Stefanie Bassett And Elizabeth Peeples Of Little Ram Oysters Are Grand Marshals Of Maritime Festival

The annual Maritime Festival in Greenport, set for September 24 and 25, is a way for residents and visitors to celebrate the village’s rich maritime history. In choosing Stefanie Bassett and Elizabeth Peeples as this year’s grand marshals, the organizers were honoring that history while looking to the future.

Bassett and Peeples are the team behind Little Ram Oyster Company, a female-owned and -operated business the couple started in 2018. Bassett and Peeples made a big life pivot when they moved to the North Fork, giving up a life in New York City, where Peeples had a career in interior design and Bassett worked in advertising. They’d taken an oyster shucking class together with friends, where they were intrigued after learning “the bare basics of the impact one oyster can make,” Bassett said.

“It struck a chord,” she added.

Eager to learn more, they took a trip to Rhode Island in January 2017, going for a very cold tour around Perry Raso’s Matunuck oyster farm. Hours spent out on the farm in the elements didn’t dampen their enthusiasm for oysters and oyster farming, which is when they knew.

They continued educating themselves and started putting together a plan to start their own oyster farm, initially thinking they’d resettle in Rhode Island. But when Bassett entered a simple Google search with the words “oyster farm for sale,” she discovered what is now their current operation in Gardiners Bay, which ended up being the perfect fit for them.

“The location is amazing, and the flavor of oysters is different because of our location in Gardiners Bay,” Peeples said. “We’ve completely overhauled the farm since then, but it at least got us started in a hobby-like way.”

The operation shed its hobby status pretty quickly, going from 100,000 oysters in the first year to 250,000 in the second year, and now 1.5 million in the water. The couple will be up to 2 million oysters on the farm next year.

Peeples and Bassett were truly starting over, in every sense of the phrase, when they headed east. Not only were they embarking on a new and radically different career as oyster farmers, they were, at the same time, settling down and making a home in an unfamiliar place, all while raising their son, Finn, now 2 and a half years old. But they showed the same energy and enthusiasm for embedding themselves in the community and making human connections with their new neighbors as they did for growing and nurturing their business venture. Peeples ran for Southold Town Trustee and has held that position since January, and Bassett developed a video, on display at the East End Seaport Museum, that shows several different oyster farmers from the area, who, like them, are part of the Long Island Oyster Growers Association. They also facilitated the Women on the Water Oyster Tour last year, sharing their craft while aboard the Peconic Star III, for the Suffolk County Aquaculture Program.

Bassett and Peeples say they are grateful to other leaders in the oyster farming industry who, from the start, have helped show them the way, and they’re committed to giving back in the same way.

“We came out here to be part of the rebirth of the oyster industry out there,” Bassett said. “And we’re doing our best to be leaders in that and help other farmers along the way. … We know that education is the key to the future of the industry and a thriving waterfront.

“We were lucky enough to come into the industry where we had mentors who were doing the same thing,” she continued. “We all need to hold each other’s hands and help each other along. The more oysters there are in the water, the better. It’s better for the environment and better for the industry.”

With all the ways they’ve been committed to making connections, fostering education and giving back to the community, it’s not surprising Peeples and Bassett were chosen as grand marshals of the Maritime Festival. Still, they say they were initially shocked when they got the news.

“We thought it was sent to the wrong people,” Peeples said, with a laugh, referring to the email they received letting them know they’d been chosen. “But then we got the phone call and said, ‘OK, this is real.’”

“When you think about the history of Southold, there are so many people who deserve to be grand marshal,” Bassett said. “We really felt honored when we’d been here such a short period of time.”

While they have not been living in the area for long, all signs point to Bassett and Peeples and the Little Ram operation having some serious staying power and continued impact in the community. Aside from the impressive year-to-year increase in the number of oysters they’re putting in the water, Peeples and Bassett are also increasing the reach of Little Ram by setting up a land operation this year at the property between The Shoals Hotel and Albertson’s Marine. It’s been a gamechanger for them, allowing them to do their tumbling and sorting off the boat. There is historical significance as well, as The Shoals Hotel building was once a historic scallop shop where, fittingly, many of the people working opening the scallops there at that time, in the 1950s, were women.

Being connected to the history of the area while looking to the future makes sense to Bassett and Peeples, and they’re thrilled to be recognized during one of the biggest community events of the year on the North Fork. They expressed gratitude to the East End Seaport Museum and its board for their support and the effort they put into their nomination.

“It’s a really wonderful acknowledgment of the future of the industry and of the commercial working waterfront,” Peeples said.

“You can’t help but feel the energy from living on and being surrounded by water,” Bassett added. “You’re part of nature and the environment out here, and protecting that. We’re doing everything we can to be responsible. It’s inherent in the culture out here and something we’re really excited about, and to feel the support from towns and the community in growing the aquaculture industry is really rewarding.”