Freedom!

The last three days have been sunny and warm, with highs pushing 60. The chickens, who don’t seem inclined to want to leave their run when it’s snowy and cold, start a full-court press for freedom when the sun’s out and the ground begins to warm. They take up their little signs and pace back and forth along the side of the run. “Free range! Free range!” they squawk.

We want to let them out, but the risk-reward calculation is the same as it was a month ago. There’s still not much good foraging, and there’s no protective leaf cover under which they can hide from passing hawks.

What there is, though, is a garden full of the winter rye we planted as a cover crop. If we put them out in that, we can stay close enough to discourage hawks, and they can have a beautiful afternoon’s outing, eating some much-needed greens and taking dust baths on the perimeter. The grass is surrounded by a chicken-wire fence, so they can’t go rogue, and we can put them back in the run when play-time’s over.

I suppose there’s no real way to determine if a chicken is happy. They don’t smile or laugh, and they certainly can’t tell you. But, roaming around the grass field, eating their fill with the sun on their backs, they certainly looked happy. I know I was happy.

Chickens dustbathing from Tamar Haspel on Vimeo.

And the finding of them isn’t the only difficulty with steamers. Once you encounter a bona fide steamer hole, you still have to get the steamer out without breaking its shell. This isn’t easy. The rakes made for steamer digging are short handled, with tines at a right angle to the handle. You kneel on the beach, dig out the sand in front of the suspect hole, take a layer of sand off right above the suspected clam (being careful not to go too deep), and then use your hands to try and locate the steamer. Once you’ve done that, you still have to pry the thing out of the wet sand, a hospitable home he has no inclination to leave.

Digging up a steamer clam from Tamar Haspel on Vimeo.

I have only a tenuous grasp of the physical laws that account for the sucking vacuum behind a clam you’re trying to pull out of wet sand, but I have vast experience with the sucking vacuum itself. Electrolux should be so lucky.

All this by way of saying we had good reason to marvel at the two-peck haul of the guys at Bay Street.

Naturally, we struck up a conversation, hoping to wheedle their secrets out of them. One of their secrets, though, was lying in plain sight in the bed of their pick-up. It looked a lot like a toilet plunger.

“Hey,” I said, with the grace and subtlety that mark all my encounters with strangers, “What’s with the toilet plunger?”

This was one secret they were perfectly willing to share. They described how, when you get to a fertile steamer ground, you use the plunger to dig a kind of crater in the seabed (you use it under water), and the clams just drift up with with sand you displace. You scoop them up with a net, and Bob’s your uncle.

And just where was their particular fertile steamer ground? That, they weren’t telling. I understood.

Ever since then, I’ve been wanting to try the plunge method of clamming. It turns out that purveyors of shellfishing equipment actually sell something called a “clam plunger,” which looks suspiciously like a toilet plunger except that it has a longer stick and a net attached to the non-plunging end. Overall, it looked like the kind of thing we could improvise.

We have a stick. We have a net. And, of course, we have a toilet plunger.

Anyone who either knows me personally or follows this space understands that I am loath to buy anything I can cobble together out of stuff that’s lying around. The clam plunger was just begging to be cobbled. We had all the parts, and the duct tape to cobble them, but even I draw the line somewhere. Call me doctrinaire, but I think anything that’s used in the toilet should not be used in food procurement.

We bought a brand new toilet plunger, and headed out to our very own fertile steamer ground with it, stick, and net. We also brought our conventional gear, just in case.

We had discovered our steamer ground accidentally. We’d gone out for quahogs, but we kept spearing the soft-shell clams with our wicked, long-tined quahog rakes. Exactly where was that, you may ask? I’m not telling, and I know you’ll understand.

We got to our super-secret steamer spot, and Kevin waded out ankle-deep. We found an area that looked to have some steamer holes, and he started plunging. After two or three plunges, he came up empty. No clams, of course, but also no plunger. It had come off the aluminum pole and lodged itself in the sand. The threading on the end of the pole apparently wasn’t a perfect match with the threading on the inside collar of the plunger.

The same physical laws that create the sucking vacuum behind a clam apply to plungers, and it took a good deal of effort to dislodge it. Once we did, we put it back on the stick it came with, and tried again.

It works as advertised, more or less. The plunging creates a crater, and much of the sand and silt you dislodge floats away on the current. A great deal of it, though, seems to settle back in the hole, which we couldn’t make deep enough to reach the clams, which are usually about six to eight inches below the surface.

Whether the hole depth was the problem, or the clamlessness of the spot, we don’t know. We do know that we didn’t plunge up a single clam. We ditched the plunger and went back to the rakes.

Dinner, and then some

None of last year’s steamering excursions had been entirely satisfactory. The clams had been few and far between, and what there had been tended to be below legal size (two inches long). Although we’d never been completely skunked, the ratio of effort invested to clams harvested always seemed a bit high. This, our new fertile clamming ground, made for a much better experience — once we gave up on plunging. Most of the holes that looked like steamer holes proved to be just that, and Kevin and I both got much better at finding them and dislodging them without breaking their shells. Although we had a few casualties and a few shorts, we went home with five dozen steamers.

We had them for lunch, steamed and dipped in butter, accompanied by cole slaw and beer. 

It wasn’t only the clams, though, that made it such a fine morning. There were signs that winter was finally on the wane — fish were jumping, trees were budding. It was warm enough that I didn’t need a hat. The sun was out. It was a joy to be on the beach, clamming with my husband, looking forward to spring.

Last May, we made our very first batch of dandelion wine. Up until then, the only fermenting I’d ever done was accidental, a result of leaving fruit juice, or black beans, or cooked barley sitting in the refrigerator too long. As this was our first attempt at deliberate fermentation, we followed the recipe from Euell “Try Anything” Gibbons pretty much to the letter.

At the time, I was unconvinced that dandelions had anything to do with dandelion wine. Oh sure, you start with a bunch of dandelions, but then you add things like oranges and lemons and sugar and ginger, which are all way more delicious than dandelions. I suspected that the whole dandelion part – which involves hours of backbreaking labor and many, many insects – was just inserted into the recipe to build character.

Now I’m not so sure.

The glass looked clean at the time ...

Last night, we broke out the dandelion wine, which has been aging for almost ten months. There are two gallon jugs of it in the basement, but we reserved one small bottle that we keep in the kitchen so we can taste it without disturbing the jugs. Or shlepping to the basement.

First, we took a good hard look at it. It’s not completely clear, although it’s clearer than it was when we bottled it. It could be my imagination, but there’s a faint residue on the sides of the bottle that looks remarkably like pollen. In color, it’s like the dishwater you washed the orange juice glasses in. Which is not to say it’s unappetizing; it looks like something you can drink.

We each took a sip. It has a faint effervescence and a pronounced (surprise!) citrus flavor, but it also has very decided vegetal overtones that balance the sweetness and fruity flavor. I was forced to conclude that dandelion wine does indeed require dandelions.

Which means, come May, we’re in for another few hours of backbreaking work. It’s not ready for prime time yet, but we’re happy enough with our 2009 vintage to want to try it again for 2010.