Hamming it up 

The legacy of country ham in Cadiz

In the rolling hills of Trigg County, country ham is an icon—a testament to the area’s agricultural and commercial heritage. 

Each October, tens of thousands of people flock to the western Kentucky county for its Country Ham Festival—Oct. 10–11 this year. Celebrating 49 years, the festival is Trigg County’s signature tourism event. But the history of the hog runs deeper than the festival’s nearly half-century. 

Trigg County, which borders Tennessee, was founded in 1820 and soon became a hub for agriculture—specifically, hog farming. Before the advent of refrigeration technology, curing hams was an essential food preservation technique. The process involves adding a salt-based cure to a fresh ham and aging it in a cool place, which can include smoking the ham at a cool temperature. 

Country hams hanging at a festival booth.

Photo: Joe Imel

  In 1909 in Cadiz, Smith Broadbent III started the family business that produces cured ham and bacon on a commercial scale. Over the decades since, Broadbent B & B Food Products, now based in Kuttawa, has earned a prizewinning reputation at the Kentucky State Fair. This year, Broadbent’s 16.5-pound grand champion ham sold for $10 million—just shy of last year’s $10.5 million—at the Kentucky Farm Bureau’s Country Ham Breakfast and Charity Auction at the state fair. 

A festival is born 

In the 1970s, Trigg County Extension Agent John Fourqurean was looking for a family-friendly way to showcase the county’s culture. 

At the time, his son David says, the county was known for three things: dark tobacco, moonshine and country ham. His father decided that country ham would make for the most family-friendly festival focal point. 

John Fourqurean worked with county officials, and the first Country Ham Festival launched in 1977 around Cadiz’s Courthouse Square. The festival featured activities like “money in a haystack,” greased pig races, cake walks and rocking chair races. 

David Fourqurean—who followed in his father’s footsteps as an Extension agent, was a teenager during the first Country Ham Festival. During the early years, he says, organizers weren’t focused on tourism. Local organizations like the Rotary Club, football team and church groups sponsored the activities. There was some doubt about the longevity of the event during the festival’s beginning, Fourqurean recalls, but crowd sizes put that doubt to rest.  

Beth Sumner, executive director of the Cadiz-Trigg County Tourist and Convention Commission, grew up in the community and remembers going to the Country Ham Festival as a little girl, which she says “was a big to-do.”  

“I can remember, as a real young kid, if you stuck around all day they’d have drawings for the people that were there,” Sumner says. “I won a country ham one year.” 

The event started as a one-day-only gathering, but has expanded to Friday and Saturday (though its carnival opens Thursday night). Some downtown businesses and roads shut down early in preparation for the thousands of guests who will fill the streets. 

The Country Ham Show has been one of the festival’s mainstay events from the beginning. Producers from across Trigg County select their best country ham and haul it in for judging, based on qualities that include color, shape and workmanship. The most points are awarded for aroma, Fourqurean says. 

“You don’t think that there’d be much difference in country hams, but I promise you that every one of them will smell just a little bit different,” Fourqurean says. “The aroma, to me, is just second to none.” 

Another signature event is the baking of a giant ham biscuit, 10 feet in diameter. 

Volunteers bake Kentucky’s largest

ham biscuit in the Bank of Cadiz

parking lot. A forklift is required

to lift the biscuit into a giant oven.

Photo: Joe Imel

Festivalgoers line the street on Saturday morning to catch a glimpse of the 200 pounds of dough being rolled out and baked to a golden brown. (See sidebar.) 

Many attendees center their day around the classic festival foods they enjoy each year, like ham and biscuits, blooming onions, pork chop sandwiches and funnel cakes. More than 200 vendors sell their wares, from food to artisan crafts, and there is live music both days. Broadbent’s will even be on hand this year with a cooking demonstration. 

Economic and community impact 

Sumner says the festival has seen visitors from nearly all states, plus Germany and Japan. Cadiz Mayor Todd King says the economic impact on the city is “tremendous and overwhelming” as tourists pack lodging, restaurants and shopping centers year after year.  

“And it’s not just the stores that are right downtown. It impacts everything in the community,” Sumner says. Repeat patrons even make their lodging reservations for next year as this year’s festival closes, city officials say.  

While the Country Ham Festival draws tourists, it continues to hold special significance for western Kentuckians.  

Fourqurean says when he was growing up, going to the ham festival was one of the only community events in Trigg County. If he wanted to spend time with friends, that was the place to do it. 

He views the Country Ham Festival today as a homecoming. He helps run the Country Ham Show on Saturday and spends time with his grandkids and family. His son even participated in the ham biscuit-eating contest last year. 

“I still like helping and continuing that legacy that my dad built. I think it’s very important,” he says. 

Fourqurean says he and his father had many conversations about the Country Ham Festival before John died in January. His Dad never expected it to last a half century, but he says that’s just a testament to the strength of Trigg County. 

“Will it last another 50 years? I don’t know,” he says, chuckling. “That’d be something pretty cool to tell my (great-grandkids)—that your great-great-grandaddy started the Country Ham Festival.” 

What a ham 

The Trigg County Ham Festival and its county seat are all about the everything porcine. Take a look at some photos of the pig statues that stand guard outside of Cadiz’s local businesses.  

Curious about Cadi the giant pig statue? Here’s what it looks like. 

To make the Trigg County Country Ham Festival’s 10-foot in diameter biscuit, it takes a rolling pin that big, too, as this video shows.