Over the past year, I’ve been working on a genealogy research project for my family. One of my priorities has been to collect as many stories as possible from my grandparents’ generation before everyone disappears.
My great great grandparents immigrated to Idaho from Germany in the late 1800s, drawn to the mountains near the border with Montana during the mining boom. Eventually my great grandparents would start a very successful flour milling business in the area, and they also had a large farming and ranching operation to compliment the mill business.
Earlier this year I was reading an old news article about the mill where I discovered that they also raised their own hogs. They had big vats in the basement of the mill where they used to butcher about 30 pigs every fall. Then they’d cure hams and bacon in the vats. I was quite excited to discover this piece of information about my heritage.
Then last weekend I was at my parents’ house going through some old photo albums and stumbled across this photo that was taken after one of the hog slaughters (that’s my great grand uncle Virgil in the photo with the hogs).
Maybe there is something more to this whole bacon fascination of mine afterall!