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Wellfleet Shellfish Company clammers plan to put their seafood on the national map By Ken Rivard, Globe Correspondent, 1/1/2003
But on this chilly day, with the wind putting a punch into the drizzle
on the three-acre tidal flats of Indian Neck where she has a grant to
clam, Austin is making an exception. Squatting in chest-high waders, over
a regulation plastic crate, she ignores the strands of blond hair whipping
about her face and rakes her reddened fingers through a bushel of vivid
blue quahogs. She seems completely at home, unlike the circle of men
surrounding her in their damp shoes, hands jammed into their pockets
against the cold. Austin, just this side of 40, learned to clam as a child, beside her
father. She has been either digging wild clams or raising them as an
aquaculturist - or clam ''farmer'' - ever since. ''Found one!'' she cries, and she passes up a small hard-shelled clam
for the men's examination. The men, representatives of a national seafood wholesaler, tighten in
for a closer look. They are here to examine firsthand the operations of
the Wellfleet Shellfish Company, formed by Austin and a dozen other local
aquaculturists. Austin and her partners raise oysters and clams on their individual
''grants,'' specific areas of tidal flat to which they have exclusive
aquacultural rights. By banding together into a company, they hope to take
what has been until now a regional specialty - the Wellfleet littleneck
clam - and to market it nationally. If everything goes according to plan,
the clams will take their place beside Wellfleet's famous oysters. ''This guy is just barely undersize,'' Austin says, while contrasting
the smaller clam to a larger one, which is legally marketable. ''But in
another three or four months he'll be all grown up and ready to go.'' The wholesaler these men represent is concerned with whether Wellfleet
Shellfish can deliver clams year-round. One of Austin's jobs today is to
explain how the company plans to insure a reliable flow of clams from
December to mid-March, the period when most individual aquaculturists stop
harvesting. She can, in her own words, ''talk a blue streak about aquaculture.''
And she easily fields questions about the size the clam ''runs'' on her
grant (''twelve by fifty or a hundred feet''), beach access in the dead of
winter, and product shelf life. ''That's why we're building a facility
with wet storage. We'll have a backup supply and wet storage improves the
shelf life of the clam,'' she says. Richard Blakey, who is among Austin's partners in Wellfleet Shellfish,
and who is one of her neighbors on Indian Neck - he was awarded the grant
space next to hers - pulls a Swiss army knife out of his pocket and begins
popping open the shellfish for the visitors to taste. With his untamed
surfer-type blond hair, Blakey might easily pass as Austin's brother. Eager slurping noises are followed by a round of appreciative grunts
and murmured compliments. Whatever other reservations the visitors might
have, all agree: The clams and oysters of the Wellfleet Shellfish Company
taste about as good as you can get. ''No offense meant,'' Austin says over coffee later in the modest home
she shares with her husband Jerre, a Wellfleet police officer and
part-time fisherman, and their 13-year-old daughter, Wendy. (Clinton, a
20-year-old son, is away at college.) ''But all these clams we're starting
to see from Virginia and Florida just don't taste as good as Wellfleet
clams.'' Wellfleet can't go head-to-head against Florida and Virginia on
price because clams grow more quickly in warm water, she says.
''We've got to compete on taste.'' This is more than cheering for the hometown team. Joe Gurrera, the
Manhattan seafood magnate (owner of Citarella restaurant, Citarella
stores, and a wholesale seafood business) praises Wellfleet Shellfish
clams for their clarity and pristine appearance, but especially for their
flavor. ''All you've got to do is taste their product,'' he says. ''Their
clam is the only littleneck I carry.'' Stephanie Staith, Northeast regional director for Pigeon Cove, the
wholesale seafood arm of Whole Foods, agrees. ''I cooked a sample batch''
of Wellfleet Shellfish clams ''at my house one night and found myself
stealing them off a friend's plate when she wasn't looking,'' Staith
says. As long as the market could absorb as many clams as Wellfleet farmers
could grow, at a price that guaranteed a profit, no one felt the need to
capitalize on the clams' high quality. But increasing competition from
both inside and outside of Massachusetts has changed that. When Austin got her grant in 1985 there were barely 200 acres of grants
on all of Cape Cod. Today there are individual commercial aquaculture
farms in Virginia, which get 200 acres each. Overall, grants on the Cape
now amount to about 1,200 acres. Austin says that it's getting increasingly difficult to make a living
just by harvesting clams and selling them to a local wholesaler. At the
end of the summer in 2001, clam farmers found themselves unable to sell
all their clams, a first in Austin's experience. The wholesale price,
always volatile depending on the supply, dropped below the point where it
was profitable to bother raking clams. Although Austin temporarily stopped harvesting, she put an alternate
strategy into place. ''I began putting clams aside for January when I knew
the price would be higher. It's hard to dig then, but I knew they'd be
worth more.'' When Austin heard about other clam farmers getting together to discuss
starting a company, she was interested. ''My husband thought I was nuts,''
she says, speaking about the $5,000 she had to put up to purchase her
share in Wellfleet Shellfish, ''but he thought I was nuts when I started
raising clams.'' The company has been cautious about its expansion, opening accounts in
New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Atlanta, and Chicago only as fast as
they are sure they can keep pace with them. Wellfleet Shellfish expects to
be selling 5 to 10 million clams annually within a year. Austin concedes that as partner she's not crazy about having to think
about wiring and plumbing for their plant and ''all the million other
decisions'' that are settled by the Wellfleet Shellfish Company in weekly
meetings. Aquaculturists are an independent bunch, and she admits to a few
rifts with partners. ''But we always work it out,'' Austin says. They don't have a choice; their way of life is at stake. ''None of us
is the kind of person who likes punching a time clock. ''We just want to keep leading our lives the way we always have,'' she
says. ''That's why we want this company to succeed.'' If diners of the near future at upscale raw bars in, say, Chicago, or
St. Louis, or Atlanta, see that menus now feature Wellfleet clams in
addition to Wellfleet oysters, Barbara Austin and the Wellfleet Shellfish
Company may be the ones to thank. Fried pork with clams Although pork and clams are now served in dozens of different
incarnations all over Portugal, the combination originated in Alentejo, in
the southeast, where fried pork and clams in a soup broth are a regional
specialty. This is a great meal with a rustic loaf of country bread.
Serves 4 2teaspoons white wine vinegar 1 1/3cups dry white wine 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped 1bay leaf 3tablespoonsflat-leaf parsley, chopped 1medium onion, finely chopped 1carrot, grated 3to 4 threads saffron, crushed 1sprig fresh cilantro, leaves chopped 2pounds pork loin, cut into 3/4-inch cubes 2tablespoons olive oil 2teaspoons tomato paste 1can (16 ounces) chopped tomatoes Salt and pepper, to taste 2 dozen littleneck clams, scrubbed and washed in cold
water 4 lemon wedges (for serving) 1. In a large container, combine the vinegar, wine, garlic, bay
leaf, 1 tablespoon of the parsley, onion, carrot, saffron, and cilantro.
Add the pork, toss well, cover, and refrigerate overnight. 2. Remove the meat from the marinade; reserve the marinade. In a
large casserole, heat the oil over medium high heat. When it is hot, add
the pork and cook it, turning often, for 3 to 5 minutes. 3. Add the reserved marinade, tomato paste, and chopped
tomatoes. Stir well and add pepper. (The clams may have added enough
salt.) Bring the mixture to a boil. Add the clams and lower the heat.
Cover the pan and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes or until the clams
just open. 4. Ladle into bowls, sprinkle with the remaining 2 tablespoons
of parsley, and garnish with lemon. Adapted from ''The Gastronomy of Spain and Portugal'' This story ran on page C1 of the Boston Globe on
1/1/2003.
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