Shuck You

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The story of the Drake’s Bay Oyster Farm is long and complicated. The farm, which has operated under several owners, has been running in Drake’s Bay for more than 100 years. It generates more than half of all oysters produced in California, according to Lunny, and is the only remaining oyster cannery in the state. Its oysters are canned on site.

Lunny’s family has operated a cattle ranch for three generations on the land surrounding Drake’s Bay. That land is a designated pastoral zone under the Wilderness Act, so the ranching will remain there if or when the bay is designated a wilderness area.

The Lunnys purchased the oyster farm in 2005 from the Johnson family, who operated what was then called Johnson’s Oyster Co. The Lunnys bought the company’s assets — its buildings and machinery — and took over its leasehold agreement with the National Park Service. The lease is scheduled to expire in 2012.

“We wanted to see this tradition go on,” says Lunny of why he purchased the farm. Lunny says he spent more than $300,000 “cleaning up” the operation, which was operating under a cease-and-desist order issued by the California Coastal Commission because of environmental problems. He says he cleaned up the debris in the bay, which is also known as an estero, a place where saltwater and fresh water mix. The Lunnys fixed the farm’s septic system, brought buildings up to code and fixed a problem with the way the farm was processing water that was discharging back into the estuary.

CATTLE, YES; OYSTERS, NO

As the Lunnys moved forward to correct problems at the farm, the National Park Service said it had maps that showed some of the buildings of the operation were actually outside the boundaries of the leasehold agreement, ostensibly stripping Lunny of the legal right to continue his environmental cleanup of areas the NPS deemed outside his farm’s boundaries.

Lunny said he hired a firm that mapped the farm and concluded the buildings were under the original agreement. The two sides battled over the issue until a meeting with Feinstein’s aides this summer when officials with the NPS accepted Lunny’s map.

Now Lunny is continuing to move forward to remove the last items cited as problems under the cease-and- desist order. When he has, he hopes to have his special-use permit to run the farm renewed and perhaps even extended so he can operate past 2012.

“I’m a real believer in sustainable and organic production and local food systems,” says Lunny, whose beef and oysters are deemed organic by Marin Organic, a group of producers in Marin County. “That’s what got us so excited about the oyster farm. There’s no need for feed, fertilizers or chemicals.” The Lunny cattle ranch, known also as the Historic G Ranch, is in the heart of Point Reyes National Seashore.

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