"We
had Oscar Hein butcher a pig for us. Had
sausage for supper and it tasted fine...."
--Letter from my grandmother, Bloomington, Kans., to my father, Winfield,
Kans., Wednesday, February 3, 1943.
In his memoir, the father wrote the
following about hogs on the family farm: “Our hogs were kept in some low,
ramshackle buildings open on the south near the house, and wallowed in the mud
just beyond when the rains came. Leonard
was an expert at hog calling, and his ‘Whooee,’ when he took the kitchen slop
out brought them running from all across the alfalfa field. They fed at a trough, filled with leftovers
from the family table and added grain, to fatten them for the market, or for
butchering.
“We slaughtered some of the best hogs on
the coldest day of winter, when the great outdoors approximated a deep freeze
locker, and natural refrigeration preserved the meat while it was being
processed. We set up equipment south of
the old storage house, and had six or eight people around to do the job. Frank Cousins and Walter Bowyer, old timers,
had mastered the art of hog-butchering, and appeared with their knives to carve
up the fattened hog, assisted by Leonard, and Pus Cousins, Max King, Jay
Causey, and the author who ran errands as a ten-year-old. The animal was suspended by its feet from a
temporary frame, its throat cut, blood drained, and then dropped into a huge
black kettle of boiling water, heated by a wood fire underneath. The hot water made scraping the black hair
from its body easier. When the carcass
was free of hair, it was suspended again from the special frame, head downward,
and the butcher deftly cut it apart into pork loins, hams, bacon, and all the
parts which humans consume. The
intestines were discarded, but the extensive fat portion was chopped into
squares and dumped into the fresh boiling water of the great kettle, taken out,
and rendered into lard.
“Cracklings--what was left after the
lard was removed--were the treat of the day for little boys,. Pork rinds they would be called today. After the crew had left, we made soap from
the lard, a mixture of lye, saltpeter, and who knows what else. The ghastly mixture was boiled in the same
huge kettle, and, after it had cooled and solidified, cut into blocks of soap
which Jessie used on Monday, the universal wash day. Tide had not been invented, or was too
expensive, and our self-sufficient farm kept going with its huge white cakes of
homemade soap.
“Bacon was the best part of the hog; the
bacon sides were treated with salt and other things, and easily preserved. The rest of it was preserved by some mixture
of salt and spices, cloves among them, and stored in the cellar beneath the
house until needed. At one time, I
believe the meat was smoked and dried in the smokehouse to take care of
preservation through the winter, and I dimly remember as a small boy watching
smoke come out of that building just south of the house. When I was older the “smokehouse” was used
for the washing machine, the cream separator, the butter churn and the large
wooden ice box, but never for smoking meat.” (Source:
Brown, Kansas Farmboy, 114-15)
