Bacon Marmalade
Mom and my aunt Jane on some of those mean farm horses.
The lawn at the farm. I remember picnicking here and apprehensively swimming in the water.
Look at what a rockstar Mom is! Entertaining the guests at the farm.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard “Acne Blues”. I’ll have to ask Dad for a rendition.
Mom and my uncle Frank’s former wife, Ferne. Look at that landscape behind them! It looks like one of my Nonnie’s paintings.
When they redid the farm, they closed in the screen porch making a lovely sunroom. Here is Mom teaching my cousins Reed and Mariah to knit. Also pictured is my cousin Sara’s husband, Brett.
My Grandpa Reed believed in the power of owning land. At one point he bought all five of his children farms in Eastern Tennessee. When I heard that we suddenly owned a farm, my mind went wild with possibilities! Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ashley dresses, butter churning, you know ….. Well, one day we visited said farm and WHAT A DUMP! It was flat land, used for cattle farming, with a pile of stinky manure taller than a house. Bucolic fantasies dashed, Chapel Hill didn’t seem so bad after all. Dad hung on to that farm for many years and it did what it was supposed to do: appreciate. At some point it was sold off, I think it may now be part of a golf course.
Now, we have a Reed family farm that is a different story. It is storybook country perfection with rolling hills, picturesque cows and a pond. This farm is still in our family and is just outside of Jonesboro, Tennessee. It has seen the Reeds through many phases. My Dad and his siblings grew up exploring the land, basically being free-range children. My parents lived in the farm’s old log cabin when they were first married. I spent afternoons picnicking on the lawn while visiting my grandparents. And, most recently, my Dad and his now wife, Linda, sheltered there for several months during the early months of COVID.
When Dad was a kid, they kept a series of mean horses at the farm. I just saw Dad in North Carolina last week and he reminded me of a story. One day my aunt Lisa was riding one of these horses and it freaked out and dragged her along a barbed wire fence, basically shredding her leg. They whisked her off to the Emergency Room. Apparently Dad attempted to distract her from her blinding pain in the car by showing her his coin collection. Bless. ha ha.
There were no horses at the farm when I was a kid, but there were rather large and terrifying fish in the pond where we used to swim. We would step in and immediately sink up to our knees in sludge. But, being kids, we’d pretty much swim in anything so we persevered. Maybe twenty years ago, the farm was redone. The house was updated and the pond was dredged. Evidently they pulled out fish of a truly alarming size! Several feet long! It’s shocking to think of my little kid body in tandem with these crazy rogue fish in the rather cramped quarters of this body of water. But, I probably bothered them more than they bothered me.
Early in my marriage, my husband and I went to Kingsport to visit my grandparents. My grandpa picked us up at the airport in his large town car. Everything was going great until we merged onto the freeway. Grandpa, well, he just merged. He didn’t look to see if there was anyone coming in the lane. There was. He was fine with it. We weren’t! Further questioning uncovered that Grandpa couldn’t feel his feet. When asked how he changed pedals, he said, “I look down”. OMG. On the return trip to the airport we decided to save ourselves (and him!) and take a taxi. Guess what we talked to the driver about? Fish. Apparently, this guy had pulled an 8 ft. catfish out of some local lake. I’m not even kidding.
Now, this grandpa is the same one who used to chase us around with a bull whip. We would beg him (or my dad, or sometimes uncle Bill) to “Chase us with the Black Snake Whip! Chase us with the Black Snake Whip!”. They would crack the whip and we would run, scattering to various hiding places throughout the house. Then, there was a bit of hide and seek involved, punctuated by the sound of the whip. I’m not sure how it ended. But it was a thrilling and, in retrospect, pretty hillbilly!
When we would go to the farm for the afternoon, my grandmother would make sandwiches and wrap them in wax paper. For the record, wax paper sucks. The sandwiches would always kind of fall out and I swear the wax paper only served to retain heat, thereby basically ensuring the growth of salmonella. (This was before we knew better about hot mayo.)
For today’s recipe, I thought I’d share something from a friend of Mom’s, Moreton Neal. It’s called Bacon Marmalade. My Dad just sent me home with a jar of it last week. It would go great on a farm sandwich!
BACON MARMALADE
(courtesy of Moreton Neal)
4 slices hickory-smoked bacon, chopped
5 ½ cups thin sweet onion strips
½ cup sugar
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons bourbon
pinch of dried crushed red pepper
1 ½ tsp. fresh thyme, chopped
¼ tsp salt
Cook bacon in large skillet over medium-high heat 6 to 8 minutes, or until crisp. Remove bacon and drain on paper towels, reserving 2 tbsps grease in skillet.
add onions to skillet. Cook, stirring often, over medium heat, 15 minutes or until onions are caramel colored.
add sugar, stirring to dissolve.
Stir in vinegar and next 4 ingredients
Cook 5 minutes or until liquid is the consistency of syrup.
Add bacon. cook, stirring occasionally, 15 minutes, or until thickened and consistency of thin marmalade.
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