That Would Be Ham on the Right

Yesterday, I was flipping through this month's Mother Earth News and found myself thinking about a great meal last summer. With few exceptions, those mainly being the wine and condiments, everything we ate that night was grown 10 miles or less from Hawksbill Cabin. The original post is here: http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2010/08/vegetables-in-round.html .

Adding to my remembering some fine local produce, over the weekend, there was news from Public House Produce (website http://publichouseproduce.com/index.html ) that it’s time to register for the 2011 CSA. That is welcome news, because it means that the fields are just about ready to be plowed and planted - Spring's not far off. I hear that Public House will be offering a couple of variations on the traditional CSA this year, but will wait to write on it until I’ve got official word.

It’s a timely bit of news. There is a new initiative in Page County, just organizing, that will help local growers with some of the challenging aspects of setting up CSAs and getting what you’ve grown to market. The first meeting was well attended, held last week at the Luray-Page Chamber. There’ll be more news out of this in the next few weeks.

Now back to the photo that opened this post. Late last summer, David told me about getting some pigs going on the farm. There are actually four, two more in addition to the two here. It reminded me that there was a short anecdote in Michael Perry’s Coop about the pigs he started raising at his farm.

The first pair he and his family raised were named Cocklebur (the female) and Wilbur (the male). These two were always destined for the freezer, but the family still decided to name them. It was a proud father who related the tale of his daughter, with another little girl visiting who said their names. After saying their proper names, she added at the end, “But come Easter, that one’s ham and that one’s bacon!”

So when David posted these photos, I asked him which one was Ham, and which one was Bacon. “That would be Ham on the right,” he said.

Here's an Amazon link to Michael Perry's Coop: