Hog Killing Time

by Jas Faulkner 

Reminder: Next week the ENFM will feature their annual Fall Festival!  Check here on Monday, October 7th for more information.

Readers outside of the Nashville area probably picture my hometown as a more of an overgrown small town than the cosmopolitan metropolis that it really is.  Like many entertainment industry hubs, the best way to describe the population of Nashville is: "nearly everybody here is from someplace else."  

This demographic shift has contributed to some big changes in Music City's culinary diversity.  Are you a displaced New Yorker looking for a taste of home? There's a restaurant near Vanderbilt called Noshville that offers deli food Big Apple Style. Nolensville Road is a culinary UN, with establishments representing the foodways of nearly every continent. No matter where a Nashvillian may hail from, there is something here that will give them a touch of "back home."   My home city's culinary profile is not just about bringing everything from there to here. Nashville Originals is an organization devoted to promoting local restaurants whose chefs work at the edge of the continually evolving definition of Nashville cuisine.

Another aspect of this change can be found in our recognition of the holiday calendar in terms of the accepted wisdom of when and to a much lesser degree what is eaten at certain times of the year. The ways in which Middle Tennesseans eat, especially during the winter holidays, is getting less distinguishable from the rest of the country. What many transplants don't realize is that divergent regional traditions in the holiday bill of fare were still the norm less than a century ago.

Thanksgiving is a classic example of the way regional differences can affect what's on the menu.  The Thanksgiving pictured by Norman Rockwell is a version that has its roots in the Northeast.  While the custom of having roast turkey, dressing and cranberries is pretty common across the US now, in the first half of the Twentieth Century, Thanksgiving was considerably different for many Tennesseans, especially those who still lived in rural areas.

The cooler weather meant that many families were devoting the time off from school and work to prepare for the winter months. The last of the produce was canned, frozen, and stored in cellars and the next step, slaughtering and parceling the meat usually occurred in November.  Often referred to as "hog killing time," the long Thanksgiving weekend usually entailed families gathering to slaughter livestock and then butcher the carcass.

This was, well, actually it is a communal process.  Once the animal is killed and the meat is cut, much of it is either sent into a deep freeze or a smokehouse.  Meals center around this activity and the recreational/subsistence hunting that takes place once the livestock chores are completed.  If there is deer or turkey meat to be prepared, a similar process ensues.

Because of this, many families might enjoy a pork roast and vegetables for Thanksgiving dinner (midday) or supper that evening.  The next day, the traditional breakfast would consist of tenderloin and biscuits, gravy, grits, fried potatoes and eggs. Tabletop condiments for breakfast usually included molasses, apple butter, butter, and home canned or frozen fruit.  For the rest of the weekend, there might be a cookout, but for the most part, meals were made from leftovers.

Did those 20th Century Tennesseans ever feel their holiday was lacking?  Not really.  It was a time for fun, telling family stories and yes, giving thanks.  According to one person who remembers those Autumn days fondly:

"But then we always did that, give thanks.  Getting up in the morning is as much a reason for knowing there  would be food on the table and a roof over our heads.  We were always thankful for both every day!"

Good Guys Wear Blue Corduroy

by Jas Faulkner 

Theirs was the kind of cool that defied the usual taxonomic constraints of senior high school hierarchies.  Laconic and for the most part unworried by the usual sturm and dang that plagued teens determined to make those three years the BEST years of their lives by being the BEST class EVER, they moved through life at their own pace.  Small, close-knit groups of clean-shaven, baby-faced boys and smartly turned out young women walked the hallways, self possessed, impervious to the handfull of students who sometimes catcalled them without fully understanding their own concomitant loathing and envy. They followed an agenda that addressed few of the concerns of the so-called lives that flittered inside the snow-globe insularity of high school's social order.  The timetable and values they followed were those of the real world, the world beyond classrooms.

 What set them apart visually from other self-contained groups, the kids who would grow up to work for Cessna and Boeing and IBM and NASA, were the jackets. Those zippered, cobalt blue, wide wale corduroy jackets with the oddly old-fashioned embroidered logos on the crest and back identified members of FFA, the Future Farmers of America.  They were worn with pride by students who were either continuing a family tradition of farming and ranching or contemplating a move beyond the suburban nine to five careers of their parents.

Actually, there are still kids getting, no, earning those jackets every year.  According to the latest figures, over half a million young people ages twelve and up have answered the call to learn agricultural science.  Many of them will be in FFA until graduation and then move on to other things.  Aside from the artifacts and memories, they'll have a deeper understanding of how important it is to have a vital, thriving agricultural sector within the economic makeup of our country.  They will respect how important it is to not take for granted the labor, the availability of resources, and the significance of knowledge and commitment to farming that keeps everyone fed and secure.

Food security is not just organizational lip service.  It is a very real value that is at least three shifts each to helping assemble meals for distribution to areas where hunger is a problem.  Their goal this year is to assemble one million meals as part of their Rally To Fight Hunger.  This initiative not only employs young hands, it engages hearts and minds as attendees learn more about the root causes and possible solutions to food scarcity on both local and global levels.

Those who choose to follow the creed* into adulthood by stepping into the family business or pursuing agriculture as a major in college find that FFA continues to offer support.   The organisation provides scholarships and opportunities for mentoring and leadership either in the capacity of apprenticeship or as an educator for the next generation of Future Farmers.

To the many children who come together from diverse backgrounds to be a part of FFA, those blue jackets are not just a quaint fashion statement to be discarded when other inclinations hold a greater attraction.  They represent a serious commitment to the kind of stewardship that goes beyond youthful promises for short term involvement.  When it's done right, FFA is life-changing.  It is their chance to be part of something good, something bigger than themselves that has fostered personal growth since that first gathering of teachers and students at Kansas City in 1928. It is, in the truest sense of the expression, a way for  young people to be empowered by knowledge and to gain confidence in their abilities as agents of positive change for the future.

Want to know more?  Visit the FFA's homepage at: https://www.ffa.org.

*The FFA Creed:

I believe in the future of agriculture, with a faith born not of words but of deeds - achievements won by the present and past generations of agriculturists; in the promise of better days through better ways, even as the better things we now enjoy have come to us from the struggles of former years.

I believe that to live and work on a good farm or to be engaged in other agricultural pursuits, is pleasant as well as challenging; for I know the joys and discomforts of agricultural life and hold an inborn fondness for those associations which, even in hours of discouragement I cannot deny.

I believe in leadership from ourselves and respect from others. I believe in my own ability to work efficiently and think clearly, with such knowledge and skill as I can secure, and in the ability of progressive agriculturalists to serve our own and the public interest in producing and marketing the product of our toil.

I believe in less dependence on begging and more power in bargaining; in the life abundant and enough honest wealth to help make it so-for others as well as myself; in less need for charity and more of it when needed; in being happy myself and playing square with those whose happiness depends upon me.

I believe that American agriculture can and will hold true to the best traditions of our national life and that I can exert an influence in my home and community which will stand solid for my part in that inspiring task.

Thomas Jefferson, Green American

by Jas Faulkner

It may come as a surprise to many Americans that one of the most vocal proponents for the conservation of our farmlands and preservation of agrarianism as a way of life was also a founding father of this country. Thomas Jefferson may be remembered first and foremost as the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, but he considered himself to be a farmer by profession.  According to Jefferson, farming was the only truly pure and honest profession.  He reasoned that farmers had to maintain a relationship with the land that did not allow for the byzantine devices put in place that alienated people from what sustained them.  A false promise to the earth accomplished nothing, but hard work and devotion to stewardship of the land could keep a nation fed.  

In Jefferson's own words:

“Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth.” 

                       - from "Notes on the State of Virginia 1781

 Today's organic farmers are looking to the wisdom of older techniques of farming, many of which were borrowed from indigenous people who had cultivated the land long generations before the arrival of the Europeans. Just like those contemporary farmers, Jefferson was very aware of the techniques that had been created by his predecessors.  Their watchful, mindful use of the earth was not lost on the statesman from Virginia, who observed and recorded the effects of everything he tried.


Thomas Jefferson's respect for his profession extended beyond merely practicing within the bounds of accepted vocational wisdom.  He experimented with the combinations of plants within the same plot, crop rotation, seed saving, soil amendment and fertilization, and even inventive ideas for tools.  Most important of all was Jefferson's endorsement of the concept that the land itself was as alive as the plants that grew on it and required just as much care.
 
On the eve of the 236th anniversary of the US declaration of independence, take a moment to remember the founding fathers, many of whom were farmers themselves.  They're the reason we can celebrate what we enjoy today.  Their lives should also serve as examples of how we should view the land we have been given.


Happy Independence Day! 
(and see y'all next week!)   


Jas Faulkner and everyone at The East Nashville Farmers Market