Tag Archives: cooking

Lazy, I want to be lazy

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I pulled on my third shirt just after 9:30 yesterday morning. The drought continues here in East Tennessee with the high heat and humidity punishing all efforts at productivity. We had spent the morning moving cattle, clearing brush from electric fencing and cleaning manure out of the barn. All of which left me drenched and guzzling water as fast as it leaked out of me. Some days it just seems too brutal to keep up with the workload.

A three-shirt morning

A three-shirt morning

Finally Caleb (my farm helper) and I wrapped up our workday a little after noon. We went into Sweetwater to pick up some supplies at the farmer’s co-op and ran into Tim. After a quick bite to eat at a local Mexican joint we headed back to the farm.

In the evening Tim came over and joined me and Don Davis, a friend of long standing, for dinner. I fixed a pot roast along with carrots, potatoes and a cabbage salad, always a favorite dish of mine and one Cindy dislikes. But since she was visiting family in Florida I could indulge in whatever I wanted to eat (along with a cigar).

Although it had probably been ten years since I had seen Don, like all good friends we were able to reconnect easily. He has written a number of books on Appalachian culture over the years and he brought us up to speed on the history of the American chestnut book he has been writing. He hopes to have a publisher in the coming months and the book in print within the year.

Now, after the sweat of yesterday, I find myself dawdling this morning. There is a full list of projects commanding my attention. But I just can’t bring myself to go back into the heat. This unmanly procrastination is only making matters worse as the mercury climbs into the eighties before 10am.

Yet here I sit.

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Reading this weekend: The Breakdown of Nations by Leopold Kohr, a timely read after the Brexit vote.

An Ode to the Meat and Three

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Meat and three image

One assumes the stewed apples are stage right in this photo

Oh, how I yearn for the return of the meat and three. The simple joy of knowing that with a quick turn off the highway, any small town in the South yielded a diner that served up the sacred trifecta — that assurance brought comfort to restless, dark nights.

The daily break for lunch, the communion with one’s people. They have given way to the blight of Hardees and its ilk, the shuffling herd inching forward at the drive-through, devouring at the wheel, afterward pitching leftover hamburger wrappers out the windows. Our collective soul has been starved, even as our collective waistline has expanded.

We were a people of the garden once, the content of our favorite diner’s lunch fare reflecting the abundance of the seasons. Served in modest portions that allowed us to eat healthy, but not to excess or somnolence, the choices were varied and yet consistent: two or three meats, perhaps six or more vegetables. The daily decision was made while waiting for the iced tea to arrive.

The chicken was a smaller bird, the cuts done to maximize the number of servings. Each breast was cut in half, and when it was served on a small plate, it did not dwarf the other choices. The meatloaf was divvied into small squares, the country ham shaved in modest slices, the vegetables simply prepared with minimal seasoning.Meat and three 2

“Yes, ma’am, we are ready to order. Hmm, I will get the chicken today, dark meat, please. And let me have the okra and stewed tomatoes (which still counted as one side), turnip greens, and the crowder peas. Roll or cornbread? Cornbread, of course. Yes, ma’am, that is all today, no dessert for me. Peanut butter pie? Oh, that’s tempting, but, no.”

Y’all have a good day. We’ll see you tomorrow.

Farm Postcard: March 6

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Speckled Sussex flock

Speckled Sussex flock

Speckled Sussex: We have raised this breed for sixteen years. We have introduced outside stock twice. Good layers for a heavy breed, they are white-fleshed and make an excellent dinner fowl. They still have a natural instinct to go broody, setting and hatching out chicks each spring. The origins, like much of British fowl, come from the Dorking breed, introduced by the Roman’s in the invasion of 55 BC. More recently they evolved out of the Old Kent Fowl in the Kent and Sussex region of England. The first breed standards were established in 1864.

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Reading this weekend: “The Sussex” by Peter Smith, signed first edition (take that, Clem). And “American State Papers, Documents of the Congress of the United States, Public Lands Volume V, December 3rd, 1827 through March 3, 1829”. Published 1860. This has extensive records on our family and their settlement along Bayou que de Tortue, below Crowley, LA in the late 1700’s.

Basic Farm Lessons: Part 3

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  • Caring for tools: A couple of hours each year of rubbing linseed oil onto wooden handles will keep tools at the ready for years to come.
  • Obtaining tools: Take a few hours twice a year to attend a farm auction. It is an inexpensive way to pick up tools you did not know you needed—three dollars for a tool to remove bark from a log.
  • Your copy of the Rural Weekly Informer: Take the time to talk with the neighbors. Whether hearing of a death, of a birth or just plain old-fashioned gossip, this may well be your only chance to gain valuable knowledge of your community.
  • Never gossip … well, never call it gossip: Control the smirk on your face as you work the latest gossip into a conversation. It is more seemly and manly to assume a mature visage, as if imparting this bit of news for a valid reason.
  • Beating the heat: Wake when it is first light, go to the garden and pull weeds. Reentering the house, remove the annoyingly smug look on your face upon finding your partner sucking on her first cup of coffee.
  • Beating the heat #2: Starting mid-July, take a late afternoon walk in the woods with the dogs. It is a smart thing to do. The weather is too hot for work under the sun, and the chanterelles are beginning to carpet the ground under the mixed hardwoods.
  • Dog races: Let the dogs run unrestrained after the bolting deer. They won’t catch them, and the chase takes them far from the fawns hidden in the brush.
  • Sound show: Use an approaching thunderstorm as an excuse to sit and watch the horizon, listen to thunder and drink a cold beer.
  • Dinner plans: While sipping that beer, mentally review the larder. Dinner should be based on what you have provided.
  • Reaping what you sow: Perfectly marbled ribeyes from a steer raised out on your land, potatoes dug minutes before baking, juicy tomatoes still warm from the sun—a fine homegrown meal is well worth the time and sweat. It’s an essential farm lesson that needs learning only once.photo (5)
  • Farm flexibility: Company showing up unexpected requires only extra place settings and the ability to not fuss about quantities in a recipe. A handful of this and a dash to the garden are all that is needed when friends sit at the table.
  • The purpose: A missing lamb takes priority, dinner can wait. Because without first being a good husband to the animals in your charge, the table would be bare.
  • Light show: Before sleep, walk to the top of the hill. Admire the lightning strikes in the tops of thunderheads near the Kentucky border. Pat the heads of your dogs, and walk back home in the dark.

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Reading this weekend: God Against the Gods: the history of the war between monotheism and polytheism by Jonathan Kirsch. 

The Meaning of a Local Table

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Weather records kept on the farm are fairly casual. A semi-frequent journal entry documenting temperature or precipitation is about the best I manage. Those entries are usually prompted by one extreme or another: “too hot” or “too cold.” “Just right” seldom warrants an observation. Thankfully, other, more consistent individuals keep closer watch.Hubbards 002

The local weather keeper for Philadelphia, Tennessee, about 15 miles away, has so far recorded .15 inches for the month of May. My casual recordkeeping indicates closer to a half-inch. The average for the area for the month closes in on five inches.

How rain falls and how it is used is place based. How each farm uses the rain affects the productivity of the garden, the lives of the livestock, and the setting of the table. For maintaining an abundant garden, my preference is the slightly dry summer, as long as we have ample alternative sources to water the veggies, and our fairly extensive rain harvesting system meets that need in all but the most exceptional droughts.

But pastures need rain to be productive for a small livestock farm. Ample forage now for everyday needs and stored forage in the form of hay for the winter are essential. And both are at the mercy of the weather.

The frequency of our rotational grazing system for the sheep currently outpaces the slow growth of the forage: a typical week’s worth of grass is now being consumed in three short days, leaving us scanning the western ridge lines for the approach of rain.

Unless we get ample rain in the next couple of weeks, we will need to reevaluate the carrying capacity of our pastures. This decision will not affect our small cattle herd, for they are on fields ample enough to support their numbers. The grazing options of our sheep, because they require special predator-proof fencing, are much more limited.

So as it stands now, we will cull more sheep than we had previously intended, perhaps reducing the flock by a third, from around 45 to 25 or 30. We cull for a variety of reasons besides grass availability: age, susceptibility to parasites, poor mothering, problems lambing, or because a particular sheep is a simple pain in the ass. Ideally, we would market the ewes as mutton. Direct marketing allows us to get a better price than through the stock auction and rest more comfortably knowing the future of the selected animal.

Mutton has, however, been out of favor in this country for a number of years. Which is a shame. The meat has a mature flavor for a mature taste. It is the taste of a food tradition of place-based eating, a culinary table set with the dishes rooted in necessity and seasonal availability–two traits out of step with our collective national taste, that of a 12-year-old for whom tenderness and immediacy are prized over flavor and quality.

I used to joke that it took 24 months to make my chicken and sausage gumbo. Because it did take two full years to raise out the rooster for the pot. In the meantime, the old boy had plenty of time to be useful to the hens. That utility is the hallmark of the small farm: everything has a place in the overall productivity.

Which is why we continue to try and market the mutton each summer. And not just out of a necessity brought on by a lack of rain. It is the natural ebb and flow of the farmer, farm, and flock–the necessity of an annual cull creates availability of a unique meat for a local cuisine.

But these efforts remain unsuccessful because, although the buying habits of the consumer have changed, they are still predicated on buying for convenience. And as long as the small farm has to compete with corporate farming over convenience, the small farm (and the consumer) will lose. A truly sustainable farm needs a sustainable food tradition with which to partner, combining geography and a people.

In a truly local food system, it is the culture that adapts to the foods’ seasonal availability. The annual coq au vin made from the culled rooster in the fall, the slow-cooked leg of mutton from the culled ewe at the height of summer, both are simmered in a sauce made of freshly grown vegetables, herbs, and garlic. Both meals are place based, with a personal relationship with the farmer, pasture, and garden and seasoned by the utility of the ingredients.

It is this place-based cooking tradition that has the potential to nourish our lives, build resilient communities, and sustain the planet. It’s a local table that speaks about the people of that place, a people who today are scanning the ridge lines for a storm’s approach.