MUSSELS: HOW TO FORAGE OR FARM THEM

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[EDITOR'S NOTE: For some other delicious mussel recipes, see Euell Gibbons' Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop (David McKay Company, Inc., $3.95), which is available in many bookstores and libraries.]

MUSSEL FARMING

Now that you know how easy it is to gather mussels, you may think it's ridiculous to talk about raising them. But cultured mussels have a number of advantages over their wild cousins. First, homegrown shellfish are usually meatier and better tasting. Second, the foraged mussels sometimes contain ugly black "pearls", harmless but crunchy parasites not found in the farmed variety. Third, the domesticated mollusks are more readily available, and — when you grow your crop suspended from floats — you don't even have to wait for low tide to harvest. Finally, cultured mollusks are easier to market .

There are a number of ways of raising mussels. In Holland, "seed" shellfish spawn are spread along the bottom of shallow inland seas where they grow to maturity, while in France it's common to see the mollusks thriving on oak poles driven into the ocean bottom. The most popular and successful method, worldwide, is to grow them on ropes suspended from rafts.

The easiest technique for a family -sized saltwater crop, however, is simply to culture the mussels on the pilings of an old pier. Assuming that you can obtain permission to utilize such a structure, you'll be able to start farming for a minimal investment. The mollusks will either grow there of their own accord, or you can gather small mussels from a low-tidal bed ( collect them from an area with few barnacles, if you can find such a spot) and transplant them to the posts from June or July through September.

Medium-gauge netting will hold the "youngsters" in place for the two weeks or so it will take for them to become attached to the poles. Once that happens, you can work at thinning them and keeping away predators ( mostly starfish, sea squirts, perch, flounder, moonsnails, oyster drills, crabs, and birds) . . . or you can just let nature take its taxes, and keep the survivors for yourself.

Most successful commercial mussel farmers, on the other hand, find that the raft method allows the most efficient use of space, and — because most of the creatures that prey on the mollusks are bottom dwellers — keeping the culturing ropes off the sea bed protects the crop. (Should you plan to use this system, however, you must accept the fact that the public has not always been eager to welcome mussel rafts. If you encounter such a problem, you'd better brush up on your public relations skills and perhaps offer to split your harvest with one or two waterfront landowners.)

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