VALDOSTA — Leon Harrell recalls long-ago days, coming home, and walking to the smokehouse for an after-school snack.

“I can remember well when the meat was cured and ready to eat,” Harrell shares. “I would come in from school and get one of mama’s leftover biscuits and go to the smokehouse and take my Barlow knife and slice a piece of ham for my biscuit. I had something good.”

Leon Harrell and his wife, Annette Harrell, can both recall a time when meat-filled smokehouses were a regular part of South Georgia falls and winters.

Annette Harrell recalls her mother walking out to their family smokehouse where she would cut off a few slabs of ham, bring them back and fry them in a skillet.

But those smokehouse days aren’t just long-ago memories for the Harrells. The smokehouse was once a regular part of the South Georgia landscape. For the Harrell’s little part of South Georgia, it will be again.

Come this Thanksgiving, the Harrells hope to be eating their first meat from the smokehouse they recently completed on their backyard property located on the swatch of Lanier County that juts between Lowndes and Berrien counties on Highway 125.

Leon Harrell decided memories of having something good weren’t enough. He wanted to taste fresh smoked hams, shoulders and sausage again.

Though the world has changed since the smokehouse days, the memories linger. Harrell’s family smokehouse is among his fondest childhood memories.

“It was used to smoke our meat when Daddy would kill hogs,” Harrell says. “Every year, in the winter time, Daddy would pick the coldest day to kill hogs. The smokehouse was built out of boards and it had a dirt floor. There was a shallow hole in the floor to burn wood to smoke the meat. He would gather oak logs about two-feet long and burn them until he got a good smoke.”

From the woods, Harrell’s father found palmetto fans. He peeled away the outer skin from the stems and used these to hang the hams and shoulders. His father used tobacco sticks for sausages. The meat smoked for three to four days.

For years, these memories from his childhood in Coffee County stayed with Leon Harrell. He joined the Air Force. He moved in 1983 to a rural part of South Georgia, where he raised cattle until a spinal surgery made working with cows impossible.

He and his late wife made friends with many people including another couple who had moved to this region in the 1970s. Annette was part of that couple. She had grown up in Jeff Davis County, familiar with farm life since childhood. Annette and Leon knew each other for years. After both of their spouses passed away, they ran across each other and, as Leon Harrell describes it, “all of a sudden it just happened one day.” They have been married for eight years.

Though they both grew up with smokehouses, Leon Harrell had the idea to build one for the 21st century.

“He’s the instigator of it,” Annette Harrell says, “and I just went along with it.”

Though he dreamed for years of building a smokehouse, the biggest deterrent was finding “the old-time logs to build it.”

On a trip to Berrien County’s Riverside Church, he noticed two old tobacco barns. The barns were unused and deteriorating. Learning they belonged to Danny Hendley, Harrell contacted the owner and told him of wanting to build a smokehouse. Hendley donated the tier poles from one barn. Harrell soon realized he would need more tier poles to build the smokehouse; Hendley donated the poles from the second tobacco barn.

The Harrells pressure-washed these poles several times to remove the tobacco odor from them. “You have to remove that tobacco smell,” Leon Harrell says. “You don’t want that smell getting in your meats.”

Stepping into the smokehouse finished in May, no trace of tobacco smell remains. Even with the temperatures pushing 100 degrees outside, the smell is sweet inside the smokehouse.

Summer temperatures will spoil meats. So, the Harrells cannot smoke any meats until the first cold snap, but he has been burning wood in the smokehouse’s pit to ensure the smokehouse works properly when the right time comes.

The Harrells made a few modifications from the smokehouses of their memories. Then, they explain, smokehouses typically had gaps between the wood and usually between the walls and the tin roof where air could enter. The Harrells’ smokehouse has a shingled roof and the gaps between the wood have been blocked by thinner pieces of nailed wood. The Harrells have installed dampers which will allow them to control air flow.

With the smokehouse sealed, Harrell believes he can increase the time of smoking meats from the old four days to about two. He notes, however, that the smoking process cooks the meat’s outer layers, allowing a young boy to cut a slab of ham for a biscuit, but the inner meat must still be cooked by a more traditional oven or other means. The smoking process gives the meat its distinct flavor.

Twenty removable wooden cross pieces are lined below the ceiling. Stainless-steel hooks will be fitted in these wooden slats where hams and shoulders will hang. Sausages can be wrapped around these slats.

A metal plate fits over the iron-grill pit dug in the floor. Here, the wood already drying in the Harrells’ backyard will be burned this fall and winter, creating the smoke for the meats.

With the construction complete, and many of the test runs successful, the Harrells still have about four months until they can try smoking the real thing.

Though he may have a hankering to slice off a slab of ham for a biscuit or she to slice some slabs for the skillet, Leon and Annette Harrell understand that any cooking form that involves days of preparation also requires patience.

Besides, having dreamed of a smokehouse for decades, what’s four more months?