Mussels

Mussels

Our mussels are reared on ropes near the loch’s headwaters at Ardkinglas, and by our partner growers in Argyll, the Islands and Shetland. The prime season at Ardkinglas runs from October to May, after which the mussel meat shrinks after spawning and does not fully recover until the Autumn. Further out to sea in the Gulf Stream, recovery time after spawning is much quicker. This allows us to supply really good mussels throughout the summer in most years, until the loch season resumes in the autumn.

The mussels’ growing cycle begins when wild mussel spat settles on our ropes in the springtime, growing naturally to market size over a period of 24 to 30 months. We have 12 double ‘headropes’ strung out at Ardkinglas, each 2.5cm thick and 200m long. 1,000 ropes, 1cm thick and 10m long, are strung from each headrope in late March and early April, weighted with a half brick. By June, the only evidence that mussels are forming is a sandy texture to the surface of the ropes: this is made up of many thousands of mussel spat.
A month later, they will have turned black and covered the rope to the thickness of an arm: by the end of August, they will sit as thick as a man’s thigh. At maturity, we have almost 70 miles of rope, covered in columns of mussels as wide and round as a dinner plate, and grown totally naturally. In spite of the scale of the operation, there is little to see from the surface. The farm occupies just a tiny space in the loch and provides a wonderful floating habitat for birds, fish and mammals.