Barnyards and Woods

In the Old Country, every man who had a farm could keep a pig, but game was the prerogative of the nobility. If dukes celebrated the abundance of their forests with banquets of venison and wild boar, peasants celebrated the abundance of their fields with banquets of pig. The schlactplatt so popular today in the restaurants of Milwaukee is named for the medieval schlachtfest, a harvest festival when hogs were slaughtered in November to provide meat for the winter. The whole village would turn out to cut up their pigs into chops and loins and hams. Scraps were ground into sausages, or wursts, and parts that could not be processed, such as the shank or foot, were cooked and consumed as the centerpiece of a feast devoted to pig.