Farmer Jim’s Curing Country Meat Process (CCMP)

“The idea of curing country meat is to remove the water from the meat.”

To start, pick a time in the fall or winter when there is no danger of the meat freezing during the first few days after applying the mixture. Prepare a curing table that is protected from the animals and weather.

Below are they steps of the process I followed farmer Jim in 2002. It was a gas.

1. A week or so ahead of time, farmer Jim orders his fresh hams from his friend since grade school Bladen Yates. The Yates once had 3 stores in Ellicott City. One at the top, one in the middle and one at the bottom. The hams should have their skins left on. In 2002, farmer Jim is doing 4 hams. Two are for his family reunion that is coming up in July.

2. Go to pick up the hams. Get a hand to go with you. Buy a lunch for a friend, have a meal with a friend; take a tour of Oella, look over Treuth’s slaughter operation, stop to get the hams, find out they are not there. Take off to the store.

3. Find the ingredients; the old sizes and bags are gone, there are no more 5 lb bags of brown sugar or large cans of ground red peppers in our area store. Head out to the farm.

4. Remember, we forgot the brown sugar, make a quick “UB”  and head back to the store. Move out once again to the farm.

5. Get home and get the ingredients ready. Eighty three year old farmer Jim climbs up the ladder to retrieve the sodium nitrate that he keeps stashed high up in a little used kitchen cabinet. I cringed. He had to move a lot of stuff off the top of the refrigerator just to open the cabinet door.

6. He gets his sodium nitrate and prepares 2 oz. for the mixture.

7. We wash our hands. Farmer Jim emphasized this step several times.

8. At last we were clean, the ingredients assembled and made ready. Farmer Jim digs out a mixing bowl and we start to mix the ingredients. As I said, farmer Jim made sure our hands were clean. He did all the mixing. I helped him open and pour the ingredients.

9. We did not throw in everything at once, but added portions of them and mixed the smaller portions together. We then added about a third more of the ingredients mixing these together with the first batch. We added the last third and Farmer Jim mixed this together with the other 2/3 for a long time. It was an even consistency when he was finished.

10. While he is mixing, the phone starts ringing. I relay the messages while farmer Jim is caressing and mixing the ingredients. Farmer Don phones in with a message about the status of farmer Jim’s old black Camero which I call the bat mobile. The environmental controls are shot and causing vacuum leaks which is why the old Camero feels like it doesn’t have any brakes. New parts are about $200. Farmer Don is checking to see if there are any used ones available that would do the job.

11.  Farmer Don brings the Camero back to farmer Jim’s house and joins us to see the end of the mixing process. We talk for a short while and make up the rest of the plan to finish off the hams. The hams have arrived at Yates’s and have to be picked up.

12. Farmer Glen gets the financial details of the transactions and a blank check and heads out with farmer Don to farmer Jim’s truck. Farmer Jim is to be waiting at the cooler when the hams arrive. Should take about an hour to get the hams. Head out.

13. Farmer Don needs to get back to his truck at the shop. Take him there and drop him off. Take off to Yates’s.

14. I am recognized at Yates’s by my hat. Things go smoothly at Yates’s. A fellow helps me load the meat into the truck. A young lady and I make the deal and I head back to the stand.

15. I have to cut through the slick muddy farm road to get to the stand since the fence is closed off to the high way. I almost lose traction going up the hill to the stand, but make it ok.

16. We prop open the cooler door to get to the table that farmer Jim has prepared for the hams. We open and inspect the hams. They have some of their skins remove and farmer Jim mutters about no one doing what there are told to do. We discuss how there could have been such a breakdown.

17. Farmer Jim spreads some paper over the table and spreads puts out a portion of the mixture for one of the hams to lay in. Farmer Jim sets the ham up on its broad end and works the mixture into the bone around the hock, pushing it as far as he can with his fingers between the bone and the meat.

18.  He spreads the mixture evenly around the top of the ham and piled up the foundation of the mixture he had laid on the paper around the edge of the hams. We did all four of the hams the same way one at a time.

19. We head back to the house together leaving the white truck at the stand.

20. Farmer Jim is to check on the hams in a few days.
1.  Update, we have visited the hams and they are looking great.

As we are waiting to enter the main road, a lovely beauty pulls up next to farmer Jim and walks over to talk. Farmer Jim says he has missed her. Well, she got carried away and stuck her head and arms in the truck and gave farmer Jim a great big hug. Said that that was the sweetest thing anyone had said to her in a long time. I could see that farmer Jim was getting nervous at this point. He commented that it was good seeing her and he was ready to move on. She told us she had been sick for three weeks from some bad meat she had eaten.

On the way home, we could not help but mention that she looked thinner. We wondered if we might not bottle a new mixture and use the hams as a diet medicine. We even named it “Farmer Jim’s Diet Mixture” and thought of plans to market it. We could see it clearly. We would make a fortune! 

We carried on about the value of such a product to mankind, how the list of ingredients would look like and the side effects one might of experience from using Farmer Jim’s Diet Mixture like being ill for 3 weeks. We were crying and could hardly see from the tears and laughter. 

Farmer Jim dropped my off and turned around and headed home. 

I know the smokehouse still needs to be cleaned out. I will have to complete the rest of the process at a later date as it unfolds. For now here is the recipe for Farmer Jim’s Mixture. 

Farmer Jim’s Receipt for curing 100 lbs of hams (or five 20 pound hams) 

8 lbs of salt

4 lbs brown sugar

4 oz black pepper

2 oz red pepper

2 oz sodium nitrate (NaNO3) 

Wash your hands well. 

Mix ingredients in a large pot, mix thoroughly.  See more details above. 

Well there are some updates you should hear. 

The smokehouse has been made ready. Farmer Jim going to burn seasoned apple and hickory for his 2002 hams.  

Update-The smoke house has been cleaned out. We still need to fumigate. 

On the week of March 18th, Farmer Jim puts the hams in the smokehouse and starts a small fire of apple wood to smoke them. He does this several times.