My mom grew up in Virginia in the back woods. No electricity or running water. When I was a kid it was like traveling back to 1844 when we went to visit my grandparents. My grandma washed clothes by hand on a board and hung them out to dry. There was an out-house which was horrifying in the daytime, because you could see spiders up in the corners. At night when I had to go to the bathroom, and I had to walk out in the dark down the path and go in that dark little out-house and I always imagined the spiders were coming down from the corners while I sat there trying to pee fast.
There was a creek beside the house and a well out back. My grandfather grew tobacco and there was a curing shed that was always full of upside down stalks of tobacco, smelling wonderful. My grandfather always rolled his own and his fingertips were permanently dark orange from years of smoking.
I actually watched my grandma kill chickens for dinner. She was a pro. She'd grab one, sling it around, and chop it's head off before it knew what was going on. She plucked it, cleaned it, cut it, fried it and it was delicious.
But that was in summer. There were vegetables and chickens and pigs (they had a smokehouse too). In the late winter, when there wasn't much of her canned goods left, and the smokehouse was bare, and she had 10 kids to feed. My grandpa would kill possums. My mom ate possum until spring came. She said there were NO possums anywhere by the time the first greens came up. I don't know if I could eat a possum. They are truly disgusting. But my mom and uncles say when they were starving, those fried possums were wonderful and they were all grateful to have a meal.
I guess that's off topic but since it's sort of a weird animals we eat discussion, I just thought I would add that. Maybe other people here ate it. Maybe they still do.
