Clamming!

Marc has managed to luckily hit some fairly good clamming tides here in Florence so often goes out to get his limit. There is a very small state park wayside off a side road where he is mostly the only one clamming so it doesn’t take him long to get his daily limit. It’s just south across the lovely Florence Bridge and one foggy morning I accompanied him to take some pictures. Old Town Florence sits right across the bay.

The clam species here is Little Necks and they are much smaller than what we are used to digging in Coos Bay; but the upside of this is that they are much faster and easier to clean. More than likely they will also be tenderer. Clams freeze extremely well, lasting a long time due to their water and salt content I would suspect, so we are not eating them right now but putting them away in our freezer. These are not available in retail stores so the only way you get them is to do the work of harvesting them yourself. 

There is a definite art and trick to digging clams and if you see someone on their hands and knees doing it, that ain’t it! (As the gentleman in the background here is doing; he’s the little red spot behind Marc.) For reasons inexplicable to us, we see many who dig clams who never seem to get the hang of it despite how often they do it.

After clamming, we stopped by Old Town to visit the crab shack on the dock. Since we’ve had no luck catching crab we decided to splurge and buy two. We overpaid for a couple of thick live beauties, stopped by the farmer’s market to pick up some fresh vegetables and the most delicious tomatoes I’ve had in years, then went home to prepare our feast. Wow, was that good!