I, you know, I'm a fan of your podcasts and, uh, there's a lot of hours out there in the water and, we need quality stuff to listen to. It's a tough job and sometimes you really get down to yourself out there. Things break, and you're by yourself in the middle of the water and you feel like just such a, you feel like an idiot. You're like, what am I doing? This is, I'm such a bad business person.This is so crazy. And then. You know, at least two times this past summer I popped on an OYSTER-ology podcast and I was like, no, this is awesome, man. this is the wild west right now down here, and you're doing something and this is really fun and really cool.

Kevin: That is so flattering. Thank you so much. And I'm sure that, when you're having a tough [00:51:00] day and things aren't going the way you want to and then you pull out just a beautiful oyster that you were responsible for getting to where it is, that kinda makes it all okay. 

Justin: That's the whole thing, man. That's it. That's it. That's all there is. 

Kevin: Well, Justin, thanks again. Really appreciate it. 

Speaker 3: All right, thanks Kevin.

Kevin: Well, that's it for this episode of OYSTER-ology. Thanks so much to my guest, Justin Trosclair of Lady Nelly Oyster Farm. Images and links to the things we talked about can be found in the show notes. So definitely check 'em out. If you like this episode or wanna say anything about it, please leave a comment to let me know. I read and reply to everyone and hey, please click follow on your podcast player to catch every OYSTER-ology episode. The more followers I get, the easier others can discover it too. So help me out on that.  Thanks so much for listening, and be sure to join me again next time when I pry open the shell of another interesting OYSTER-ology topic.