High Demand for Artisan Pork Products
Preparing artisan pork products in 1932, Courtesy of the Florida Memory Project
Each spring Dr. Alvenia Fulton’s father purchased young sheep, goats, and pigs, pastured them, and then sold them months later for a profit at local markets. Hogs gave birth in April with pigs growing to maturity almost for free feasting on slop and waste from the garden, fields, orchards etc. During hog killing season in the late fall, her father slaughtered and butchered eight or nine hogs. Her father used his renowned sugar recipe to cure hams, sausage, and bacon then smoked the meats with hickory wood before putting them up in the farm’s smokehouse. In terms of revenue, homemade sausage was and is a luxury item, and all one had to do is let people know you had some for sale. Farmers had difficulty meeting market demand for their artisan pork products. “The same was true of souse, hog’s-head cheese, scrapple, pigs feet and ears, chitterlings, together with a fine lot of choice lard and cracklings,” said Tuskegee’s George Washington Carver in 1929. “There is always a good market for choice pork and pork products” and no farm animals “multiplies as fast as hogs except chicken.”
