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TENNESSEE |
“I’ve had people ask, ‘How do you do that [slaughter animals]? How can you do that? I can't believe you do that.’ And I’ll say, ‘Do you eat meat? Do you eat hamburgers?’ Well I know how mine was killed. I know exactly how mine was treated. And I do it right; they don't suffer. They are fed, they are watered, they lay back there and have a good time. And so I know it’s going to be done and people are always going to eat meat and if I can step in and do my share of it—doing it humanely—then that’s what I’m going to do.” – Crystal Norwood
Hays Meat Company
19690 Hwy. 412 E.
Lexington, TN 38351
(731) 967-1411
The Hunt-Norwood family eats meat seven days a week. They feel safe doing so because in their own words, they know where their meat is coming from: locally raised, locally slaughtered.
The young couple Crystal and Derek Norwood—under the guidance of Crystal’s father, Chuck Hunt—relocated to Tennessee from Florida to buy and operate one of the few remaining independent, USDA-approved slaughter houses in the state. They supply whole hogs for several of the restaurants in the area.
But they also sell to the public: fully butchered animals, steaks, three spice-levels of home-ground sausage, and fresh bacon. The Norwoods are interested in changing the perceptions of those used to buying pre-packaged cuts from department store-sized groceries. They value the lives of animals, the ritual of the slaughter, and the kindness of a family-run business.
We first visited this location in 2003, as part of our initial foray into documenting rural Tennessee ‘cue. Visit the original Hays Smoke House/Meat Co. page.
What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
Subject: Crystal Norwood, Derek Norwood, and Chuck Hunt
Date: July 22, 2008
Location: Hays Meat Co. – Lexington, TN
Interviewer & Photographer: Rien T. Fertel
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Rien T. Fertel: This is Rien Fertel for the Southern Foodways Alliance. … I’m at Hays Meat Company with Crystal and Derek Norwood, the owners—new owners. I’m going to have them introduce themselves and give us their birth dates, please.
Crystal Norwood: I’m Crystal Norwood and my birthday is January 23, 1983.
Derek Norwood: I’m Derek Norwood—birthday is May 16, 1985.
So how long have you owned this business?
CN: August will be two years.
Tell us about how you came into this business.
DN: Well we originally started looking; we wanted to get into the meat business and started looking around and just got on the internet and started looking around. I found two or three places in Tennessee and, just really, just looked at them and decided on this place and started—and we really liked the area and liked the businesses we’d be dealing with and it just went from there.
So what made you want to go into the meat slaughtering business?
DN: I guess my dad always told us if we were going to do something to get into alcohol, sex, or meat ‘cause it sells. And we didn’t want to get into alcohol or sex so we went with meat.
Tell me exactly what the business does and is.
DN: We basically just bring—we do beef, goat, sheep, hogs and buffalo—a few buffalo and they come in live you know from either individuals or farmers that we buy them from where we slaughter them and we can either—we either sell them out whole to the barbecue restaurants; we—shoulders to the barbecue restaurants on the—on the pork or any—any other cuts are processed, you know quartered or all the way down to pork chops and steaks and whatever. … Wholesale and retail.
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Well take me through a day. What time does a slaughter start, a pig slaughter?
DN: We normally start at 7 o'clock, depending on what time the back gets lit and how busy we are. Normally we start killing between 7:00 and 7:30 and depending on what we have to kill, obviously the bigger hogs take longer so we try to move them towards the beginning of the week. We do our big sausage hogs for mainly like the small grocery stores that make their own sausage and then we’ll do the barbecue hogs say for like [Ricky] Parker [of Scott’s] and any local restaurants and basically we have like whatever we—if we have something to process, you know say it was killed on Monday, let it hang overnight in the cooler. And then once it’s chilled we’ll process it you know Tuesday or the following day and get it ready to go out.
Well how do you start the process? How do you kill an animal?
DN: Oh okay; well I guess we pick like whatever hogs we’re going to kill first, they go out and run. We run one hog in the shoot; we run one hog in the shoot at a time. That hog is shot and as soon as possible it’s stuck and once I bleed it out it goes into the hog—into the scald vat and that water is 180-degrees and it’s in there for just a minute or two and the hair starts loosening up. And when the hair gets loose then it’s flipped into the de-hairer which takes the hair off and whatever is remaining is scraped off by hand and then the hog is—well the head is removed and the hog is gutted. And then the Inspector looks at it and it’s either—released and stamped and it goes into a cooler.
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What is the largest hogs you get?
DN: I think about 1,072 is the biggest and we don't have them very often. That was only—but the average—the average like a big sausage hog will be 700 pounds.
Sausage hogs it sounds like they’re twice as big as a barbecue hog?
DN: Not necessarily; a lot of the—the local—the local stores that make their own sausage they prefer a big hog. … I think because more of a turnout and more of a yield on their meat.
How much fatter is it than a 250-pound hog?
DN: It depends. There’s—if you’re—like if you’re looking at the fat—the inches on the back say a—a 200-pound hog has an inch. One of those hogs may be up to four inches.
CN: They get more meat. The barbecue hogs get more meat where the sausage has more fat, you know or the sausage hogs.
And how many pounds does a whole barbecue hog weigh about?
DN: It depends—three—live weight would be 315 average—300, 315 average.
What are the names of some of the breeds [of barbecue hogs]?
Chuck Hunt: You’ve got Duroc(s), you’ve got New Hampshire(s)—those are the two major breeds and you would then—they sometimes cross those and everything so you can have a cross between those but those are the two major breeds. And most of the barbecue houses prefer the Duroc(s). … The—most of the Duroc breeds came from Britain originally. The New Hampshire(s) are an American breed. They normally don't like the New Hampshire(s) because they’re a longer and a leaner hog. They get more yield and a faster growth out of Duroc(s) so most of the farmers raise the Duroc(s).
And why do barbecue guys prefer this hog?
CH: They—they want a more meaty hog with less fat so they like their hogs to be around the 240 pound range and everything. Most hogs go up to about 240 or 280—are what they call top hogs which are kind of the ideal size for cutting it for pork chops and things like that. After 280 pounds it takes a lot more grain to put meat and fat on them and they put more fat on them which most of the places don't like because that’s not a marketable product you know. They lose that so they don't—but that’s where you get the big sows where they keep those and they’re having the pigs and after two or three years of having pigs they get where they’re—what they call spent sows and they’re not producing anymore so they—they sell those off and that’s why the barbecue houses like them because they like usually about 30-percent fat in the sausage, so you want more fat to—to grind into the sausage.
Do you think there’s going to be always people doing whole hogs? Do you think it’s going to go away?
CH: I think you’re going to see a dying off of the old people that are doing—that are raising the hogs but I think you’re always going to see one or two of those places around because you’re always going to have the people that say I don't want to go get shoulders and I want whole hog barbecue and I want it done the old-fashioned way. And you know with a lot of the younger people coming in or a lot of the newer places and particularly chains and that they don't want somebody cooking out there 24 hours on a thing. They—they want a shoulder. They could put it in; two hours later it’s ready to come off and it’s ready to cut up and—and put out you know and everything. So it’s just a matter of expediency, but I think there’s always going to be the demand for the people that say, “look, I want good old Southern Tennessee barbecue and I’m going to go where I can get a good whole hog full of barbecue.” And you’re going to take guys like—like Scott’s down there. He’s always going to have a crowd at the front door because that’s what the people want and that’s what they’re going to go there and get and everything. And it’ll never—it’ll never get like—like McDonald’s where you can just drive up to the window and say give me [Laughs] quick barbecue you know.
CN: It stays—it’s just good food and as long as they keep cooking it like they do people are going to want to eat it. [Laughs]
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I think you slaughter some of those hogs for yourself also and what do you do with those hogs?
CN: We process them just for pork chops and sausage and shoulders, hams, bacon—or we don't do—we do fresh middlin’. We don't cure anything. Ribs, we—anything that’s on the hog we’ll cut it up and sell it.
The public can come in and buy?
CN: They can come if they want steak we’ll sell them one steak; if they want 10-pounds of steaks we’ll sell them 10-pounds and they can even come in and tell us they want pork chops an inch thick, half an inch thick and we’ll cut them to exactly how they want them.
The hogs that you own [for slaughter], where do you get them from?
CN: We have a—some local farmers; we have a—you know a farm in Kentucky that’s bringing us some now. We try and keep it local but with the prices and everything people are getting out of the business ‘cause they just can't afford it anymore. And so we—but we try and keep everything local.
Since you’ve been here the past two years, how many farmers do you think have disappeared or stopped coming here because they stopped growing pigs and cows?
CH: We have probably have what—10 or 12 large hog producers that have got out of the business because of the cost. We—it used to be we never had to go further than about 10—15 miles to get any hogs. Now we’re going to Kentucky. … We’re seeing a lot more local animals being brought in particularly on the beef where before they were shipping them out to Nebraska and everything else to have them slaughtered out there. Well with the price of freight and oil and everything going out there now it’s—it’s bringing them more to—to the local processors to—to do that here now. You’re also seeing a lot more though with the economy tightening up; beef and pork prices have gone up about 28-percent in the last two months in the grocery stores from our side. We’ve only gone up about three to four percent and so you’re seeing a lot more of the local producers now saying instead of selling that cow and shipping him out west they’ll bring him in here to have it killed and put back in their freezer. And—and so I think that’s going to do more for the locals to—and I think it’s going to be one the trends you’re going to see where as these fuel prices and that go higher you’re going to see more local things being produced and—and marketed in the area than you are being shipped out or freighted out or freighted in. … And as more and more people know we’re here we’ll do several cows every—we probably average four to five head of beef a week just for people doing custom—want to buy it from their local farmers and bringing them in and that—that so we’re seeing that increase. We had never seen that—that type of increase before. I mean when they first bought the plant they I don't think ever killed a cow from February to September; now we’ve still got them coming in all year long now and everything where they’re—they’re doing more locally and everything.
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Tell us why the American public should know where their meat comes from.
CN: We’ve had a lot of people—like I’ve had people ask, “How do you do that? How can you do that? I can't believe you do that.” And I’ll say, “Do you eat meat? Do you eat hamburgers?” And they’ll say, “yes.” And I say, “well I know how mine was killed. I know exactly how mine was treated.” And I do it right; I do it you know where it’s—they—they don't suffer. They don't you know—they are fed, they are watered, they lay back there and have a good time; you know they don't suffer at all and so I know it’s going to be done and people are always going to eat meat and if I can step in and do my share of it—doing it humanely then that’s what I’m going to do. … If anything—if anything cute comes in here it’s going to go home to my house. I have a miniature bull at my house because it was brought in here to be slaughtered and I just couldn’t let it happen. So he now walks around on my property at home.
How many—how many nights or—or days a week do you have meat?
CN: Probably seven out of seven. [Laughs] Yeah; we’re a meat-eating family.
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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
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