A Day in the Country

Spending time in the 18th century

“They’re going to butcher a pig,” says the woman waiting in line at the entrance to the festival.

“I know, our friend’s doing it. That’s why we came,” says her companion.

“I’m not sure I want to see it.”

“Oh, he’s very good. The pig won’t feel a thing,” the friend of the butcher says.

This is after the pig had met its maker.

This is a good introduction to the Goschenhopper Festival in rural Perkiomenville, PA. Organized by the Goschenhopper Historians, the festival celebrates the German immigrants who began to settle the area north of Philadelphia in the late 17th and 18th century. Men, women, and children wander about in 18th century dress and Revolutionary War uniforms. Many of the women and children are barefoot. Lithe teenage girls appear to do all the cooking under the directions of matronly women who sit nearby crocheting lace; the boys apprentice with master craftsmen such as carpenters, shoemakers, and blacksmiths who alternate between paying close attention and benign neglect.

“I’d never be able to live like this,” cries a boy who looks to be about nine. He throws up his hands to emphasize how crazy he thinks life was four hundred years ago. He might also mean specifically the knot of young teenage boys in the corral before him who have just wrestled down a good-size sheep and is now struggling to shear its wool.

A good time to shuffle over to the butcher barn is about a half-hour before they execute the pig. The barn is crammed with young men in chambray shirts, almost all of whom display the sartorial bearing favored by millennial hipsters. Greedy people are quite happy that not too many people dip into a plate piled high with addictive crackling. The men have also cooked up crisp slices of a mild-tasting scrapple. One young man explains that it is closer to the original bland Pennsylvania Dutch recipe rather than the somewhat spicier Habbersett brand that people in Philadelphia are used to. Another differences between the scrapples is that the meat used in the Pennsylvania Dutch recipe is not a blend of other parts of the pig that people would rather not know about.

Hanging out before the pig gets there.

Scrapple recipe

The Goschenhoppen Festival takes place on the grounds of the Henry Antes house, built in 1736. Henry was one of the most famous minister’s in the region and a political force who preached tolerance and proved it by establishing the first interracial and nonsectarian boys schools in Pennsylvania and possibly in America.

One of the many reasons to seek out such culturally specific events as the Goschenhopper Festival is the chance to receive an intimate understanding of what it was like to live in the early days of our republic. And for people who like to eat and are open-minded about tasting strange food, they are opportunities to press their noses up against a window into culinary history. The kind of food offered at the festival is, of course, of German origins, hearty enough to get you through heavy farm and household work, delicious enough to have pleased a sophisticated Virginia plantation owner such as George Washington. There are many well-stained recipe index cards on the tables and a good many opportunities to learn how to make them. On this particular Saturday, a young woman is happy to spend some time discussing the preparation and taste of pig tongue.

Thoroughly chill before serving with your barbeque.

The correct way to attend such festivals as Goschenhoppen is to clear your day and come hungry. Most of these festivals will appear small but that’s deceptive. Time sweeps along with eating, talking, and marveling at the industry the past demanded. The Goschenhoppen Festival Fiddlers takes the stage around 5 p.m., a politely merry way to signal it’s time to go home. Everyone wanders out to find their cars in the nearby field. Then they sit for awhile to plug in their GPS coordinates that will lead them down narrow country roads hemmed in by corn and wheat fields, back to the highway and the modern world.