Hi all,
In past years, I have had some experience doing this, drying Italian
Sausage during the winter season when I used to live in Chicago.

Also, one Italian friend of mine there used to dry/cure about 140lbs
worth of pork shoulder every winter, turning this into Dried Italian
Sausage, Supersade (sp) and Cappocollo.
He really made some very very tasty stuff.

I was typically told by others, that very cool dry weather is needed to
succeed to air curing/drying meats. I can recall, some of the larger
pieces of meat my friend cured (Pork Butts) sometimes would spoil,
perhaps due to their large size, and also perhaps due to inconsistent
temperatures, and humidity conditions?

I have read about some Italian Parma Hams, and have read that some of
these "air cure" for up to 15 months! How do they do this?

What conditions, (temperatures-humidity are needed to provide safe
reliable results for this?
How do both commercial, and amateur makers guarantee safe results
without fear of say perhaps Trichinosis? ( I understand this parasite is
sort of uncommon nowadays)

Now, that I'm living in the Southwest US, is there any way to still
somehow succeed in this endeavor making air dried-cured Sausages, etc?
TIA, Mark