'A pig is like $100 in the bank. Every family but the poorest raises a pig. It provides food for a year, and none of it is thrown away.'
Just one generation ago this was true for families in the Italian hilltop village of Montenero Val Cocchiara: a town of 500 people located east of Rome in the Appenine mountains.
The town is shrinking, and with it, its traditions. Cheese making, religous traditions, pig killing. If you take a closer look, and listen, you can still...
more »'A pig is like $100 in the bank. Every family but the poorest raises a pig. It provides food for a year, and none of it is thrown away.'
Just one generation ago this was true for families in the Italian hilltop village of Montenero Val Cocchiara: a town of 500 people located east of Rome in the Appenine mountains.
The town is shrinking, and with it, its traditions. Cheese making, religous traditions, pig killing. If you take a closer look, and listen, you can still hear the wailing of a pig during the weekends of the winter months.
It took weeks of inquiry to gain access to photograph the tradition. It is now illegal for reasons of sanitation and animal cruelty. A pig is supposed to be send to a government sanctioned butcher. But the costs are too high, and the meat is not the same when killed with the modern shock technique.
The method I witnessed is similar to that of previous generations. A rope is tied around the nose of the pig, it is pulled out of its shed and held by three others. The owner of the pig stabs it once in the neck with a sharp knife. The knife twists, is removed, and the blood gushes in pulses - less and less each beat. The pig is placed upon a metal table, boiling water is poured on its skin to make shaving it easier. It is shaved, its belly cut, its intestines are removed, then hung for two days to dry out. Today, not every part is saved.
There is a celebratory meal at the end to thank those who have helped in the three-hour ordeal. The current version is humbler than before, less of a celebration, and more of a meal. There is wine, bread, cheese, and of course, sausage.
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About the images: These images were photographed with a Hasselblad 500CM on Kodak Portra 400NC film and scanned on an Imacon desktop drum scanner. Video footage was also taken.
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