by David Cecelski
I’ve been working hard to finish
my next book by New Years, so I haven’t visited my family’s farm in eastern North Carolina in weeks.
Sitting here all blurry-eyed in the middle of piles of old historical
documents, I try to remind myself that there’s a season for all things, as
Ecclesiastes tells us, and that I will have other days to walk in those fields
and woods that I love so much back home. In the meantime, I’ve been surrounding
my writing desk with little things that will sustain my spirit until I’m at the
farm again.
For me a lot of those little things, of course, are
food. I have mullet roe drying in a sunny window next to my desk. I have jars
of pickled green tomatoes on the windowsill, too. I made them last week with
the last tomatoes on my vines. I have a bowl of speckled fall beans on the
table here, next to my computer. And just around the corner, I have a round of
country sausage drying on the porch.
The air-dried sausage is what’s on my mind today. I
found this round of air-dried country link sausage at Mac’s General Merchandise
on NC Hwy. 242, between Benson and Spivey’s Corner, on my last trip to the
farm. Established in 1963, Mac’s attracts pilgrims from near and far. They’re
in search of that old country store’s rendition of one of the state’s great
regional delicacies.
Air-dried sausage is made like other country
sausage, but it’s not smoked and doesn’t need to be kept refrigerated in the
same way. Instead, you preserve the sausage either by adding salt, which
removes moisture that bacteria are fond of, or more commonly, by adding
nitrates, which prevent the worst kinds of bacteria from growing.
Commercial meat processors are obliged by law to
keep air-dried sausage refrigerated during the beginning of its aging. I’ve
noticed that a lot of backyard sausage makers don’t bother. Either way, after
the sausage has dried for a time, they can safely continue the aging in the
open air, as long as they hang the links in a cool, dry spot. Most connoisseurs
believe that the sausage gets better with age, so the longer it air dries, the
better.
I’ve just hung these air-dried links on my back
porch. After a few weeks, they’ll begin to take on a different look. They’ll
get hard, darker, and a little shriveled. They’ll also become very, very
delicious. The butchers at Mac’s, where I got them, calls them “Old Folks”
air-dried sausage, because mostly older customers come looking for them.
I look forward to sharing the air-dried sausage at one
of our big family gatherings this winter. Maybe we’ll even eat it Christmas
morning. But even just hanging there, the sausage is an inspiration for me.
After all the years I’ve put into writing this book, I need a reminder, now and
then, that many of the good things in life take time and that, in the end,
they’re worth it.
