Well folks! We done gone went and done did it. Yes we did.
I’ve wanted to do this ever since the Berkshire heritage breed of pigs arrived here at West Wind Farms as part of the breeding stock. The information that was gathered in order to make the decision to try our luck with them, favoured the Berkshires as the best tasting meat of any and all breeds of the pork industry.
Believe me folks, the information that we had garnered from here and there was not wrong.
Three outdoor barbecues within the past four weeks with quite a number of folks, visiting here at Westwind Farms, echoed similar comments. The chicken breasts were good, the beef roasts were excellent, but the pork was just out of this world. The whole pig slowly turning over a charcoal based bed of coals, wafting an odour that words can’t explain, left many impatiently waiting.
But the time was well worth waiting. Never before have I tasted meat that was so moist, so pleasantly sweet, so tender and yet chewy. The taste lingered so intense that you were reluctant to swallow each individual bite.
If the pig was not turning there on the spit, many would have been at a loss as to guessing that it was from the pork family. It had a taste all its own.
This all leads me to believe that free roaming, pasture fed heritage animals, not only live a better life but make far better food on the table. Let me assure you they have the feed lot animals, living under crowded conditions, beat by more than the proverbial mile. Could it be that our ancestors ate far better than we do?
In the meantime, the following day, as I sat on our sunny front porch munching a sandwich or two of these quality leftovers, a young phoebe lit on the railing not three feet from where I sat. She looked at me for several minutes as though wanting to join me for lunch, which after eyeing me up and down several times she did.
As I ate she flew up several times, catching a wayward house fly, and settling back on the railing; eyed me as she ate it. I am not sure where this little flycatcher could have nested, but it was obviously close at hand, perhaps in one of our goat sheds. I can recall as a child one of them building their moss woven nest on a ledge over our urban front door. Later as we had moved to the farm they nested year after year under the country road bridges.
But later, as the big heavier trucks became common, their eggs were addled by the vibration as these trucks thundered overhead. So went the nesting sites of many of the barn and cliff swallows as well.
Such is life in the rural route areas.
Take care, ‘cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-986-4105