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Visiting a Pearl FarmWhere do pearls come from?Just what is a pearl farm anyway?
We know where corn comes from, and wheat, even rice and cotton, but how about pearls? Pearls are also grown much like any other crop...on a pearl farm.
As anxious as I was to visit a farm for pearls, nothing could prepare me for the thrill of actually going to one and seeing first hand where these gorgeous gems come from. On a recent trip to Japan, Korea, and China, my sons, Sam and Matt, and myself toured a farm. After a long walk on very narrow high paths between rice paddies and man-made ponds, we (the owner of the farm, Richard--our interpreter, my sons--Sam and Matt, and myself) arrived at a small shed next to yet another pond. This pond had odd looking empty green pop bottles floating in rows.
Farms sometimes have round black floats or floating platforms with oysters suspended below. An older man who stays in the shack greeted us and after being told by the owner we wanted to see some pearls harvested he went around to the back of his shed and loosened an old boat tied there.
With a long pole he pushed himself out into the shallow water between the rows of green suspended bottles and lifted up a rope tied from bottle to bottle which held a mesh sack filled with growing mussels which are fed periodically to help them grow faster.
Opening the sack, he removed a very large mussel and went on to another sack doing the same thing, until he had five mussels from five different mesh bags.
Back on land, and after laying the muddy mussels on the ground, he retrieved a meat cleaver from his shed and forced the shells open with it. (See this and removal of the pearls on the next page.)
At this particular farm, they buy the mussels already nucleated and ready to produce pearls.
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