In a day filled with minor disasters, the Duroc pork butt was a winner

[smokin fool]

Ya gotta watch those little bush tigers, they can be as mean as the day is long.
I'm 0 and 2 against them.
The rest of the day, as much as we think we're in charge reality is quite the opposite.
At least the meal worked out.
Wait n see what tomorrow brings....

[RonB]

Well, you survived and ate well, so the day turned out at least OK.

[Ahumadora]

Tomorrows menu: Roast chipmunk with elder berries. Days like this you remember. Normal days you don't.

[IowaGirl]

It's been a day.

The synopsis -- Hubby and I had to deal with a torrential rainstorm (1.46 inches in under an hour), a torrent of said rainwater coming in through a workshop window, and a chipmunk hiding out in a bedroom. Not to mention struggling with a horridly humid (95% +), hot day in which we needed to be outdoors harvesting elderflower in my husband's elderberry orchard. All while I was trying my best to smoke a yummy Duroc pork butt from Compart Farms. It all turned out okay in the end.

And now for the rest of the story (as Paul Harvey once put it) --

My local Fareway grocery store has started to stock Duroc pork butts (shoulders) and bellies from Compart Farms. This outfit is based in southern Minnesota (https://www.compartduroc.com/) not all that far away from my neighborhood. Fareway ran a special this week on these butts, pricing them at $1.99 per pound. I bought an 8 pounder, dry brined it for a few days, and put it in the smoker (18" Smoke Vault) about 9:30 this morning at 275-300F / 135-150C.

The day was unbearably muggy and hot with very little breeze, but we got a fair bit of the field work done. In the late afternoon, we were outdoors harvesting more elderflower, when the sky rapidly darkened with rolling dark gray clouds, distant thunder rolled, and a mad wind came up -- all signals to high-tail it to the house.

We got back in about 5 minutes before the downpour started. About 10 minutes later, we heard water trickling and realized rainwater was pouring into the workshop through a window. That window has leaked a little bit in past heavy rainstorms, but today there were spouts of water jetting out from the window, rapidly covering the floor with water. We made a mad rush to move things off the floor, contain most of the water, and direct the rest to a floor drain.

After that problem had settled down a bit, I was feeling a bit paranoid and decided to check the rest of the downstairs rooms to see if there were any other trouble spots. I didn't find other water problems, thankfully ... but as I walked through a bedroom, a dark shadow streaked by me as I went around the corner of a bed. I couldn't tell what it was, but it was considerably larger than a mouse.

I screamed and my spouse stomped into the bedroom with that patented "What 'n the h*ll NOW!" look on his face -- the look that husbands get during a difficult day with more difficult things piling up. So we had a small rodeo trying to catch a chipmunk that very much did not want to be caught. As I write this, the score is currently Chippy - 1, Humanz - 0. He's still at large in the lower floor of our house. At this point I'm too tired to care, to be honest.

Back to the butt. During the flood and chipmunk rodeos, the smoker had been gamely struggling on without my help. The smoker temperature had plunged below 200F, rain had poured through the top vent and soaked the butcher paper I'd used to wrap the pork, and as a result, the meat cooled down a bit. To make matters worse, I had to wait until the heaviest rain slacked off to try to salvage the cook. After struggling for awhile with ongoing showers and a cranky smoker, I gave up about 6:30 pm, after about 9 hours of cook time. I brought the pork into the house and put it in the oven at 145F / 63C. The internal temp of the butt had originally been around 180F, but by this time it had dropped to 165F.

I didn't have the energy to make the sides I had in mind -- I had planned to make my version of Troutman's Elote corn salad and my smoky bacon baked beans. But my mister came to the rescue with a quick tossed veggie salad, and I made a simple fresh melon, strawberry, and blackberry mixture drizzled with a sauce of sour cream thinned and sweetened with honey from my beehives. Combined with a big glass of milk and thick slices of pork, the meal was waaayyy plenty good.

The Duroc pork is delicious. I did not cook it long enough to be tender enough for pulling, but it was still easy to slice and tender, flavorful, and extremely juicy in the mouth. This is how I remember pork was like when I was a kid. My grandfather raised purebred Yorkshire hogs as breeding stock and I grew up eating that pork. I realize now it was quite different than most pork sold today.

The Duroc meat is darker overall than commodity pork. There is more variation in color between the various muscle groups. I also think it has a more distinct pork flavor -- still sweet and mild, but not as bland as commodity pork. If you live in the upper Midwest, more local grocery stores are carrying Compart pork products, and I recommend you give this meat a try.

At this moment of this eventful day, the chipmunk is still at large. Parts of my workshop are still wet, but the puddles are gone. We still have more elderflower to pick and dry once the rain and dew on the elder bushes has dried. But my belly is full of good food, and I finally got that hot shower I'd been craving. And my mister and I are still speaking to each other, which is always a good thing.

I know -- no pics or it didn't happen, but there was too much going on earlier and now I'm tired. I have just enough energy to set this crazy story down on paper, so to speak, before I crash for the night, so I hope y'all can pretend a bit and cut me a wee bit of slack for no photos.