Carlton Hill Smoked Rabbit Takes First Place
We entered our first local cooking contest this year and somehow walked out with first place. The Parkersburg News and Sentinel’s annual Cookbook Contest has been running for 71 years, and this year’s theme was Cook of All Trades.
When Sean submitted the recipe and was asked to prepare the dish for the tasting party, his first feeling was excitement. The next was dread. He’s usually pretty quiet, especially in front of people, and this meant putting his work, his food, and the way we live on full display. This recipe wasn’t just a casserole thrown together and plopped in the oven. Sean processed the rabbit fresh two days before the event, soaked it for twenty-four hours to draw the blood out, and brined it for another twenty-four before it hit the smoker. Nothing fancy. Just Sean outside on a crisp fall morning, tending a small charcoal smoker and hoping it came out right. You can find his (now award-winning) recipe here if you want to try it.
The contest is known for being competitive. Entrants can submit up to twenty recipes, and many return every year with decades of experience behind them. Sean entered one. Just this one. His first year. A single dish made the same way we make dinner here: by hand, with what we raise, using the time we have.
That’s what makes this win matter. Recognition isn’t the goal. Representation is. When the food that wins a local contest comes from a one-acre farm in town, it means something. It shows that small, honest food can still stand beside anything from a professional kitchen. It shows that the skills we’re trying to rebuild aren’t lost or old-fashioned. They are alive, useful, and worth protecting.
The theme this year, Cook of All Trades, fits in ways that go beyond the kitchen. Processing your own meat, smoking it, preparing it from start to finish. These are trades too. They take patience, precision, and respect for what you’re working with. The potatoes, onion, and garlic in the dish were all grown here on our farm, fertilized with rabbit manure from the same animal that gave its life to make the meal possible. Nothing imported or packaged. Everything connected. These are the kinds of skills that used to be common and are now considered rare, but they’re the backbone of what keeps a small farm alive. That’s the kind of cooking we believe in.
This wasn’t about competing. It was about proving that the work of feeding yourself still has value in a world that tells you to buy instead of build. It was about reminding people that food doesn’t need packaging or polish to matter. It just needs care, patience, and a willingness to keep doing the work.
You can read the full article from The Parkersburg News and Sentinel here. It’s behind a paywall, but you can usually open it in a private or incognito window if you hit the block.