White Stone · Northern Neck of Virginia

The farm.

A boutique oyster farm at the mouth of the Rappahannock.

Eli in orange foul-weather gear on the workboat, ice on the Rappahannock behind him

Meet the farmer

Eli Nichols

Eli grew up in Charlottesville and farms oysters where the Rappahannock meets the lower Chesapeake Bay, on the Northern Neck at White Stone. The farm is small on purpose — every bag of Revival oysters is raised, sorted, and harvested by hand, in every season the river throws at it.

Most weekends he trades the workboat for the boat-shaped raw bar and drives the harvest up to the Blue Ridge, shucking at wineries, cideries, and markets around Charlottesville.

From the Bay to the Blue Ridge.

The Oyster Catcher route

Cage to market

Seed
Oyster seed (spat) arrives tiny — hundreds of thousands of future oysters that fit on a work table. One week of this July's planting alone topped 600,000.
Nursery
The seed grows in protected nursery gear until it's big enough to hold its own in the river.
Cages
Oysters mature in mesh cages in the tidal flow at the river's mouth — the salinity there is what gives Revival its clean brine.
Tumble & sort
Regular tumbling chips the growing edge so the shells cup deep and even; sorting keeps each bag consistent.
Harvest
Pulled, counted, bagged, and iced — then off to a pop-up raw bar or a farm-pickup cooler, often within a day.

A pile of oyster seed heaped on the stainless work table in the farm workshop

Planting season

One week of July 2026 put more than 600,000 oyster seed into the water, on the way to the farm's 800,000 goal for the year. Every one of them filters the Bay while it grows.

Why that matters

The farm dog, a fox-red Labrador, sitting at the workshop door beside oyster shells and a well-loved ball

The first mate

Every workboat needs a crew. Ours supervises the shell pile, inspects every bag, and has never once missed a departure.

Catch us at a pop-up