Category Archives: Rural Living

Making Pimento Cheese and Duck Confit Sandwiches

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Just another farm dinner: shredded confit on crowders, tomato and cucumber salad, cabbage and carrot slaw.

I should be outside mowing the lawn. Claiming that the mercury is climbing is really not an excuse or a reality. For it is a beautiful Saturday afternoon with highs in the mid-80s and lowish, for us, humidity. That the morning was productive — a gutter cleaning, the daily harvest of crowder peas, weed-eating around the day’s rotation of trees, vines, bushes, and outbuildings — seems to matter not. Through the open window my mower’s kin call gaily out to mine from up and down the valley, “Come out and play.”

Slamming the window on their siren song, I determine to focus my considerable energies on more fruitful projects. An hour later, a handful of computer chess game victories under my belt (All praise the Undo button!), I continue to wrestle with my work avoidance and open the refrigerator.

A little snack to fortify my willpower for the afternoon is called for in this moment. Before me, in a dish gifted by my 99-year-old aunt, lie salty duck legs buried in white glistening lard. Beautiful confit! (The result of another work avoidance project tackled earlier in the week when I should have been completing a memorandum for something or other.)

I reach past the various salads and grab a hunk of cheddar. In mere moments, it is turned into a lovely shredded mound. A few simple steps more: a bowl, a small jar of pimentos, drained, then tossed with the cheese, freshly ground pepper and a sprinkle of salt, a healthy dollop of Blue Plate mayonnaise, a wooden spoon to mix and mash and I’m done.

Now, if you are from regions less enlightened than the South, you may already have stopped reading. Good riddance! For it is truly depressing to the soul that there are depraved and deprived individuals who have never and will never eat a pimento cheese sandwich. So be it. I pledge, henceforth, to drop this messianic desire to convert. To never exalt in the blended perfection of extra-sharp cheddar and piquant pimento is a sad existence indeed. But it is yours — welcome to it.

There are moments in life, genius moments, that strike us all. Ford had his assembly line and Edison his lightbulb. It is in these moments that the gods hold their breath: “Will he???” With generations of can-do pioneers coursing through my veins, I answer with a resounding “Yes!” I will take that hill and scatter the naysayers. Give me that ceramic of confit and be quick about it, sires!

Two slices of sourdough, a heap of pimento cheese on top and shredded duck confit on bottom, assembled into one glorious sandwich. I stand out on the porch, my masterpiece in one hand and a cold beer in the other, and dare the world.

But wait, fortune smiles on me this Saturday afternoon. Do I see gathering clouds? They do look like they could carry rain, might even, in time, develop into dangerous thunderstorms. Should I dash out and mow and risk certain death … on the admittedly random chance of being struck with lightning?

Nay, I head back inside, unwilling to hazard depriving future generations of these awesome insights.

You are welcome.

The Things I Know I Don’t Know

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Two decades have passed and it is hard to recall the precise moment when we decided to move to the country. The decision wasn’t arrived at because of any book read or any cultural force stirring in the zeitgeist. What I do remember is that one Sunday afternoon I made an innocent comment that we should find some land and get out of the city.

Two years and many hours of searching later, on another Sunday afternoon, we landed in this valley. We closed on the property in short order, locked up the house in town (eventually selling it), and moved to 70 acres of minimally improved property that we christened Winged Elm Farm. It was the summer of 1999, 20 years ago come September.

While Cindy already had farming experience, my own skill set was limited to what I had learned in running a satisfying yet low-profit bookstore. We started out with only the typical toolbox of an inner-city homeowner — screwdriver, corded drill, hammer —which left us trying to build a farm operation from very modest resources. We had to decide with each paycheck what was most important to purchase. Today when I look around the outbuildings of our well-provisioned setup, it is hard to imagine the time when we didn’t own a shovel or mattock, hoe or tiller, axe or chainsaw. Each of those acquisitions was a hard-won addition, but each allowed us to accomplish an important task in the building of an infrastructure.

We were both fortunate in having full-time jobs, albeit modestly compensated. Timely for our needs was that we began in an era of low costs on weanling steers and high prices on beef. Putting cattle to work on the land, we agreed, should be one of our first priorities. It was a good call: it put money in the bank and paid for most of the big-ticket purchases. Without the cattle there would be no orchards, house, barns, sawmill, tractors — or 20 years to look back on.

A farm is such a wonderful place to discover the limits of one’s hubris. I easily entertained a certainty, thanks to an article or book I had read, that I Know Better how to do something that others have been doing for generations. Nevertheless, over time, I discovered that the seasoned farmers around me were knowledgeable, resourceful, and frugal. And if I was willing to admit and embrace my own ignorance, heck, I might even learn a thing or two, or lots, from them.

True, the lessons learned were not always pretty, and in some cases they were pretty damned frightening. An afternoon spent in the company of an elderly neighbor helping dehorn and castrate his herd of cattle was thrift personified: his tools were piano wire and a pocket knife (not an experience I recommend or wish to repeat).

Another “memorable” afternoon, the same neighbor asked me to assist him in separating a grown mule from the family jewels. The mule was fairly determined this was not going to happen. Several hours and many well-placed kicks later (in spite of repeated attempts to restrain his legs with ropes), we finally turned the mule back out to pasture … still intact as the day he was born. (The lesson learned: Know when to let it go.)

Getting rid of the I Know Better instinct was possibly the hardest and probably the most important lesson I’ve learned these past 20 years. (Eventually, you really can knock some common sense into even the hardest of heads.) Not that I’ve become a sponge for what others can teach, mind you, but I have come to appreciate the value of accepting my own ignorance, and occasionally of listening to and accepting advice from others.

Donald Rumsfeld (that great agrarian thinker) distilled into one beautiful quote the essence of what I’ve learned over the past two decades: “There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.” Amen, Brother. Amen.

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Reading this weekend: My Bookstore: writers celebrate their favorite places to browse, read, and shop.

Self-sufficiency: repeat

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One from the archives (2012)

 “I am a grandchild of a lost war, and I have blood knowledge of what life can be in a defeated country on the bare bones of privation.”
Kathryn Anne Porter from her memoir The Days Before

Our well-house, built with salvaged wood from another outbuilding.

I have written of our efforts at self-sufficiency and made occasional sport of some of our neighbors. But, I have not conveyed much of the wisdom of many our self-sufficient neighbors. As I’ve mentioned previously, self-sufficiency is as much about learning to live in hard times or preparing for the same as it often is a response to a cultural memory. For those of us in the US that memory extends to the Depression and further back to stories of hardship after the American Civil War; with a knowledge that what one currently enjoys may yet be removed from ones ownership.

Here are a few simple examples.

T-posts: A few years ago I helped our neighbor, Lowell rebuild a fence. He and I labored for weeks. He outworked me most days even though he is in his mid-seventies. Besides that fact what Cindy and I often recall was a steadfast determination to build a beautiful and sturdy fence and his use of frugality to achieve it. A t-post, the metal post commonly used in line to attach barbed wire, has become quite expensive. Currently they run about $3.99 a post. Multiply that cost times a hundred and you quickly get fence that is not economically justifiable to build.

Lowell, in typical fashion as we have learned these last 12 years, found a novel way to circumvent that cost. He bought warehouse shelving posts at auction. If you have been in a warehouse you have seen the towering shelving units that go up 20-30 feet where goods are stored. The connecting pieces, a bit like scaffolding, come in 14 foot units. These pieces he bought in bulk and hauled to his farm. Using a cutting torch these were then cut into 7 foot sections. We used these pieces as our posts, pushed into the ground with his front end-loader. They are sturdy and will in all likelihood outlast the un-bought t-posts. Unit costs were perhaps 25 cents.

Home production: A man lives across the road from our farm in a small hand-built house of no particular style, maybe 600 square feet. Additionally he has a few small outbuildings. It all sits on about an acre of land nestled between the road and the creek. The owner works odd jobs as a handyman. His place is beautifully kept, neat and orderly. But, the real pride is the garden. Beginning in late winter a regular and varied succession of crops and veggies make an appearance. Never a sign advertising produce, we are left to assume that is all canned and preserved for his own use. Regardless, his place is a simple reminder of the value of hard work.

Repurposing: Ten years ago Cindy wrecked on Pond Creek while pulling a horse trailer. Shaken but unhurt she secured the horse and made arrangements to have the trailer towed to the wrecker. The top of the trailer was completely smashed like a beer can. To our eyes and the eyes of the insurance company this was a total loss.

A nearby farmer, now deceased, heard the story and asked Cindy to call the wrecker company for him. He bought the smashed trailer for $60. Using a welding torch he cut away the frame of the trailer and was left with a perfectly sound foundation. Using scrap metal from his barn he built a new and sturdy frame. A few weeks later he drove up to our farm and showed us a functional, painted livestock trailer. Still in use the many years later, the trailer reminds us of the need and uses of thrift.

We struggle with the same impulse as the rest… go buy it. We have gradually, though certainly imperfectly, begun to learn to make do or simply “make”. Or, as a friend suggested, based on his farming background, do without.

The Readings Gone By

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Like most, I pick up books to suit the mood and moment. Many times, when I just want some entertainment, a Lee Child, John Sandford, or Bernard Cornwell novel fits the bill. But, and this is not an indictment of those authors, the plots and writing soon fade from memory. Their works are the cheese dip and the cheesecake, not the entrée. They are not the books I recall while sitting on the porch before dawn. Nor are they the books I want to press into a nephew’s hand, saying, “Read this, it is important. It will take you places, make you want to upend your life.”

Here are 10 books from the past year (numbered by chronology, not preference) that meant the most to me. Books that took me out of my small world, connected me to the broader course of humanity, and made me glad to have had the experience. Works that were either artfully written, engrossing, or informative … or, in a few instances, all three at the same time.

  1. Desert Solitaire (Edward Abbey, 1968). I was surprised one cold winter day to realize I had not read this oft-mentioned work. So, this time last year, I got myself to the Book Eddy in Knoxville and picked up a copy. This book is a beautiful, haunting, angry, and often funny work on the desert Southwest, a region Abbey feared was changing too fast, one I fear he would now find gone. Every sentence is a Wiki-quote.
  2. Southern Harvest (Clare Leighton, 1942). Based on the English illustrator’s time spent in North Carolina, it contains vignettes of rural Southern life. Most but not all pieces are sensitively written and wonderfully illustrated. I loved her woodcuts so much that Cindy located a numbered print for my Christmas present.
  3. Grey Seas Under (Farley Mowat, 1958). This book sat on my shelf for 20 years before I took it down to read. Sometimes you just know that if given time you will get around to a book, so why rush the experience? This is the story of an Atlantic salvage tug and the men who operated her off the coast of Canada from 1930 to 1948. It’s the absolutely riveting history of a ship masquerading as an edge-of-the-seat thriller. These sailors and their vessel had more of what it takes than any group of men you are ever likely to meet: daredevil rescues amid towering seas in icy waters day after day (and even more often, night after night), year after year — everyday heroics by uncommon people that make you proud to be of the same species.
  4. Cræft (Alexander Langlands, 2017). An antidote to the mass age, Cræft (not to be confused with “craft”) looks at the broad-based skills needed to survive in the old world. Putting up hay in medieval Europe, for example, required not only the knowledge to cut, cure, and store feed, but also to make and maintain a scythe, plant the forage, save the seed…. Today, we tend to learn, if we can be bothered, just a limited part of any craft. This book is a humbling reminder of how we have specialized ourselves into irrelevance yet still claim to be masters.
  5. Localism in the Mass Age (Mark Mitchell and Jason Peters, Eds., 2018). Styled as the Front Porch Republic Manifesto, it is a compendium of some of today’s more interesting writers on localism. This one has introduced me to a whole range of authors who suck away my spare time.
  6. The Last Grain Race (Eric Newby, 1956). Here’s another one picked up at the Book Eddy, a small, expertly curated out-of-print bookstore. I loved this book so much that I sought out a first edition (found cheap in Australia). But, first I read the Penguin orange-cover paperback. The plot: the author chucks advertising career at the tender age of 18 and signs on to sail on one of the last tall-masted ships, leaving out of Belfast for Australia to pick up grain, in 1938. A there-and-back-again tale about his stoic Finnish officers (who spoke little to no English), a polyglot crew, lice, rats, fights, clambers up rotten rigging in pitching seas and howling winds — all played out to the backbeat of approaching WW2, yet written with a touching and self-deprecating humor that makes you wish you had been on board. It now occupies a special place in my library.
  7. Round of a Country Year (David Kline, 2017). Kline is an Amish farmer who puts out a quarterly magazine, Farming (Remind me to resubscribe). This book is a simple diary of the farmer’s year. It’s the kind of work that has me dreaming of being a better steward and neighbor, of getting it right this year, or at least next.
  8. Fruitful Labors (Mike Madison, 2018). Ditto the Kline book. I knew the writing of Madison’s sister, Deborah, a creator of cookbooks, first. But this somewhat practical, often philosophical, work on farming in Northern California reeled me in with the author’s understanding, commitment, and struggle to manage a productive farm. Better written than I expected (and perhaps than I deserved, since the copy was given to me by the publisher), it sat on my to-read shelf for most of the year, the whiff of obligation wafting from its pages. Finally I read it, and for you farmers out there, I’d recommend it. You will be better for it. I know I am.
  9. Payne Hollow (Harlan Hubbard, 1974). I didn’t know much about Harlan Hubbard, other than that Wendell Berry wrote of him and he was mentioned by similar authors. I picked up this reprint at the Berry Center in New Castle, Kentucky. It is the autobiography of Harlan and his wife, Anna, as they settled down to live a life off the grid on the edge of the Ohio River in the 1950s. Simple, well-written, it kind of makes you regret every tie that binds you to this stinkin’ system.
  10. Conversations With Wendell Berry (Morris Grubbs, Ed., 2007). Goddamnit, Wendell Berry! Even the transcripts of his conversations are good and often great. This one was picked up just to say I owned it, for the bragging rights (Hear me loud and clear, Clem). So, I planned to read just one interview before placing it on the shelf. But then I read another, then another, until 213 pages later I ran out of reading. For Berry fans, pick it up. For those who don’t know Berry, pick it up.

I dream this January of a book yet to be found, at random, in a stack, discarded by a library for a sale. A forgotten and never-checked-out castoff that will make me fall in love with reading again and again, that will change me in ways I haven’t considered. A book that causes me, the next time I see you, to say, “Have you read…?”

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Reading this weekend: The Last Cowboys, a pioneer family in the new west (Branch). 

Farmers’ Night Out

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Yesterday was a good day. I made enough soap to keep us clean for another year and took a nap. Visited friends long enough to drink a beer and admire their skill in getting their old Massey 165 up and running. Returned to the farm for a late-afternoon coffee, where we then decided to treat ourselves to a farmers’ night out.

Soap molds

Dining off the farm is a rare occurrence for us, principally for matters of occupation (we, being the producers of food that we love) and availability of restaurants within a 30-minute drive. The choices for eating out are confined to three small towns, and they mostly consist of a handful of Mexican and Italian joints — the latter run (who knows why?) by either Greek or Mexican families. Our top pick last night was Angela’s Cuban Restaurant in Athens, an outlier in both menu and the fact that its namesake is actually Cuban. Unfortunately it was closed, we assume, for the holidays. Fortunately, we called before we headed out.

Next, we checked in on Facebook to make sure our second choice was open on Saturday nights. Assured that it was, we headed north to the Taco Loco Bar and Grill in Loudon. Having never been to this particular restaurant, we had decided to give it a try based on positive online reviews. Half an hour later we arrived, only to find the windows dark and the door locked.

After some debate we agreed, mainly because it was nearby, on a small, unremarkable Italian spot. But, upon pulling into the parking lot — you guessed it — we found that it, too, was closed up tight. Laughing at our luck, we turned the car back down old Highway 11 toward Sweetwater. Rolling through Philadelphia, about five miles south and a burg of a few hundred, we opined that that community must also have closed for the pre-New Year’s celebrations. No cars, no lights.

Continuing on Highway 11, aka the Robert E. Lee Highway, we passed the now-derelict farm equipment business where we bought a disc harrow 20 years earlier; the Houston family’s livestock auction barn, where we have sold and bought many a steer and calf; an uninviting honky-tonk, dimly lighted, with three pickup trucks in the parking lot; and the long-closed military institute, founded in 1874 by a Presbyterian minister, before entering Sweetwater proper.

The illuminated windows of the well-appointed Italian restaurant and the line of cars parked along Main Street in front looked promising. Relieved, we joined the fair-size crowd inside. Five minutes later, the two of us having stood thus far at the entrance, waiting conspicuously to be seated, Cindy went to the kitchen and found the 16-year-old hostess. Ten minutes later, the hostess-turned-waitress walked by our table, then stopped and asked if we had been waited on. Clearly flustered when we replied no, she wrote down our order.

Over the next 20 minutes, she would periodically come around, but she never quite got any part of our requests right. Me: “We do get bread before the meal, right?” Waitress: “Oh, yes, I’ll bring you some bread.” (The bread never came.) Waitress: “What kind of beer was it you ordered?” Me: “I asked for Chianti wine.” (The drink never came.) Cindy: “Could we get some silverware please?”” Waitress: “Oh, I’ll get it for you.” (The silverware never came.) Waitress: “Here is your garden salad.” Me: “I ordered a small Caesar.” All said, we were still in remarkably good humor when we informed the waitress that we were going to find another restaurant.

Out the door and a short walk down the block, we were greeted, seated, and served at our favorite go-to “farmers off the farm” Mexican restaurant in record time. It took us nearly an hour to end up where we almost always go. But the meal was good, and we headed home to the farm in high spirits, still laughing about the evening.

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Reading this weekend: The Swerve, how the world became modern (Greenblatt)