More about living on the farm as a child.
Not only did we have peanut boilings, we had hog killings! That's right: HOG KILLINGS!!!! Neighbors and sometimes family would come to these gatherings. I don't know how many hogs would be killed in one day, but I know it had to be several. See, every family represented would take a share of the meat home.
The men would first kill the hog (not sure if they knocked them in the head or shot them), then slit their throat and hung them somehow on two posts with a cross post and let the blood drain out. Then they dipped the hog in a vat or tub of some sort filled with boiling hot water. I have not idea how long they kept them in the water, but when it had been long enough, they took the body out and scraped all the hair off of it. Then all you could see was pinkish, white skin. Amazing how clean the hair came off.
The next step was to get the entrails (intestines) out. They might have done this before the hot water bath, I was too young to remember all the mechanics of this great operation! Anyway, there was nothing wasted, nothing!!! They had liver and lights (consisted of lungs and liver). I am not sure about the heart, but I know for a fact that they used the hog head to make souse (hog head cheese). My Momma loved that souse. She also loved to scramble pig brains and eggs for breakfast! I never could bring myself to eat that nor the souse! I don't know if they used the feet, tails and ears, but I do know that they sell them in the grocery stores even today, so they are edible as well. The waste was cleaned out of the intestines and then washed until squeeky clean and then used to make stuffed sausages. I remember me and Wayne helping to stuff the sausages. There was a machine that had a hopper to put the sausage mix in and an opening that we would put the clean intestine onto and a handle that we turned to push the ground up sausage mix into the intestine and the ends tied to keep the meat inside. Then they would be strung up on some sort of pieces of wood in the smoke house to be smoked.That is how smoked sausage came to be. Nowadays they use something else to put the sausage mix into.They also made sausage patties. The women had to grind up the sausage and get the seasoning just right or they would not be good. The intestines were also used as chitterlings (mostly called chitlins) and some people fried them, some boiled them and ate them. Those I could not stand to eat either (they stunk even though they were clean! My Momma loved those as well, don't know if my Daddy did or not.
While all this is going on the men are cutting up the hog into hams, shoulders, boston butts, bacon (side meat), pork chops, roasts, ribs,backbone, ham hocks and probably some other cuts that I don't know about.
Then they had the old cast iron wash pot over a fire and were frying the skin to make cracklings and the lard that cooked out was used to cook with and fry things in.
One of my aunts and her husband put some of the side meat into buckets of lard and sealed them up and had pickled meat. I don't know if they added anything to the lard or not. I do know that I did not like pickled meat. They took it out and fried it like bacon, but it did not taste much like bacon to me. I don't remember Momma and Daddy doing pickled meat, but like I said I was pretty young and don't remember all the details.
The hog killings had to be done when it was very cold so the meat would not spoil before it was properly prepared for storage. All the hams, shoulder, sausage,and bacon and I don't know what else were put into the smoke house for weeks I think until they were cured just right.
While all this was going on, some of the women would be in the house cooking dinner for every body.
Then when all the work was done, the meat was portioned out to each family according to how they had worked it out. The families that came there had their own hog killings and my parents helped and shared with them the same way.
But even with all the eww-ww work, the ahh-hh eating was mighty fine. And besides we all had a good time fellow shipping and working together.
Hog Killing Day was looked forward to with great excitement each year. Daddy would say, "well, I believe its cold enough today to kill hogs." That was all he had to say, then we knew what was coming. This went on each year on the farm.
So there you have the eww-ww and the ahh-hh!!!!
See ya next time!!!
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