KIlling and barbecuing hogs has been a Black Southern ritual for centuries. It was living off the land and living off the meat. It was a way of surviving and self preservation.
Regular contributor and food writer Kayla Stewart wrote about this tradition in today's New York Times Food section.The practice goes deep into the country's history, to a time when plantations slaughtered hundreds of large pigs.It was the high point in the agricultural calendar of the rural South according to Adrian Miller, food scholar and author of Black Smoke:African Americans and the United States of Barbecue. All that meat was to last the entire year. It was a ritual performed only in the fall or winter before the flies returned. Cuts like ham and belly would be kept in the smokehouse for long term use while large quantities of fat were used for making soap and for cooking,Parts like liver, chitlins and lungs were eaten immediately.Those had to be quickly processed and eaten in the days before refrigeration.There is still an elaborate amount of work to be done on the hog's body.It's quartered which requires a numerous amount of men. The work is so intense.It involves slicing, dicing and salting, all so labor intensive that a celebration always follows.
It is a large part of the Southern African-American experience.It creates a sense of community and family getting together, Nora E. Doctor of Ridgeville South Carolina, a town council member, is finally back at a hog butchering after being away fro two years. For her returning to the event is going back to her childhood, It was an even that her parents, aunt and uncle shared. There was crackling shortbread made with pork skin along with pork pot, a dish of hog stomach, fresh neck bones and ears, spiced with onion, sage and coriander and served over rice. At this coming together, the pork was mixed with Sea Island red beans to be served over grits.For other families, like the Rosses, it's about the awareness and honoring of the animal for its' life.Marvin Ross, a fifth generation farmer is one of just a handful of Black farmers. He has other animals such as chicken and , ducks, goats and pigs.He is reclaiming the land through farming, along with maintaining the hog slaughtering tradition, lost because of the Great Migration that lasted for sixty years.
Luckily there are new generations that will continue this ritual. They will follow what their ancestors did, creating food for the community. It is part of their lives and culture.
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