The last two weekends of February were surprisingly warm on Cape Cod so what’s a person to but go clamming and paint boats? It was 60 and sunny when I decided to squeeze into a pair of uninsulated waders and scratch around for some quahogs off of Lowell Point. My lower extremities turned into popsicles but I wanted some chowder and would not be denied. A pair of beach walkers cocooned in their down coats took a seat on the stairs leading up to the old Lowell estate and watched me pull one clam after another out of the hard bottom.
A clam warden appeared out of nowhere. The relay off of the point is next to the town dock so it’s not hard for the department of natural resources staff to swing down in their truck and see if anyone is out there. A few years ago there was a lot of pissed off clammers after some local Wampanoags cleared out the beds under the cover of their native riparian rights so that stretch of beach tends to get a lot of scrutiny. The town with the help of the volunteers of the Barnstable Association of Recreational Shellfishers “relays” clams from high up in the bays where the water is a little more stagnant and polluted down to the lower harbor and so-called relay bed where they can flush out in cleaner water until they’re safe to eat.
The warden called out to me, asked how I was doing, asked me to show him my basket and to give him my license number. I was too far out to feel sociable and it was too cold to wade back ashore and then out again, so we conversed through shouts for five minutes before he was satisfied I was legit and only grabbing three dozen quahogs for my dinner.
It was quite nice to stretch out on the back deck with a knife and open said clams and then turn them into a winter chowder. Something about the smell and taste of plain clam chowder makes me realize the “terroir” of Cotuit is the particular smell of its antidiluvian black mud which comes through its clams and chowder.
The following weekend was just as warm, and with temperatures in the mid-60s I turned on the outside faucets, dragged out the house, and set to work on the motorboat and the sloop. Nothing like the lung searing fumes of hull cleaner to get one awake, but in eight hours of non-stop work I was able to paint a total of 51-feet of bottom with antifouling paint, right down to a fresh boot-top of red on the motorboat.
I left the motorboat in the middle of the lawn, daring to think for a moment I might launch and be on the water in February when the usual first launch is in April. But no. Hubris is a bitch and now the boat still rests in the middle of the lawn covered with a half-foot of cold, cold now and another foot is predicted tonight and tomorrow. At least they’re painted and I can cross that off the list — the first time in my memory I’ve checked off antifouling paint day in February.
With the crocuses buried and the tulips and daffodils utterly confused at this point, next up in the harbinger list are the arrival of the ospreys and the planting of my peas on St. Patrick’s day. With tomorrow’s yet-to-be named blizzard on its way, I doubt either will happen this week.
your favorite recipe for chowdah is:
WE have chocolate clams here on the So Cal coast. they’re actually Pacific brown clams.