Trout raised, smoked and sold at the gate outside Dullstroom

Cold water, oak smoke, and six weeks of roe

The water comes out of the mountain above the farm at eleven degrees and runs through four concrete raceways before it goes back into the stream, and that is the whole reason we are standing here rather than somewhere warmer. Rainbow trout grow slowly in cold water, which is a nuisance if you are counting months and the making of the fish if you are eating it. Sixteen months from fingerling to plate size, and nobody has ever managed to hurry it. The smokehouse is the tin shed at the top of the yard. A side gets salted overnight, rinsed, dried until the skin goes tacky, then hangs in cold oak smoke for nine or ten hours depending on what the wind is doing to the draw. Roe is its own season: the hens come into condition in the middle of May and are finished by the end of June, so it is on the shelf for six weeks and then gone until the next winter. We do not freeze it and we do not pretend otherwise.