DWheat
Well-known member
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2009
- Location
- Blairsville Ga
Celebrated our annual family reunion this weekend. My 92 year old father passed the torch officially to my brother, first cousin and me this year. It's the first time he didn't have any hands on with the cook and it was both sad and happy at the same time, sad that he's no longer physically able to cook but glad to know that all his skills he's passed on to us helping over the years made him happy with the way everything turned out with a successful cook this weekend. It's now up to us to continue the tradition. By his recollection the "Wheatley Reunion" has taken place on the fourth Sunday in August since 1924 without missing a year and he thinks it had started before 1924 but wasn't celebrated each year. We typically average 125 family members attending. We cook our version on Brunswick stew with chopped pork, vinegar based sauce,Cole slaw and families bring home made desserts and jugs of tea. This year I was fortunate to cook the pork on my recently purchased Shirley Fabrication 24 X 65 and I gotta tell you that it cooked flawlessly, held 275 consistently end to end and used very little wood. Used a combination of mostly cherry for first 4 hours and finished up with mostly oak and little hickory. This was my first big cook on the Shirley cooking 80 lbs Boston butts, 20 lb loins and a 20 lb ham that we chopped and mixed to get whole hog type BBQ with very little waste like we used to have when cooking whole hogs, also much cheaper and turns out consistently good quality and quantity. This was also the first time cooking without our burn barrel making coals to be shoveled under the meat but the amount of wood the Shirley used compared to the burn barrel is unbelievable, we can cook several reunions on the wood saved by using the Shirley Fab. I remember as a child when we didn't use burn barrels but had a couple of railroad tracks to burn hard wood slabs and some fresh cut green hickory saplings on an open fire and had to back up to the fire with a shovel with a long handle to get the coals out to spread on each side of the pigs on a brick pit with a dirt base that was preheated with a good fire inside the pit to warm the ground. Sad thing is I have very few pictures mostly my memories, my parents have never owned a camera and I never thought about taking pictures of the cooking, these were all night cooks to prepare for a noon Sunday meal but I do have great memories. Blessed that my family is keeping the tradition alive and we're already involving our boys in the cooking, chopping, serving and cleaning up afterwards process that's part of making this happen for future generations to enjoy as we have been blessed to enjoy.
