If you had told me two years ago I would willingly participate in a butchering program that would break down six hogs, I would have laughed you out of the room. I grew up as a notoriously picky eater; when I was thirteen my mother got me to try fried calamari by telling me it was an onion ring. I haven’t had calamari since.
My basic food groups are pasta, lasagna, and pizza (can you tell that I have Italian heritage?) But then, I moved to Colonial Williamsburg. All of a sudden, I was surrounded by aspects of the 18th century I had never considered before. I started having questions that don’t often get answered on television or in novels; questions about how cities dealt with human waste, what women did during menstruation, and how animals went from the yard to the table. I started hanging around the kitchens at the Governor’s Palace and the Public Armory.
Luckily, I’m blessed with some very patient coworkers who took the time to show me what they were cooking, from dishes that I recognized like macaroni and cheese and chocolate pudding, to exotic things I had never seen before such as boiled lamb’s head and oyster ice cream. Our Historic Foodways trade has some of the best experts in 18th-century cooking out there. They keep a blog (History is Served) full of recipes that they’ve made and translated into 21st-century cooking terms for anyone who is interested in learning more. I don’t pretend to have learned more that the tiniest percentage of what they know, but I was intrigued.
Last December was my first winter in the city, and therefore my first experience with its annual program “Hogs to Ham.” I wasn’t sure how I was going to react on that chilly morning as the truck rolled in to deliver the hogs that would be the star attraction of the Governor’s Palace that day. By the end of the day I was hooked, and I knew that I would do anything in my power to ensure that I could volunteer to participate the next year. Fast forward to last weekend.
It’s ten a.m. and I’m up to my elbows in the carcass of a hundred pound hog. Inside there is a thick layer of white fat surrounding the kidneys. I’ve got both hands dug deep into this layer; I can feel it sliding beneath my fingernails as I try to tug it loose from the chest cavity. Finally committing myself, I throw my entire weight behind my arms, dig in, and with a satisfying rip I am left with a chunk of fat in my hands and bare meat in the pig.
That’s right. This year, on an unseasonably warm morning in December, I found myself standing in ratty old clothing in the courtyard by the Palace kitchen staring at the first of six hogs to be butchered. All of a sudden it was very, very real.
Let me start by saying that we do not slaughter our hogs as part of this interpretive program. The animals are taken to an offsite location and slaughtered using 21st-century regulated methods. Therefore, when they are returned to us, some of the work has already been done. The actual breakdown of the animal is fairly straightforward. One starts by removing the head, and in our annual tradition this is a task usually left as a rite of passage to someone who has never participated in the program before. Someone like… me.
When team leader, Kimberly Costa, signaled this was to be my job, I had a millisecond of wondering what exactly I had gotten myself into. The fat was soft, exactly the same consistency as store bought Crisco. I don’t know why this surprised me, but in that second I realized that as long as I was doing this, I needed to do it. I dug in.
In that hot moment, it didn’t matter that there were families watching and taking videos with their iphones. It didn’t matter that I knew I was going to go home to a hot shower, that I wasn’t going to have to survive off this pork for the rest of the winter. In that moment, I was living in the 18th century.
Kim shows me where to position the knife, and it goes in easier than expected. Yesterday I thought this part would make me squeamish, but now I’m in the moment I’m surprisingly calm. Today is a lot warmer than a day that would have traditionally been chosen for butchering in the eighteenth century (Seventy five degrees in December?!) I’m already sweating by the time I take the pig’s ears in my hands. I’ve watched all day as people give a quick twist to break the neck bone and I’m anticipating the immediate drop of weight; I’m nervous that I’ll drop the prized head before this crowd of people that seems to have spontaneously gathered. I ready myself for the moment of truth and twist….
And nothing happens. The head stays firmly attached. Red from both exertion and slight embarrassment, I turn it the other way. I can hear people shouting my name (how they learned it I’ll never know) and I take hold of the snout, the ears, anything that will help me get a grip. What they don’t write about in history books is how, after a day dealing rendering lard, everything your fingers touch is slightly greasy, which makes getting a grasp even more difficult. I’m frustrated now, silently cursing the warm weather and the stubbornness of the hog in its final act of defiance. After what seems to be ages (but according to my video is a little under two minutes), I finally hear a crack. The head is in my hand and I’m beaming. Earlier in the day, I had a millisecond in the 18th-century where everything else faded away. That moment, with so many friends, colleagues, and guests around to celebrate my small victory, was totally Colonial Williamsburg.
Throughout the day I learned other basic skills. How to melt the fat down to turn it into lard that would (hopefully) last the winter for cooking. How to salt the meat, and I mean really salt it, pushing the drying agent into every crevice to make sure that there are absolutely no places it did not penetrate that could cause the whole cut to spoil.
And then I learned the story of the hogs themselves. Ossabaw Island Hogs were originally brought to this part of the world by Spanish and Portuguese sailors who traveled up and down the southern coast. Rather than keeping animals on their ships, they dropped them off on coastal islands and let them roam free and breed. Then, when supplies ran low they could stop by the islands and pick up some of the animals for their return voyage.
Their guiding principal was that the best way to keep your meat fresh is to keep the animals alive until you absolutely have to slaughter them. Over time, some of the hogs were left alone and continued to breed freely on the islands. This is the origin of the heritage breed that is kept today by Colonial Williamsburg at Great Hopes Plantation as well as other historic farms like Mount Vernon. At its heart, this breed exists because it is food.
This story resonated with me. There is a very personal reason that I pushed myself to participate in this program. I am a child of the 21st century, and dare I say it, a millennial. I grew up in an age of shrink-wrapped freezer dinners and de-boned, de-skinned, pretty cuts of meat in plastic wrap. For my own personal growth, I felt it was extremely important to understand where my food comes from and how it gets to my plate. The hogs that we raise in Colonial Williamsburg serve the same purpose that pigs across America are raised for. They are meant for consumption. They do not have names; they are not pets. However, I would say that our hogs have a much happier existence in this city than many animals who are raised for the same purpose in the broader United States today. In looking at my food as a whole animal and not simply a pre-packaged convenience, I’m going to try to live my life a little more conscientiously.
And at the end of the day, grimy and exhausted, I began my walk home. As I mentally prepared a shopping list for something quick I could grab from the grocery store for a potluck party, I thought about how I am eternally grateful that my family doesn’t rely on my butchering skills (or lack thereof) for survival.
We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Kathy Eaton and Fred Blystone for helping us to tell this story through their wonderful photographs.
GUEST BLOGGER: EMILY DOHERTY
Emily works for the Historic Sites department within the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Previously she spent a summer working in the brickyard, so she can assure you that yes-it does get hot in those clothes. She would like to thank Barbara and Kim and the rest of Foodways team for allowing her to volunteer for Hogs to Ham, and also for feeding her whenever she shows up at the Armoury Kitchen. She is of course ever thankful for her father who decided that instead of going to amusement parks, school vacations would be spent visiting historic sites around New England. Emily is proud to have (almost!) realized her childhood ambition to grow up to be Felicity Merriman, and she gets great joy in sharing her love for history with others.
Very nice story. Another good story will be to tell us some about how these 6 hogs will be used over the next months in the foodways program. I will be there next week and will ask but I thought it would be an interesting story.
Hello Joan- I am personally so glad you liked the story. All of the back legs (hams) and front legs (Virginia Shoulders), as well as about a dozen belly pieces are sitting in our salting barrels now, waiting to be turned into hams. The other meat has gone into our freezers to be used in our cooking programs here in the Historic Kitchens. Most of the belly pork will be used at the Anderson Armory in making stew for our workers. They are most appreciative! The feet will be turned into jelly, or gelatine, to grace His Lordship’s Dessert course. Please feel free to check out our blog at recipes.history.org to find out what happens to the meat as well as usuful recipes that you can try at home. And as always, thank you for your interest in Historic Foodways!
Kimberly Costa, Apprentice, Historic Foodways
Very informative article. Ms. Doherty does a fine job of relating her stories by pen. Born and raised in Virginia, I was involved in many hog processing opportunities. It is something that everyone should at least see once to understand what work is done to get food to our tables.
When my sister and I were there several years ago, we saw the whole process and (at the time before cell phones) I have photos of the whole process. It was a great experience. Thank you for sharing the photos with others. Merry Christmas!