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Winter

Hog Butchering
The quilting project came to a temporary halt when a series of cold days followed cold days. Butchering time had come. Daddy called Mr. Raymond or Uncle Charlie or in some way arranged to butcher our hogs with a farmer. Rarely did we butcher at our house for we did not have a good supply of water. Rather, the farmer came with his horses and wagon, loaded the scalding vat that Daddy had made (and lent to anyone) and the two hogs that Daddy had shot right after breakfast, and took them to the barnyard area out from the farmer's spring where a fire was already started. The vat was placed over the fire and filled with water, the men and the women going back and forth to the spring in the springhouse. When the water was boiling and all the killed hogs had been assembled, four men lowered one hog very carefully into the vat, paused, turned it, and then, grunting and straining, lifted it out. Immediately the men began scraping off the hog hair. They worked quickly, braced spraddle-legged over the limp, steaming bulk.

All the while, the water was returning to the boiling point, ready far the next hog. The men carried the scraped hog to already set up poles with cross bars at the top and nailed the hog's two front hoofs in place, belly forward. It reminded me of the crucifixion pictures on, my Easter Sunday School lesson. Another man, with a long, sharp knife slit the hog from top to bottom and carefully urged the whole interior mass to drop into the wash tub that one of the women placed on the ground beneath the hung up hog.

Two people carried the tub over to some make-shift tables and then Mama and Aunt Merica and all the women began separating out the heart, the liver, the melts, the sweetbreads, and taking off the fat from the intestines. Each person set aside his own off-fallings to take home, but all helped on each hog.
Late in the afternoon the farmer with his horses and wagon brought our somewhat cold carcasses and the vat to our house. He helped Daddy carry the hogs, now cut into lesser pieces, to the shed and put them on a worktable that Daddy had made by putting planks across the saw horses. They brought in the buckets off-fallings and fat; they brought in the hogs' heads. And the bladders. Aunt Merica would soak them and in a day or two blow them up into balloons for Joe and me to play with. Mama and Aunt Merica made use of everything but the kidneys, the tail and the squeal.

It had been a hard day, but the work was far from over. That night or the next morning, Daddy had to cut the meat into hams, shoulder, side meat, fat-back, ribs, backbones, and tenderloin. He threw the trimmings into washtubs, one lean and fat for sausage, one of pure fat for lard, all of which Mama and Aunt Merica would manage. When the meat had properly cooled, a day or so later, depending on the weather, he had to cure it with salt and pepper and probably other things and eventually sack and hang it in the smokehouse – a misnomer, for we never smoked meat.

Down at the house, the sausage grinder was fastened to the kitchen table and a washtub made ready to catch the ground meat. We all took turns with the handle of the grinder, although I could hardly get it all the way round one time. Black pepper, salt and sage were added to the ground meat. Mama or Aunt Merica, their hands freshly washed and their sleeves rolled up above the elbows, mixed the mass by hand. Then the best part started. Small cakes were fried and tasted. Not enough pepper. More added and another sample tested. Aunt Merica knew just how it should taste, but we all had our say. Once accepted, Mama and Aunt Merica made it into cakes to fry, then pack into crocks and cover with hot grease. Or they packed it into small crocks, baked it in the oven, and covered it with grease. All these cracks got stored in the cellar.

Mama and Aunt Merica were busy all day long, for days, working up the meat. The weather was so cold that fresh meat would keep, frozen, for sometime in the shed. Nevertheless, Mama canned some backbones and ribs. She stuffed the heart with sage stuffing and baked it for supper. Liver got sliced and fried for breakfast. Sweetbreads were cooked with scrappy pieces of meat to make a wonderful meal. The feet were cooked on a day Daddy was not home for dinner. Aunt Merica took trimmed off pieces of meat, liver, cornmeal, spices, even the hog's head (carefully cleaned by her) and turned them into mincemeat, sauce, and scrappel. Cooled, each was poured into pans and stared for winter use. But before she made any of these things, she had to make lard.

She built a fire under the wash kettle, out in the backyard. By batches, she put in the cut up fat and some water. Slowly the mixture cooked; the water evaporated; the cracklings fell to the bottom. Hot fat was dipped out into tins, cooled and stored in the shed. Mama counted the gallons and far the next year, rationed out the opening of a new bucket, making the supply last until the next butchering time. The cracklings, pressed free of grease, were stored in a crock in the cellar and used by Mama for several weeks to make crackling cornbread. Eventually, Mama and Aunt Merica could say that butchering was over and they could return to the quilts.

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