Growing a Farmer

by Kurt Timmermeister

  To me this is a great example of a simulacrum. The butter in the store references butter of a hundred years ago. It obviously has a direct lineage, even if it has been greatly altered. Interestingly, that authentic source is not what is referenced now, but the imitator. We all want to create industrial butter, industrial bacon, industrial pork. That is our reality. None of us, or very few of us, can reference the authentic because it has been entirely replaced with the facsimile. Maybe our grandparents can vaguely remember the bacon of their childhoods, but primarily our culture is a culture of supermarket industrial food products.

  Possibly the bacon of 1840 Virginia, for example, shrank when cooked, never crisped up well and was too salty. Hormel has certainly created a product that we now know as bacon that has a very specific size, flavor profile and texture. It is what we have come to expect as bacon and what most likely was created through focus-group testing. America at the turn of the twenty-first century has a salt threshold for food. It is not based on the amount of salt needed to cure pork, but rather on what people enjoy.

  The idea of salting pork to remove the moisture with the goal of preserving the meat has many different forms. Different cultures created distinct riffs on this basic idea; the most famous is likely prosciutto, the style credited to the Italians of Parma. Virginians developed their Smithfield hams, Germans speck and so on.

  I have made hams many times with a variety of outcomes. Some were so salty as to be inedible. Trying to soak the salt out yields some success, but generally the dogs enjoyed them, we ate a lot of soup seasoned with bits of salty ham and the compost heap got a bit larger.

  Some hams were quickly and distinctly damaged by flies and maggots. The entire center of the large twenty-five-pound blocks of pork would be liquefied and grotesque. Straight to the compost.

  There have been, however, a few hams over the years that were exceptional. Salty, but not too salty. Sweet, yet not sugary. Fatty, yet a pleasure to leave on your tongue to melt.

  The great challenge in making hams is that the time frame for producing a success is not a few hours, or a few days, but months. It isn’t until the ham is pulled down from the rafters and sliced that its glory shines, or its tremendous deficits become apparent. I persevere, though, confident that with time and more experience, the success rate will rise.

  A large fatty pig is essential. I have often seen precious little legs dried to the point of taxidermy, having insufficient fat to sweeten the end product and preserve the moisture of the ham. Raise a large hog. Fat is good, more is better.

  The first goal is to remove the legs from the body of the pig. At this point the pig is scraped clean of hair, the guts have been removed, the meat chilled, the fat firm. The legs are easily seen; there is no doubt where they start and finish. At my farm we start with the hind legs, and the hooves will still be attached at first. The Spanish tend to leave the hooves on; I find that a bit much, and the Italians concur. The hoof does make it a bit easier to tie a rope to the ham for hanging, but it still is more animal than you need. Cut it off just beyond the joint. A Sawzall works just great; not what those saws were designed for, but cutting through bone is comparable to cutting pipe and plasterboard.

  Where the leg meets the hip is the pelvis. The ball joint that connects the leg to the pelvis is where we want it to be separated. As I break down a pig, I constantly look to myself as reference: my foot, my ankle, my hip and so on. If that doesn’t work, I call over one of the dogs, feeling around on their legs, trying to figure out how the bones are laid out. Once a pig is slaughtered and gutted, there is no frame of reference. It is hard to put it back together in your head. A carcass on a big table is no longer an animal, it is a piece of meat.

  The goal is to remove any muscle, fat, skin, bone that is extraneous to what the ham will be in its final form. But keep in mind that any cut, slash or opening becomes a pathway for bacteria to enter and potentially ruin the final ham. One side, the skin side, is well protected. The flesh side, the side that was attached to the pelvis, is much more difficult, and this is where problems can happen. Leaving only the ball of the joint is good; some people leave a bit of the pelvis attached to seal the joint as well.

  Trimming the fat and muscle on the skinless side makes for a tidier result. Be bold, don’t be cheap. Bits of stray muscle or skin will not be usable months later when the ham is to be eventually consumed. If they are trimmed now, they can be rendered to lard, ground for sausage or fed to the dogs for lunch.

  Keep as much of the skin on the hind end while slaughtering the pig. The skin will provide excellent protection against flies on the sections it covers.

  Once the leg looks like a ham, footless, tidied up, essentially flat on the muscle side, it can be salted. Although for bacons a cure mixture is nice, pure kosher salt works quite well for curing hams. Different methods of salting abound. I prefer to place the leg in a large high-sided storage container that can hold the ham completely. Traditionally the English would use wooden boxes. I never seem to get around to building a wooden box; a plastic container will have to do.

  As with bacon, put a layer of salt on the bottom, and also rub plenty of salt deep and well into the fleshy side of the pork. We want the salt to make contact, to be a part of the meat. The pork will quickly begin giving off liquid and, as this is the goal of salting and curing, it is most welcomed. I drain it off as it occurs, but a wet brine would work well too, so I don’t fret if it begins to build up. Keeping the meat cool is important at this stage, as it is not presently cured. Forty degrees makes sense to me; the salt can do its work while the meat is kept safe.

  The general rule I find works well is to keep the leg on salt for one day for every pound of weight that the leg weighs the day it is slaughtered. Twenty-five pound leg, twenty-five days in salt. As I am a nervous man, add a couple or three days as well. Too little, and the meat may go bad; too much, and it is bound to be preserved, but be too salty to consume. Which is worse? My thought on most things is to experiment and use the experience of trial and error. Last year’s ham too salty? Pull the salt back a bit. Smell a bit off in a month? Salt it more next time.

  Once the appropriate time has elapsed in salt, drain the brine from the meat. Wipe the pork down, and feel it. It should be firm; a lot of liquid will have been drawn off. The weight will be a bit less. The color will have changed as well. Where the pork going in was red and vibrant and wet, now it will be darker, more ocher and have a flat sense to it. The glossiness will have left.

  The rest of the process is time. Sounds simple enough, but all can still go wrong. The goal is to keep the ham fairly cool, safe from predators and pests and in a space where the air can circulate to dry out the ham. Easier said than done. In the case of prosciutto de Parma, the hams are aged in the mountains with cool alpine air breezing through protected curing rooms. Since most of us do not have such conditions, we must improvise.

  Because the pigs are slaughtered in the late fall early winter, it is most likely that we have three to five months before the warmth of summer approaches. By that time the ham will be well enough along to protect itself. In the winter, temperatures are lower, and with luck the fly population is much smaller or nonexistent.

  I have seen folks in the city keep hams in refrigerators. It is often the best and only possibility. The temperature is cool and generally very consistent. There is no chance of a sudden warm afternoon. The cooler is completely sealed; no chance of flies getting to the ham, birds pecking it or rats nibbling on the edges. Coolers even have fans to move the air around. Moisture can be a problem, though. Some coolers simply add too much and make dehydrating the ham difficult if not impossible. Try it, though; it may be your best bet.

  Here on the farm, curing is a challenge. The best hams I have made were aged in a back shed. With a great deal of ventilation, the air moved through freely. A huge elm tree to the south side provided constant coolness; even on the hottest day of summer the shed would stay cool. Because the shed was open to breez
es, it was also open to flies. Many a ham has been lost to maggots gnawing internally. One solution I tried was to wrap the meat in muslin fabric, tied well. It usually worked, but still wasn’t perfect.

  For years I have tried deboning the hams prior to salting them. To this day I am not sure which preparation I prefer, so I will give you an overview of the deboning method.

  The leg is removed from the carcass as with the more traditional ham style. Then a very sharp, short boning knife is used to remove the entire bone from the ham. I have heard of splitting open the leg, removing the bone and then sewing up the opened leg, but that is not as much of a challenge.

  Little by little, working from both ends of the leg, cut the muscle from the bone. At the shin the muscle will be very thin at the surface and difficult to remove; patience and perseverance are required. Have care—the pork at this point is rather chilly, the fat slippery, the meat still rather wet. Your hand with a sharp, small knife is reaching deep into the center of this doughnut of pork. Where the pork ends and your fingers begin is sometimes in question.

  Once you have the deboning halfway finished, cutting the meat off the bone from both ends, you can hold on to the leg bone and let gravity pull the remaining leg muscle down. One hand holds the bone aloft, while the other slowly cuts the remaining muscle from the bone. With luck it will all come out without damaging the cylinder of pork.

  I like this method. I’ve done this for years. Recently I have had cooks inform me that it is simply not how it is done. I am not sure what that means, but I don’t care. I think that the goal of farming and cooking is to find your own way, to learn from the traditions of Europe, but then to adapt them to your climate, to your needs, to your skills and products. If I wanted to live in Europe, I would pack my bags and move. My goal here is to live my American life on my little farm, eating great food; food with integrity, not food that is imitative of my counterparts a continent away.

  Once the tunnel boning is complete, salt the meat in the same manner as ham that still has a bone. The salt will permeate well, as there is more surface area. Once the salting is complete, remove the meat from the brine in the same manner. Dry it, and tidy it up. Now the challenge is to tie it together to make the pork look less like a doughnut and more like an apple fritter, solid. Easier said than done. Drying the pork will close the gap in the meat, but it needs some assistance. We don’t want an air pocket in the center. We also need a way to hang this ham from the rafters to dry. Again, easier said than done. The pork has firmed up, but it is still meat. Slippery, unwieldy, with no hard edges to tie on to.

  Both methods—with bone or without—will make a nice ham. Another option is to smoke the pork as well as to cure the pork. After the salting has cured the meat, the ham can be smoked in the same manner as bacon. The result will be more like a Tyrolean speck than an Italian prosciutto, but smoke is a lovely flavor. There will also be less chance of flies nibbling their way into the heart of the pork.

  Salting and drying is the basic technique used to preserve pork for a length of time. You can apply this technique to other parts of the pig. Any meat can be salted and air-dried. Some cuts of meat, however, will be tastier than others. You could conceivably cure the ribs, but why bother? Roast them up the first day and enjoy them. There is not a great deal of meat and really not that much fat either. The best cuts for curing have fat. Fat is flavor. Fat is moisture. Fat is your friend.

  A couple of classic cuts to preserve with salt: the jowls turn into a lovely guanciale; instead of curing the bellies on the flat and making bacon, season them liberally with chilies, roll them, tie them tightly and cure them for spicy pancetta; large slabs of fat make for tasty lardo; the main muscle of the shoulder transforms itself into coppa. These are classic Italian treatments. Instead of trying to duplicate these traditions, use the idea of them as the basis for preserving your own pork in your own traditions.

  Turning lovely bits of the pig into fine slices of delectable charcuterie for the table—nothing could be more in the spirit of my farm. The ingredients are basic: pork that was well raised and a simple box of kosher salt. Nothing is wasted, all is utilized. The transformation is profound, yet simple and achievable.

  Fourteen

  The Present-Day Farm

  Kurtwood Farms is located on an island near Seattle, surrounded by suburbs and small one-acre lots. Compared to the humble gardens of the city, a twelve-acre plot is tremendous: room for animals and row crops and a woodlot. Coming from the Midwest, however, a visitor would think this parcel tiny and un-farm-like.

  The terrain of this farm is varied. The upper pasture is high on the western hill, the house and its outbuildings lie on the lower, eastern border of the plot. Between the upper pasture and the buildings are the lowest sections, below the water table much of the year. This band of land, running north to south, is perennially wet, muddy and difficult to traverse. The eastern section, where the barn, the dairy, the kitchen and the rest of the structures are clustered, is close to the neighbors. From the house I can hear the neighbors mowing their lawns, their children playing on their Slip ’n Slide, the cars coming and going down their driveways. It is the suburban quadrant.

  On the upper pastures, the cows relax, the calves graze in their paddock, and the orchard trees stand in tidy rows. Standing on this verdant stretch of land uninterrupted by buildings or power lines or neighbors, I can see Mount Rainier in the distance.

  This island was settled by farmers and loggers 150 years ago, but today only a handful of its twelve-thousand-plus inhabitants make their living from the land; the vast majority commute off the island to the city for work. This piece of land was originally part of a larger homestead, settled by a German man who in 1881 built the log house that is the center point of the farm. Soon after the house was completed it was sold to the Beall family, who grew this homestead into an agricultural powerhouse on the island, erecting acres of glass greenhouses to raise vegetables and later roses and orchids for close to one hundred years. This farm, this land, is the legacy of a long agricultural tradition. These hills and knolls and small valleys supported the Beall family. The pastures grew kale to feed their prizewinning chickens.

  Today, Kurtwood Farms is a mixed farm, one with animals, vegetables and fruits. The cheese ends up for sale and the rest of what I produce gets served at weekly dinner events. The more customary model in this country is a large farm with one or maybe a few similar crops: large hog operations, corn and soybean farms and mammoth dairy enterprises. Those farms are based on the idea that animals, vegetables and fruits can be produced via an assembly-line model. A production farm is efficient and profitable. Kurtwood Farms is neither efficient nor particularly profitable.

  My vision of a farm is a throwback to an earlier era. It is, I must admit, a time that never really existed. I have taken bits and pieces of agricultural design over the years and used them as I see fit. The barn is a large timber-frame structure that looks much like any French barn of the nineteenth century. I keep an old Oliver tractor from 1949 around simply because I like its design, sturdy and redolent of post–World War II industrial confidence. The tractor I use the most is the compact John Deere, with its hydraulic steering, four-wheel drive and three-point hitch. The kitchen garden is a study in modernity: large, repetitive stark cement beds surrounded by mute gray gravel and low concrete curbs. My greatest tool on the farm is most likely my cell phone, plus an iPod for keeping my sanity on long lonely tasks. The buildings reflect a taste for all things rural French, while still utilizing the great materials of Douglas fir and western red cedar, ubiquitous in Pacific Northwest forests. I have shaped this farm over the years and love it, and yet I still think it should be bigger, produce more food, be tidier.

  I am a more experienced farmer now, but that does not mean that I am immune to the unpredictability, and sometimes downright cruelty, of nature. This past spring, soon after the ewes had lambed, the field was filled with a dozen ewes and close to twice that many baby lambs. A pot
ential problem for any newborn animal is scours: known to humans as diarrhea. The youngster eats too much or too little of one thing or another and promptly gets sick. The danger is dehydration. The animal will stop eating, lose weight, weaken and most importantly stop drinking water. A quick death is often in order. I have had animals with scours over the years. With quick attention, I can get them back to health. If I don’t notice it early on, their demise is generally assured.

  In this case, I had caught it early. One young lamb was slowing down, sitting by herself and not eating. Her rear end showed the telltale signs of scours. She was an incredibly adorable little lamb, maybe six weeks old, already a nice woolly coat of brown and white. She looked at me with a lamb’s characteristic bright eyes, all hope and optimism. The sour eyes of an old ewe were years away.

  I headed for the back field with my standard help kit for young lambs: a small syringe with no needle, a bottle of Pepto-Bismol and some sugar water. I filled the syringe with bright pink medicine, and holding the small mouth of the lamb open, I squirted it into her mouth. Not sure that she liked it, but she ingested enough of it to help. I followed with ample syringefuls of the lightly sweetened water, trying to get her rehydrated. Each day I would trek back out, giving her a bit more pink and as much water as she could drink, four or five times a day. After the third day I was convinced that I had saved this one. After all these years I had a sense that I knew when I had rounded the corner of survivability. Although the young lamb stayed in one place, I moved her around each day, and she could hold her head up and seemed to be gaining strength. Each time I went out to feed her she would look up at me with those innocent eyes.