The Oyster Farm – Part 1: Low Tide

"Not like that," said Rowan. "You'll lose a finger."

"I like my fingers."

"Then hold it like this." She stepped behind Solène and wrapped her tanned hand around Solène's glove. "Find the hinge. Push. Twist."

The shell opened with a soft pop. Solène laughed, delighted, holding up a perfect pearly oyster on its half-shell. The farm sat on a windswept bay in southern Brittany, with long tidal flats stretching to a silver horizon, rows of black racks half-submerged and a ramshackle wooden hut with a tin roof. Gulls wheeled overhead. The air tasted of salt.

Solène, thirty-six, was a restaurant critic from Paris who was supposed to be writing eight hundred words on Breton shellfish. Rowan, thirty-three, a farmer with sun-streaked hair, waders to her thighs and a laugh like a wave, ran the farm with her cousin and a million oysters. She had pointed Solène to a stool and handed her a knife without asking if she wanted one.

For days they worked the tides. At low water they walked the flats in boots, flipping bags of oysters in the cold wet sun. At high water they sat in the hut shucking and talking. Solène stopped carrying her notebook.

"You're not writing," Rowan noticed.

"I'm eating. It's better than writing."

"What will you say about us?"

"That the best table in France has a stool, a knife and a very good view." Solène looked up. "And that I didn't expect to like the farmer."

Rowan turned pink above her scarf. "I am very much in the way of my work this week."

"I'm sorry."

"Please don't be." She wiped the knife. "Would you stay for dinner on the pier? Just us?"

Continue the story: Part 2 – High Tide.

Continue the story: Part 2 – High Tide.