Biography and Heritage of an Uninterrupted Local Tradition
The Cajun Traditional Agriculture Festival
"La Grande Boucherie des Cajuns"




(Reprinted from the St. Martin Parish Tourism Commission website)

The Saturday Before Mardi Gras!!!!!

Traditionally, Cajun social life centered around the home. Neighbors came together to fashion their own entertainment. Then, as now, food was central to any gathering of friends and family.

Among Cajuns, anything can be a celebration, including the butchering of a hog. Called a Boucherie, the occasion still brings together aunts, uncles, cousins and neighbors, all of whom participate, and leave with some byproducts of the butchering. Sharing animated conversation and often some cold beer and wine, the participants produce from the freshly killed hog des tripes, which most everyone in the rest of the country call chitterlings, p’ tit sale or salt meat, andouille sausage, pork meat patties called platines, the perennial favorite boudin, which consists of rice and pork dressing stuffed in an edible casing, hog’s head cheese, marinated pork or grillades and smoked meat for seasoning which Cajuns call tasso. Also from the hog comes gratons, the original Cajun snack food. Called cracklins in other parts of the country, gratons are produced along with lard, another important byproduct of the Boucherie. The skin is scraped and the fat layer next to it rendered into lard for cooking, after which the skin and attached fat residue are fried into crisp, tasty gratons.

It is not by accident that the predominately Catholic Cajuns from St. Martinville hold their annual “La Grande Boucherie des Cajuns” right before Ash Wednesday, which is the beginning of the Lenten season. The community comes together for one last “bon temps.”

Traditionally, the boucherie has been the Sunday before Mardi Gras.

"We decided not to try to compete with Super Bowl," Bert Bienvenu, president of La Grande Boucherie Des Cajuns said.

Bienvenu said the idea of moving the day of the event is not a new one.

"That's something we've been kicking around for years. But for the sake of tradition, we held it on Sunday," he said.

The celebration will feature arts and crafts, food, fun and much more.

Music will be provided by Damon Troy & Louisiana Beat and Kevin Naquin and the Ossun Playboys.

Various activities will take place throughout the course of the day.

Rooster fights will he held at various times. The famous butchering of the pig will be at 1 p.m. and at 3:30 p.m. a "Squeal Like a Pig" contest will be conducted.

Far from the Carnival balls, parades and raucous crowds of New Orleans, Cajuns in St. Martinville held their last ''bon temps'' before Lent in a far different fashion: with a grand boucherie, or slaughtering of a pig.

Associated Press reports that hundreds of people watched at least part of the ritual Saturday, though most have seen it before.

A strong breeze rolls off Bayou Teche and through Magnolia Park in St. Martinville. It's a sunny Sunday afternoon, perfect weather for La Grande Boucherie des Cajuns.

The pink cheeks of children are painted with butterflies, rainbows and clouds. The adults wear sunglasses and grip plastic cups and beer cans. Under one of the oaks, there's a large circular trampoline frame wrapped with wire. Next to it are four caged roosters. They scratch at the leaves under their feet and peck at the ground.

Behind the gathering crowd, a band sets up on a flatbed trailer. A heavy man in green shorts, a matching T-shirt and a worn Adidas sun visor parts the crowd, cradling a rooster with his right arm and stroking the bird's feathers with his free hand. Behind him is a smaller man, dressed in denim and cowboy boots, holding another rooster and stroking it the same way. The roosters have small gloves, one pair red and the other yellow, strapped to their spurs with rubber bands.

Inside the ring, the man in denim scratches out two lines in the grass with the heel of his boot. Both men face one another. They extend the birds at arm's length -- close enough that the beaks can almost touch -- and then quickly bring them back to their chests.

They do this several times, letting the birds get a good look at each other. Then they place the roosters on the ground behind the lines and let them loose. The roosters flare their hackles (neck feathers), spread their wings and go at each other, striking with their beaks and their miniature boxing gloves.

As a Lenny Kravitz song blares from the flatbed trailer, a bald man yells, "C'mon, Red! C'mon, Big Boy!" A younger man yells, "Put him in the gumbo!"