[Granville-Hough] 24 Jun 2009 - Hog Kill

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:15:11 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: Hog Kill  - 24 June 2009

Though this is an old story to most of you, others will be seeing it for 
the first time.  It is actually more fitting for a cold November day, 
but there are several hog stories I want to cover.

Hog-killing Day.

    Hog-killing day was not my favorite day of the year, but I have been
asked what it was like before electricity was available and how we
managed to save all the meat.  Of course, I was at hog-killing day from
my earliest memory, but I only officiated in 1940 after we had joined
Grandpa Richardson.  We had smoke houses on both farms where we cured
the meat. There were chores which lasted for weeks in curing the meat in
the smoke houses.  Small boys frequently had these chores of mending the
fires, cutting the hickory, etc.

    What you wanted for hog-killing day was a cold, dry day, certainly
no rain.  You needed a supply of hot, boiling water for scalding, and
you needed a supply of hickory wood for producing the most acrid,
eye-smarting smoke you ever encountered.  You needed lots of loose salt
for working into the surface of the slabs of pork meat.  You also needed
a supply of bear grass, (yucca) for hanging the slabs of meat in the
smokehouse.

    After the chosen hog was killed and bled (by cutting the jugular
vein in the throat), it was taken to a barrel partly in the ground where
we could slide the hog into the barrel which we would have filled with
boiling water.  Then we would add more boiling water as we rotated the
hog.  Then we would pull it out of the barrel, turn it around, and
repeat the process.  Then we would slide the hog out onto a flat surface
and remove the hair and outer skin with the back side of a butcher
knife.  If the scalding had been successful, the skin would be free of
hair and dull white in color.  Sometimes we would have to add more
boiling water and repeat the process.  We aimed for a clean outer
surface with no remnant hairs.  So we needed wash pots of boiling water
within reach, and small boys tended the fires and fetched the water.
Then we slid the dehaired hog over to the gutting and quartering frame
for the next step.  We found a piece of corrogated tin roofing ideal for
sliding a hog around without getting it dirty again. We anchored the
hogs rear leg tendons into a singletree, then used a pulley to elevate
the hog, head down, to the height we needed for gutting.

    Gutting was a simple process.  With a sharp butcherknife we started
at the tail and cut straight down to the throat.  On this first cut we
only did the outer skin.  Then we started back up going all the way to
the cavities.  We would have placed a large washtub under the hog to
catch the guts and internal organs.  As you cut, they came tumbling out
and by the time you got back up to the tail, you had a tubful of body
organs in sight which did not make you hungry.  You took this away and
cleaned the inside of the hanging carcass with buckets of boiling
water.  You were then ready to cut out the fatty parts for rendering
into lard, then the parts for making sausage, then the parts to be hung
up and cured into bacon or ham hocks, etc.  You cut off the head and set
it aside for special processing to remove the brains, tongue, and other
parts used to grind up into hogshead cheese.

    At this point, there would be so many tasks waiting to be done that
hog-killing was something where you needed all the help there was.
Neighbors who were not squeamish were always welcome.  The tub of guts
was waiting to be separated into parts which were edible (lights 
(lungs), liver,
heart, etc), the non-edible large intestine and stomach, and the useable
small intestines.  The non-edible parts were taken away and buried so
they would not be found by scavengers.  The small intestines were the
casings for new sausage.  They had to be cleansed by running boiling
water through them to remove any internal parasites, which were usually
very much in evidence.  (If one does not know, any internal parasite
which will infect a hog will also infect a human.  These parasites came
together with the hogs and humans from the Middle East eons ago.)  The
head of the hog had its brains which had to be removed, and they were
delicious mixed with scrambled eggs and catsup.  They were my preferred
meal after hog-killing.  We were willing for neighbors who liked the
rest of the head to take it as well as the internal organs.  We did not
know it at the time, but these internal organs were very high in certain
vitamins and were as good as prescription medicine for some diseases.

    Then the problem of cleaning the small intestines began in earnest,
as they had to be ready for stuffing with the sausage meat.  Whoever was
cutting up the hanging carcass into its parts first cut out the fatty
sections which were to be rendered into lard.  We generally did that
part first because the wash pots of boiling water were ready.  We put
the pieces in and some small boy had to keep the fires going as the
water boiled away and the lard began to bubble.  We selected cuts that
had as much lean meat as we could get for grinding into sausage meat. We
cut these into lengths and sizes which we could feed into our sausage
grinder.  The cleaned internal intestines automatically were called
casings.  That helped you forget how they looked just out of the hog.
One end was attached to the sausage grinder, and you began to grind by
hand and fill the casing.  Frequently, you could run a filling casing
out 8 or 10 feet, but we generally cut and tied at 4 feet, as that fit
our smokehouse poles for hanging and drying.

The remaining pieces of the carcass were cut into convenient sizes for
salting, hanging, and curing.  We liked a size about 12 by 15 inches.
Any flat surface would do for rubbing the salt into the meat as deep as
you could push it.  Then you made a hanging hole in the slab of meat and
ran your folded bear grass leaf through that hole and made a knot so it
could be hooked to the curing rack in the smoke house.   (The Choctaw
Indians taught the earliest settlers how to use bear grass, and it
remained the preferred hanging material.  Cotton, wire, or other hangers
caused mold, rust, and discoloration.  My brother Clifford and I set out 
bear grass near
our house so we did not have to go hunt for it in the woods.)  We then
hung the meat and let it cool until all natural heat of the animal was
gone.  (We probably wanted the meat to be in a state of rigor mortis
before we started the curing.)  We then started the hickory fire.

Now a smoke house is so designed that there is no chimney.  The smoke
and heat accumulate in its upper half where the meat and sausage are
hanging.  The temperature is probably about 120 degrees.  The fire is in
a pit in the center of the house.  A small boy can go in and hang low
and tend the fire and get out unscathed, but an adult generally came out
crying and coughing.  So we boys learned a lot about tending smoke house
fires as we grew up.  We actually used green hickory after we got a fire
started as it gave a more acrid smoke and lasted longer.  We kept the
fire going day and night.   As the meat dried, it dripped salt, fluid,
or water onto the smokehouse soil floor.  Nothing much will grow on the
site of an old smokehouse.  The soil is too salty.

The lard renderers by this time had lard ready to be ladled into crocks
for storage.  For some reason, we generally used gourds with long
handles to ladle the lard.  Perhaps they were just readily available,
but we also grew them for such purposes.  I do know the handle of a long
gourd does not get as hot as other things.  The lard would harden and
last a long time before it became rancid in hot weather.  There would be
a residue of the skin which did not become lard, and I think these
strips of skin left over in the bottom of the washpot were used to make
cracklings.

We did not waste much, and we always had pork (for those who liked it).
I preferred other food, for some reason.  However, everything my mother 
cooked from the garden seemed to have a hunk of pork in it for salt and 
flavoring.  Collard greens, field peas, cabbage, string beans, were all 
cooked with a small hunk of salt pork.  The residue after cooking was 
the delightful food we ate with corn bread called pot liquor.