Christine Balfa never knew her grandfather, Charles Balfa. But she did know about the legacy he left to her family – Cajun music. Born around the turn of the century, Charles Balfa was a fiddler. He didn’t do it for the money but for the pure joy of it. “In that era, a lot of people played,” Christine explains. “They didn’t have entertainment like we have now, so it was more common for people to be musical.”
Back in the early 1980s, Lafayette attorneys, Jimmy Domengeaux and Kyle Gideon sensed a problem — many Cajun mom-and-pop butcher shops were getting squeezed out by the explosion of grocery superstores throughout Acadiana. “The country butchers in Acadiana, in many ways, represent the best of Cajun and Creole culture, many of which have been run by a single family for generations,” Domengeaux explained. “A Cajun butcher knows how to make perfect use of the delicacies provided by a slaughtered hog, including making chaudin (the lining of the pork stomach stuffed with pork), hog’s head cheese, sausage, cracklins and our favorite — boudin.”