Best Day of the Year Tuesday

On the second Saturday in August, at my hometown Quaker meeting, magic happens. We call it “The Best Day of the Year.”

The annual Smith Neck Friends Clambake—a day not to be missed by those of us who grew up in the meeting and have worked “the bake” since elementary school. No one remembers exactly when it began, but the event is well over 90 years old.

This day has been a part of my life since I was a child, working at the bake beginning at age 10. Sixty years of clambakes, and I have only missed working a handful of them.

Ruth at her first clambake, my little buddy as I worked.

So for the next week or so, I will take you on a tour of this day and show you the behind-the-scenes story of how the team at Smith Neck Friends puts on a clambake.

Saturday, 6:45 a.m. The tent, which was erected earlier in the week, stands empty. But not for long. Anticipation grows.

Waiting under a tarp is the wood for the fire that was collected and expertly laid two days before, interlaced with carefully selected 8-9” diameter stones. The white-hot stones will be put in that pit where they will cook the food. (I will show each step as we go along.)

The large refrigerated truck in the background holds the food waiting to be packed and cooked.

In the shadows to the left are burlap bags of rockweed— the seaweed harvested the day before from the ocean and kept moist.

A lot of work happens before clambake day. Besides the firewood and seaweed prep, meal ingredients and paper goods have to be found and purchased.

Here, Jonathan slices the rind off fatback, which we had to buy locally in NH—they could no longer find it in the Dartmouth-New Bedford area. Fatback is one of the not-so-secret ingredients in the bake’s famous quahog chowder.

I was part of the crew on Friday night that diced celery and peeled bags of onions. Here, the 19 pounds of onions set aside for the chowder. More were minced for the stuffing, and the remainder put into the truck to pack on Saturday for the guests’ meals.

The chopped onions and celery are then cooked, and stuffing is prepared and packed into aluminum loaf pans for each of the 28 tables, which each seat eight guests.

This 2024 photo shows the pans of stuffing being prepared, always decorated and flavored with two sausages on top.

But this year, we had a problem. A big one.

That evening, the electricity kept going off in the kitchen—every 5-7 minutes. Which not only set off a deafening CO sensor alarm each time but also shut off the gas to the stove. We could not cook.

It was hot; the heat index in the 90s. Late Friday afternoon, people were coming home and turning on their AC.

I grew up here. No one, and I mean, no one, had AC.

The power grid has not kept up with climate change.

Jenn Reid stepped up, and others joined her, and they took all the ingredients to her home to make the stuffing there.

So, we left on that Friday evening, hoping the electricity would stay on the next day for the bake.

There was chowder to cook…

Clambake, Smith Neck Friends Meeting, South Dartmouth, MA

August 8, 2026; August 9, 2024