So, here’s what I’ve been dreaming of lately. Penguin Classics cloth-bound books designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith. Gosh are they lovely! You don’t even need to read them. Why even crack the spines! I just want them to sit on a shelf and look pretty for me. A shelf in a bright, hip loft that I don’t own.

We are headed to Spain for 15 days to immerse ourselves in all things Jamon. Jamon is salt-cured ham. It sounds simple, but to produce a flavorful ham cured only in salt and essentially eaten raw takes time and practice. The Spanish have been curing hams for centuries. Their process depends upon the right breed of pig fed on right kinds of foods. It also depends upon patience.

On our farm we have pigs and plenty of patience. We also have questions about curing hams. Many of them. And who better to answer these questions than the masters themselves, the Spanish jamoneiros. During our first days in Spain, our guide will be an expert named Bosco (the brother-in-law of a friend) who will take us to ham-producing regions like Huelva, Jabugo, and Salamanca. Below is a map of traditional Jamon-producing regions.

Our hopes for the trip are high. We’d like to see some acorn-fed Iberico pigs. We’d like to unravel the mystery of mold: what kinds are good? What kinds of mold are dangerous or hallucinogens or both? We’d like to understand what makes the shoulder cure differently from the leg. We’d like to see a pig “sacrifice” as the Spanish call it. And we’d like to eat some great ham.

Since we are on a quest (hopefully not a quixotic one), I hope to meet one of my new idols in the food world, a Spanish farmer named Eduardo Sousa. He raises geese and creates humane foie-gras. He lives for his geese, he listens to them, he cares for them and loves them. And in honor of his geese he creates great food. Here’s a TED video where Chef Dan Barber talks about Sousa.

I probably won’t post while we are away, but there will be many posts when we return from our Jamon quest.

Agora em Português:
Estamos indo para a Espanha por 15 dias para mergulhar em todas as coisas relacionadas a Jamon. Jamon é presunto curado no sal. Parece simples, mas para produzir um bom presunto curado apenas com sal e comido cru, leva tempo e prática. Os espanhóis tem curado presuntos para séculos. Seu processo depende da raça do porco e a sua alimentção. Também depende de sal e paciência.

Nós também temos porcos e muita paciência. E, alem disso, temos muitas perguntas. E quem seria melhor para responder a estas perguntas de que os próprios mestres (chamados jamoneiros em espanhol). Durante nossos primeiros dias em Espanha, nosso guia será um mestre chamado Bosco (o cunhado de um amigo) que nos levará para as regiões produtoras como Huelva, Jabugo e Salamanca. Abaixo está um mapa de regiões produtoras de Jamon na Espanha.

Nossas esperanças para a viagem são grandes. Nós gostaríamos de ver alguns suínos alimentados com bolota Iberico. Nós gostaríamos de descobrir o mistério do fungo: que tipos são bons? Que tipos de fungos são perigosas ou alucinógenos? Gostaríamos de entender o que faz a pá cura de forma diferente do pernil. E nós gostaríamos de comer presunto, claro!

Quando estamos em nossa busca espero encontrar um dos meus ídolos no mundo gastronomico, um fazendeiro espanhol chamado Eduardo Sousa. Ele cria gansos e faz foie-gras. Ele vive por seus gansos. E, em homenagem ao seu gansos, Sr. Sousa cria comida boa e saudavel. Aqui está um vídeo onde o chef americano Dan Barber fala de Sousa.

Eu provavelmente não vou escrever no blog quando estamos na Espanha, mas escreverá muitos posts quando voltamos da nossa busca Jamonica!

Wired UK printed this spiffy diagram of an algorithm predicting who will win the World Cup. I hope it’s true!

We’re on high alert tonight. Our lovely (and very pregnant) sow Mona will probably give birth in the next 12 hours. I’ve whispered in her ear to please try to push those piglets out sooner (how about 7 PM?) rather than later. But Mother Nature doesn’t care about my bedtime, and the piglets will arrive whenever they please.

How do we know that it’s Mona’s time? First, she lost her appetite. Next, she started breathing heavily. Milk began to leak from her teats today and (read no further if you’re squeamish–this is a farm blog, folks!) her vulva is really swollen and red. (The picture above says it all, really.) We’ll check her periodically to see if her water has broken. If it has, that means piglets are on the way. Births can last anywhere from 1-5 hours. Sometimes there’s a long wait between piglets, and sometimes they slide out one after the other. I’ll let you know how Mona’s birth goes. Hopefully we’ll have 8-12 new additions by morning.

As you set out on the way to Ithaca
hope that the road is a long one,
filled with adventures, filled with understanding.
The Laestrygonians and the Cyclopes,
Poseidon in his anger: do not fear them,
you’ll never come across them on your way
as long as your mind stays aloft, and a choice
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Laestrygonians and the Cyclopes,
savage Poseidon; you’ll not encounter them
unless you carry them within your soul,
unless your soul sets them up before you.

Hope that the road is a long one.
Many may the summer mornings be
when—with what pleasure, with what joy—
you first put in to harbors new to your eyes;
may you stop at Phoenician trading posts
and there acquire fine goods:
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and heady perfumes of every kind:
as many heady perfumes as you can.
To many Egyptian cities may you go
so you may learn, and go on learning, from their sages.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind;
to reach her is your destiny.
But do not rush your journey in the least.
Better that it last for many years;
that you drop anchor at the island an old man,
rich with all you’ve gotten on the way,
not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.

Ithaca gave to you the beautiful journey;
without her you’d not have set upon the road.
But she has nothing left to give you any more.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca did not deceive you.
As wise as you’ll have become, with so much experience,
you’ll have understood, by then, what these Ithacas mean.

By CP Cavafy, born April 29, 1863
Translated by Daniel Mendelsohn

Long ago, there had been a fire,
And they’d all gone into it,
My brother and sister,
a few
friends, too, and my parents
piecemeal.
And the fire
flooded up at first
like
brilliance from the wood
like
both a burning fount
called up
by great thirst
and the thirst it quenched.

It raged and then it didn’t.
Then there was only
A lull of embers,
vague flares
like wakened absences
of fire dying down
to ash,
and then ash-blunted
scrape of bronze
on stone,
a weight
of ash to lift,
and then the ash haze
left there in the shovel’s wake.

How long have I been here
Keeping the dark
in sight
my mind the place in which
the dark’s grown
conscious of itself in the dark?

Come to me now, love.
I need you.
Come here.
How cold it’s gotten.
Let my name in your voice be
the fresh disturbance,
the rippling
of char-scented air;
your touch the tinder.

–”Hearthkeeper” by Alan Shapiro

For Valentine’s Day, some excerpts of letters between Franz Kafka and his fiancé, Felice Bauer. They had a five-year relationship carried out mostly through letters, and were engaged twice.

Hoje é Dia dos Namorados nos EUA. Para comemorar, trechos da correspondência de Franz Kafka com Felice Bauer. Eles eram noivos para 5 anos e, durante seu noivado, tiveram uma correspondência de mais de 700 páginas. (Só achei trechos das cartas em inglês, infelizmente.)

In 1912, Kafka wrote to Bauer about how she had become inseparable from his work, and also how anticipation of her writing kept him awake at night. He wrote:

“Lately I have found to my amazement how intimately you have now become associated with my writing, although until recently I believe that the only time I did not think about you at all was while I was writing. In one short paragraph I had written, there were, among others, the following references to you and your letters: someone was give a bar of chocolate. There was talk of small diversions someone had during working hours. Then there was a telephone call. And finally somebody urged someone to go to bed, and threatened to take him straight to his room if he did not obey, which was certainly prompted by the recollection of your mother’s annoyance when you stayed so late at the office. — Such passages are especially dear to me; in them I take hold of you, without your feeling it, and therefore without your having to resist.

Eleven days later, Kafka wrote to her:
“Fraulein Felice!
I am now going to ask you a favour which sounds quite crazy, and which I should regard as such, were I the one to receive the letter. It is also the very greatest test that even the kindest person could be put to. Well this is it: Write to me only once a week, so that your letter arrives on Sunday — for I cannot endure your daily letters, I am incapable of enduring them.
For instance, I answer one of your letters, then lie in bed in apparent calm, but my heart beats through my entire body and is conscious only of you. I belong to you; there is really no other way of expressing it, and that is not strong enough. But for this very reason I don’t want to know what you are wearing; it confuses me so much that I cannot deal with life; and that’s why I don’t want to know that you are fond of me. If I did, how could I, fool that I am, go on sitting in my office, or here at home, instead of leaping onto a train with my eyes shut and opening them only when I am with you?”

Writing, too, requires a good amount of waiting. The creative process, like farming, demands periods of activity and then contemplation. Putting words on a page (or, in my case, typing them on keyboard) makes me feel productive, but my most fertile moments are often when I’m away from my desk and my computer. The best ideas aren’t forced. They arrive because we’ve kept a space for them in our minds, like keeping a chair empty at the table for long-awaited guest.