The lardo has finished curing and has been hung to dry. The mocetta is on day eighteen and is doing very well. There’s either salt or good mold on the outside of it.

Look! I actually weighed it this time!

574 grams of pastured [...]]]>

Lardo on day one, mocetta on day 18

The lardo has finished curing and has been hung to dry. The mocetta is on day eighteen and is doing very well. There’s either salt or good mold on the outside of it.

Look! I actually weighed it this time!

574 grams of pastured goodness. You can much more clearly see the resident hairs in the skin. Today I learned that industrial/conventional pork producers aim to produce a carcass with no more that 0.6″ of back fat. The minimum thickness for curing into lardo is 1″. It’s truly wonderful to have so many artisanal producers in our neck of the woods.

Ruhlman doesn’t, I think, talk much about before/after weights in Charcuterie or, at any rate, I missed it. Either way, it’ll be interesting to get the data on moisture loss. Come to think of it, what would the percentages look like in pastured pork versus industrial, saline-injected meat?

Ten days later, it's unwrapped.

This is what the fatback looked like once unwrapped from the plastic wrap and tin foil that held the cure in the fridge.

No, it's not exciting, but it's documented.

Poor lardo spends all of its time in the dark. Light will cause the fat to turn rancid so it’s wrapped in foil in the fridge and cured in the dark. On top of that, it’s swaddled in cheesecloth while it hangs.

All wrapped up in cheesecloth to protect it while it hangs.

I confess that it has more than a little to do with my odd reading habits of late, but locking things away in a darkened closet seems a little sinister to me. While charcuterie has very little to do with unnamable evil, there are a few commonalities.

As I alluded to earlier, there’s a little over a pound of fatback [...]]]> That’s not actually true, it’s back fat. However, I once saw one of those godawful women’s magazines at a grocery store and, after reading the headline “Cure your belly fat now!,” was honestly confused that they weren’t talking about bacon.

As I alluded to earlier, there’s a little over a pound of fatback curing in the fridge right now in anticipation of joining my mocetta (goat prosciutto, roughly) that’s hanging in the Harry Potter closet under the stairs.

First, let’s check in on the mocetta. It’s been hanging for 11 days and is definitely looking more like prosciutto that rotten meat.

As you can see, I was in the middle of doing knife maintenance and sharpening.

There was a bit of white mold turning to blue green on it so I performed a little surgery.

The nice thing about the bad mold was that I got to check on the progress of the drying. It seems to be moving along nicely. It’s distinctly firmer and the cured texture goes about a centimeter into the ham. It turning into food instead of rotting meat!

After a few more days (okay, a week), I checked back in on it and the “wound” seems to have healed itself and the ham is drying as intended with no more blue mold.

Moving on to the lardo.

First of all, it’s fat. Pure fat (almost) which has been salted and dried. I’m not sure if I’ve had it before but I hear good things and have a lot of fat back. Now, I’ve been served pork belly confit* (Yeah, that was these guys). And it was fantastic. Not cured though.

I started with Michael Rulman’s recipe from the book Charcuterie but, as ever, fiddled with it. Juniper berries were added and white pepper substituted for 1/4 of the black pepper.

From left to right, juniper berries, bay leaves, peppercorns, and basic cure #1

And now the meat. The recipe calls for fatback or, you know, the fat from the back of the pig. This may sounds obvious, but butchery terminology is rarely so straightforward. The boston butt, for example, comes from the part of the back directly over the front legs. What this implies about bostonians is unclear.

The pink that you see is muscle that came along when the fat was removed. The other side has little bits of stubble that remains from the process of scraping the pig. Pig, not carcass, is a deliberate word choice. It’s a carcass once it’s gutted or skinned, as I see it. Since scraping is the first step after killing and bleeding, I still see it as a pig.

Scraping is cool though. The pig doesn’t get skinned or plucked like sheep, goats, and poultry (the only animals I have firsthand experience with). Instead, the pig is scalded, or immersed or exposed to water around 145F and the hair and outer layer of skin is scraped off in an unpleasant and time-consuming manner. Basically, you skritch skritch skritch every inch of the pig’s skin with a knife or a pastry scraper or even a hog scraper if you’re well equipped.

The scraping process inevitably leaves a little bit of the hair behind. Like pinfeathers on broilers, this has resulted in a drive toward lighter-colored animals to satisfy consumer and producer demand for a blemish-free product. Like white poultry, the lack of pigmentation makes the animal less hardy in the sun. When I get pigs, I’m thinking a breed like the large black hog. Mmmm, hardy.

Due to misremembering the recipe, I was looking forward to posting this with pictures of the lardo leaving the fridge and being hung. Fortunately, I re-read the recipe and it’s got another three days. (Less botulism means more years to eat food!) I’m going with Ruhlman’s minimum this time as my stuff has been turning out saltier than ideal.

In other news, I’ve come into possession of a 5.5 pound leg of ram from a mature, adult ram who, until yesterday, displayed a bad attitude toward children. During the butchering, the meat smelled intensely of the flavor of lamb. He was also tremendously fatty with much more marbling than other lambs/goats I’ve and the meats has a deep red color. Much of the odor faded while he hung, which is why one hangs meat, I guess.

I am a bit bereft of recipe ideas for the leg. Suggestions? I’d like to find something to highlight the powerful flavor and muscle development in the same way that coq au vin is best with a gamy old rooster.

Thoughts?

Think hard about your food and your sources, and what it takes to support [...]]]> These California farmers are giving up their land and quitting farming. Most of the reasons they cite for getting out of farming could be things we are saying next year or the year after, or the year after that.

Think hard about your food and your sources, and what it takes to support them. Farming is hard on mind and body, and land is expensive, and organic is expensive, and farmers too need health care and homes and a bit of time to relax. If you eat, you should consider these costs.

[We] are in ecstasy over here, post roast chicken. Do you have any more we could purchase? Also, could we sign up to order more now? How many can we reserve? We LOVE your chicken!!!

On being told the 48-hour deadline has passed so we can’t legally give them [...]]]>

Subj: NEED MORE CHICKEN!!!

[We] are in ecstasy over here, post roast chicken. Do you have any more we could purchase? Also, could we sign up to order more now? How many can we reserve? We LOVE your chicken!!!

On being told the 48-hour deadline has passed so we can’t legally give them any more:

The chicken was *INCREDIBLE*. We had it last night.

And

And seriously the guy we ate last night was amazing. We roasted w/ 2 lemons (Marcella Hazan recipe) — nothing else — and it knocked it out of the park. We’re converted!!

Aw, thanks! (And thanks, chickens!)

I assume they’re using this recipe, Chicken with Lemons from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan. It looks wonderfully simple, which I find to be my favorite method of cooking these chickens, who have plenty of flavor of their own. (My current obsession with HF-W‘s barbecue sauce notwithstanding. [I can't find the recipe online but it consists of garlic, salt, ketchup, mustard, soy sauce, and brown sugar, and a smidge of apple cider vinegar.])

Two things that may or may not [...]]]> Our second batch of chickens for this year went smoothly last weekend. It was a small batch and we had some enthusiastic helpers. I even had enough energy to go to the show (the New Pornographers) that I had tickets to in Seattle that same night!

Two things that may or may not have happened:

• A bag of chicken kidneys was set aside for one of our more adventurous helpers. This may have been handed out to a customer instead of a bag of giblets! Our giblets baggies include heart, liver, and gizzard, and not usually kidneys. In any case it isn’t meant to be just kidneys. Apologies if you received this! Please feel free to enjoy them or bring them back to me (probably put them in the freezer at this point) and you can get extra giblets next time.
• I thought I counted three birds with limbs damaged in processing — one broken wing and two broken legs. We put them in to chill with the others, intending to mark the packaging to indicate that they were damaged. After the birds were all packaged up, though, we found only one broken wing and one broken leg indicated on the bagged birds. But I might have counted wrong and there may not have been 2 broken legs. So, there may or may not have been a chicken with a broken leg that was distributed like a whole one. If you got this broken chicken unknowingly, let us know and we’ll hook you up with a discount next time.

We’re getting some good feedback, which is really gratifying — thanks to all our customers! We love to hear from you and we’d like to hear the constructive criticism as well as the “OMG nom”s and the delicious recipes.

We’ll be at market at least once for this next batch of chickens, as well as taking signups online as usual (form’s not ready yet, but it’ll be soon). We may also have a signup sheet at the farm stand on Day Road. Stay tuned for more info.

These shy little guys (who won’t move out from behind the crate so I can take a good picture) are Soay sheep, a not-very-domesticated breed from Scotland. They are small, and their tails are short so they don’t need to be docked, and they don’t need to [...]]]> Hey look what we got!

These shy little guys (who won’t move out from behind the crate so I can take a good picture) are Soay sheep, a not-very-domesticated breed from Scotland. They are small, and their tails are short so they don’t need to be docked, and they don’t need to be sheared to gather their wool, as they rub it off or you can just pull it off with your fingers. And, they’ll eat scrub and weeds, including Scotch broom and blackberries, like goats will, but most domestic sheep won’t.

We brought them home from Puyallup last night in the dog crate in the back of truck. It was late and dark when we got home so we left them in the crate, on the front porch, for the night, then woke up early this morning to let them out to learn about the electric fence and get some delicious grass. They munched all day and spent a lot of time running and jumping when we opened the back door and startled them into touching the electric fence accidentally. (They don’t learn as fast as dogs!)

They come with the names Biscuit and Muskrat* (the one with horns, in front above). They are wethers, which means they are fixed males who have been removed from circulation, so to speak, for whatever genetic reason. In this case they will ultimately be removed into our freezer and thence to our tummies for the winter. If it goes well, we may see about a breeding and/or wool flock in the future.

All of a sudden, where I used to see overgrown grass and weeds, I now see delicious pasture. Who knew I’d have this side effect? So we’re trying to figure out how best to confine them to specific small parts of our yard so they can safely trim the lawn without eating the cabbage and kale and lettuce, or eat the Scotch broom and blackberry without getting into the street. Harness? Collar? More electric fence?

If you have experience with sheep, please do chime in! We are winging it here … so far they seem to want to eat some grass and not be near us. On Sunday we will pick up a couple of domestic-breed mutt-ish wethers (Romney and whatever), also for meat, who we will try to integrate with these guys. Any and all advice/ideas are welcome!

* Despite the America (orig. Captain and Tennille, I think) song, I keep thinking it’s Biscuit and Buckwheat. So Muskrat may become Buckwheat. Or else Buttermilk, for thematic-ness.)

The chickens (affectionately known as nuggets) moved to pasture [...]]]> So, we really dropped the ball on keeping everyone updated on the broiler chickens via the website. We really intended to, but it turned out that 150 chickens took up kind of a lot of time. So, here’s a retrospective of their lives …

The chickens (affectionately known as nuggets) moved to pasture the last weekend of September, just before the TWL Harvest Fair. Thousands of people attend the Harvest Fair so the chickens had a busy first day, and it seemed we prompted a lot of family conversations about where meat comes from (which I think is good). From there, we moved the tractors the hill towards the top, then over towards the orchard, then back down into some extra-delicious juicy green grass, then sideways towards the cropland area — basically in a big rectangle to avoid some trees and some really hilly areas.

By the time we got back to our starting point, about 6 weeks later, and looked at the path up the hill that we had already grazed, we realized that the grass where the chickens had been (scratching, pooping, scratching, eating, pooping) was greener, thicker, and taller than the paths we had left between the tractors. Part of the reason we do chickens in tractors — aside from the extremely important fact that it’s the most humane, safest way for the chickens to spend their lives — is the soil improvement that comes with rotating poultry through a pasture. It was really gratifying to see it in practice. We were able to re-graze them on the land they had already passed through because the soil and grass had improved so much.

One of the first times we moved them, shortly after the Harvest Fair, I noticed one chicken with some sort of morsel that he had just found, and everyone else was chasing him around to try to get it. Kids at the Harvest Fair had been running around with balloons and I heard several of them pop, so I went in to chase him around to try to get it, too, to verify that it wasn’t balloon. It was a little salamander or newt. I felt sorry for the little guy but he was already beyond help, so I left the birds to finish their game of keep-away.

Never let anyone tell you chickens are naturally vegetarian. If you see “vegetarian” on the egg carton, you know those hens were never outside.

It only took a couple of days for them to realize that when we started pulling the tractors forward, instead of running away from us (towards the back), they should run forward to the nice fresh grass that we were dragging them towards. Chickens love grass.

We lost a few of them here and there, a couple for reasons we could identify (ate too much) and a couple we couldn’t. We had one bad day when the biggest tractor blew down the hill and ran over a couple of guys partway, leaving them pinned under the end — one was gimpy but still getting around OK enough to not let us catch him easily, so we left him; the other had a broken wing and a pretty mangled leg. He was big enough to keep so we processed him and were able to keep all the meat except the bad leg and wing. Poor guy.

This weekend we processed everyone who was left, minus the one little girl who was too small and cute to process, who we will keep until she gets bigger or starts laying. We had lots of helpers (though many novices — not like we’re experts!) and we processed all day Saturday and Sunday. By midday on Saturday we got into a rhythm and everyone was pretty comfortable doing all the jobs, so we were able to take breaks and work in shifts and move around between stations for some variety. It was great to see customers again — lots of people were really excited — and to hear about how folks are going to cook them. Lots of barbecue and roasting (my favorite), and some folks with Romertopfs, plus some recipes that might get me eating liver yet … breaded and fried; sauteed; pâté …

It certainly doesn’t make for a good day, and it shouldn’t be, but it’s a day of completeness. It’s thanksgiving all the time on the farm.

Thank you, chickens.