OVER MY SHOULDER

This has been an unusual fall---as a youngster it seems to me that we always had cold weather prior to December 1, and usually we would have had snow. Dad’s birthday was November 23, and I recall that many times, we would have snow on or before his birthday. Along in the late 30’s, I recall that when it turned cold in the fall and early winter, Dad would often butcher a hog.

Earlier in the fall, Dad would ‘pen’ a hog in a small area, and start feeding it grain to fatten it. Usually, this would be corn, and perhaps a mixture of items to form what we would call ‘hog slop’. It seems to me that this was a mixture of several items, which included small grain of some kind soaked overnight or longer in water. I don’t recall exactly how long the hog would be in the fattening pen, but I would guess anywhere from 30 to 60 days.

Once the hog was fat, Dad would wait for a cold day to butcher---often, one of my uncles, or a neighbor would be on hand to assist with the butchering process. To butcher a hog, one needs a large barrel of boiling water. This would be done in the back yard over an open fire under the barrel. While the water was heating, Dad would secure a rope and pulley on a strong limb several feet above the barrel of water. He would have already spent several hours in grinding and honing the knives for the process.

A ‘single tree’ would be secured to one end of the rope---the other end would be run through the pulley and ‘tied off’ on the tree, or some secure spot. (a single tree is that part of a hitch to which the ‘tugs’ of a horse’s harness is connected to pull a load---two single trees are fastened to an ‘evener’, to form a double tree that would be connected to the wagon, plow or what ever.) In this case however, the single tree would be used to lift and ‘dip’ the hog into the hot water.

When the water had been brought to a boil, the hog would be killed (usually shot with a 22), bled, and transported to the hot water. The hogs “hind’ legs would be secured to the single tree, and with the rope and pulley would be pulled up and dipped into the boiling water. The hog was ‘scalded’, so as to loosen the bristles so that they could be scraped from the body in the butchering process.

Once the hog had been adequately scalded, it would be lowered to the ground and ‘scraped’ until all of the bristles had been removed. After the hog had been properly scraped, it would again be pulled up into the tree---usually just off of the ground, and the butchering process would continue with removal of the entrails.

Some where in the process the head and feet were removed. Dad had a large ‘meat’ saw that he used to saw the hog in half. This consisted of starting at the top of the hanging hog and sawing down the middle of the back bone all of the way through the hog. As I recall, it was at this point that the hog would be pulled higher into the tree, and left for several hours to ‘cool out’----I don’t recall for certain, but it seems to me that it may have been left over night.

We had no freezer at that time---in fact I do not remember that there were even any cold storage lockers in town at that time---therefore, the meat had to be either used, cured, canned, or processed so as to preserve it for use. Often neighbors would help each other with the butchering process, then share the fresh meat that had to be used at that butchering time. This way, the meat would be ‘used up’ over a shorter period of time, and it would not be necessary to preserve it for so long.

After the ‘cooling out process’, the hog would be lowered, and each side would be cut in half---(shoulder half and ham half)---placed on a clean cloth and moved to the house or ‘smoke house’ to process. The shoulders, bacon and hams would be remove and laid aside to be prepared later for curing. The tenderloin would be removed, or cut into ‘chops’---each chop would have to be cut with a saw. (there is nothing better than fresh pork tenderloin, eggs, hot biscuits and gravy for breakfast on a cold morning after you have done the morning milking).

Much of the ‘fat’ would be trimmed from the various parts of the hog and put back to be ‘rendered’ into lard. All of the the ‘trimmed’ meat (all of those little spots that were not on the main meat cuts) would be bunched up to be ground into sausage later. Once the hog had been processed (cut into the appropriate pieces), the preserving process would start. The shoulders, bacon and hams would be ‘salted’ down with curing salt---this involved rubbing the curing salt (that looks much like brown sugar) thoroughly into the meat, and hang them in the smoke house to cure. Brother Jim used to love brown sugar, and one day mistook a bowl of curing salt for brown sugar---only once.

The sausage meat would be ground through the hand meat grinder. This was a small grinder that would be secured to a table top, and turned by hand as someone fed the meat into the grinder. (we still have the old grinder around here somewhere) This was a slow process, as there was often a lot of trimmings to go through the grinder, and it was a slow tiresome process. Once the sausage was ground, it was seasoned with various spices before it was ready to use.

All of the fat that had been gathered would be place in a large iron kettle over an open fire in the back yard, and ‘rendered’ down into lard. Lard was used as cooking grease, as we did not have crisco, and other cooking oils at that time (at least at our house). The lard would be placed in containers and stored in the cave for future use. The ‘cracklings’ that were left over from the rendering process would be used to make ‘lye soap’ for laundry---(and boys if they got too dirty). We all remember Grandma’s lye soap.

Any of the meat that was not cured, and was to be preserved over a longer period of time was cooked, place in containers, covered with lard, sealed, and stored in the cave. Very little of the animal would be unused, or go to waste. As explained earlier, usually, a lot of the fresh meat would be shared with a neighbor who would also share when they butchered. The liver, heart etc would be share with all the neighbors as they needed to be used pretty quick.

Butchering, processing and preserving a hog was a lot of work, but the proceeds certainly were worth the effort. It was only a once or twice time or the year, thus it was an ‘event’----one that I remember with fond memories.