Oysters

If you're happy and you know it and your face really shows it, you must be a resident of Solomons Island in Calvert County. Coastal Living magazine's special 15th anniversary issue ranks the southern Maryland waterfront village no. 15 on a list of "America's Happiest Seaside Towns. " The magazine points to the town's history of fishing and exploration, as well as its boardwalk, sculpture gardens and of course, its hospitality. It also notes that Solomons Victorian Inn is the place to stay.

Spring's time for planting more than flower and vegetable gardens.  it's oyster planting time, too. Last week, the Oyster Recovery Partnership put 31 million baby oysters in Harris Creek, near the mouth of the Choptank River. The oysters were bred at the University of Maryland's Horn Point hatchery , and primed for planting once they had settled as "spat" on old oyster shells. It was the first of a series of plantings the Annapolis-based nonprofit hopes to make this year, seeding Harris Creek, the Severn River and possibly a couple other spots in the Chesapeake Bay with a projected 300-500 million bivalves.

The Manor Tavern in Monkton is teaming up with the Oyster Recovery Partnership for a Sunday afternoon Oyster Festival. The event will feature more than 20 types of different oysters, shucked by Maryland and World Champion Oyster Shucker George Hastings. The Oyster Festival will include displays of local arts and crafts, children's activities -- including a pirate ship moon, bounce -- and live bluegrass music by Slim Pickinz. Smyth Jewelers has donated a pearl necklace and earrings, raffle tickets are $15 with all the proceeds benefiting the Oyster Recovery Partnership . Admission to the Oyster Festival at Manor Tavern is free.

You'd expect a Baltimore restaurant to compete in crab cake competition, but Thames Street Oyster House is contending for a big lobster roll prize. The event is Tasting Table's third annual Lobster Roll Rumble, which will take place in New York City on June 7. You can take a look at event information and photographs of all 20 contenders here So, how did a Baltimore restaurant come to have a contending lobster roll. Turns out chef Eric Houseknecht stayed in Providence after graduating form Johnson & Wales University.

Ryleigh's Oyster in Federal Hill now has its own oyster -- Avery's Pearls, named after Avery McComas, the younger daughter of the restaurant's owners, Jennifer and Brian McComas. Ryleigh's itself was named after their elder daughter, Ryleigh. Avery's Pearls are a collaboration between Ryleigh's and the Shooting Point Oyster Co., a family-owned oyster farm located in a remote stretch of Virginia's Eastern Shore. All aspects of their cultivation, from size, salinity levels, shape and overall appearance were jointly developed in what is being called a first of its kind restaurant-farm partnership.

Efforts to restore native oysters in Maryland's portion of the Chesapeake Bay are about to begin in earnest, as state and federal officials air plans to conduct large-scale reef rebuilding projects in Harris Creek on the Eastern Shore. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources , along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the US. Army Corps of Engineers , are scheduled to present their plans for oyster restoration work in Harris Creek from 1 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum inSt.

Parts of three waterways have been opened to shellfish harvesting after tests showed declines in bacteria there, the Maryland Department of the Environment announced Monday. An area of the Wicomico River on the Eastern Shore, at the border between Wicomico and Somerset counties, is now approved for commercial harvests. Waters below Bay Point had been closed because of high bacteria levels in the water. The headwaters of Broad Creek in Talbot County have been conditionally approved, meaning that oysters and clams can be harvested there except after a heavy rainfall.

The Chesapeake Bay'slong-suffering "smart" buoys , which have come back after being shot up and hit by boats and ships, now face perhaps their most serious threat yet - the budget knife. President Obama's spending plan for fiscal 2013 proposes cutting the $300,000 to keep the fleet of 10 buoys afloat in the bay, where they monitor water quality, weather conditions and serve as guides for the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail . The elimination of funding for the Chesapeake Bay Interpretive Buoy System is just the most visible of the deep cuts planned in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Chesapeake Bay efforts.  Overall, the Annapolis NOAA office is proposed to receive $3.4 million in the coming year, down from this year's funding allocation of $5.1 million and less than half the $7.1 million the office received the year before.

With its leafless landscape and almost eerie yellow and pink light, the Eastern Shore in winter is wonderfully different from its warm-weather self. This time of year, it is stripped down to its essence — quiet and spare. Summer, with its crowds and ocean-bound traffic, seems very far away. And that's how a lot of us who live there like it. Not that the Shore is inhospitable in winter — far from it. It's the time of year we celebrate eagles, oysters and muskrats. And, thanks to winter getaway packages, praise be as well to dining and lodging on the cheap.

We've been slurping Chesapeake oysters, my Chesapeake Bay Foundation buddy Don Baugh and I, for more than 100 years between us. And while we've known the bay in better times, we never had better oysters from it than the dozens we downed - chilled and fat and bursting with taste - over the winter holidays. It was Chesapeake seafood at its finest, and all of it was farmed - some raised in floats in Virginia by Tangiermen Rudy Shores and Mark Crockett; the rest grown in cages in Maryland by Hooper Islander Johnny Shockley.