On Inertia

Momentum, farm work, life; twice-baked ham.

Inertia is often spoken about as something that you need to overcome. How you need to “get up and go” or “break out of a rut” and how “if nothing changes, nothing changes.” This inertia we’re battling can be stagnation, yes — but it can also be movement. One might wake up one morning and realize that he is caught in the swirling Charybdis of life, that one must tack a different course, take charge, take action, make change. One must find an external force to temper Newton’s first law.

I think, though, inertia can work in other ways. Like when you manage to align your rudder with what you want out of life and then, suddenly, more good and interesting things keep happening, the currents of the universe driving you forward. This type of inertia requires no external force, no real concentrated exertion. Life begins to flow — and it can sometimes come on fast.

It’s in this way, without directed intention, that I found myself at the farm, standing next to the livestock manager, holding onto an upside down piglet, steadying its four-week-old body as it was being castrated.

Radical living, right?

I’ve been more and more often finding myself in situations like this. Because we live around the corner from the farm, we end up going there regularly with the kids. We end up shopping at the farm store and then the farm store serendipitously starts to expand and then we’re getting most of our produce there. Then we’ve joined the CSA and I’m coordinating a volunteer day with the head farmer cleaning up the fields and then I’m getting to know him and his kids and our dog is patrolling the fields in the morning to protect the seedlings from geese. And then, because we’ve also joined the meat CSA at this point, it only seems natural that I volunteer with the livestock, too, cleaning out the pens and feeding them and making sure the water is working. Then suddenly the sows have piglets and I find myself in the barn navigating around a mass of adorable, oinking shapes, sweeping them from underneath the heat lamps and their mothers so I can muck the stalls.

And then I get a text that hey the piglets are getting castrated tomorrow so can you come a little earlier to make sure it’s clean. And then when the rest of the team shows up it’s a would you mind bringing the piglets back to the stall once the operation is over — don’t worry, just grab them by the hind legs — and then after I’ve gotten back a second time and Tim’s getting tired it’s a hey could you hold onto this one?

And next thing I know I’ve held onto most of the eleven poor souls who had the misfortune to be born male and I’ve got blood and sweat and tears on my pants and suddenly it’s all over. And I’m thanked for my help and I’m on my way, still in a reverie so I take out the compost when I get home.

The raised beds need to be ready for seedlings next month.

And I’m for whatever reason thinking about how, at the end of water polo tournaments in college, after victories, we used to make a whirlpool by wildly jumping and swimming in circles in the shallow end. After a few minutes of vigorous movement, we’d relax, floating, letting the inertia of the water spin us round and round.

I’m out of the water, but still — everywhere now — I feel momentum.

It’s that momentum that, fittingly, drove me to dig into our freezer earlier this month and find the remaining ham from the sow quarter I accidentally bought last year. I put it in a brine, letting it cure for a week, and then smoked it on Good Friday so it could rise again to grace us for Easter brunch.

If you don’t have the foresight to cure your own city ham, this technique works equally well when resurrecting a store-bought one.

Dust your ham with your preferred seasoning — we like Meat Church’s Honey Hog. Let the ham ride in a smoker or oven at around 325(F) until the internal temp hits 145(F).¹ If eating immediately, glaze every hour or so with an equal mix of bourbon and maple syrup — but if you plan on eating this later, but within a week, just let cool and glaze when you reheat it (cooking it the exact same way until the internal temp is above 145(F).

So there you go folks — a spring ham. Whether you make this over the weekend or wait until another holiday, I encourage you to try making your own ham at least once. You won’t regret it.²

Us, this weekend, we’ll be celebrating with the Family CWD, seeing — again — cousins and grandparents and enjoying life and what will hopefully be a late emergence of spring. By next week, my mind will be on turkeys.

However you choose to spend your weekends, I hope you allow positive inertia to overcome you, accepting and embracing all the good the universe has to offer — even if it comes as a surprise.

We’ll see you back here next week.

1. I actually ended up cooking ours at 375(F) and it turned out just fine, so you’ve got flexibility here.

2. I use the guidance from Meathead.