Falling behind and catching up.

It has been a while since I wrote. I think it has something to do with the natural tension between working the land and writing about working the land.
We have also been up to a few things.
First we held our second annual summer festival at the farm. It was a great success. So many great people came out and joined us and the weather was not that bad. I got a chance to see some old friends Like Sharyn who took some great pictures of the event. I also got to make some new friends like John Scott Auterino who took some great pictures of the event.
My friend Jamie did most of our part of the cooking and it was excellent. He has a good post about it over here. We also collected a big box of food for the food shelves. I would like to raise even more at the fall festival.
We have also been trying to keep up with the new expanded garden. Everything is growing well. It is taking me a while to get everything in but what is in is doing great. I hope to post some pictures some night this week.
We also went and took a class this afternoon on butchering whole hogs with the Scott Pampuch of Corner Table . We had a great time. We broke down some hogs from Hidden Stream Farm in Elgin. Butchering an animal is something that I am familiar with after years of butchering my own deer but there were a few new wrinkles where hogs are concerned. I learned the correct way to remove the jowls for guanciale by first demonstrating that I could cut them out the wrong way. Scott also showed Jess how to hold a knife correctly.



We also brought a bottle of the nocino and helped to "raise awareness" of the fine qualites of good nocino after the knives were put away. We all had a lunch together at a long table in the restaurant. It was a great afternoon and the experience was great. The thing I learned about that most interested me was nettle salt. It looked like dried nettle tops ground fine and mixed with kosher salt. It had a fabulous smell, very green and herbal.