Culinary Heartbreak

As you know our first ever home reared air dried ham venture was a huge success and we are still licking our lips and patting ourselves on the backs.  The joint lasted a couple of months. It weighed roughly 1500g, and comparing the cost of something similar such as prosciutto or parma at €80 a kilo, ours would have been roughly valued at €120.  Is that too cheeky, comparing our own ham to such famous delicacies?!

Having finished our first air dried ham at Christmas, we were savouring the moment of cutting into the  next culinary extravaganza with anticipation. Our mouths watered at the thought of it and one day we could hold off no longer. I tripped out to the wood barn to cut down the next ham, and shock horror ... a huge hole chewed into the side of the muslin where some blasted unidentified creature had been helping itself to the most delicious and expensive  meal in its entire life. The whole thing was a disaster, it looked like a gaping leg wound, there was nothing salvageable. I hope theres a rat, or a cat out there, suffering badly with gout after its selfish over indulgence!

We've no idea what creature was responsible. What makes it more infuriating is that it was nobodies fault but our own. When the first ham was taken down it shifted the balance, so that the second ham swung to the side of the cage and was touching the edge. This provided any creature a perfect ladder down to the food source. Next time we will be far more careful, and instead of string to suspend the joints, I will use fishing line.

But the story doesn't end there, no, there's another link in the chain ...  butterfly wings and all that. Having decided democratically that it wasn't worth eating the remains we gave it to the dog. She devoured it and, not surprisingly, was very very thirsty. That night our children came down with a particularly aggressive vomiting bug and when I went to the kitchen at 5am to collect puke buckets I noted, with due agitation, that the entire kitchen floor was flooded. After a process of eliminating other possible culprits such as burst pipes, or rising water under the house, I had to concede that it was indeed the dog (the one looking sheepish in the corner) who was responsible for the flood. She has always had a bladder of steal, but unfortunately the huge salt intake from the ham, followed by the volume of water she needed to drink to quench her thirst, all proved to be too much.  Mind you, after cleaning up the consequences of projectile vomiting bug from the girls bedroom (even had to put curtains in the wash), dog wee was an altogether more pleasant and light hearted task.

When the meat has been raised and cared for by us, and when we have seen it walk in our woods for months, and in the end been directly responsible for taking its life to sustain us, it really does ache when something like this happens and it goes to waste.  A loss is felt and a failure in terms of respect to the pig.

Comments

[Lizz]

I'm sorry for your loss.

I'm laughing about your clean-up. I've so been there!

[Notaproperfarmer]

Bad Luck! I reckon the culprits found the ham using your map...don't say I didn't warn you. (see comments 5th Dec) hehe.

[Robin]

Hope every one feels better soon. I have had days like that here to, when something you would normally be upset about isn't so bad comparatively speaking.

[polly peirce]

I could almost weep for you...

Regarding the family; it's horrid and we've all been there, dog pee is definately better than projectile vomiting.

Regarding the ham; that is a disaster of catastrophic propertions when you consider the investment of time, energy and also emotion which went into what should have been an exercise in culinary perfection.

[Claire]

What a shame. I'm sad to hear this.

[cliodhna]

Hi, loss of ham bad and very disheartening but description of disaster night quite funny.
I am sure it wasn't funny at the time and I hope both humans and animals have recovered but I did chuckle my way through the said paragraph. Better luck next time, I am sure the pig understands on a cosmic level somewhere.

[farmingfriends]

I am so sorry to hear about the ham.
Hope the girls and the dogs have recovered.
Sara from farmingfriends

[Katrien]

Yeah, when you think about it that ham was worth a lot more than $120, sorry Euro! A great lesson for us readers about what food is really worth!
Get better soon!

[Elizabeth]

Sorry to hear about the ham - lets hope whatever ate it also had a raging thirst!! On a much smaller scale, I've just discovered that some little rodent git has been devouring the apples I had carefully stored away in the shed over winter - all they've left are the apple-shaped newspaper they were wrapped in.

[Maddy]

Oh I do hope your children are feeling better and that the dog is very appreciative of his wonderful dinner.

At least you got to taste some of your hard work and next time it will taste all the more so.