Rama at the Hama Hama

Lissa James can throw one heck of a party.

If you missed it last weekend, then put it on your calendar for 2013. Usually the first low-tide weekend in May, the Hama Hama Oyster Rama* is a day-long fundraiser for the Hood Canal Education Foundation in Lilliwaup, Wash., complete with oyster and wine tastings, a shucking contest, beer garden, a variety of shellfish culinary experiences, cooking and history seminars, trivia contest, arts and crafts, live music, and best of all, the opportunity to dig your own clams and pick your own oysters for less than the sponsoring Hama Hama Oyster Company's retail price.

Arriving promptly at 11am last Saturday when the u-pick started (time is of the essence as the incoming tide waits for no one), Tim and I dug at least six pounds of clams and gathered six dozen more oysters.

One of the guys who checked us out was so impressed with our foraging skills that he said, "Wow. Do you want a job?"

Believe me, I was tempted. There is something about going outside into the fresh air to get food that feels visceral to me.

Food = Community = Love

You may notice that I have changed the name of this blog from Bent Fork Farm to Olympic Fork. That's because my idea for this blog has grown from telling you about my backyard garden project (which I will still do) to all types of food-related activity here on Washington State's Olympic Peninsula.

I may be an unemployed journalist, but I am still a journalist, and a freelance one at that. So it wasn't long after I started this blog that I had the strong urge to interview other local people about their adventures in growing, cooking, and eating food. By "local," I mean folks anywhere between Port Townsend (where I live) and Sekiu (where Tim lives), which is almost all the way to Neah Bay and Cape Flattery, the northwestern-most point of the contiguous United States. I'll also travel south down the Hood Canal to places like Lilliwaup, an inky-dinky unincorporated town where my mom grew up in the 1920s and '30s.

So, while my backyard project is still called Bent Fork Farm, this blog is wider in scope because, really, food is about community, and on a personal level, it signifies the offering of strength and nourishment to ourselves.