Blood on the River, A Lowcountry Boucherie
Sponsored by Holy City Hogs

When it comes to butchering, Adam Danforth is one of the preeminent voices in the field. The Oregonian is a James Beard award-winning author (Butchering Beef and Butchering Poultry, Rabbit, Lamb, Goat & Pork) and next weekend he'll join Toby Rodriguez, the Cajun king of Louisiana butchery (a Top Chef: Seattle contestant and guest on No Reservations), for Holy City Hog's Blood on the River a Lowcountry Boucherie. 

Fifty some chefs will be in attendance at a historic plantation on Wadmalaw for the Sun. Oct. 25 all day butchering event. But Holy City Hogs owner Tank Jackson says he's saved 10 tickets, so if you're hankering to learn how to bleed out a goat, now's your chance. 

"We're going to kill two pigs — a 300 pounder mule foot Ossabow named Pearl and then a smaller pig named Estevez that's a Mangalitsa cross. We're doing a goat, 20 cickens. I bought some Kentucky bourbon red turkeys and we'll slaughter one of them, also some rabbits. And Ben Berryhill will be cooking whole fish from Mark Marhefka over coals," says Jackson. If oystering and clamming is reopened by S.C. DHEC, he'll add those as well. Oh yeah, and squirrels too. 

For the chefs, Jackson says the event is an opportunity for them to learn from two of the masterminds of modern butchery as well as offer a window on the skill to a few civilian guests.

"Everyone who wants to will have an opportunity to participate," Jackson says. That's provided you show up on time. "Killing animals will start right at  8 a.m. on Sunday," says Jackson. "We'll do a walk through at 7 a.m., but once you're bleeding animals, you need to have everyone there."

Blood on the River will have 12 cooking stations and food will be served as it comes off each station. Rodriguez will also be exhibiting a Cajun boucherie preparation. "That pig will be butchered in eight different parcels. Those pieces will go to a team of chefs and they'll each make a Cajun dish," Jackson says. 

The farmer has even brought in a friend, a Portuguese woman who lives on Isle of Palms, to show participants how to wring chickens necks as she did as a child growing up in Portugal.