Creating A Custom Two Stage Drying System For The Long Island Community

One of the major projects we've been focusing on over the better part of the past year has been the creation of a solution for one of the key obstacles many of our kelp growing friends were facing: how to take heavy, wet kelp fresh from the water and turn it into an easy to move product ready to use either as a soil additive or products. After much trial and error and many late night planning sessions, Wendy and Justin came to the conclusion that this needed to be a two part process.

Kelp is incredibly heavy when it is first harvested so it makes sense to have phase one happen near the shore: enter our waterfront drying system. We were determined to use clean energy to dry the kelp as much as possible. Fortunately, since harvest season happens during the warmer months of the year, a modular setup repurposing stage equipment in a greenhouse proved capable of getting the kelp roughly 80% dry using sun and wind. At that point the kelp is much easier to transport offsite to the storage shed for phase two!

The modular, portable drying system we were able to design and finance, thanks to a generous grant from the Long Island Sierra Club, makes use of clean energy and repurposed materials manufactured for other projects. But we’re particularly proud of it because it is emblematic of the Lazy Point Farms ethos: a collaborative project produced by and for members of the community. The drying shed system is available for all local growers to use, not only commercial growers like our friends at Violet Cove Oyster, who have already made use of it, but also non-profit institutions or city entities like the teams from the city of Brookhaven and Suffolk County who were an instrumental part of planning the drying system.