Winter and Summer on the Farm

a Local Culture essay

This essay of mine was just published in Local Culture (the journal of the Front Porch Republic). Many are those who moan online about how digital life is destroying both print and local culture. Subscribe to this journal, and you might just move the needle back a bit. (For those who read this earlier, sorry for the repeated sentence in the first paragraph. It has been corrected.)

the cover of the Local Culture issue

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If I had to pick a point where the circle of life on our East Tennessee farm begins it would be winter. Winter is the time of preparing for the fertility of spring, growth of summer, and harvest of fall. It is the time when we plan our gardens, build a new manure pile, and make repairs to fences and buildings. Winter is also the season that lambs are born, and what our annual lambing produces sets the stage for everything else to come with the flock during the year. Cindy and I have been taking turns getting up at three o’clock for a welfare check of the ewes with new lambs and, more importantly, the ewes expected to lamb imminently. On this February night, in the middle of lambing season, it is my turn. Neither of us has had a full night’s sleep for way too long. The thermometer in the kitchen indicates it is 15 degrees outside.

In the barn I find that lambs and mothers are nestled in slumber. The glare of my flashlight rouses one set of week-old twins. They rise, stretch, and begin to nurse with zeal. Over the next little while most of the other lambs go in search of their own mothers. The noise level heightens; it takes a bit of back and forth bleating before moms and babies sort themselves out and the lambs find the right teats. Only then does a contented quiet return.

Upon looking around further I see that one maiden ewe has just broken her water. She stands with a large balloon of amniotic fluid dangling between her hocks. Birthing is underway now, so I step outside into the frigid night air to await what I hope is an unassisted delivery. The waning half-moon is just above the house in the east. Icicles grow long in unseen motion off a nearby shed roof, sparkling like the stars above.

This is our farm life, an intimate continuum. The seed, the plant, and the pot of beans or greens seasoned with ham; the egg, the chick, the rooster, and the bowl of gumbo; the lamb, the nurturing, the fattening, and the feast—each arc has its own alpha and omega.

Of all the reasons we undertook farming in this narrow valley a quarter-century ago, surely eating well from the fruits of our labor must rank near the top. And when those “fruits” are presented as a slow-smoked hog or lamb, the juicy, richly flavored meat falling apart, well, that is the validatory stamp, the cherry on top, the merit badge of goodness that says all is well and God wants us to be happy.

Thomas Jefferson’s culinary dictum to use meat “not as an aliment so much as a condiment to the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet,” is essentially sound. It certainly works well enough for a weeknight meal. As a born-and-raised Louisiana boy, however, I am bound to point out that, come a festive occasion, the traditional Southern table features meat in large quantities front and center, in a seat of honor (although, to be sure, because our farm gardens do provide such an ample bounty for the table, that meat course is always orbited by a host of satellite vegetable dishes). Even now, in these waning days of glory and greatness—that is, at a time when minute rice and instant grits mar the pantries of the ones who have lost the path—the home-cooked dinner, if prepared with a love of land, family, and friends, still adheres to that most holy of formulas: the meat-and-three.

Many years ago I spent the week one day in a mid-size town in Minnesota. My then-colleague, knowing my fondness for ordering meatloaf, chicken, or the like, accompanied by a perfect trifecta of vegetables on the side, took me to the town’s local diner for lunch. The meat choices were conventional and acceptable. But I was more than a bit flummoxed when asked to pick three veggies from the following list: French fries, baked potatoes, scalloped potatoes, potato chips, mashed potatoes and gravy, potato salad, and loaded potato skins. When I asked if the diner offered any non-potato vegetables, the kind waitress checked and reported back that the cook would be happy to open a can of succotash for me. I declined, opting instead for the when-in-Rome choice, the carb-coma combo.

Because farming for us starts with and ends at the table, I am frankly puzzled by why anyone would go through the lengthy and laborious work of growing and raising food if it didn’t conclude with some cornbread and pot likker, vine-ripened tomatoes, and a cucumber or crowder pea salad—or, at the very least, a comforting bowl of chicken and dumplings.

I don’t raise chickens because they are cute (which they can be). I raise them because I’m looking to get an ample supply of eggs each day, even in winter. And I damn sure don’t get up in the middle of the night only out of compassion for our ewes (though I do have compassion for them). I get up because some lambs will provide income, some will become breeding stock, and some will provide meat for our table, including one special ram lamb that is destined to be smoked on a blue-sky summer day.

The family of a teenager who formerly worked with me on our farm still smokes a hog the old-fashioned way. The teen and his brother kill the pig in the afternoon, then eviscerate it, scald it, and dig a large pit in the ground. Around midnight they place the carcass in the pit and build a fire on top. The boys make a night of it—sitting around the glowing coals with friends, adding wood as needed, sleeping off and on—until the roasted hog is ready the next day, at which time friends and family come together for a feast in the early afternoon.

I leave the all-night sessions to the young. Instead, I favor using a La Caja China roasting box or what is called, simply, the “china box.” For the uninitiated, the china box is a portable wooden cooker lined with metal and covered by a tray for the charcoal. It is built to simulate slow-roasting the whole pig (or lamb or deer) in the ground, but in less than half the time.

On this cloudless Fourth of July morning, about eight o’clock or so, I lay the carcass of a spring ram lamb onto a stainless steel table in the barn. We have just harvested our garlic a few days before, and the bulbs are still fresh and juicy, uncured and green, perfect for my purpose. I halve the cloves of a few bulbs, maybe thirty cloves in all. Then, using a paring knife, I cut slits across the meat. I push the chunks of garlic inside before smearing across the surface and into the crevices lard and a varying spice rub that is sure to include smoked paprika. After brushing on a final marinade of vinegar and citrus and covering the lamb with sprigs of rosemary, I place the carcass belly up in the box, put the top on, and light the charcoal. For now all that is left to do is wait, so I return to the house and sit down with a book.

Even though the box sits a good fifty yards away from my study, the smell of the roasting meat has me wiping saliva from the corners of my mouth within the hour. If any response is truly atavistic, it is the drooling triggered by the smell of meat cooking over coals, by fat dripping and sizzling.

At some point mid-morning Cindy reminds me that it is time to put flowers on the graves. For twenty-five years now every Fourth of July we have placed wildflowers upon the graves of Revolutionary War heroes James “Big Jim” Campbell and William Moore in honor of their participation in the Battle of Kings Mountain. I still find it remarkable, sixty or so years after the battle they fought in, that they were both buried in a small church cemetery down a gravel road in another narrow valley not far from where our farm is located. There are fewer than two hundred graves in that out-of-the-way spot. The intimate plot of land is home to the oak-shaded graves of veterans of the War of 1812, of both Union and Confederate soldiers, and indeed of participants in all conflicts up through Vietnam.

The graveyard is peaceful and quiet on this warm East Tennessee morning, except for the colony of bees buzzing around their home in a rotted-out tree trunk. In all our years of coming here we have never met any other visitors. We place the flowers and stand quietly for a few minutes before moving among the other now-familiar graves. As always, we remark on those who died too young (so many) and those who lived so long (also a surprising number). Then we head back to the farm. It is time to attend to the roasting meat.

Out at the barn I turn the lamb over so that its back is facing up, pile on more wood pellets for additional smoke flavor, and mop the meat again with sauce. Just before covering it again and adding more charcoal I trot out my secret for keeping the meat moist during the final few hours: bacon. Thick, wide belly pieces from our sweet-tempered old sow. The sow was a very large hog—at her death 650 pounds, to be precise, once the hide, head, and some organs were removed. The bacon we have from her is primarily fat, with very little lean. It is the ideal choice to self-baste the leaner lamb meat going into the final stretch. (The bonus is chef’s prerogative: when I unveil the roasted lamb, that crisp bacon is mine.)

The twenty to thirty family members and friends who join us begin to arrive mid-afternoon. Around five I gather some volunteers and head back to the barn. This is the moment for the great reveal: one beautifully smoked lamb. We lift it out of the china box and onto the stainless table. The phones come out and pictures are taken, and then we begin the pleasant task of pulling the meat off the bone before chopping it up. A one-hundred-pound animal provides a lot of meat. So we make a parade out of it, with a half-dozen platters each piled high and presented to the crowd waiting in the backyard. At last comes the moment we’ve all been anticipating. We sit down and dive in, savoring the meat, the assorted vegetable dishes, and the fellowship with those we love.

Late into the night, as the taillights of the last pickup disappear down our gravel driveway, Cindy and I close the busy day by taking a final walk together among the sheep. The mothers are now just a couple of months from being rebred; their winter offspring are already starting to look like gawky teenagers. All is well under the star-filled summer sky. We head indoors to enjoy a sleep without interruption for as long as we have the chance.

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Reading recently: Penhally (C. Gordon), a novel of the rise and decline of a landed Kentucky family, the author was married to Allen Tate, one of the Southern Agrarians. The Mint Julep (R. B. Harwell). Eating, Drinking, and Visiting in the Old South (J. Taylor), a culinary and cultural history covering the planter class, the yeomen, and the enslaved. And, I’ve been on an embarrassingly long binge of John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport mysteries. (Embarrassing, only because I could go back and reread the books from 15-20 years ago and they seemed only vaguely familiar.)

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Recipe from Winged Elm Farm: Brian’s Crowder Pea Salad (from the above L.C. essay)

Use any Southern field pea, be it crowder, black-eyed pea, or other cowpea variety, for the base. Texas Zipper Cream, a delicious variety of delicate white pea that grew to excess in my garden last year, is my personal favorite. (You can substitute the quantities for any of the ingredients based on what you have available.)

Ingredients:
• 1/4 or more cup fresh lime juice
• 1 cup parsley, chopped
• 1 cup canola oil
• 5 cups cooked Southern field peas
• 1 Vidalia (pronounced “vī-DAY-yuh”) onion, chopped
• 1 bell pepper, chopped
• 1 tomato, chopped
• 1 cucumber, chopped
• 2 Poblano- or Hatch-type peppers, seeded and chopped
• Salt and black pepper to taste
Mix the parsley and lime juice together and whisk in the oil. Add all the other ingredients and toss together. Refrigerate for at least an hour to cool. Eat and enjoy.