CADIZ, Ky. -- Some folks here are so serious about ham, they still make their own.

And here -- near the far Western tip of Kentucky, as in many places south of the Mason-Dixon Line -- the only serious ham is "country ham."

Cadiz (pronounced, in a lovely drawl, KAY-deez) is home to the Trigg County Ham Festival, which for 31 years has celebrated the traditional craft of cutting and curing country ham.

This is old-school ham -- the kind the pilgrims and pioneers and their predecessors made by curing the just-butchered pig haunches in salt. This preserves the uncooked meat so that it can keep, without refrigeration, for months, and even longer.

A ham billed as the world's oldest is displayed in a museum in the more famous Virginia ham capital of Smithfield 105 years after it was cured.

But most country hams get gobbled up much more quickly.

They just take a relatively long time to make.

These days, most country hams (or "red hams") are made by commercial processors in Kentucky and other country ham states: Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Missouri. In these parts you'll see these "dry-cured" country hams hanging from the rafters in general stores and supermarkets, as well as in the collective identity.

You want serious ham? Broadbent's B & B Foods, a well-known commercial processor just outside of Cadiz on the other side of the interstate to Nashville, for the third consecutive year won Grand Champion ham at the 2006 Kentucky State Fair. That one 17.2-pound ham was auctioned off (to a bank) for a half-million dollars, to benefit charity, and was displayed at charity breakfasts before being eaten, presumably sliced mighty thin.

But to Pittsburghers and most Yankees, ham is what Southerners might call "city ham" or "pink ham." It's wet-cured -- that is, soaked in and/or injected with brine, either through the arteries and capillaries or via needles in the flesh. This kind of ham comes in various versions, but it generally bears as little resemblance to its country cousin as an urban desk jockey's baby-soft hands do to a hog farmer's gnarled mitts.

With country ham, the taste is, in a word, salty, and the texture tends to be tougher, as dry-curing pulls the water out of the meat. Federal regulations require country ham to be at least 4 percent salt, and it can be so salty that some people can't stand it. But aficionados, from hillbillies to foodies, cite the intense flavor, enhanced by the smoking that most, but not all, country hams receive (usually hickory, but it can also be apple and other wood).

Some say the best country hams rival Italian prosciutto and Spanish jamon, which tend to be cured longer -- drier -- to be shaved thin and eaten raw.

"It's really a dying art," says Squirrel Hill's Marci Woodruff of people making their own country ham as they do in Cadiz. The freelance theater director was born in Cadiz, and grew up always having a country ham for Christmas. She regularly ships country ham from Broadbent's there for a Kentucky Derby party and other gatherings she holds with her husband, Lon Durbin, also a Kentucky native, who is executive chef at Whole Foods Market in East Liberty.

They always have country ham, gravy and biscuits on Christmas morning. They bake a ham for New Year's Day and put some in black-eyed peas.

Even if you like country ham, you probably don't eat piles of it like people do city ham. One of their guests did. Ms. Woodruff says she and her husband just looked at each other and said, "His feet are going to be swollen and he's going to be SO thirsty when he gets up tomorrow."

She and others maintain country ham is best sliced thin -- say, in buttermilk biscuits -- or sliced and fried with red-eye gravy or maybe a sweet sauce.

After hankering for country ham during the 600-mile drive from Pittsburgh, I tucked into some fried slices for my "meat and three" -- meat and three side dishes, plus cornbread cakes -- buffet lunch at the Cadiz Restaurant. I was thirsty the rest of the weekend. In part because Trigg County is dry -- no alcohol sales.

After lunch, I took a tour of Broadbent packing plant (in a former seed-corn barn) and smokehouse. Owner Ronny Drennan gave me a quick tutorial on country ham, which his operation makes with a process that's slightly speeded up, but still longer than many processors use. But Broadbent cures about 10,000 hams a year. Most of them -- 60 percent -- sell just before Christmas (for about $4 a pound uncooked, $10 cooked).

I learned that their country hams are cured with a typical cure of salt, sugar, honey and sodium nitrate (it acts as a preservative, helps the salt penetrate faster and enhances the deep color). Most aren't sold until they're aged about eight or nine months, by which time they will have lost about 25 to 30 percent of their weight (the rule is that they lose at least 18 percent).

But mostly I reveled in the deep hickory, porky, bonne ham perfume, which is what Mr. Drennan smells like after work.

"All the dogs love you," he said.

To make your own country hams, you need even more patience than salt. You also need a smokehouse, an air- and light-tight place for the curing and aging to gradually commence.

Purists are skeptical of the "shortcuts" commercial processors take and wish a minimum aging time was regulated. Folks in Cadiz will tell you, the process properly takes a full year, beginning in the late fall or early winter. The end result is a ham for the holidays -- if not for Thanksgiving, then for Christmas, or New Year's, or if you're really lucky, all three.

"They always say, if you kill after Thanksgiving, they won't spoil," said Jason Oakley. He was one of the guys -- and ham makers are almost always guys -- standing with their hams under the tent under the yellowing maple trees on the lawn of the Cadiz Christian Church this past second Saturday of October.

This was the competition part of the Trigg County Ham Festival. While there was a lot of ham in the "world's largest edible country ham biscuit" that was being cut and served at the other end of the crowded business district, there wasn't a lot of ham in the festival.

Mr. Oakley entered one, as did his dad, Joe, and there were eight other homemade hams.

"We just don't have as many people curing hams," said David Fourqurean, the county cooperative extension agent who cooked up a youth category for hams made by 4-H club members at Broadbent to try to keep this part of local heritage alive.

"It's not convenient," he said of country ham. "But it is good."

At age 35, Mr. Oakley doesn't look like the snaggle-toothed old codger you might stereotypically imagine. But he was talking to one of those. (The most legendary ham man hereabouts is named Pink -- Pink "Tiny" Guier.)

Mr. Oakley still makes hams with his father, who taught him how to do it. They used to raise their own hogs, but hardly anyone in Trigg County does that now, so the meat comes from Missouri and elsewhere.

No longer do folks get together to kill and butcher hogs and "block out" the hams.

But otherwise, the process is pretty much unchanged. Mr. Oakley said that, when the weather turns cold enough, he and his father pack their hams in salt for four to five weeks.

You hear talk of "secret recipes," but most people use the same cures, perhaps adding a little red and black pepper as the Oakleys do to repel flies. They also pack some borax into the hock, or lower leg, end of the ham and the hip joint, to deter a fly he calls "skippers" that can spoil a ham.

After about a month, they smoke their hams, using, as most people do, carefully tended smouldering hickory dust.

"Some people like 'em dark. Some people like 'em light. We try to get ours pecan color," says Mr. Oakley, who smokes his hams twice.

Then, the hams hang in the dark of the smokehouse all summer, so they can "sweat" out the water (the fluctuating temperature also breaks down enzymes). "Lock the door in March," he said, "and don't go in 'til October" -- and the festival.

"They sure are pretty," a woman said, viewing the hams on the tables under the tent. The amateur hams were noticeably more rustic than the commercial ones -- rougher and darker on the surface, and bigger, too, as most had not had the hock cut off.

This year's ham contest judge was Nicky Baker, a cowboy-hatted ham maker from the next county. He graded the hams on criteria including general shape, neatness of trim, meatiness and color. Evidence of moldiness would count against a ham, but country ham lovers know that it's not unusual for a good ham to be covered with mold; you just brush and rinse it off the rind, which gets trimmed off anyway.

"Most old-timers won't eat one if it doesn't have mold on it," said Mr. Oakley.

While the judge doesn't taste the hams, he gives the most points -- up to 30 -- for aroma, which he determines by probing the hams, especially along the bones, with an ice pick.

Sniff. Probe. Sniff. When he was done with one ham, he cleaned and neutralized the pick by sticking it into a raw potato.

And when he was done with the judging, Joe and Jason Oakley's hams got the yellow and pink ribbons, for fifth and fourth place, respectively.

The blue ribbon and Grand Champion silver platter went to ham entered by Tony Holland, a 50-year-old state highway inspector who moved from Frankfort back to Cadiz with his wife and started dabbling in some of the old ways.

This was just the second year he'd made six hams, "just playing around." But he won Grand Champion here last year, too, after reading a how-to book. So he was pleased as punch to shake hands with Tiny Guier (who took third) and pose for photos for the local paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Mike Sula, a Pittsburgh native covering the festival for The Chicago Reader. Mr. Sula and his foodie friends actually bought Joe Oakley's ham to take home.

Someone yelled, "What you gonna do with your ham, Holland?" Mr. Holland grinned and answered, "Eat it" -- sliced and fried on New Year's Day.