Spring

Not to rave too much about any one topic, we just had to show everyone the incredible marbling of the Mangalitsa pork. This is a piece from the leg, which was brined and seared. Truely awesome.

We had the good fortune to be taught some basic grafting technique from a local expert orchardist named Ed, he grew up in Holland and was kind enough to come over and show us how to top work some old pear trees. The tree was vigorous, but the pears were not good at all. We grafted an old heirloom, asian type that we had here, and several old varieties of keeper pears that Ed had in his orchard, including one named after his father, Suij, from Holland. The tree looks kind of rough, but as the grafts take, we will continue to remove the old growth. We also grafted several plum varieties into our healthy Italian Prune Plum trees, of which we have plenty. We will look forward to reworking these trees and it will give us greater diversity and let us ripen over longer periods of time. Some of the cooking pears that Ed brought us were from last year, and are really good. As it is now, most of our pears ripen at the same time, during our busiest period, late August.

Here is a terrine being lined with some of the nice cured Mangalitsa Lardo. It is very clean and white, great for lining duck or chicken liver mousse.

The sun has been shining, lulling us into a false sense of security. We all know that many weeks of rain could be in store. But spring is unstoppable at this point, the tomatoes are started and the fruit trees are begging to bloom.