Gastropod on Gastropods

Support for this show comes from Pure Leaf Iced Tea.

When you find yourself in the afternoon slump, you need the right thing to make you bounce back.

You need Pure Leaf Iced Tea.

It's real brewed tea made in a variety of bold flavors with just the right amount of naturally occurring caffeine.

You're left feeling refreshed and revitalized, so you can be ready to take on what's next.

The next time you need to hit the reset button, grab a Pure Leaf Iced Tea.

Time for a tea break?

Time for a Pure Leaf.

With a Spark Cash Plus card from Capital One, you earn unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase.

And you get big purchasing power.

So your business can spend more and earn more.

Capital One, what's in your wallet?

Find out more at capital1.com/slash Spark Cash Plus.

Terms apply.

I consider snails land clams.

Same group of animals.

They're both mollusks.

It's the same general kind of texture, a little bit different flavor, obviously, but it's the same basic idea and they can be used in similar ways.

Welcome to Gastropod, the podcast named after snails, where we take a close look at food through the lens of science and history.

I'm Nicola Twilley, and I'm Cynthia Graeber.

And on this episode, I am going to take all of you with me to visit one of the very first Escargo farms in the U.S.

out on the edge of a rainforest in Washington State.

You'll learn why Rick Brewer quit his job to do something almost nobody in this country is doing and about the intricacies of snail sex.

Oh man, with us, it's either microbes or sex.

Or both.

So this story came about because Rick Brewer got in touch with us and teased us for stealing his name.

As some of you science-inclined listeners already know, a gastropod is a snail.

It means stomach foot.

And that's because that's just what they are, really.

Basically, they're a stomach that crawls along the ground, either on land or in the water.

Some are slugs with no shells, and some have a shell, like the snails you see on the sidewalk.

But not a podcast about all things gastronomical, apparently.

That is true.

But we always knew we had to do an episode about gastropods.

Rick just gave us a great excuse.

So, Nikki, have you ever eaten escargot?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I think, you know, it's a rite of passage on the French exchange.

Your host family has to kind of haze the poor English kid with some, you know, escargot and garlic butter.

And yeah, not a big fan.

A little bit rubbery.

The garlic was overpowering.

I mean, I was glad I tried them, but I didn't, I've never had them since.

What about you, Cynthia?

I actually had never even tried them until this past year.

I mean, I eat clams.

I certainly eat raw oysters.

I have no problem with any of that.

But somehow, I don't know, snails didn't seem that appealing to me.

But twice in the past year at different restaurants, I did try them.

And they were fine.

I liked them.

It didn't really blow me away or anything.

But it's funny that you mentioned the rubbery texture.

That's one of the things that Rick Brewer wants to change.

He says it is possible to get a non-rubbery snail, but that texture didn't put Rick off the first time he tried a snail back in high school.

I had stowed away with the French club, even though I do not speak French, on a field trip that they had made to Seattle.

And of course, they visited a French restaurant and dared me to eat the snails, which I did and I liked.

It was just a dare.

But really found that I enjoyed them and for some reason they intrigued me as an animal.

Wow.

They're both very primitive and very exotic at the same time.

There's so many different environments that they thrive in and next to insects they're one of the most prolific animals on the planet.

So they've been here for a very long time so they must be doing something right.

That was back in the 70s, but snails still aren't super popular here in the U.S.

today.

It's nothing like in France where they eat 50 million snails a year.

Rick wants to change that.

He has big plans for snails.

Hold up, though.

How do you get from eating snails on a dare to being one of America's first and only snail ranchers?

It was not a straightforward path.

Rick was actually a journalist, and then he moved into communications and he worked for the Seattle Zoo.

He was still kind of obsessed with snails.

So while he was at the zoo, in a strange twist, he became the North American Species Survival Coordinator for an endangered species of snail from Tahiti.

Well, I had struck up this conversation with the entomologist at the zoo and a long series of things.

It led to me coordinating this program that was working in conjunction with London Zoo.

So I took many snail field trips to London.

And so just, you know, gained a lot of knowledge on my own.

And that's the point where I started to say, well, we have snails here.

And I wonder if there's a escargot industry.

And through my research, I found out that there was not.

There was no one really formally growing them here in the United States.

That was about 15 years ago, and then he started foraging them.

They're wild.

Ask any gardener, he says.

They are just out in the environment, and so I basically foraged them, and that's how I got most of my original stock was foraged and then breeding them in a domesticated situation.

So that was 2000 when you were checking out what was going on in London and thinking, well, there must be something here, and found out there wasn't.

There's still a leap between that and foraging them and then deciding to try to farm them.

I had decided that I had hit a fairly big milestone age-wise in my life

and that

I wasn't terribly

satisfied in my job at that point of time.

And I'd been talking about this probably ad nauseum with friends for several years.

What were you you talking about?

Just the idea of launching a snail farm.

And so finally, one day, one dear friend of mine said, what are you waiting for?

You're not getting any younger.

And something kind of clicked, and I went, okay, I'm going to do it then.

And what did you have to do to make that leap?

First, I quit my job, which probably wasn't the wisest thing to do.

And how many years ago was that?

About

three and a half years ago or so.

At that point, I moved over here

and I had opened another business thinking that that business would help me fund this business, and it did not.

What was that other business?

I was a CrossFit coach.

So I opened a CrossFit gym over here on the peninsula.

CrossFit?

What?

He certainly does look like he's in good shape.

He's slim.

He's not too tall.

CrossFit wasn't quite as popular on the peninsula as it is in Seattle, though.

I mean, he did have clients, but there just aren't as many people there.

He does still teach CrossFit in Seattle to pay the bills.

How about that for a job description?

CrossFit trainer and snail farmer.

But the snails, are the snails in France and the snails you can forage in Washington, are they both edible?

Or is there some special breed for eating?

Well there are about 60,000 species of snails in the world.

Of those there are probably about six that are commonly eaten, so not a high number.

Wow.

Mostly due to size.

Probably of that 60,000, I'm going to say maybe 50,000 or so are considered micro snails.

So they're very tiny.

So not worth anyone's while.

But actually, the main species that you can farm in France or that you can forage in the U.S.

are in fact the same ones.

The legend goes that some French or Belgian immigrants were homesick and brought snails with them to eat, and of course, some escaped and they bred like crazy.

The snails Rick foraged are an invasive species from the Mediterranean.

They've happily spread over almost the entire United States.

Food farmers and ornamental plant farmers and home veggie growers have been cursing them ever since.

But of course, snails have a long history in Europe.

I mean last year archaeologists found evidence that Paleolithic humans in the Benedorm area of Spain, which is on the western coast of Spain and which is much more famous these days for being home to embarrassing drunk Brits on cheapo package holidays.

Of course you were never one of those drunk Brits in Spain.

How well you know me, Cynthia.

But moving swiftly onwards, basically people 30,000 years ago.

ago were eating snails rather than kebabs in Benedorm.

And the Romans loved them.

They fattened them up on a milk diet before eating them.

Later on, in medieval Europe, snails came in super handy for monks.

They are neither meat nor fish, according to the Catholic Church, so they were okay to eat during Lent.

Monasteries usually had their own special snail gardens to supply the refectory table.

And another thing I love, this one goes all the way back to the prehistoric times.

Rick told me that snails were the original fast food.

You know, we think of it as elite French food now, but originally it was kind of the first fast food that they could carry around with them and cook and eat anywhere.

Why were they the ultimate fast food, portable food as opposed to something else, you know, even kind of hunting and then you have your rabbit that you take around with you or something?

Well, if you think about the difference between trying to catch a rabbit and trying to catch a snail, that makes that part.

You're saying just the speed is a little different there?

Speed, speed is in your favor in this point of view.

When you think of a snail, what do you think of first?

Their shell.

So

once you gather them, they tend to hold up in their shell, and it's covered with a little epiphragm, which is a little kind of a layer, so they'll seal in the shell.

You can put them in a little pouch or a little pocket, and they'll stay in there until you bring them out and cook them.

So they come with their own packaging.

They come with their own packaging, exactly.

Rick told me they can stay fresh, holed up in there for a couple of weeks.

Yeah, you know, I've actually read, I'm not sure if this is true, but I've read that snails were one of the ways that Napoleon fed his army.

So each soldier would apparently get a thousand per week.

If you think about it, it's a perfect source of portable protein, which was a huge problem for armies on the move.

Napoleon ended up offering that gigantic cash prize for someone to invent a method of preserving food, which led to the invention of the tin can.

Snails and cans, I mean, it's the proto-MRE.

But we digress.

To get back to Rick, he had a problem.

There's all this amazing history of people eating snails, and everyone knows that the French are famous for eating snails.

But Rick just couldn't get anyone to help him learn how to farm them.

Why not?

Because the French didn't want to give up their secrets?

Actually, the French aren't the main farmers these days.

France cannot supply enough snails even to meet the French market.

Today, most snails are farmed in Eastern Europe and then canned, and even if you buy canned snails that say burgundy snails, they don't have to be from Burgundy.

They're just the same species.

And if the package says France, that just means they were canned in France.

They still could have been farmed in Eastern Europe.

Most of the original guidelines that Rick found came from halfway around the world.

Thumbtack presents.

Uncertainty strikes.

I was surrounded.

The aisle and the options were closing in.

There were paint rollers, satin and matte finish, angle brushes, and natural bristles.

There were too many choices.

What if I never got my living room painted?

What if I couldn't figure out what type of paint to use?

What if...

I just used Thumbtack.

I can hire a top-rated pro in the Bay Area that knows everything about interior paint, easily compare prices, and read reviews.

Thumbtack knows homes.

Download the app today.

Support for this show comes from Pure Leaf Iced Tea.

You know that point in the afternoon when you just hit a wall?

You don't have time for self-care rituals or getting some fresh air, so maybe you grab a beverage to bring you back.

But somehow it doesn't do the trick, or it leaves you feeling even worse.

What you need is a quality break, a tea break.

And you can do that with Pure Leaf Iced Tea, real brewed tea made in a variety of bold and refreshing flavors with just the right amount of naturally occurring caffeine.

With a pure leaf iced tea in hand, you'll be left feeling refreshed and revitalized with a new motivation to take on what's next.

The next time you need to hit the reset button, grab a pure leaf iced tea.

Time for a tea break, time for a pure leaf.

Actually, this, the woman in Australia, did a very comprehensive study and a guy and guidelines which I've used quite a bit, but there's still lots of pieces missing.

So those I've been having to fill in myself.

What do you mean?

Well because Australia is a little bit different climate than here.

Slightly.

Slightly.

I'm having to adapt to the climate here.

And also there's not a great detail, step-by-step kind of detail from egg to adult.

There's a lot of pieces that aren't included in any of those manuals.

Is this at all a historical relic of either the fact that they were just kind of plentiful and people would forage for them, or the fact that France or maybe these local producers were secretive about their methods of raising snails?

Can I answer yes to both of those?

I've been in contact with several farmers throughout Europe trying to gain more information and they've all refused.

That woman in Australia, she got her information from the Italian International Institute of Heliculture.

That means snail farming.

There's an international Institute for Snail Farming in Italy?

Where was this information when I was filling out my college applications?

There is, and they even have an annual festival of all things snail, a gastropod festival.

Oh, you know, we're going to that.

Next year in Italy.

But back to Rick.

Not only did he have to figure out for himself how to grow and farm the snails, but he couldn't even buy the original stock.

It is illegal to ship live snails across state borders unless the person buying them has a permit and all these crazy expensive safeguards in place to keep them from escaping.

And that means there's no market for someone to grow snail babies for snail farms.

Oh, I probably foraged about 2,000 or so.

And this was with my mother's help and all of her church lady friends.

So thank them very much.

You and all the church ladies, how many people are we talking about foraging?

Oh, I would say 10 or 20 or so.

And this wasn't all in one time.

It's over the years.

And I have friends that still occasionally will give me a snail or two, so I appreciate that as well.

Okay, so now he has the snails.

But you know what I want to know is what does a snail farm look like?

Foraging, I can picture.

Farming?

Not so much.

I'm not sure whether they all look the same.

Rick is still trying to figure his farm out.

He has a warehouse in Seattle where he keeps them warm in the winter so they don't hibernate.

That way they keep growing and he gets two harvests a year.

But I met him out at his farm on the Olympic Peninsula.

It is the rainforest, the temperate rainforest, and we're kind of right on the eastern edge of it on the Olympic Peninsula.

So we get lots of kind of extremes in weather.

Right now, you may hear it blowing past the microphone.

We got a lot of wind today,

but

it remains relatively moderate.

We don't get big long freezes.

Lots of green.

Everywhere you look, it's green.

He has five acres in a town called Quilsine near the coast.

He's cleared out about a quarter acre so far, and it is gorgeously green all around.

He's got a cabin.

He built it himself.

He built raised beds for vegetables and plants.

Where he raised snails last summer, it was totally enclosed under what's called a shade cloth that lets some light in but shades the snails and keeps them from escaping.

This year, he's building a bigger growing space.

It's about 40 feet by 30 feet, and he will be able to fit 25 to 35,000 adults in that small space.

Right now, he has somewhere between 7,000 and 9,000 snails he's about to bring over from the winter warehouse, and he has thousands thousands more juveniles and babies so he hopes to grow into the space there.

And what sort of entertainment is provided for these snails, recreational opportunities, you know, like what do snails like?

Well you've got the climbing walls but really there's food, lots and lots of happy snail food.

Apparently they love herbs and brassicas, broccoli and cabbage and kale and all those sorts of delicious things.

They're just starting up.

A few cabbage and some peas are starting to come up.

Hopefully they'll share a little bit of that with me as well.

They'll let you, the snails will let you have some of them?

Exactly.

Okay, I get the need for it to be enclosed so the snails don't escape in slow motion.

But why the shade cloth?

Do they get sunburned?

They like some shade and they need a moist environment.

But there's another important reason to keep the snails separate from the rest of the outside world.

You find out just how many things love snails.

One of my things this year is the weather up here was unusually warm for this winter.

So I had been raising the babies indoors.

And then I thought, well, it's time they're big enough.

I had some plants that had overwintered in the greenhouse.

I thought, I'm going to release them into the greenhouse, get a little bit of a head start on the year.

So I released about 1,000 snails into this little protected area in the greenhouse.

And about two weeks later, when I'd come back over for the weekend to check on everyone, they were all gone.

And what it turned out to be is I saw every place littered with shells.

Mice had gotten into this, what I thought was protected area and basically feasted on them like you would popcorn at the movies.

Wow.

So you gave the mice a really amazing Escargo dinner.

Amazing, amazing Escargo dinner.

Wow.

Fortunately, that was not all of my stock, so I'm still okay for this year.

I went with him into that little greenhouse space to see the scene of the crime for myself.

So you can probably see there's some shells littered around in there.

That's what's that's what's left.

Can I, yeah, where look

if I could see.

Oh, I do.

I see some snails.

So this is what I came up with.

Oh, so sad.

That's the sound of us crushing up snail cells.

Snail shells.

I can't even say that.

And if you're talking about 50 bucks a pound, this is a

significant

bonus.

But you know what happens with any farmer?

There's piles of them over there, too.

Wow, the mice really went to town.

They had quite an expensive dinner.

Wait, that's what Rick's snails cost?

It's $50, $55 a pound.

And how does that compare to what the costs are from overseas?

It's slightly more, but not significantly, believe it or not.

I probably should charge more.

But, you know,

for now, I'm doing that.

My investor wants me to charge a dollar per snail, but I think that might be pushing it.

There are about 120 snails in a pound.

That's a lot.

So it's kind of amazing when you think about how much labor he puts into those snails.

And then there's the whole process around when the snail's ready to harvest.

How long does it take to raise a snail?

A year.

It takes a year to grow them to maturity.

That's about the same amount of time as a feedlot cow.

I checked out some snails he'd put into large plastic containers to show me.

The containers were basically like the ones you might store some sweaters in for the winter.

Some of the snails were in their purging mode.

Purging just basically means that they are not fed and they're just washed daily, which which helps evacuate things

because when before you process them you want them to be as clean as possible so just like if you've ever dug clams and they're full of grit and everything and you let them soak in water and spit all that out it's the same basic idea here how long does that take i purge them for a minimum of seven days so they basically they're on a water diet at this point this purging business sounds kind of nasty though i mean you're trying to get all of the crap out of their guts.

Literally.

I actually read that it's common to give them something brightly colored, like a carrot, for their last meal, so you can see for sure when it has come through.

Lovely.

Rick has to de-shell them and clean them out and then parboil them and then vacuum pack them.

He does it all himself.

Oh, so he doesn't sell them fresh?

No, he can't.

The USDA won't let him.

Restaurants in other states have asked for live snails, though, but instead he vacuum packs them.

Still, he says they're far fresher than the canned snails you can buy from Europe.

Those could be years old, and that means his are far less rubbery.

Okay.

Sure.

Okay.

Yep.

They're probably not active, terribly active now, but we'll wake them up a little bit here.

Let's grab some nice big ones here.

He pulled one out.

Its shell was maybe an inch or so across, and he pointed out a lip on the outside of the shell.

And that's when you know that they're good harvestable size.

It's not necessarily based on the physical size of the shell, but the formation of that lip on the aperture, the opening where the snail comes out of the shell.

It's starting to come out a little bit.

Let's dip him in a little bit of water.

That always helps.

Oh, there he comes.

That's a little bit of cold water.

He might not have liked that.

There he's coming up.

There he comes.

And it doesn't make any sound for radio.

No, unfortunately, not.

So here it comes.

Oh, yeah.

He's like almost unfurling his body.

It looks like, oh, and there come the eyes.

Those are eyes?

Those are, what are those?

Well, they have four tentacles.

They're not antenna because antennas are only on insects.

Okay.

So the tentacles, just like with an octopus, but the two upper ones, the larger ones, are eye stalks.

So if you might see a little...

I can totally see those little eye dots.

So is this kind of like a meet and eat?

Are you going to get to try a snail as well as say hi?

You know, I had asked him in our original emails if I could taste them, but then I felt kind of guilty.

I mean, $50 a pound, but he did have a package on hand to cook some up for me.

So how frequently do you eat?

Escargo?

I don't.

It doesn't eat in too much into your profits.

And that's why.

I mean, I enjoy Escargo, but one time when I was deshelling some, and my spouse came in, I think it was like picking strawberries.

You know, two go in the thing, and one goes in.

He goes, What are you doing?

Don't eat your profit.

So I stopped.

Rick made me snails and breadcrumbs with butter and nettles and garlic.

Okay, so we will chop up some garlic here.

I just like the the egg because it makes the breadcrumbs stay on a little bit easier.

Because one of the things I really am looking forward to chefs doing is playing around with them and creating dishes that will popularize them a little bit more instead of one traditional thing like snail poppers, things that people are familiar with.

So it raises the comfort level to try something new and different.

Have you heard resistance from people about trying snails?

Oh, all the time.

What do they say?

Ooh, gross, of course, is the first thing.

People just refuse.

They just refuse to do it.

And there's no reason to.

You know, we have such a limited palate in this country, and it's a shame.

But I imagine you also get some enthusiasm, too, from people who are excited about them.

Oh, all the chefs have been terribly excited.

Can I swear on the air?

Of course.

Okay.

So one of my customers, I took a sample over because he wanted to try them before serving them, obviously.

And went back on the road, headed over to the farm.

And I get this text that came through and I read it.

And it said, they are fucking delicious.

And I almost started crying.

That was the best news I'd ever heard.

So?

What's the verdict?

A little chewy, but not too bad.

Only one by itself because I am getting that mushroom flavor you were talking about.

I know Americans have the bit of the ick factor because we kind of see them on the ground and they're kind of like icky looking.

But the texture is really similar to food that Americans do eat a lot, like clams, like you were saying.

But they do just, they don't have that sea flavor.

They do have more of kind of this earthy flavor.

Sounds pretty good.

But you know, the real question is, would you have them again?

I definitely would.

They weren't as groundbreaking for me as when I ate oysters for the first time, but they were delicious and mushroom-y.

and I could imagine a great chef having fun with them.

Rick said that's why he loves the chefs he's worked with so far.

They don't just stick to that whole classic butter, garlic, spread the snails on bread dish.

One did beef marrow with snails, another did turnips with a snail baked right inside, and Rick loves it.

He worked with three chefs last year.

That was his first year of sales, and he sold about 2,500 snails total.

How long do you think it'll take you to have it be a business that supports you as a kind of working business?

I know it's always hard to start a new business.

I would love to say next year, though that would be a fantasy.

I'm going to say 10 years probably before it actually is supporting itself and making profit, but hopefully under that.

I mean, I know all new businesses are hard, so this is not at all a comment on your work.

Do you think that that's because of what you still need to do to kind of be able to figure out how to make it scale?

Because it seems like the demand is there.

So what is the barrier to getting to the size that you'll need to be financially sustainable?

For me right now, it's volume, creating the volume that's necessary.

Just that snails grow and multiply kind of slowly.

Is that the?

Yeah, I mean, taking a year to come to a marketable size is that's

a goodly amount of time to have to

invest in something.

And just the mere facilities, too, and the money to get everything going.

Farming's an expensive endeavor.

Let's pause here and consider exactly what we are talking about when we say the snails multiply slowly.

Parental warning alert, snail sex ahead.

People love hearing about their sex lives.

I don't know why that is.

If you were raising cows, no one asks about that.

But with snails, for some reason, people are just fascinated with learning about their sex life.

Snail sex is weird.

First, they're hermaphrodites.

They can inseminate each other at the same time, but that's not all.

They actually shoot darts at each other.

They will shoot darts into their heads.

It's a little calcium deposit.

There's some thought that that is the origin for Cupid's arrow.

Scientists still don't know exactly what it is.

It is some kind of a prelude to mating.

Exactly what it is, they don't know and they don't know why, but they will shoot these darts into each other's heads.

And I've actually seen video of one killing the other one because of the force that this dart projected.

Yes, one tried to mate and ended up killing its potential partner instead.

And there's one other thing about snail sex that they're famous for.

Well, you know, they're known for snail's pace, very slow.

They will mate for usually, oh, six to ten hours at a time.

You can unplug your ears now, people.

Yeah, enough with the snail smut, Cynthia.

The point is, Rick really wants to expand more quickly than he can.

And he also wants to be big enough to sell babies to other wannabe snail farmers.

He gets emails from those wannabe farmers all the time.

But here is another USDA problem.

One great source of snail parents is agricultural fields.

Rick would love to be able to go to a big organic farm and collect all their pesky snails.

That would help both him and the farmers.

He'd bring them home and put them to work.

Getting it on.

Exactly.

But he can't.

He can't bring them across state lines.

Yeah, they're invasive, but they're already in Washington state.

So it's not like he'd be introducing them.

There do seem to be a couple of other snail farmers in the U.S.

or snail foragers, and he'd love to create a trade association to try to convince the the USDA to change the rules.

But, you know, the whole business, it's kind of an uphill struggle.

I'd recently said something about, oh, maybe I should just get a job and go back.

And

the person I

said that to said, I can't see you in four gray cubicles again, you know.

And it's like, yeah, I can't either.

I was going to ask you if you ever thought about quitting.

Every day.

Really?

Every day.

And then something happens

and I get renewed.

Like what?

A text, an email, a comment, some discovery I make, something I learn, and it makes me want to go keep going forward.

Slowly, but keep going forward.

Just like the snails.

Just like the snails.

Okay, maybe it's time to give snails another shot after all.

Right now, Rick is only selling to restaurants, but he told me he's going to be creating a way to freeze them and send them to adventurous eaters all around the U.S.

So listeners, once he does, you will be able to score some snails for yourselves.

You can find links to how to get in touch with Little Gray Farm's Escar Gautier on our website.

And there, you can also see videos from Rick Brewer of Snail Sex, plus some photos from his farm.

Thanks to Rick for showing me around.

We'll be back in a couple of weeks.

Till then.

You're basking on a beach in the Bahamas.

Now you're journeying through the jade forests of Japan.

Now you're there for your alma mater's epic win.

win.

And now you're awake.

Womp, womp.

Which means it was all a dream.

But with millions of incredible deals on Priceline, those travel dreams can be a reality.

Download the Priceline app today and you can save up to 60% off hotels and up to 50% off flights.

So don't just dream about that trip.

Book it with Priceline.