This morning I read a story in the New York Times about a fire at the Edwards Ham Smokehouses in Surry County Virginia.

My family’s roots are in Surry County, Virginia. And Edwards Hams defined the concept of country ham and southern cooking in my family for generations. Nearly every year my parents would have an Edwards Ham for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Heavily salted and cured for nearly a year, they had a distinctive taste that you never quite found anywhere else. It’s not that other country hams weren’t good. But as the meat industry became more and more consolidated, ham products, even ones labeled at “country” ham have come to taste more and more alike, while the Edwards kept their company privately owned, never having a staff more than 35 – 40 people, all living in Surry County.

How deep are my Surry Roots? My dad’s parents lived there. His father, my favorite grandparent by far, was a pig farmer. Early on he cured his own hams (the smoke house still stands on the family farm) but later he sold his hogs to others to cure. That man flat loved ham. In summers, when I would sometimes spend time on the farm. it was not uncommon to have country ham for breakfast with eggs, in a sandwich for lunch and fried up with butter beans on the side for dinner.

There was country ham on the other side of my family too. My mom’s mom, besides often serving ham, kept a huge slab of fatback in the garage just off the kitchen, and chunks of that flavorful lard ended in being cooked in the vegetables, frying the eggs, at times, even melted down and using in biscuits.

This is the stuff I was raised on – country ham, cured bacon, grits heavy and greasy with butter (That would be real butter), deep fried chicken. Butter beans and snap beans cooked to death in fatback. All of it terribly bad for us, simultaneously clogging our veins with fat and sending our blood pressure into the ozone layer with salt. And oh, so, so good. My dad loved Edwards hams so much that after we had the Thanksgiving ham, he would stuff the cloth bag the ham was wrapped in and hang it in his tool shed. Last year, after he died and we began to clear out the house and workshop, there were a couple dozen of the paper stuffed Edwards Ham bags hanging from the rafters. I took one for myself and it now hangs on my back porch. My neighbors must wonder, but the way I figure, it’s way more acceptable symbol of the south than a Confederate flag.

I moved to Vermont about seven years ago. Mostly, I haven’t missed the South. I discovered that I actually like winters and cold. There’s an atmosphere of acceptance here I adore. It’s a strange mix of people that should not get along, and yet do. I love the small towns and villages with their scores of old clapboard houses.

But I do miss my Southern food. Once or twice a year, I would order an Edwards ham, which had an astonishing amount of meat on it. I could run for weeks, and use the bones to make Navy Bean soup or cook with. Ham mixed with crab meat. Oh so good. A taste of home. A reminder of Christmases and family gatherings and my beloved grandparents.

When I traveled south for work, I often had a cooler in my car, and picked up the southern delicacies that just are not part of the New England culture and came home with them, precious cargo, for the eleven-hour drive. I don’t get south as often as I used to, but it is still common for me to come back with food. I suppose that means I’ll never quite be a 100% Vermonter, even if I live the rest of my days here.

Why am I writing this? For no real reason. For myself perhaps, and my recognition of how much food and country ham in particular, has played a role in my life. We take stuff like for granted sometimes, not appreciating how much it plays into who we are. Until… we don’t have it.

Edwards will rebuild, or so they are saying. I’ll have a season without their salty ham. And then I will be able to get it again (I hope). And while I hate what has happened, it has made me remember, and smile, and appreciate a part of my heritage that I have carried with me, and still carry with me. It’s good to stop and wallow in the things you love now and then. And that is exactly what I am doing today.

Be well. Travel wisely,

Tom