Laurra Lyden-McGregor of Lyden Shellfish didn’t start out to be a shellfish farmer, but she was drawn to it by her love of nature.
As a child, she spent weekends and holidays at her grandparents’ shellfish farm in Totten Inlet. “It was always a business to them,” Laurra says, “but to me, as a city kid, it was a magical place in which to escape and discover the world of nature around me.” Laurra took a scientist’s approach to the beach, spending hours hovered over one-foot holes she’d dug, recording the contents and counting and measuring clams.
Laurra took over the business in 2000, and today she sells her annual production of 100,000 pounds of Manila clams and 10,000 dozen oysters into high end markets in Seattle. She’s quick to say she owes much of her success to her manager, Mark McCormack, whom she hired when she took over the company.
Laurra is now a self proclaimed “very happy mother of two.” She often brings her young son Lachlan and daughter Mahrin with her when she works the Olympia farm.
Laurra’s dedication thrust her into the limelight when Organic Magazine named her “one of eight extraordinary women who are…in the process of making our country a safer, healthier, and more beautiful place.”
In Laurra’s own words: “Life is very, very good.”