Great Bay, 8am
When I first put together the concept of Local Originals I started writing down potential guests. I wanted the first few episodes to be people I had some sort of connection to so I had a little bit of built in grace if things went a little sideways. Admittedly, while I’ve always been interested in visual media this is the first project I’ve worked on where the visual is the star, where the shots tell a story in their own way and lay out the story for the viewer in a way that audio simply cannot. I also knew that the concept of the show might take a couple tries to nail down. It’s easier to ask a friend to reshoot than a complete stranger, so that’s how I decided to record our first few episodes.
Matt Matusky was a guest of mine on my old podcast, Greetings From the Garden State (GFTGS). He owns Love Oysters, an oyster farm down in the Great Bay in Tuckerton, NJ, and is just an all around great dude. He was one of the first names I wrote down because when I did the podcast with him, he did bring me out on the boat to see the farm, pull oysters out of the bay, and get a first hand look at how he works. I ran GFTGS for four years and recorded almost 200 episodes and the time I spent out on the boat with Matt remains of my best memories from that stretch of time.
When I connected with Matt and asked him to be a part of this new endeavor he was immediately on board (pun!) but I think he thought I wanted to go out with him when, you know, the weather was nice. I assured him that I wanted to go out as soon as possible…..in December. This was also the first episode I would be recording of Local Originals and was still getting used to the equipment, so why not put me on a rickety boat (the first boat we took out the propeller broke so we had to go in and take a different one), in frigid temperatures, with saltwater spraying me and my camera. When it comes to creative projects I’ve gotten better with “planning” but I do think you need to have a little bit of that “we’ll do it live” attitude and I’m really glad I did.
Once we got out to Matt’s farm and my face thawed out a little, Matt got to work transferring his younger oysters into different baskets and organizing his market oysters into bags to bring back to shore. This is a year round ordeal for Matt and it’s not easy work. He told me a story about February 2025 where the bay froze, relocated his farm a few miles away and did some damage along the way and it took a lot of time, effort, and money to get everything back rolling again. But like any farmer, Matt has to show up and do the work. There are no work from home days where he can sit on his couch in sweatpants and play around on his computer like I’m doing right now, he has a few hundred thousand oysters in a large body of water that are his responsibility and livelihood. That is something I’ve always admired about Matt, he’s built this from the ground up and faced those trials and tribulations along the way and still keeps going with a level of humility, grace, and kindness that we should all aspire to.
As Matt sorted and I was filming and taking pictures, I did notice the Great Bay and looking across it with Atlantic City out in the distance, there was just this wave of calm that came over me. It’s one of the least disturbed wetlands in the Northeast and oysters and oyster farms have played a major role in making it a significant ecosystem for all sorts of wildlife. There was just something about the Great Bay that cut through the icy fingers, the wet socks, the stress about making sure I’m using my gear correctly that quieted all that noise (except for the fingers, I was going back and forth between what hand was in my coat on a hand warmer every 30 seconds, that was brutal) and was honestly something bigger than me, Matt, the farm, the oysters themselves, and what we were out there to do that day.
When we got back Matt had packed a bag of about 30 oysters for me to bring home (we did have a couple each before I left because there’s no better breakfast at 9am than a few oysters pulled right out of the water) and sent me on my way.
I could not think of a better way to record my first episode of a project that I am truly excited about. There was a moment in time where I felt like I lost my creative spark and was reaching down into a well that was dry. My day out on the Great Bay with Matt filled that well back up and reminded me what this is all about.
People are interesting.
We need to tell those stories.
All of this matters.
See you at the next one.
