A Tennessee Hog Killing

The Southern Foodways Alliance has an "member contributions" section online. One great contribution to it comes from Evan Hatch, who photographed the annual hog slaughtering held at Ronald Lawson’s farm in Short Mountain community near Woodbury, Tennessee, in January 2003 (here). Hatch provides a great essay on this vanishing tradition, one that draws heavily on my main source for traditional hog butchering, Eliot Wigginton's The Foxfire Book (1972). Hatch's photo to the right depicts the men scraping the hair off the hog after its scalding.