A Time for Pigs to Turn into Wursts

A Time for Pigs to Turn into Wursts
 
From Time/Life's Foods of the World - The Cooking of Germany, 1969:
 

"Everybody rejoices when November kills its pig." So says the Latin inscription under the painting (above) depicting the agricultural activity appropriate to November on the great clock in Münster Cathedral. The artist showed a family, helped by a relative, doing its own butchering as was the custom in the 16th Century. After the butchering was completed and the Wurst was made, the family and the neighbours got together for a Schlachtfest, a convivial meal at which they sampled the freshly-made Wurst and dined on the parts of the pig that could not be processed. Nowadays farmers either take their pigs to a commercial plant to be slaughtered and processed or call in professional butchers to do the work. The Wurst-maker (below) is working with his own equipment in the sunny backyard of one of his customers, a farmer in the Bavarian Alps, filling a casing with a Wurst paste he has made himself using his own recipe.