Image of the day January 28, 2012

Image of the day taken in Chatham Massachusetts

Today was an amazing day spent with a good friend of mine in Chatham Massachusetts, we drove up to Provincetown stopping at many great spots along the way that I will showcase in the daily edits for today so please stay tuned for that wonderful slideshow very soon…

This is a shot of a local Clam Digger in Chatham, I started up a little conversation and overcame my stage fright if you want to call it that and asked him if it would be alright if I took his picture and then let him know that if he wanted to check it out he could at FindAlan.com

I will be posting a small Gallery there of most likely the best 12 shots of the day on my website and then have the whole edited bunch in the daily edits slideshow, here on my blog…

A little info for you want to be do it yourself Clammers…

Shellfishing, the act of fishing for clams, oysters, and mussels, is a traditional coastal activity. Clam can be found buried in the sand in coastal coves, sand bars, and tidal mud flats.

In Massachusetts, recreational shellfishing is permitted in designated clean areas and regulated by the individual towns. Contact a town’s Department of Natural Resources or the town clerk to buy a permit and learn the local shellfishing regulations. For recreational shellfishing, this is the only permit you will need. Be sure to become informed about shellfishing beds that may be closed due to pollution. General information about shellfishing is available from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries at 617-626-1520.

Water pollutants that are absorbed by the shellfish can sometimes make shellfish unsafe for human consumption. The state may close shellfishing beds when the water is deemed polluted and the shellfish unsafe. Before heading out for a day of shellfishing be sure to check shellfishing maps or ask local shellfishing constables about prohibited areas, and seasonal or conditional closures.

The best time to go clamming is about an hour before low tide. Take a bucket or net-like bag for your catch and a digging tool. Rakes, shovels, and bathroom plungers are commonly used for digging. The ideal foot wear is old sneakers or water shoes.

Clams can be found in places where a small spout of water shoots up or where there is a small mound of sand with a hole in the top. You may have to dig a foot or more to find the clams. Often if you find one clam there will be many more nearby. It takes about 30 clams or roughly two hours of digging to make a pot of clam chowder.

Quahogs are the larger, hard-shelled clams that are used to make chowder, stuffies, and clam cakes. Cherrystones, which are smaller, hard-shelled clams, are less chewy and are commonly used in pasta dishes. Soft-shelled clams known as steamers are often chopped and fried or steamed and served with fresh bread. Oysters are commonly eaten raw and for this reason it is especially important to know the water quality where they are harvested.

And now a little history as well, hope you enjoy…

 

CLAMS AND QUAHAUGS

BY JOSEPH C. LINCOLN

A New Yorker will tell you that there are two kinds of clams — hard and soft. The variety with the long, thin shell is a soft clam and that with the round, thick shell is a hard clam. The Cape Codder, however, will tell you nothing of the kind.

To him a clam is a clam and a quahaug is a quahaug. They are both shellfish — yes; but that does not prove anything. A hen and a canary are both feathered, but if you expect a hen to sing like a canary, you will be disappointed. And if you expect a quahaug soup with tomatoes in it to taste like a Cape Cod clam chowder, you will be even more so. Each of them may be good of its kind, but they are different kinds, that’s all. You may call a clam a “sedge” or a “sea clam” or a “rundown,” but he is a clam, just the same. And calling a quahaug a “Little Neck” or a “cherry-stone” does not make him any the less a quahaug.

Yes, and there are other differences. For example, you dig clams and you rake quahaugs.

The distinction between the two is something the Cape Cod child learns at his mother’s knee — or at her table. He knows and therefore to him the carelessness of the outlander is surprising. Even more surprising is the indisputable fact that, in this world of ours, there are people who never saw a clam —would not recognize one if they met him on the flat at low tide.

The dictionary — we infer that it was not compiled by a Cape Codder — says there are countless varieties of clams. It even mentions the “razor clam” among them. Now, every boy of our generation in our town knew that a “razor fish” was not a clam at all. He was not shaped like a clam. He was long and thin — he did look something like an old-fashioned razor with the blade closed into the handle — and he lived buried in the wet sand on the flats, a quarter of a mile or more from high-tide mark. He marked his home by a tiny ring, with a hole in the middle of it, in the sand above his head. He had made that ring by squirting water up through the hole. In that respect he was like a clam, for clams squirt too — real clams, we mean, not quahaugs.

The Cape Cod boy’s procedure with a razor fish was, and perhaps still is, simple and primitive. Having located him, he thrust his fingers into the sand and dug as rapidly as possible. Rapidity was essential for, unless one was very quick, the razor fish slid out from between his shells and downward; in which case, when the two shells were resurrected, their former occupant was no longer at home; he was at large and seeking lower levels.

But, if we were quick enough, we got him while at least a third of him was still in residence. After that — well, if you don’t mind, we won’t go into details.

I have known people who said that razor fish made a wonderful stew, as sweet and flavorsome as a scallop stew. I never tasted a stew made from the razor fish, but I do remember what he used to taste like. And, after all, everyone eats oysters and Little Necks au naturel.

    Our wide stretches of flats were habited by clams, thousands and thousands of them. At the inner edge, bordering the clumps of coarse beach grass, were the “sedge clams,” the little fellows, tender and just right for a bake or a boil. Farther out were the “rundowns,” the big chaps with their shells snowy white. Rundowns were best in a chowder. And, away out, along the outer bar, almost two miles from shore and only get-at-able when the tide was at full ebb, were the large “sea clams.” Sea clams made the best clam pie.

To dig clams, as they should be dug, a clam hoe and a “dreener” are the proper equipment. The clam hoe, as of course almost everyone knows, differs from the garden hoe. To dig clams with a garden hoe is a rash and unprofitable adventure. The sharp edge of the blade cuts through the tender shells and, although you may get your clam, you are all too likely to get him in sections. I remember a neighborhood clam bake, presided over and superintended by a veteran Codder, where one of the guests, a city visitor, insisted on digging his own share and, as the clam hoes were all in use, he dug with an ordinary hoe. When he brought in his spoil, the veteran looked into the half-filled pail and sniffed.

“Say, Mr. Jones,” he observed sadly, “it’s too bad, but you’ve made a mistake in your figurin’. We wasn’t cal’latin’ to have clam hash.”

The Cape Cod clam hoe has three or four narrow and deep prongs instead of one shallow blade. Its handle, too, is short, no more than two or three feet long. You set the prongs into the sand at their full depth and then pull. The wet sand is heaped between your feet as you dig and, between hoefuls, you stoop and pick up the clams you have uncovered. By “stoop” I mean, of course, stoop lower, for you have been stooping all the time. Clam digging is a back-breaking business — for a greenhorn. An hour of it is enough to take the starch out of the most dignified backbone and helps to add to a pious vocabulary.

The “dreener” is a sort of a lath crate with a handle to carry it by. The clams, as they are dug, are deposited in it and, after digging, are washed by dipping the dreener and its contents into a pool of clean water. Moving the dreener up and down in the water rinses away the sand, or is supposed to.

The dreener was a drainer once, probably, but it has not been one for a century or more down on the Cape. It is a dreener, just as a Cape fisherman’s barrel is a — a — I declare I don’t know exactly how to tell you what it is. Something between a barrel and a “beerill” and a “burrill,” but not precisely either. I could pronounce it for you but to save my life I cannot spell it adequately. There is a “b-r-r-r” in the middle of it that defies orthography.

Digging the rundowns is like digging for sedge clams, except that the digger works faster. And he gets fewer clams at a time. The results are worth the effort, however, for they —the clams are often from three to four inches in length, fat — and, oh, so white and clean.

There is little real digging in a sea clam hunt. These big, three-cornered fellows lie with their backs exposed or just beneath a clearly visible mound of sand. I never heard that sea clams were good for anything, as an edible, except, as stated before, in a clam pie. They are tough. The fish like them and they are gathered principally for bait.

The quahaug — please give him the local pronunciation “Ko-hog” — is not brought to the surface with a clam hoe. He must be raked for. If you are a casual, an amateur quahauger, you may use a garden rake and go after him at low tide. He lies at the bottom, usually under a layer of seaweed and in at least a few inches of water. You rake the seaweed just as you would rake a lawn, lifting the rake after each stroke to pick the quahaugs from between its teeth. Then you would put them in a bucket or dreener. Raking for quahaugs in this way is not as hard as clam digging.

But if you are a professional — if you “go quahauging” regularly, to earn a living — you do work hard. Indeed you do. You may do it in two ways, the first a trifle easier than the second. The first way is to put on fisherman’s boots, high rubber boots reaching above the hips and secured to your belt, and wade the submerged flats at the edges of the channels, raking as you go. And you use a regulation quahaug rake. Its teeth are much longer than those of an ordinary rake and are turned up at the ends, making the implement a sort of scoop. And, because a dreener would be a hindrance rather than an aid to this sort of work, you fasten a canvas or burlap bag, open end up, to your belt, and put your quahaugs into that. The bag is heavy and growing heavier all the time, the boots are heavy, the rake anything but light, and the wading through seaweed not easy. Does sound like hard work, doesn’t it? Yes, but wait a moment. You have not been “deep quahauging” yet.

Deep quahauging is a comparatively recent innovation on the Cape — at least, I believe it is. Cape Codders have always raked quahaugs; no doubt the first settlers raked for them along the flats. But when we were youngsters, we never heard of anyone seeking them in deep water. To go quahauging in a boat would have been a town joke in our youth. But scores do that very thing now and do it daily.

There is a yarn to the effect that the idea originated like this: Someone was out in the bay — we were never told which bay — dredging for flounders. And, at one spot, the dredges brought up hundreds and hundreds of quahaugs, big ones. Flounders were scarce at the time and there was always a market for quahaugs. So this particular dredger marked the spot and returned to it the next day and the days succeeding. Others, of course, followed his example and “deep quahauging” became a regular and profitable profession.

The deep quahauger goes out to the grounds in a motor-boat or skiff. There he anchors and begins to work. His rake is a toothed scoop, somewhat like that used by the wader, but bigger and heavier; sometimes it is weighted to make it heavier still. Its wooden handle is forty feet long and flexible. He throws the scooped end as far from the boat as he can, lets it sink to the bottom, and then draws it toward him and up to the boat, working the long handle backward over his shoulder in a series of jerks. When he gets it into the boat, he paws over the half bushel or so of mud and sand and seaweed, picks out his quahaugs, dumps the trash — “culch” he would call it — over the side and makes another cast. And he keeps on casting and jerking and sorting and dumping all day long, with a brief rest while he eats his lunch. He makes, so they say, a pretty fair wage, and I think he earns it.

If, in the summer, you are motoring by — well, let us say the upper end of Pleasant Bay, between Orleans and Chatham, and look out over the water toward the east, you will see a dozen or more boats anchored a mile or so out. The occupants of those boats are quahaugers, every one of them.

— From Cape Cod Yesterdays, 1935