Seawater is about 3.5% salt. To get the salt out you have to take away the water,
and the only tools are the sun, the wind, and a grid of shallow clay ponds you walk
the brine across. Twelve ponds, one tide, and a season that will not wait.
1
Let the tide in. Seawater enters the west ponds at 3.5 °Bé. Everything after that is evaporation, and evaporation is weather.
2
Walk it east, one pond at a time. Each pond concentrates it further. Never open a gate from a weak pond into a strong one — you undo days of sun in seconds.
3
Drop the gypsum where you never harvest. Between 12 and 16 °Bé calcium sulphate falls out of the brine. Let that happen in a crystallising pan and it ends up in your salt, hard and gritty.
4
Sodium chloride starts at 25.7 °Bé. Rake it off the clay floor. Past 29 °Bé the bitter magnesium and potassium salts come down with it.
5
Fleur de sel is the thin crust that forms on the surface of a pan on a still, warm, dry afternoon. Wind breaks it. Rain dissolves it. Skim it the same day or it sinks into the coarse salt below.
DRAG orbit TAP a pond to select it ARROWS move the selection E east gate N / S side gates T tide or drain F skim fleur ENTER rake P pause R restart