Hog Killing

Photo by Sandy Perle of WPA Mural by Ray Bertrand, 1934, Coit Tower Museum. Used with permission.
Last month, on one of the coldest days this winter, Daddy declared it was a good day for killing hogs. We girls stayed inside after we helped get all the equipment together, because we hate the part where they shoot the hogs and then string them up on a big limb on the elm tree in the back yard using a block and tackle. We already had a fire going around a fifty gallon barrel of water into which they lower each hog into boiling water to soften the hair so it's easily scraped off when they pull them back up and guide them over to a platform that keeps them off the ground. Scraping takes a while; Daddy and Mack work fast with big, sharp butcher knives.

Hog Killing is a day when we eat fresh liver, which doesn't keep. The next day we have brains and eggs for breakfast.

Fannie J. and the little boys each got a pig bladder, inflated and tied by Mack, which makes a passable balloon that lasts a while.

In days to come, we'll eat pig feet, one of Daddy's favorites. We'll make sausage using sage that we grow and dry, and lots of black pepper. We'll boil the head and make 'press meat' which people other places call souse, or head cheese. After we cut up the fat meat to make lard and cook it, we'll have cracklings to make crackling cornbread. Mack and Mama will clean the chit'lins and they'll fry them up one night. Daddy doesn't eat chit'lins. Mack likes to scandalize us by asking if we want 'stump whupped' chit'lins or 'hand slung'?

Daddy will salt down the hams and shoulders and sides with salt and salt petre in the smokehouse. We should have enough ham and streak of lean bacon to last until next fall when the weather is cool enough for butchering again.

Grandpa says that during the War of the Oppression, when salt was hard to come by, they scraped up the salty dirt in the smokehouse and boiled it out to reclaim salt. Grandpa was too young to go to war, but he tells about toward the end of the war, going in a wagon with an aged man too old to go to war, to get what supplies they could get in Rome. They heard troops up ahead and Grandpa, 15 years old, walked through the woods while the old man drove the mule and wagon on. The wagon and mule were too old and shabby for the soldiers to use, so he was let pass by.