Slow cooked chaps - hairy but good!
I knew something wasn't right this morning when I came downstairs to the sound of water hissing through the plumbing. Ours is a simple dwelling. There are no heating pumps or appliances on timer, some if water is running its coming out somewhere! My guess was that a half asleep Em had left a tap on in the night and opened the bathroom door to investigate. The taps were dry, but in the light from the door way the tiled floor glistened with a film of water and below the wood burner there was already a pool half an inch deep. Five AM isn't the time for quick thinking, but in a few moments I had located the source and was wrestling with the cistern lid to try get it off. Inside, the ball cock was totally free, bobbing around on a level well above the overwhelmed outlet, whilst pressurised water gushed in at the other end. The problem was simple to fix- I just screwed the plastic float back on - but for it to have come off in the first place was rather amazing. Presumably touching the sides lightly on every journey up or down had been enough to unthread it over the years.
Putting in the spit
Party preparations continued apace today. The spit area is ready, drinkable cider has been identified for mulling and the pig is mounted on a spit. I hope the 50 guests are hungry on Sunday as the animal looks fairly large now it has been stretched out and I wouldn't be surprised if there was enough pork to feed everyone twice. At 4 PM it was the usual trip to school, apart from this time the journey was somewhat different. Reaching the brow of the hill by the prison I immediately saw a black column of smoke climbing high into the sky. Tracing it down (whilst still concentrating on the road of course) my eyes alighted on a pile of brash crowding a tall crimson flame which wavered in its midst. I knew immediately what was happening. The orchard which for me had ever been a feature of that landscape was being grubbed out and on further inspection a JCB could be seen, bucket down, pushing the double rowed trees into a tangled mass and on towards the fire. It's easy to be sentimental about fruit trees but the fact remains that for a farmer they are just another crop and if the variety or layout isn't profitable they will simply rip them out. This wasn't even a particularly beautiful orchard but still there is something unsettling about something so familiar going up in smoke. Perhaps more disturbing is the realisation that I had always considered the tight rows of dwarf trees to be rather modern, another sign of my ageing which would make my father laugh. Soon all orchards will be lines of twigs tied up to canes, tended by machines and producing high yields. It would be wrong to try and halt the progress but I dearly hope the fine Bramley orchard below the cottage survives long enough for me to show G a ‘real’ orchard before they have all gone.
There won't be a blog tomorrow as I'll be up at 4:30 AM lighting the spit fires and getting the pig cooking.
Dinner
Slow roasted chaps with mashed potatoes and brussel sprouts. The head meat from our pigs usually goes into faggots or brawn, so chaps are a new experience. They cooked for about five hours in a medium oven and that was enough to make the long fibrous muscles meltingly tender. Inevitably there was lots of fat, so I pulled the cheeks apart on a board and piled the meat onto warmed plates, topping each mound with a little golden crackling. G unwittingly donated a bit of his stewed apple to the meal and the whole thing was fantastic. The meat was intense, rich, yielding to the bite and definitely worth having again.
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