mchen@heraldsun.com; 419-6636
DURHAM -- The rainy weather dampened a second hog roast in the front yard of the Bennett Home this weekend, but the hog's head from Saturday was on full display at the Civil War re-enactment site on Sunday -- complete with an apple in its mouth.
Volunteers in the near-freezing cold fielded visitors' questions on Sunday.
Brenda McKean, who has been participating in Civil War re-enactments at the Bennett Place State Historic Site for some 20 years, explained how people back then dried herbs and hung them around the kitchen for use.
The kitchen, in a separate building from the Bennett Home, had no glass in its windows. To let in the light necessary for food preparation and to operate the fireplace, a window was left wide open, letting in the cold and rain.
McKean said some volunteers have already become sick from working in this weather.
"You don't realize how much you appreciate central heat until this," she said, chuckling. "We try to cook what they would've had in the winter time back then."
Over the fireplace in the kitchen hung dried rosemary, sage and "leather britches," which were dried green beans that could be soaked in water and cooked.
McKean said there was a shortage of meat in the Confederacy during the war, so they cooked peas, beans and rice for the troops. And of course, there was hot cider and sweet potatoes.
The kitchen also stored boxes of food for the troops, filled with jam and tobacco and other tastes of home.
Pat Haggarty, another volunteer, stepped into the kitchen with a straw pack on his back. "I started in Michigan, got down to Florida. And I seem to be late again," he said, in character.
James and Nancy Bennitt (or Bennett) were yeoman farmers whose farm became the site of the largest troop surrender of the Civil War.
The historic site also held talks Sunday of Christmas in the South before, during and after the war.
