They Knew Little About Oysters. Now They Have a Farm With 2 Million.

Stefanie Bassett and Elizabeth Peeples left their city lives behind to raise mollusks.

The Little Ram Oyster Co., a farm of 2 million oysters on the North Fork of Long Island, started with a Groupon.

To celebrate a friend’s birthday in the summer of 2017, Stefanie Bassett and Elizabeth Peeples joined eight other enthusiasts in Long Island City to learn how to shuck oysters at a discount. The Brooklyn couple, who knew each other from middle school in Columbia, Md., always had a love for the delicacy. But as they laughed with their friends and fumbled with their oyster knives, they also listened intently as an instructor explained the history and magic of the mollusks.

Ms. Bassett and Ms. Peeples prepare oyster cages to be put into the water. Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

“The thing that drew our attention was the positive environmental impact oysters have,” said Ms. Bassett, 42.

Among the ocean’s best filter feeders, one oyster cleans 50 gallons of water per day. New York was once known as “the Big Oyster,” but over-harvesting and poor water quality wiped out the population by the 21st century. The couple learned about efforts to bring them back to the harbor.

Faster than one can slurp an oyster, Ms. Bassett, who worked in advertising at the time, and Ms. Peeples, then an interior designer, decided to become oyster farmers. “We said, ‘OK, let’s give ourselves five years,’” Ms. Bassett said, “‘save money, change our budget, change our way of living.’”

They took research trips to the bays of Rhode Island, the only place where farmers responded to their inquiries, and searched “oyster farms for sale” on the internet. Then one day, an ad popped up for a farm for sale in Gardiners Bay near the western shore of Shelter Island.

“The minute I landed on the North Fork, I was in love,” Ms. Bassett said. “It’s wine country, and there are beaches. It’s the most amazing place ever.”

She spent a 72-degree, flat-water day with the farm’s then-owner.

A 15-minute boat ride from the hamlet of Southold, it’s 10 square acres, visible from the surface only by lines of bobbing buoys marking the locations of oyster cages.

It’s immersed in a community of oyster farms. Of the 79 oyster cultivation permits issued in New York so far in 2023, 39 are in Peconic and Gardiners Bays, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation…