I invite you to read 'Confederates In the Attic' by Tony Horowitz, as he takes it upon himself to follow a group of modern-day 'hardcore' Confederate reenactors as they go about their lives.
You'll get a glimpse of yet another take on historical reenactment and those who 'really' embrace it.
I need to reread that book again, it's been at least 10 if not more years since I did. There is something in the book that drives me crazy and you see it at Civil War reeactments, watch the HC series Civil War Journal and you will see it in there when they use footage from events. It's the salt pork, I swear every Civil War reenactor thinks that the army removed the fat back from pigs, put it in barrels of brine and threw the rest of the pig away, either that or they don't think things through.
The whole hog was cut up and put in the pork barrel, the fatback was used to flavor the messes beans or was sliced and fried to eat only when you were scraping the bottom of the barrel. Now it you got to the store, what they have for "salt pork" is only fat back, to be used to flavor beans and other purposes it's useful for. If you want salt pork to match the ration pork you are going to have to buy shoulder, loins or other large cuts of pork and brine them for at least a couple weeks yourself.
If that is not handy, or you don't want to make it, then switch the ration to the dreaded salt beef, aka salt horse, it can be bought in any store, they only cut seen commonly today is brisket, but at least it has meat on it, one can slice it and fry it for individual rations or boil it for the whole mess. Wait till a week or so after March 17th and you can often buy it cheap and freeze it, most of us know it as corned beef. Yep either the fatback or the beef does not have quite enough salt in it to keep it like the product of the time.