S2 EP 38: Hard Oysters & Heavy Anchors: real-world advice on oyster gear with Ketcham Supply.

In this engaging episode of OYSTER-ology, my guests, Heather Ketcham and Myron Horzesky, discuss their journey at Ketcham Supply, a key player in the oyster farming industry. Heather shares her transition from biotech to taking over the family business, founded by her father Bob Ketcham, while Myron recounts his long history with the company starting as a teenager. They discuss the innovations and challenges they've faced, including the move from paper to digital records, the creation of bespoke oyster farming equipment, and tackling issues like bird contamination on oyster cages. Our conversation also explores the close-knit relationships they've developed with farmers and the ways in which they collaboratively innovate to improve efficiency and productivity in oyster farming. They emphasize the importance of understanding site-specific needs and starting small to ensure sustainable growth. We discuss innovation, sustainability, regional challenges, and how feedback from growers drives design and refinement. It’s a story about collaboration between factory and farm, and how the unseen hardware of aquaculture shapes the shellfish we taste.

00:00 Introduction to OYSTER-ology

00:35 Meet Heather Ketcham and Myron Horzesky

03:24 Heather's Journey from Biotech to Aquaculture

04:54 Myron's Early Days at Ketcham Supply

06:53 The Evolution of Ketcham Supply

10:53 Craftsmanship and Quality at Ketcham

12:52 Building Relationships with Farmers

17:05 Challenges and Successes in Oyster Farming

20:17 Gender Equality in Oyster Farming

20:34 Advice for Established Farmers

22:23 Innovations in Bird Deterrence

26:02 Challenges in Oyster Farming

31:46 Labor Issues in the Industry

34:49 Storefront and Product Range

37:09 Shoreline Restoration Efforts

38:01 Conclusion and Key Takeaways

Links:

• Ketcham Supply Co.
• Heather Ketcham – ECSGA Profile

Guest: Heather Ketcham & Myron Horzesky

Host: Kevin Cox

Digital Deckhand: Chet Jipty

Special thanks to Karen Hudson of VIMS for arranging recording studio space.

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 Episode 38: Hard Oysters & Heavy Anchors: real-world advice on oyster gear with Ketcham Supply. 

(prepared by Chet Jipty, Digital Deckhand)

Myron: there are some people that will come in and say, I'm gonna grow a million oysters immediately. And I say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. maybe you could start with 50 or a hundred thousand. you're gonna have plenty of time to kill a million. 

Welcome to OYSTER-ology, a podcast about oysters, aquaculture, and everything from spat to shuck. I'm your host and the Foodwalker, Kevin Cox. I recently took a field trip to the Virginia Aquaculture Conference to meet producers, scientists, chefs, manufacturers, and suppliers to the oyster and aquaculture world in this part of the country.

It was there that I had the chance to sit down with my guests, Heather Ketcham and Myron Horzesky of Ketcham Supply, a new Bedford, Massachusetts institution that started as a wire lobster trap operation, and almost by accident became part of the early story of modern oyster gear, which helped drag oyster farming out of the dredge and prey era, and into the age of cages, floats, and smarter systems.

Heather is the second generation owner and chief executive officer of Ketcham Supply after two decades in biotech and corporate operations. Heather returned to her maritime roots in 2016 to lead the family business, which was founded in 1975 by her father Bob Ketcham, who pioneered the first wire mesh lobster trap, and grew the small company into one of the premier suppliers and manufacturers of high quality aquaculture and fishing gear.

Myron is one of the OG dyed in the wool employees of Ketcham, who started by stacking bricks as a kid and worked his way up to chief operations officer learning about every bend of wire and length of rope produced by Ketcham. He joined Heather and me in our conversation, and as you'll hear is no wallflower when it comes to aquaculture gear.

 Together, Heather and Myron painted the colorful mosaic of how Ketcham is helping oyster growers across the country figure out what floats, what sinks, and what keeps an oyster farm humming. It's a conversation about craftsmanship, problem solving, and why the future of oyster farming can come down to two simple rules.

Know your sight and start smaller than your ego. So adjust your floating cages and add some weight to those anchors as we hear about how a few martinis can lead to a new career. What Rolls-Royce and oyster gear have in common is today's society really softer. The meaning of one person, one cage, how bird poop leads to innovation, the power of listening.

And why size matters with owner operator, innovator, and a duo of industry leading Gearheads, Heather Ketcham and Myron Horzesky.

Kevin: 

Myron: Heather Ketcham and Myron Horzesky.Nice job on the last name. 

Kevin: welcome to OYSTER-ology. Uh, you guys are with Ketcham Supply Company in New Bedford, Mass, Right. And we are together here at the Virginia Aquaculture Conference in Newport News, Virginia. It's really cool.

I mean, it's amazing to see so many people gathered together talking about equipment and tech and oysters and farming and all the other stuff. So I am so glad that we had this opportunity to get together because I want to hear all about Ketcham Supply. what you guys do and where you came from.

So, Heather, I wanna start with you. You were not originally involved in this kind of business, right? You were involved in more of a science-based sort of thing, 

Heather: I was. So after college, I worked in biotech for 20 years. 10 years ago, a very late night after drinking several martinis with my father, probably the early morning hours he had the discussion that I am retiring now and I'm selling my business, and I think you should be the one to come back and buy it and try to run it.

Kevin: And what was your reaction to that? 

Heather: it's one of those things he'd been poking at it for a few years and that was the night that I said, yeah, let's do it. 

Kevin: and so what year was that, 

Heather: That was 2016. 

Kevin: And is your father still involved at all in this? 

Heather: so not in the day-to-day operation. He spends his winters in Florida. He comes back every spring up to where we are in Massachusetts and comes in and tells us everything we're doing wrong and helps us.

Kevin: So he's got the perfect job and of it helps us

Heather: and yeah, no, he's, he still loves to come in and talk to the guys and see the fishermen in the store and, um, it, it's worked out well for him. He still gets to keep his paws in there. Yeah. 

Kevin: is this something that you had in the back of your mind that you might one day do, or where were you headed before those, drinks with your dad?

Heather: So I was in biotech. I love doing startup biotechs. Yeah. Um, getting small companies off the ground. it was a lot of fun. I was at a point with the company that I was at where it's kind of stalled out and the timing just worked out really well for both of us.

Yeah. 

Kevin: Sometimes that's just the way it works, right? Yeah. Now, Myron, your story is a little bit different. Tell me about how you first got involved with Ketcham Supply. 

Myron: So, uh, when Bob moved in to the neighborhood, let's say I was a neighborhood kid, so you know, we're 14-year-old kids, got, you know, hair down on my ass, you know, cranking heavy metal, the big boom boxes hanging out basically on, in the loading dock area.

At the time when he moved in, the upstairs was vacant and, he actually put a basketball hoop up for the neighborhood kids to hang out. One day while I was hanging out there after school, he had come out and he had a customer with him and he said, Hey, if you're not doing anything, would you like to come by?

 tomorrow, fill out an application, if you'd like a job after school.

so that's, that's how I started working for the company and my job at the time, um, being a 14-year-old kid was basically pulling up bricks on a block and tackle.

Kevin: 

Myron: And then at the time it was basically a core lobster pot business. Uh, 'cause that's how we started originally is Ketcham Traps. 

Kevin: And you're the chief operating Officer? Yes. At Ketcham. And you're the boss. 

Heather: Mm-hmm. 

Myron: Yes. 

Heather: we have a very kind of synergistic skillset, so it works out really well. Yeah. 

Myron: 

Kevin: So, you've seen a lot of changes there since you started 

Myron: Absolutely.

you know, I'm a high school graduate. I graduated high school. I went, worked with company full time, um, you know, 19 years old, pregnant girlfriend, the whole nine yards. And 

That job turned out to be a great career. And, being taught to take care of your people that work for you, the people on you to rely on them to do their job and let them do their job, these are all things that Heather and Bob have taught me Over the 45 years that I've been doing this.

 And, uh, pretty proud of how things have turned out at the end of the day. 

Kevin: Well, it sounds like, the approach that your father and you, Heather have taken is like a family business. 

Heather: we're definitely a family business. 

Kevin: Yeah, 

Heather: And we have a lot of long-term employees, you know, we don't have a lot of turnover.

Kevin: How many employees do you currently have? 

Heather: About 20. 

Kevin: No kidding. 

Tell me a little bit about Ketcham Supply and what you do. 

Heather: so how we got into this business.

When I was born, my father was a lobsterman and he was one of the first guys to start making lobster traps out of wire. So the other guys on the dock were like, Hey, that's really cool. Will you make those for me? And that's how the business started in our garage. 

So then, you know, over the years he got, the neighbors complained and we got kicked out of the garage and um, you know, started building lobster traps.

And then in the 1980s, we're approached by the first oyster grower to kind of help him use these materials to make something to hold his oysters. So this is why a lot of the oyster gear you see is made out of the same wire material as lobster traps. They came to a lobster trap factory to help them figure out how to grow their oysters and protect their oysters.

Kevin: So then at that time, most of the oyster farmers in the area were doing just on bottom dredging 

Heather: on bottom. Um, it wasn't a very profitable business. They didn't have the resilience seed so the industry's come a long way in the last what?

15 years. Yeah. I remember the first 

Myron: cages in 1980. Those were for Cudihunk Shellfish. And actually that's an island that Bob grew up on, right? 

Heather: Yeah. 

Myron: Off the coast of Massachusetts. Small island. I've never heard of 

Heather: it.

Yeah. With a one room schoolhouse. K through eight. 

So when you grew up on a small island like that, you learn how to do a lot of stuff Yeah. And fix a lot of stuff. Yeah. Which comes in handy when you're starting a business, manufacturing things. 

Kevin: And then from there, the business was born right? For lobstermen? 

Heather: For lobstermen, yep. So we were, Ketcham Traps was the original name of the company. 

Myron: Traps a perfect name. 

Kevin: So I'm curious about those early oyster farmers who came to you guys and said, well, it holds shellfish obviously, so I can get my oysters off bottom and put 'em in cages, right?

Heather: Yeah. 

Myron: it makes it all so easier, you know, if you're just gonna go down and you come, come up to a buoy and pull up a cage full of oysters.

Versus dragging a dredge, Hey, I might catch a, I might get, be right in the right spot. Maybe the dredge comes a path full or half empty. I know what's in my cage. 

Kevin: you can see the natural evolution away from dredging, although there is still a fair amount of dredging going on. absolutely.

Why is that? Is that just traditional, 

Heather: well, there's still the wild harvest dredging, but actually some of the oyster growers will grow, um, you know, get a nice shape on their oyster, get it to a certain size, and then just, you know, throw 'em on the bottom and go back and dredge for them later.

And it's part of just gear utilization. Mm-hmm. Or if you're in a, a small footprint, um, u using the full water column. 

Kevin: Right. 

so when you took over, when your dad retired, 

What kind of evolution or changes have you made since then? 

Heather: So we modernize things a little bit. We got, we got off of paper and pencil for all of our records. Um,

And I think we invested, a little bit more in molding and tools. So we've always been a wire fabrication shop. And now we've kind of worked our way back where we didn't have the floats that we wanted, for our gear. So we went and invested and we have four or five different kinds of floats to work with our gear now, 

 um, website, e-commerce store. just kind of bringing us into the 21st century, right? I'd like to 

Myron: say that you brought us into the 21st century. I mean, I was still writing slips again, 10 years ago.

 And now she's taught me to rely on the people that she's brought in and trust in other people when everything I would always take on myself.

Kevin: Yeah, I think we're excited. We were able to expand our product range, have a lot of novel products, new things also, and we do distribute, other products as well that we don't make. And I think we've really expanded our product line. We're trying to offer Kind of soup to nuts to all the growers. 

Right. 

Heather: And, 

Myron: and we've worked well together. Mm-hmm. She came in and she didn't just come in and say, all right, this is the way things are gonna be. 

Kevin: You know? Yeah. People like the fact that, she, allows us to do things the way we do things. So to speak. 

Myron: You know, and of course there's gonna be changes and modernizations and, 

 the future is the future, you know, and the future's looking bright. 

Kevin: So tell me about how you make your gear. You have a factory and you're cutting and bending wires and that sort of thing. Tell me a little about that.

Heather: Sure. So everything starts on basically a hundred foot rolls of wire. and actually my father built years ago, custom machinery that kind of pinches and flattens it. We cut it to size, we bend it. We have, a separate group of builders and each person builds from start to finish.

whatever item it is, they get the order, they build it, start to finish. They're responsible for it. They're responsible for the quality. that, that's worked really well. It's almost like a, a craftsman type job. 

Kevin: it really is almost like bespoke equipment made by one person.

It makes me think about, the old Rolls Royces made by hand, like the same people made the entire vehicle. So they had a real sense of 

Heather: Of ownership. 

Kevin: Of ownership. Yep. That's right. Absolutely. And personal pride. And it sounds like that's what you're doing with your folks.

Myron: It's one man, one cage. we don't have an assembly line. Could we pump out a lot more if we had an assembly line? Maybe. 

 but by having a one man, one cage, you're responsible. Uh, and you have your pride in it. 

Mm-hmm. Each guy will handle the tools a little bit differently and have their own little techniques that they use. Mm-hmm. But if you have an assembly line situation, the guy next to you doesn't care what you do. And the guy after him doesn't care what he did. And that's where you can run into problems.

So if you have a man doing the same job, start to finish, you know the quality is gonna be there. As long as they're taking pride in it. And it takes a number of years to learn to do what we do because we do so many different things. 

Kevin: So each person that's involved in production knows the whole thing.

Myron: Correct. It takes on average about three to five years for a man to learn how to build everything. 

Kevin: How do you do your training with people? When you bring new people in? 

Myron: Initially 

 we'll start 'em off on smaller projects, and then slowly build them up. And that's why it takes three to five years. 

Kevin: Okay. So I want to talk about the relationship that you guys have with farmers, 

it doesn't sound to me like it's just somebody comes and says, Hey, I wanna buy a basket, and they grab it and you never hear from 'em again. 

Heather: We have, yeah. Long-term relationships with all our customers. I, I think both of our, favorite thing is to go out on the farm and visit our customers.

Yeah. See what they do. Um, we learn so much from them and anytime we do a new product, it's an iterative design process with the customers. 'cause we have what we think is the greatest idea in the world at the shop, but, um, 

 it doesn't always handle the way we think in the water. So, um, 

they, they come to us, they tell us what's working, what's not working, how can we make it better. Um, 

Myron: Yeah. 

we rely on our customers to tell us what they need versus. Us telling them what they need.

 They, they're on the water every day. They know exactly what they need and you'd never tell anybody how to run their business. 

Heather: We try to get out and visit as much as we can. Mm-hmm. Um, we try to call and check on people. 

Myron: Right? Yeah. Yeah. I haven't heard from so and so in a while. Hey, let me give him a call.

INot necessarily a sales call. and, and especially in my case, being in the industry, as long as I've been in the industry, a lot of these farmers are my friends. 

Kevin: Yeah. 

Myron: I mean, they know what an a-hole I am from time to time, and they've seen me after a few, and they 

Kevin: like it 

Myron: and they like it.

And they've seen me after having a few cocktails at an event like this, So

Kevin: It's just, you know,I'm very personally, in touch with them. 

Myron: You know, they know my family. I know their family. 

Kevin: just seeing people talking to you here, it's pretty clear that you're well known and well-liked by people. So, 

Myron: yeah. Yeah. Like I said, it's a, pleasure to be in this business, to be perfectly honest with you. coming from the initial fishing background.

 you know, when you get two lobster men together, generally they don't help each other out. They don't want to work with each other. They're definitely not gonna tell you where to put your lobster pots and they're mostly gonna say, get the fuck outta my own 

Kevin: shit. 

Myron: Whereas the aquaculture people tend to work together. A lot of guys have made the same mistake over and over, or made the mistake, and if they see somebody coming into the industry, they'll actually work with them and say, Hey, I did this, this didn't work, and they'll help each other out. So it's quite different. Growing is so much different than fishing. 

'cause the people will work together to help each other out. It's not so much like that in the fishing industry were we started. 

Kevin: it sounds like it's almost a different kind of person too. I think you had said fishing is just kind of like taking, it's like gathering from the ocean and removing it as opposed to farmers who are actually growing and nurturing and in the process, cleaning the water, creating habitat, and all of this other stuff. 

Myron: Right. And you know, it's nice to be on the green side of things. How's that? 

Kevin: Very well 

put. 

Myron: yeah,

Kevin: So, I'm trying to picture how you do this.

if a new customer, comes to you and says, Hey, I need you guys to come out, tell me what I can do better. How, how does it work? 

how do you determine what you can do to help them improve their farming? 

Heather: So, so I think before we go there, the, I think the questions we ask, what's your bottom? Like, how deep is your water? What's your water flow like? Mm-hmm. So even before we sell the first piece of gear, we try to understand, what their site's like.

 you know, so much of it is site specific for the gear selection, And the issues that they're gonna run across. 

 and we always say start small as well. You know, don't go in and buy a thousand cages until you know they're actually gonna work on your site. 

Kevin: Do you get farmers who try and do that.

Heather: Oh yeah, 

Myron: yeah. There are some people that will come in and say, you know, I'm gonna grow a million oysters immediately. And I say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know, maybe you could start with 50 or a hundred thousand. you're gonna have plenty of time to kill a million. Why don't you start 50,000 at the time and then find the 

 best gear that suits your site. 

Kevin: Right? 

Myron: And you know, what works for one place may not work for another based on, you know, if it's bottom gear. If you get a lot of silk problems where your stuff can get buried like you have bottom gear, 

you know, you get silted in, you know, it's all over for you. So you can silt in a million oysters or you can silt in 10,000 initially, 

I got gumbo mud down there. So I can't walk out to it. Or if I put a cage in of the cage, it's gonna be buried in, six hours. 'cause it'll sink directly into the mud. And I say, well maybe that's not the way you want to go.

Maybe you want to have some kind of a long line system, some anchoring and some floating gauges that you can float in the middle of the water column 'cause you're not permitted for being on top of the water columns, stuff like that. 

Kevin: do you get a lot of old established farmers coming to you and say, I want to do it differently.

I want to change, help me change. 

Heather: So, yes. it's a mix. Mm-hmm. a lot of the existing farms like to try new gear, try to be more efficient. a lot of the startup farms are people that have worked on other farms, which is great, and they can kind of ramp up on the side while they still have their day job. That's pretty common. And I think we've seen people be very successful doing that. And then we have new areas that are kind of new to farming, like down in Texas where, where they're just no experience and going in all the way, going in hard. So 

Myron: yeah, going, going in hard. I like that. 

Everything's bigger. Everything is bigger in Texas and they've done a nice job and they've got some water down there. Boy, 

 It's a nice product. It's got a nice salt content to it. And salt, I mean, for me being in the Northeast, I like a lot of salt content.

And I think they'd be a terrific oyster down there. 

Kevin: I've met a few of these people who have a lot of money, want to you know, stop being lawyers and say, I'm gonna become an oyster farmer. And they want to go big, right? It's kinda like the people who watch a few YouTube videos of sailing around the world with, bikini clad crew mates and, they spend, all their money and they buy a 60 foot sailboat, they don't even know how to sail, and they jump on the boat and they think they're traveling around the world and they usually come back with their tail between their legs in six months to a year.

Myron: we've had that similar experience. I remember, you know, 30 years ago, people being in and out of the industry in two or three years blow a bunch of money, get a bunch of equipment, and then.

 not doing it properly. starting too big, too fast, too much, 

Kevin: 

Myron: Not knowing the site that they're working with. All of those things. Right. So what I'm noticing these days. people getting in industry, and they're building themselves up to be bigger, profitable farms versus coming in, blowing a bunch of dough and actually leaving a bunch of gear out in the water just leaving it there.

Kevin: I mean, you, you want to have a good business plan when getting into it and know your business to start, know your site, know your people, help.

Myron: Very hard to find good help is very hard to find. 

And one thing I'm, I really like about this business is we find that women do very well in this business. 

and you ask a lot of farmers, some of the best people are the women they have on their crews.

Kevin: Why do you think that is? 

Myron: I think they just pay a little bit more attention maybe. Maybe that also just being tough bitches. 

Kevin: That's what it takes, I think. Right. 

 I've heard this from other, other farmers as well, and I there does seem to be a more rapid entry into the market of women farmers.

do you think it has something to do with the improved technology and gear as well, because it used to be, you had to be able to lift 200 pound baskets, oysters, And now that's changed a little bit. I think. 

Heather: I think it's more approachable and we're working to make it even more approachable going forward to be able to lift and move and handle equipment.

 and I also just think it's an interest for people like, Nicolette, who I know you've, you've interviewed who's a Mariano Yeah. A great customer of ours who we love Treasure Coast Shellfish. She came out of a biology program and that's what she learned at school and that's what she wanted to do.

 so I think we're getting just a lot of people through the university system that want to get into it now.

Kevin: I think it's great. I think that there doesn't need to be any difference between men and women doing this kind of work.

Um, you know, and at the end of the day, in a lot of cases, you are handling boxes of rocks. 

Myron: these are tough women that know the industry when they get into it. Yeah. Know what they're getting into. it's awesome. 

Kevin: Mm-hmm. 

So you've told me what you, what advice you would give to a new farmer, 

if a big established farmer comes to you and says, I want to start changing, how do you determine how they should do that? 

Heather: So they probably have a lot of money tied up in their existing gear. They have their process start to finish. Mm-hmm. They have their work boats and everything they need to run it.

 So, what we're seeing is they'll evaluate on a small scale, take a small piece of their farm, maybe set up a couple lines with different types of new gear, try it out for a year and maybe grow into it over time if they think it's gonna be better than their existing method. 

Kevin: They can compare 'em like, flush out all, all the bugs, make sure it's gonna work correctly. 'cause just to do a hot swap is not something we see people do. The other thing we see people do is the, the larger firms have so much space. In different leases, they might try gear that's more appropriate for different areas.

Heather: Right. So they might break it up that way or, try new gear in a new area. 

 and then just kind of replace older gear with the new stuff if it turns out to work for them. 

Kevin: Yeah. 'cause there are obviously some financial barriers to entry in this business 

Heather: we have such a wide product range, you know? Mm-hmm. So people can start with just floating bags with the plastic floats and that's pretty inexpensive. Yeah. And then you go up to the big six bay floating cages and those are a little more expensive.

 So we do see people starting by floating bags and over the years build up to more and more gear. 

Kevin: Yeah. Well I ask that mainly because, you know, with the intensive design and manufacturing that you put into it you're sort of building a Cadillac, whereas a lot of other companies are building Chevys and there's usually the customers or Yugo's, oh, now we're really going back, 

Myron: I'm showing my age, maybe, I dunno.

Kevin: Now I want to jump to something that you did a presentation on yesterday. and it's about birds. 

Myron: Sure. 

Kevin: But the reason I want to talk about it isn't just about birds, 

but also about how you innovate and how you figure out to do new things and change things. Mm-hmm. But tell me about the bird problem and how that came about and how you guys addressed it. 

Heather: Okay. so, the FDA is kind of going after, birds fouling on oyster gear.

Myron: I understand. the problem, you get birds that're sitting on the cages 'cause there's nowhere else to sit out there in the water and they're crapping on the cages, which creates biofoul basically, and potential contamination, I suppose, of the product, right? Mm-hmm. Is it that big of an issue? It's getting a lot of attention

and you'll have farmers that say, look, I don't have birds at my farm. Why do I have to do it? 

Kevin: 

Myron: But it's the cost of doing business at the end of the day.

Yeah. You know, people are paying attention and, you know, you see a bunch of crap on a cage. Mind starts spinning whether someone's gonna get sick. It can be, questionable. 

 you know, people have been growing oysters on the surface for a number of years, and you don't hear about a lot of people getting sick from bird crap on an oyster. But at the same time, if the FDA needs, it comes through the, you know, the people who are producing the food, they want you to produce the food a certain way. 

you do your best to follow the rules and abide by them. 

Kevin: when the cage is flipped in such a way that the oysters are out of the water and exposed and the birds are sitting on the cages, the oysters are pretty tightly closed at that point 

And then when they flip back over and they're under the water, they're kind of getting washed off and the current's cleaning 'em and mm-hmm. 

Myron: Yeah. They're not filter feeding while they're up on the surface. 

Kevin: Right. Good thing, like 

Myron: if they were 

Kevin: this oyster tastes like shit. 

Heather: As the gear supplier, we need to figure out how do we keep birds from landing on the gear. so there's a couple approaches. we need to create new gear that birds can't land on, but we also have to figure out a way to retrofit the existing gear that people have. so we've played with a lot of different spikes on the floats. We've made a new float with a shape that we think the birds aren't gonna land on. we've tested a lot of things. We've been doing it the last couple years, and we actually have a couple of ideas for going forward that we think are gonna be the home run, hopefully that 

It's gonna help solve the problem for most of our customers. But yeah, it's been a long road, but we try everything. 

Myron: Yeah. and again, this is a case where we work with our farmers to try out different things, bring different stuff over there. 

 when it comes to mother Nature and the birds, there's nothing perfect yet. Uh, we hope to come up with the perfect answer.There's a number of things that work very well, but at the end of the day, when you're handling 'em and you gotta remove 'em and do the flipping, now you've added extra labor costs.

Kevin: 

Myron: And nobody's given more money, unfortunately, for their oysters. 

so you try to find the delicate balance that's gonna work for everybody. And there's a lot of gear out there now that needs to be retrofit, so, 

Kevin: and it's a lot of trial and error to figure out what works, 

Myron: right?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. We've been at it for a few years now and, You need a lot more space if you're be gonna be taking spikes off and putting spikes on every time you go to flip the gear.

You know, I spoke with a customer about that yesterday. He like, yeah, I realize I gotta pull these things off every week to flip 'em. They work great, but, you know, where do I put 'em when I pull 'em off? Now I gotta put 'em back on. It's a pain in the ass from my crew. It adds time that I can only flip X number of cages now because I have to do that, 

Heather: So stay tuned. 

Kevin: I'm picturing little electrical wires, shooting currents and stuff. Pew, pew, pew. Exactly. 

Myron: I, I think lethal control methods are probably out of the question. you can't be knocking 'em off and then falling over dead in the water you know?

 but at the end of the day, 

it's about keeping people safe and having a safe product for people to eat. 

Kevin: Can you guys gimme an example of, a situation that you've had where a farmer has come to you with a problem either with your gear or just a farming problem and how they have really helped you innovate, they've come to you with a problem and you've now come up with some new solution that.

Changes how you work for others as well. 

Myron: I mean, that still goes back to original floating oyster cages. 

Kevin: Yeah. 

Heather: I think, just in the floating gear, putting a lot more flotation in them so when the cages are flipped over, the whole cage actually clears the water, and dries out all the way.

Myron: right. if you put the standard oyster bag float on the sides of the cage, whenever you're flipping that bag, you might be drying one side of the oysters. 

Kevin: 

Myron: Whereas like with our new flow, 

then when you flip that over, that sits the oyster up, what we like to call high and dry right out of the water. 

Kevin: 

Myron: And now you're drying that bag the whole time in the sun, whatever. 

Kevin: Right. it's an interesting thing. I hadn't thought about it. the oysters are heavy, every farm has different size oysters or a different amount in a bag, which is gonna affect the weight. Mm-hmm. And therefore the amount of flotation that you need in the floats.

Right. 

Myron: Yeah. I always like to say mine's the biggest, I mean the float. 

Kevin: Yeah. We're still talking about oysters here. Right. 

 when I've talked to people about floats, especially in areas that are prone to really severe weather, hurricanes and that sort of thing, they talk about, well, when a storm is coming, we need to sink 'em.

And I always thought, sounds like a hassle, but it is what it is, but then you gotta get 'em back up. how does a farmer get a thousand floating cages back up from the bottom?

Myron: believe me, they're heavy. It's a hassle. They're boxes of rocks and they're very heavy and it's, you know, this is a miracle growth. This is work. 

Heather: So that's something we think about a lot and talk about a lot and test ideas around, If you are in Maine, you do it once a year to get under the ice, right? You raise it in the spring, you do it once a year, it's on a schedule. Um, you're in the Gulf Coast.

 you have to start preparing three or four days ahead of time when you see a storm coming and oh my goodness, the storm went out to sea, so we just sunk the farm for nothing. Raised it. So as a farm, you go through that exercise two or three times, 

Kevin: oh my God. 

Heather: Um, you decide you're going to just batten down the hatches and go really heavy on your line and anchoring and just hope you can ride it out.

Kevin: Ride it out. Yeah. 

Heather: Um, so we're thinking through ways to help you ride it out a little better. Yeah. 

Myron: one of the exercises I asked the guys to do when I'm speaking with them is, Hey, you know, every once in a while I'll have you crew go sink, 20 or 30 cages, you know, see how long it takes To get 'em down, to get 'em up, get used to the exercise.

Kevin: Right. 

Myron: Because you are gonna wanna protect your farm and your product at the end of the day. When, when the, when the hurricane, you know, mother nature is a bitch. 

Kevin: You know, we had a farmer trying to save a few bucks. He put 120 cages on one line with two five foot auger anchors, 

Myron: And, we had a Nor Easter or something, the stuff washed up onto the beach and he comes in yelling and screaming at us and I said, you just created a mile long sail and I'm the asshole. Okay. It's, and again, unfortunately, the customer's always right, right. 

Kevin: Yeah. Well, I think we know the truth on that, 

Myron: but I like to tell that story to people because I say it's a, A 

Heather: cautionary tale.

Kevin: Yeah, 

Myron: it's a cautionary tale. You go ahead and you anchor the shit outta yourself. Right. Your anchors are your most thing. Your lines are your most important thing that holds your whole farm together, 

Kevin: 

Myron: So anchoring is key. Don't try to save a few bucks on anchoring anchor heavy. Yeah. Go heavy, you know, 

Kevin: because a five or six foot augers, basically, it's a screw that you're screwing down into the bottom.

Yeah. 

Myron: because you could have a lot of mud and then only have a few feet of sand in there and you're going five feet in, you're only in two feet. 

So knowing your site is very important and knowing what you need to do. And we have guys, down in Virginia that have 350 pound pyramid anchors. 

Kevin: 

Myron: And a hurricane comes, they ride the storm out. 

Kevin: Yeah. What other. Things in terms of new tech or new ideas and innovations are emerging.

Heather: What, say, what do we wanna talk 

Kevin: about that you can talk about? I 

Heather: was gonna say, what do we wanna talk about? 

Kevin: You don't need to give any trade secrets. 

Myron: Well, no, I mean, 

Kevin: there's a huddle in the corner. Right? 

Myron: Well, you know, we wish we could just find something that worked great for everyone. 

Kevin: 

Myron: But this is not that kind of a business.

 I mean, besides finding cages that will lower themselves and raise themselves, you know, that would be a great idea. it's a great idea in theory, but you know, how can you make it work? Right? 

Kevin: 

Myron: So I think we're trying to solve one problem at a time, and I think one of our biggest concerns right now is to try to solve this bird problem.

Kevin: 

Myron: I think, and that's where we're investing quite a bit of money into doing that. So, you know, Keeping the guys on the water and being able to sell their product is the most important thing right now. 

 Iyou know, we like to say our new bird deterred float is part of our new tech as well. But again, it's not a hundred percent perfect. We did find that we had some of the, uh, small gulls actually, uh, having sex on tops of the float.

So, I mean, you know, any point in a storm, I guess, 

Kevin: Hey, listen, birds are birds, right? 

Myron: I think right now we've got a lot of energy invested in the bird deterrence. 

And I think that's gonna be huge in this business.

This.

 and again, a big part of our ideas are always coming from our customers. 

 and that's, it's important. The customers, they're gonna tell you. Exactly what they need and how we need to do it.

 so every once in a while I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll go out and I'll. Go to a farm and I'll say, Hey, I'm gonna come out, but I'm gonna bring my waiters.

I'm gonna spend a half a day. I don't want you to have to just run me out there. Show me around. I wanna work it out and work with the guys. Whatever like that. Right. And it, it smart me up about my retirement plan though, because uh, after doing that for about four hours and you get back to the dock, handling those boxes are rock.

You realize how hard 

 the people on the farm work and you know what a hard job this is to do. 

 You better be tough and it's tough these day and age to find a 20-year-old kid to do the job.

You know, it's a different world. 40 years ago, or 50 years ago when I was a kid. 

Kevin: what do you think the source of the labor problems is? I, 

Myron: I mean, uh, I think we're a little soft today. 

Kevin: Is 

Myron: that okay to say? 

 I grew up as a poor kid, 

Kevin: right? 

Myron: So I was eight years old shoveling snow, 

Kevin: right.

Myron: You know, um, out to make money and actually giving that to my mom and, I was always taught, you gotta go out, you gotta work, for anything you're gonna have. 

Kevin: Right. 

Myron: And I think a lot of people, as they grow, you want your kids to be much better than you and you kind of make things easy on. 

Kevin: Yeah. 

Myron: So, yeah. So our society is much softer. 

Kevin: Yeah. 

Myron: But the oysters are hard.

Kevin: That may have to be the caption of this episode. Heather, what do you think about that? 

Heather: I think it's a work ethic thing. 

like, you know, we've talked about, we have a lot of long-term employees that are great, that work hard, in the instances where we do have to hire people, it's hard. It's probably every fifth person works out. Maybe. 

Myron: I mean, here I am approaching 60 and I've got a 20-year-old that's trailing me by 20 yards as I'm walking across the property, 

So when I walk out my office and I walk out the front door and I'm walking over the a hundred yards over to the other building, I get this kid chasing me back there and he's like 20 years old and I'm like, I don't think he's gonna work out. You gonna be able to catch up with Myron? 

Kevin: what would you say is the biggest challenge to what you're doing right now and also to what oyster farmers are confronting? 

Myron: So it may be different for the farmer than us. you know, the price of oysters for the farmer unfortunately has not really gone up. And while the cost of everything has, 

Kevin: even though there's kind of a, what I perceive to be an oyster renaissance going on right now, and sales must be up but prices are not 

Myron: correct.

And I think, the oyster farmers have been working on that same oyster and that same price for a long period of time. And it's hard for us because we're trying to keep our pricing at a relatively affordable price on our gear, but our costs keep going up. And it's difficult for us to work with the farmer and say, Hey, you know, I gotta go up on this gear and it, it breaks my heart to do it. But then, you know, what do we have to do on the other side? You know, how do we handle it to try to keep our costs down? So it's very difficult and it's unfortunate because the market has grown so much. You see those oysters at three, $4 a piece.

 if the farmer's still getting his 60 cents, if he's lucky sometimes. 

Kevin: You see that kind of the costing and pricing as sort of the biggest issue as well? 

Heather: yeah. I mean, I, well you talk to farmers, it's Yeah. That they're not getting enough for their product.

Um, labor, I think is the 

Myron: next biggest thing. Yeah. And labor for them, and again, this is a labor intensive business, so if you can't save money on labor, it's a great way, a good idea to do it. And that's where we try to help with coming with different ways of flipping the gear, easier ways to flip the gear, handle the gear, 

Kevin: that really makes sense to me in terms of the direction in which one wants to innovate is making it easier. So that either your labor costs go down because you don't need as much manpower or you retain your labor longer because the job is a little easier is probably the wrong word, but you 

know, 

Myron: oh no, whatever you can do to make the job easier for the farmer 

Kevin: is, 

Myron: is key.

Kevin: Yeah. tell me about your storefront. 

Heather: we we've always had a storefront. We're there Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM Um, we have just where we're located in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where probably have at least a couple hundred farms and driving distance between you know, down to Cape Cod, Plymouth, Duxbury, uh, Rhode Island. Um, so we have a lot of walk-in traffic for oyster farmers, but we're also just a few blocks up from the fishing pier, so all the fishing boats can come in and get rope and gloves and, you know, supplies every time they go out fishing.

Kevin: right because in addition to doing oyster gear, aquaculture gear, lobster traps, you also are doing things for sport fishermen and commercial fishermen and all of that kind of thing. 

Heather: Yeah. Yes.

Kevin: I have to come check it out because, you know, I'm a gearhead. and I have a feeling that walking through your store is like an aquaculturist's toy store.

Heather: So, one of our slogans, was it a fisherman's candy store? But, we have everything and you know, we have things on our website, but that's probably not even a fraction of the things that you'll see if you come and walk around. There's just no kidding. There's just so much stuff.

Yep. 

Myron: I like to say if it's a live, we don't sell it, but everything else we do 

And her, and her and, and her dad actually plays around with some some fishing poles. And he rebuilds old timer fishing poles. And he'll sell a few of those at the shop and that kind of brings in some of the recreational people And when I talk to people that are coming in to look at some of the poles that Bob rebuilds, it's fun because they're like, you know, you just can't get shit like this. This stuff is great. You know, that stuff today they make is crap.

Kevin: I've heard people talk about the difference between commercial quality gear And kind of hobbyist gear. 

 Is there a difference I mean, you need quality, right? 

Myron: Size, 

Kevin: 

Myron: size matters. 

Kevin: Again, we're still talking about oysters. 

Myron: Yeah. We're still talking about oysters, and you know, we do make some recreational farming products.

You know, a recreational farmer doesn't want to hear in the cage it's 300 pounds. 

Kevin: Yeah. 

Myron: so we'll make the equipment at a much smaller and much smaller rate. 

So if I'm making small gear for a smaller farmer that's commercial, 

 we can size stuff down for people.

Heather: I think the big thing for recreational is just things that you can pick up and handle with your hands. You're not gonna have special gear on the, your boat or the side of your dock or things like that.

So it's, it really is just a scale thing. Yeah. We're using the same quality materials. 

Kevin: Do you guys do anything with, shoreline restoration I know there's a lot of attention in that direction right now. 

Heather: There's a lot of attention. Um, we're actually very interested in that area. we've been working with, our net manufacturer in Europe actually, to make a biodegradable netting specific for that market. So, you know, you put the oyster shells in it. build a reef, do what you're doing. and then over time, that bag's gonna degrade. So we're, try to get away from using plastics in the water for right, for those kind of projects. Um, a lot of municipalities are actually putting forth projects to do that, that,we bid on for the supplies.

Um, yeah, we love that space. 

Kevin: I mean, I think it's an emerging area. 

 So you're like experimenting with different things. 

Heather: We're, yeah, we're experimenting with different materials and it's the netting we have you, you can smell it smells like sugar or maple syrup. So You know, it's a plant to rivet.

It's really cool. 

Kevin: Yeah. Oh, that's very cool. 

Well, I wanna thank you both so much for telling me about Ketcham Supply and the background of it It was very interesting.

Is there anything I missed? Is there anything that I should have asked you about or we talk about because I always miss something. 

Myron: Well, I like to say it's all about flow. If you're gonna grow oysters, you better have flow. 

we always, one of our slogans has always been more flow, more grow more dough so that there, is key. So if you're gonna start a farm, guys, make sure you got good flow. 

Kevin: I think that kind of says it all. And now I have to struggle between multiple different titles for this episode because you've given me a lot of good ones.

Well 

Myron: get your ass to work, Kevin.

Kevin: Oh, I'll thank you again, both of you. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you Kevin. Thanks for having 

Myron: us. 

Heather: Yeah, this was a lot of fun. 

Myron: Been, yeah, really 

Kevin: fun. Really fun. That's it for this episode of OYSTER-ology. Thanks so much to Heather Ketcham and Myron Horzesky for letting me drag them away from the Virginia Aquaculture Conference for our conversation. What stuck with me from our discussion is how much of aquaculture is about paying attention to the farmer, to their site, their gear, and of course their flow. Because in oyster farming there are no shortcuts, only trade-offs. You can rush in, go big and learn the hard way, or you can listen to the people who have already sunk the cages, lost the gear, fought the birds, and anchored heavy enough to ride out the storm.

Thanks so much for listening to OYSTER-ology. If you've enjoyed this episode, please follow rate and share it. It helps other oyster lovers find the show. So help me out on that and please leave a comment on what you thought about this episode. I listen to everyone and I would love your thoughts. And as a reminder of Ketcham Supplies, number one key to growing great oysters.

Myron: more flow, more grow more dough 

Kevin: Please be sure to join me again next time as we pry open the shell of another interesting OYSTER-ology topic