STORIES

Boy do I remember those days! Butchering Day truly was the big day of the year. In some ways better than Christmas or my birthday.  The excitement would start days before when Grandpa hauled the big oak butchering boards down from the dry haymow. Grandma would scrub them down with soap and water. Grandpa would make a trip to town to buy hog casings for stuffing sausage. Great-grandpa used to use the intestines of the hogs he butchered but it was a dirty job and there were never enough for all the sausage we wanted to stuff. We spent all afternoon cleaning out the shed, seeting the boards up on saw horses, and cleaning meat saws, knives, the meat grinder and lard press (sausage stuffer).

Early in the morning of butchering day, Uncle would be out behind the shed about 5:00 a.m. heating water in the scalding  tank. This was an iron and sheet metal affair the size of a  large bathtub. The lower half of one end was open; in this we built a fire which extended under the tank. At the end was fitted a stove-pipe chimney to draw the fire.  It took a couple hours to get the water rolling. When I was older this was a good time to pass around the wine bottle as we stamped out feet as we stood huddled aroud the fire in the snow.

   Around 7:00, two or three pickups rolled into the drive as the rest of the family arrived. "The men" were expected to get there early, 'the women' would arrive a bit later after the hogs were ready to be cut up. The unfortunate porkers, fat and complaining about being penned up, grunted in protest that their breakfast was late. It was important that the hogs not eat anything that morning, but the got al the water they wanted. A sorry last meal but absolutely necessary as we shall see later.

   Grandpa was the marksman of the family, and pulled the Marlin lever-action .22 rifle from its cloth bag. How I envied that rifle. It sits today in my gun case ad is still busy every November with its job of shooting hogs. I never could bear to watch one get shot until I had to do it myself. It was important to draw an 'X' between the hog's ears and eyes, and shoot for the center of the 'X'. Some city slickers tried to shoot the hogs 'right between the eyes' in the Hollywood tradition. This missed the hog's brain and accomplished nothing except a wild fit on the hog's part, with lots of squealing and tearing around. This was always unfortunate and unwanted, as no one wanted the hog to suffer.

   A good shot always knocked the hog down, putting it out of its Earthly misery. The 'knife man' would have to rush over to 'stick' the hog, slitting the jugular veins in the throat to let it bleed out. This was often easier said than done. The hog would be kicking and thrashing like mad and it was easy to get gouged by a flying hoof or stick yourself instead of the hog!

    It was very important to let the hog bleed completely so the meat would be free of blood. Excess blood left caused spoilage and bacteria. We all stood around for a few minutes 'til the hog finished kicking. Then the hog was lifted, with the aid of a couple of bale hooks, into the steaming water of the scalding tank. The water had to be just the right temperature, lest the hair 'set' and not scrape off easily. After a few minutes, when Grandpa determined that the hair pulled off easily, the hog was pulled out of the water and laid on the planks set up for the purpose of scraping it.  Everyone grabbed a bell-shaped hog scraper and went to work. The hog had to be completely scraped clean of hair. The legs and snout were the worst places to get clean. 

   Then Dad  produced a sharp slender-bladed knife and made an incision up and down the hog's hocks. He pulled the two tendons from the foot and slipped a hook from each end of a single tree through them. The hog was loaded into a wheel barrow and wheeled to the shed where the hook from a chain-fall was hooked to the single tree, and the ho hoisted into the air. Dad always did the honors of getting ready to gut the the hog by slicing between the legs and separating the bung hole from the rest of the carcass. A slice was made down the belly and bit by bit the entrails were removed into a was tub, or 'gut bucket'.   

   The heart was extracted from the mess, and the hog split down the middle with a hand saw.  It was a measure of how good a job was done when we saw how straight the two halves of the hog hung. If one was decidedly heavier, the sawyer had  not cut straight! Everyone to a short break for a smoke, then the whole process began again. We usually butchered three or four hogs, and this could take some time.   

The halves were laid on the butchering boards and were 'decifered' as Grandpa called it. Hams, shoulders and loins were separated, taking care to remove the 'catfish' or tenderloins. It was considered a crime if someone accidentally wasted these delicacies that would later be deep friend to a golden brown. Sausage meat and lard were kept separate in two separate tubs. Hams, bacons, loins and shoulders were trimmed up and set aside to cool overnight. It was vital that the meat chill completely before use.

   Sausage meat had to be cut up into small pieces so that they wouldn't plus the meat grinder. The old  Enterprise #22 grinder sat at the ready with its 1/2 H.P. electric motor belted to it. Soon the big tub was full of meat. Dad prepared the spices for seasoning the sausage. We made two versions, what we called 'Season-all' and 'Black & White'. Black and White, as you might guess, consisted mostly of salt and pepper seasoning, along with a little brown sugar. 'Season-all' was a brand of seasoning from the grocery store, and a family favorite since World War II. One bottle did 10 pounds of meat, and man I loved to pour it on ad mix it up. Oh, what a Heavenly aroma! After the meat was thoroughly mixed, the old grinder roared into life. Meat was dribbled into the ravenous throat, passed down the auger through the plat and cutting  blades, and emerged from the little wholes in the plate in little strings, or as us kids unceremoniously thought, a mess of works! The sausage was run through the grinder twice, once through a coarse plate with larger wholes, then again through the fine plate which ground it to a perfectly fine texture. 

Everyone's sausage was run through the coarse plate first. We had to keep track of whose tub was whose, and somehow we did. Before we unscrewed the tightening ring o the grinder's snout to replace the coarse plate with the smooth, we ran the lard through. It only needed to be ground once, as it would soon be boiled down for grease.

   Hogs in those days were very different than today, very fat. In fact we prided ourselves on how fat a hog we could produce. 'A lard hog' was a cherished animal. In this day and age we confuse 'poly-hydrogenated' food products, which are the real culprits behind cholesterol and heart trouble, with the God-given natural foods that, eaten sensibly, never hurt anyone. Half the sausage was separated into pies to be used as 'bulk' sausage. It was left to sit overnight to 'set up', then cut into chunks, wrapped up and put into the freezer. Yes, we had electricity in the 1950's!

    The rest of the sausage was to be 'stuffed' into the hog casings we had bought. The Enterprise sausage stuffer did the job; it also would do double duty when it was time to render lard. The stuffer, properly known as a lard press, was a sturdy black cast iron cylinder with a worm screw crank that pressed a metal plate into the cylinder, forcing the sausage out into a spout. Over this spout were threaded the casings. A hog casing was about 15 feet long and in its un-inflated state, about 1/4 inch wide. It could be darned hard to fit one of these over the end of the  spout. A little grease was rubbed on the metal spout to make it slippery, and the whole thing was pushed onto it. When one fellow turned the crank, the sausage filled the casing full, making as nice a long length of sausage as you'd ever want to see.  The trouble was, it took nimble hands as the casings tended to break. If this happened, no problem, you just sliced it off and started stuffing some more. We prided ourselves, though, on how long a 'rope' of sausage we could make, and it was a real source of pride to be able to got though an entire casing without breaking it. The sausage was wound up like a coiled snake and left to cool.

Next morning when we slide the big shed door open, a wonderful smell of sausage greeted us. The meat had 'set up' and was stiff and darker. A fire was started under a butchering kettle, after pouring in a small bit of water, and the lard dumped in. One man stood with a lard paddle and gave it a stir now and then, a least at first, while tending the fire. After a long while the lard melted, turning a beautiful golden color. Bits of meat and solids remained, called 'cracklin's.  Soon the lard had turned to hot grease, boiling and rolling.

     After a time, you could hear the cracklin's 'thump. It resonated inside the big cast-iron kettle, and we kids loved to listen for them. When it started thumping regularly you knew it was getting close to done.  At this point you were stirring constantly, as the lard would scorch very easily. Then you pulled the fire and let the lard simmer down. The lard would be set up on small saw horses, with a large crock or lard can under the spout A long-handled dipper was used to dip the lard from the kettle and pout it into the press. A sieved basket fit inside the cylinder which allowed the grease to run through while trapping the cracklin's inside. Once the cylinder was about 13 full, the crank was turned, pressing the cracklin's together. When all the grease had been squeezed out, the crank was reversed and the basket carefully pulled out. It was turned upside down on butcher's paper and a golden brown round cake of cracklin's fell out.

   Oh, you wanna talk about good! We'd throw a little salt on them and eat just a few. They were so rich they could make you sick in a hurry! The grease was allowed to set for a moment to cool slightly so it could be safely moved. Meanwhile, inside the shed, the stuffed sausage was cut into lengths and layered into stone crocks. They were brought outside and the hot grease was dippered into them. The grease covered the sausage completely. The sausage would keep safely like this to eat clear into the summer. Butcher's paper was tied around the top and they were carried to the basement.

   We bought a used electric meat saw about 1960. This greatly aided in cutting up the meat. Before we cut pork chops with a hammer and meat cleaver, and cut roasts and other cuts with a hand meat saw. The hams and bacons were trimmed and set aside to be cured. Pork chops, roasts and tenderloins were wrapped for the freezer.

    Bones were piled into another tub for head cheese. Old timers and some of our neighbors would boil the whole hog head for this dish, but by this time we simply cut the jowl meat and as much as we could trim from the head and  added it to the bones. These were all thrown into another butchering kettle and boiled until the meat fell from the bones. The meat was dipped out by another long-handled dipper, this one with little holes around it, laid out to cool, and the small bones picked out. It was then separated into two piles. One was flavored with salt and pepper and became our version of 'head cheese'. The meat was once again run through the grinder, then pressed into a pan to cool.

    The other meat had liver added to it and became liver sausage. It likewise was ground up, but them stuffed into casings. Both were delicious! A big treat was dinner time, which always came at noon. The women had friend up some of the fresh sausage and nothing ever tasted so good! When we butchered beef, we usually went into the house for chili, which was a major task, what with the multiple layers of clothes and boots. But for hog butchering, more often than not w simply stayed right in the shed and ate our hot dinner right there. Part of this was probably due to the fact that w butchered hogs in late November, while beef were always butchered in January, usually in the worst possible weather.  In both cases we had a coal-oil stove for heating water, and an ancient space heater that blew out more kerosene fumes than it ever burnt. It was totally inadequate in January and could only be run a few minutes to take off the chill, then quickly turned off so we could breath!

    The hams and bacons then had to be pumped full of pickling brine to be cured. A meat pump secured from the Morton Salt Company did the job. The meat was then rubbed down with salt and packed into a specially built wooden box. It was covered and allowed to cure about 3 weeks. We never gave it the full cure that would allow it to hang in the barn 'til August as in Great-Grandpa's day. We had a freezer, after all, and really only cured it for the flavor. After the three weeks, the hams and bacons were hung on meat hooks in the smoke house, where a smoky fire was kept burning for several days to flavor the meat. Again, it was sure good!

Later, with the basement full of meat, we felt very satisfied and secure with a job well, the larder replenished and the wolf kept away from the door for another year.