My back is sore. My shoulder is sore. The car oozes a foul, saline odor. The fridge is filled with bivalves.

On Saturday, Kris and I drove to Tillamook, one of my two favorite Oregon coastal towns (the other is Astoria). We met Andrew, Courtney, Craig, and Lisa for a nice dinner in Oceanside. Then we had a night of fitful sleep in a hot, humid hotel room. Despite the lack of sleep, we rose early Sunday morning to go dig clams.

Craig has attended a couple of workshops through Wild Food Adventures, and found them educational and enjoyable. When he suggested the clam dig workshop, I thought it sounded fun: an opportunity to dig fresh clams for a batch of the best clam chowder ever!

Though we finished the morning wet and sandy and stinky, we had a lot of fun. Here's what we learned:

How to Dig Clams

You'll need:

• A sturdy shovel (preferably with a long, narrow blade), and
• Something with which to carry your clams. A standard mop bucket is fine. You are limited to twelve Gaper clams (and twenty clams total) per person. (Each person must have a separate container; for example, a couple cannot use a single five-gallon bucket to hold forty clams.)

You'll want:

• A trowel, for close-in digging once you've latched onto a clam.
• A smaller bucket with which to bail water from your trench.
• A change of clothes waiting for you in your car.
• A plastic garbage bag (more than one?) in which to put all the wet, sandy, stinky stuff after clamming.

Check the tide tables for the lowest tide of the season. An hour before this lowest tide, visit your clamming site. (We were here, just outside of Netarts, a few miles from Tillamook.)

To reach our clamming location, we had to scramble down a short rocky slope, trudge across an expanse of gooey, slurpy mud (not recommended if you're recovering from ACL surgery — thank goodness I was wearing my brace!), and ford a thigh-deep pool of water. Eventually our group found a good spot on a raised, sandy area. (This wasn't hard to find, actually, because there were already several other groups out clamming by the time we arrived at 7:30.)

The clams live in the sand, just below the surface. The only clues to their presence are provided by holes in the sand. The larger the hole, the larger the clam.

Find a promising hole. Begin digging next to the hole. A trench is better than a pit. When you've reached a depth of about two or three feet, begun to cut your digging toward the clamhole. You will eventually locate the clam — often you'll encounter it's neck first, which may cause it to spit water at you. Once you've found your clam, extract it.

This is often easier said than done.

If the conditions are especially wet (as they were Sunday morning), your trench will have a tendency to fill with water, and its walls will have a tendency to collapse. The bottom of the trench will be a gooey, mucky mess. Once you've located your clam, the gunky conditions may make extraction quite difficult. In these situations it is useful to have a small pail with which to bail water and/or a trowel with which to dig quickly (and precisely) around your clam.

Work in pairs. While one person digs, the other provides moral support and acts as the extractor. When the digger finds the clam, the extractor works his fingers around its shell and gradually (very gradually!) wiggles it out of the sand.

Be careful! The clams' shells are not as strong as you might suspect. If you strike a clam with your shovel, you'll break its shell. If you grasp it too tightly, you'll break its shell. If you drop it into your bucket, you'll break its shell.

And that's how to dig clams. Before you return to your vehicle, be certain that you have no more than your limit. As I mentioned above, each person may have up to twelve Gaper clams, and up to twenty clams total. Each person needs a separate container; you're not allowed to pool all of your clams into one container.

Live clams can be kept in the fridge for up to three days. I'm not sure how to clean and prepare them. Once I figure that out, I'll let you know.

After digging clams, you'll be wet, sandy, and stinky. Change clothes. If you have access to a shower, then rinse yourself. Finally, get together with your clamming buddies and reward yourself with a hot meal.

---

If I go clamming again in the future — and I hope to — I will wear shorts and sandals (which I will remove at the clamming site), but wear a thick, warm shirt.

For more information about clamming in Oregon, try:

• clamming on the Oregon coast
• bay clams,
• clams (Puget Sound info, but still useful),
• OSU's clam page,
• Oregon's bay clams and
• harvesting bay clams.

Have fun!

On this day at foldedspace.org

2005 — Drunken Idiots and Spring Sprout   The neighbors behind us have a drunken party that rages through a week night. Also, Kris has a paint emergency.

2004 — A Rough Guide to Removing Spyware   This entry is a primer on how to cope with malware.

2002 — When Standards Aren't: A Rant   Let me get this off my chest: among the many evils perpetrated in the name of standards -- in particular, CSS standards -- coding a page in ems instead of absolute font sizes is one of the worst.

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