“You want to see some hams?” asked Douglas Freeman of Cadiz, Kentucky, as he ambled out of the barn. “We had it so hot and dry, a lot of ’em just shrunk up to nothing.” The 80-year-old Freeman, four-time winner of the Trigg County Country Ham Festival, is a legend in this part of southwest Kentucky, which is known for producing aged hams on a par with fine European varieties such as prosciutto di Parma and jamon serrano. In the book Southern Belly, John T. Edge points to Freeman’s hams as the pinnacle of the craft: “The meat is as sublime a treat as you are ever likely to sample: smoky, sweet, and bracingly salty if sliced and fried, salt-kissed and mellow if boiled.”
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When Freeman bought his land in the 50s, he raised his own hogs and sold their hams locally to pay the fertilizer bill—there were never any left over for the family to eat. After he won his first ham competition in 1983 his reputation grew and he began shipping them as far away as Japan. To meet both increased demand and federal restrictions, he began to buy his fresh, or green, hams from a USDA-inspected packing house. But like most small noncommercial producers, he ran into problems with inspection requirements for his curing operation and had to stop shipping across state lines, which is why you’ll never find his hams (or any like them) at Fox & Obel.
Fewer hams are entered every year in this contest, says Beth Drennan, co-owner of Broadbent Hams (broadbenthams.com), because “the older generation is dying out.” Broadbent, Trigg County’s large commercial ham producer and a sponsor of the competition, has joined the statewide effort to reintroduce the craft to kids; Beth’s husband, Ronny, helped a 4-H group whose hams were also being judged at the festival. Traditionalists generally look down on commercial manufacturers of country ham, who use quick-cure methods that produce what are derisively termed “90-day wonders” or “chemical hams.” But Broadbent has achieved a measure of respect: regulating temperatures and using nitrates as a preservative, it ages its hams between six and nine months. Last year one of its hams was grand champion of the Kentucky State Fair—the company’s 12th title—and earned a record-setting $500,000 at a charity auction.
omnivorous
