Gallery: Small-Town Paper Nabs Two Consecutive Photog of the Year Awards
Dave Weatherwax/The Herald01dmw-upy06
*Jasper seniors Kirk Stenftenagel, left, Issac Lechner, Mark Giesler and Nate Messier spent halftime during a championship football game against Evansville Reitz in a hunting blind at Jerry Brewer Alumni Stadium in Jasper.*
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*A crossbred heifer named Storm nuzzled up against Elizabeth Brinkman of Huntingburg, 16, as she rested with her cattle at the Dubois County 4-H Fair.*
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*Providence Home Health Care Center cook Becky Partenheimer danced with resident Kenny Aders as they listened to the music of Louisville performer Jeff Rehmet at the Jasper nursing home.*
Dave Weatherwax/The Herald04dmw-upy08
*Brother Macario Martinez-Arjona paused briefly at the end of each row of gravestones in the cemetery at the Saint Meinrad Archabbey as he exited the grounds following an observance of All Saints' Day.*
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*Levi Leffert lost his leg in a lawn mower accident when he was 5. Nearly an hour and a half after arriving at Shriners Hospital for Children in St. Louis to pick up his new prosthetic leg, Leffert waited while the leg was being adjusted. It took nearly two hours and several adjustments for the prosthetic to get to the point where Levi felt comfortable enough to take it home.*
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*Ferdinand Elementary fourth-graders Hunter Helming, left, and Megan Gogel, right, were no match for the speed of Leffert despite him having a prosthetic leg as he raced the two in the school'€™s gym. The race was part of the presentation Leffert gave to the school's third and fourth-graders about lawn mower safety in which he recounted how he was caught beneath the deck of a lawn mower when he was 5 years old and his injury eventually led him to have a portion of his left leg and foot amputated.*
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*Prosthetists at Shriners Hospital for Children in St. Louis have told Leffert that they can'€™t make a brace that he can'€™t break. He once managed to break one that was said to be unbreakable. Levi keeps many of his old braces and shows them to students during his classroom presentations.*
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*After having a rough day during which he spent most of the 10-hour workday at Holiday World limping, Leffert reclined in a chair while chatting with his dad, Mark, in their St. Meinrad home. It'€™s common for Leffert after long days of work to have to remove his prosthetic limb and massage his leg.*
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*Having been through multiple legs since his amputation, Leffert uses one of his older ones as his swimming leg.*
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*"I mow all of the time. It doesn'€™t bother me a bit,"€ Leffert said. Leffert, who eventually lost his left leg after a mowing accident in 1999, often helps his dad mow his family'€™s property as well as some neighbors'€™ properties.*
Dave Weatherwax/The Herald11dmw-upy29
*Every year for dozens of years, the Schwenk family has gathered at the family farm in Ireland, Indiana for a weekend of hog butchering. The tradition goes back to the days when farm families gathered to share the work and put the meat on the table. Four generations helped with this year's butchering. Logan Niehaus of Ireland, Indiana, 12, center, took aim at one of the pigs with a .22-caliber rifle as his cousins Jared Schwenk of Jasper, 12, left, Travis Main of Ireland, Chase Schwenk of Jasper, 16, and family friend Brian Schmitt of Ireland watched. Most of the young men took a turn at shooting a pig.*
Dave Weatherwax/The Herald12dmw-upy30
*A tradition that began with Herb Schwenk'€™s family before his time has continued annually over the years on the family farm in Ireland, Indiana. Now 87 years old, Herb has passed on the knowledge to keep the tradition alive to his children, grandchildren, in-laws and some family friends. In this photo, Herb'€™s son Keith Schwenk of Ireland checked the temperature of a vat filled with water and quicklime. "It's my magic potion,"€ he said. After the hogs are killed, they are placed in the mixture heated to 145 degrees, a temperature high enough to loosen hair from the body without cooking the pig.*
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*Mike Schwenk, Herb's oldest son, hosed down the hogs before processing them. The organs --€” kidneys, livers, spleens, lungs, hearts and sweetbreads --€” are all put into separate piles to be used later. The only portions of a pig that the Schwenks don'€™t use are the stomach and the intestines.*
Dave Weatherwax/The Herald14dmw-upy32
*The Schwenk family has been taught by Herb to use every part of the pig possible, including the head. The family turn the heads into head cheese, which several family members said is best served on a cracker with spicy mustard.*
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*No members of the family shy away from any portion of the butchering, no matter how dirty the task.*
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*With the farthest-away family member traveling from Evansville, Indiana, all 12 of Herb'€™s children and many of their spouses and children come together to help with the family tradition throughout the weekend. Ron Schwenk, second from left, laughed with his sister Shelly Main as Ron processed a pig'€™s head. Also helping with the process was Shelly'€™s husband, Roy, left, and her son, Travis, right.*
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*Rendering the lard was one of the last tasks the Schwenk family finished before the final cleanup began. The rendering process requires the lard to be constantly stirred, so Mark Kordes, clockwise from front left around the kettle, Roy Main, Nicholas Hoffman, 16, and Nathan Verkamp took turns stirring the lard.*
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*Hannah Schwenk, 9, watched as the head cheese was mixed.*
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*During the annual hog butchering weekend, family members make ground pork sausage, liver sausage, blood sausage, head cheese, pickled pigs feet and lard and carve the meat into select cuts.*
