ANTICHI MESTIERI UL MACELAAR: IL MACELLAIO

Usually, it was a farmer who exercised the profession of butcher during the winter season (from November to February).

This "art" was passed down, by tradition, from father to son; always practiced at the home of the requester.

The butcher ul macèlaar was "commanded" by farming families who raised pigs for their own consumption to be slaughtered each year.

Equipment: a wooden marna box, pulleys, rope, six or seven knives of various sizes, and a tool operated by a crank with a dual function: grinding meat and fat by placing four cross-shaped knives fixed at one end in the support, and "stuffing the meat" into the intestines, forming sausages and salami, applying a kind of funnel useful for the purpose.

The butcher, with the tools in a bundle carried on his back, would arrive at the house where the "victim" was predestined on cold winter mornings.

He would start working at dawn, causing the piercing grunts of the pigs destined for slaughter to echo throughout the neighborhood.
This is still a current activity in our tradition.

marna: about one and a half meters long, wide and deep from 20 to 30 cm, where the ground meat was placed along with the addition of various spices useful for preservation.

A kind contribution from Mariella of UILDM Sondrio: memories collected from her parents