Original:Hog Butchering and Smoking  From Appropedia Jump to:
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(From BITTERSWEET, Volume II, No. 2, Winter 1974)  Story and
photographs by Stephen Hough, Jay Hillig and Rick Bishop  The
day was cold, a chilling damp cold with overcast skies, hard for
the three staff members to get used to after the long Indian
summer of early November. Elmer and Letha Simpson, and their
neighbors Sidney Howell and his sister Verba who came to help
them, did not notice the cold as they went about the business of
butchering a hog for their year's supply of meat. Spread out on
the table under the big post oak was the opened and split
carcass of a hog. The men were cutting up the meat while the
women were making preparations for rendering the lard and
grinding the sausage.  Situated on bench land overlooking the
river bottom fields where cattle were grazing and just under the
steep hill bordering the valley, the usually quiet farm home of
the Simpsons was filled