If you live in Central Pennsylvania, you’re going to meet hunters. You’re going to become friends with hunters. You’re going to find they deliver you gifts of spicy venison sausage which you have no idea how to handle. And even though you mostly don’t each much meat, you’ll try a slice of it or fry it as they suggest, and then you realize you love it. You secretly wish for more.
Then you find out that your hunter friends have 60 or 70 more rolls of venison sausage stored up for the year. Then you realize that if anything ever happened to you, your home, or your food source, they would save you with their stores of meat. They also have all the vegetables you’d ever need–either canned or pickled or frozen.
I talk to my students about the venison sausage, and those from around these parts know that of course you survive off the land and the animals. Of course you eat rabbit, squirrel, bear, and deer. Don’t forget birds and fish. And everyone has a backyard smoker. It’s how they grew up and it’s what they know. So to inhabit the world of it, you at least try some venison sausage.
Welcome to my world.