Yesterday was warm and sunny and springlike, and I had a blissful day, cooking collards and blackeyed peas and biscuits and an ancient country ham that we found out in the root cellar.
Today it’s dark, and pouring rain, and all the things that need doing on the farm are sort of looming for the remainder of my forseeable future.
I guess the holidays are over!
We didn’t host our annual New Year’s Day Open House this year—we’re just not really set up for big parties here yet. Instead, we just had a few family members, and a couple of good friends and neighbors over.
The ham was one that DH cured two years ago, and it was pretty wonderful. The flavor was fabulous, and it wasn’t as salty as some, which was surprising. The only thing I don’t love about a ham that old is the texture—it gets coarse and a bit stringy, making it impossible to slice. I had a few small slices of it raw, and that’s the way to eat it! (By the way, I didn’t think of doing that myself—I read that some afficionados eat aged country hams without cooking them, and that time and curing render it perfectly safe. You know prosciutto is raw ham, right?)
So, anyway, I guess we’re back to the battle of the fences. And a ewe that ED thinks may be getting close to lambing. And perusing seed catalogues while imagining that it will ever be summer again. Or maybe just curling up with another cup of tea and the big delicious book
I’m seeing some possibilities here.