Our Nest on Wheels

Once they get a little bigger, they are ready to go into a mesh bag and go out into the Gulf of Mexico. A couple miles offshore are leased clam beds. Large mesh bags that contain around 10,000 clams are taken out and attached to the sea bottom. Clams like to be in the mud, so they're good with this. Here's our tour guide showing us one of the bags.


The clams spend about a year out in the gulf.  During that time, they get visited by the aqua-farmers, who separate the larger clams from the smaller ones and put them into different bags. As it turns out, one clam will climb on the back of another to get a better shot at the food coming by in the water. But eventually they all get their chance to grow to full size. Once the clams are full size, the bags they are in are collected off the ocean floor for the last time, and the clams come ashore for sorting.

Here they go through an initial sorting, where whole clams are separated from empty half shells.

Now the whole clams are in these large baskets.  Next they get sorted by size, then bagged up and ready for sale.

The aquaculture farms here are wildly successful.  At this time, 95% of the farm-raised clams in the US come from little Cedar Key.  And, of course, you can get some of the best fresh clams at pretty much any restaurant here.

Want to learn more?  Here's a link to the Southern Cross Sea Farms site. And here's a video that Southern Living did about the clamming industry in Cedar Key.  Next time you enjoy a nice clam chowder, you'll remember that these clams probably grew up here in Cedar Key.

Cedar Key feels like it's at the end of the road, probably because it is at the end of the road. There are no chain restaurants here, no chain stores. No Walmart or Publix market. There is a small local grocery store, but if you want something closer to a supermarket, you'll have to drive 30 miles to Chiefland. Cedar Key does have a local  hotel with 10 rooms.
And a lot of shops selling somewhat unusual combinations.  For example:


Cedar Key is relatively small, around 900 residents, 1800 during the winter. But it had at one time been much larger. Depending on what you read/who you talk to, the heyday of Cedar Key was 1885 when there were around 5000 residents on all the local islands. Or it was when there were 1900 residents some time later. No matter, the history of this place is one of setbacks and rebuilding. When you read the history, you find a recurring theme. It goes pretty much like this:  "The railroad was completed in 1861, bringing daily trains to the town. But then in 1862 the Union Army took over the town and burned the railroad depot down." And "The island was home to a factory and many homes, until the hurricane of 1896 destroyed the factory and 40 of the houses," and "...until the hurricane of 1910 destroyed...," and "...until the hurricane of 1935 destroyed..."

Seems that whenever things were going well, another hurricane showed up and wrecked a bunch of stuff. I think when you keep getting wiped out every 10 or 15 years, you don't bother to try build too fancy.  As Jane said, "this town takes 'rustic' to a whole new level."  Currently they are rebuilding from the hurricane of 2016. That one was called Hermine.

In a town this small, you don't really need a car to get around. It often seems that golf carts outnumber cars and are the preferred mode of transportation for the locals.
Even the police department, which has at least two cars and two trucks, also uses a golf cart. How would you feel about getting pulled over by this:
In any case, the golf carts are everywhere, and especially on Dock Street, which is the old railroad dock, elevated over the water.

Dock Street is mostly restaurants and gift shops catering to tourists.  No chain restaurants, even though these local birds looked to be lined up on the remains of an old dock like retirees outside the Old Country Buffet at 4:00 pm.

One of the main industries of Cedar Key in recent years was the fiber plant. Cedar Key was home to the Standard Manufacturing Co., which made the fibers for making whisk brushes and hat brushes. These fibers were extracted from the sabal (or cabbage) palm tree and exported all over the world to brush makers, including the Fuller Brush Company (you have to be over 50 to know about them). They also made their own under the brand name Donax.

The company got started in 1910 when a dentist from Indiana came for a visit and met a local who knew how to extract palm fiber and make brushes. The dentist he quit his dental practice to set up manufacturing in Cedar Key. The company was quite successful, employing over 100 people and operating from 1910 to 1952 (...until the hurricane of 1950 wiped out most of...). There's not much left of the factory site, the land having been sold and converted to condos in the 90s, but there is one building left, and the house that the owner lived in was saved and moved near the Historical Museum.

And speaking of the owner,s house, it turns out that the son of the factory founder still lives in the area and likes to hang out in his old childhood home, now part of the Historical Museum.  So we got to meet him and get a personal tour and explanation of the whole process of extracting fiber and making brushes.
We're still in Cedar Key. We'll be here until the end of the month. I'm not sure if there's much left for us to see, but we do want to kayak out to some of the islands. And maybe take in more of the Fine Art and Smoked Mullet.

The other thing that Saint Augustine is famous for is this:

That's right, the oldest wood school house in the USA. I imagine that someone can do a study of old school houses and find the stone one, the brick one, the one made out of bark, or clay, or sod.  But I'll leave that for another time. Just know that "it all started here,"