Hog Killin'

Hog Killin’

We went over to the hog pen with a .22 rifle. The shooter – Granddaddy, as usual – was always careful to kill the first pig cleanly with a single shot. It immediately fell to the ground on its belly. Two of us ran up and rolled the hog over on its back and held it steady by the front legs, so it could be "stuck" with a narrow-blade butcher knife along a major artery. Then we got out of the way. There is a lot of blood in a stuck pig.

The next step was the scalding vat. A couple of the stronger men would lower the hog into the vat very gingerly. You had to do this to make the hair on the hog loose enough to scrape or pull off. The water had to be just right: about 140 degrees. If it was too cool the hair wouldn’t "slip". If it was too hot, you literally scald the hog and again the hair wouldn't "slip". Once the hog was safely in the vat we rolled him over with a hoe from time to time to make sure he heated evenly. When he was done enough that the hair pulled away easily, we hauled him out and placed him on the scraping table.

After he had a nice clean shave, we poured water over the now mostly hairless hog. Then, Granddaddy made a cut about 3 or 4 inches long in the back of the lower leg just above the foot so we could insert a gambrel behind the tendon. The next step was to suspend him from the gutting pole.

A lot of guys got a lesson in humility here. I speak from experience. But some men never learned, among them Al Junior. He and Cousin Ken were long time rivals, and once again, Ken challenged Al to partner him in getting the hog to the gutting pole. The two men joined hands and positioned themselves so they could catch the hog. Once the gambrel was secured behind the tendon in one of the hog’s legs, Dad pulled the hog off the scraping table and into their waiting arms. His broken arm was mostly healed, but not enough to do the carrying himself. Thus they carried the hog to the pole where they had to hoist the hog up high enough (the pole is about head high) to get the gambrel over the pole and behind the tendon of the other leg.

The results were hilarious. No matter how weak you felt, you did not drop that hog. It was a matter of pride. To drop a hog and get him dirty was roundly frowned upon. So off they went, poor Al with his knees buckling, eyes bulging, veins popping out all over and in despair because that 10 yards to the pole looked like a mile. Finally, they arrived at the pole and Al realized he had to lift that sucker up. Fortunately, that year, he didn't drop the hog, so I grabbed hold and gave him a hand. Of course, he could never acknowledge this act of kindness. To do so would be to admit defeat.

He wasn’t so lucky with the next hog.

One of the main things I learned to avoid when toting the hogs to the pole was partnering with someone taller than me. That’s why I never, ever, partnered with Cousin Ken. Either he had to walk stooped down carrying all that weight or he stood up straight and rolled all the weight over on me. Ken usually preferred to roll the weight on the short guy, and Al was no taller than I am.

Such were the lessons of life learned at a hog killing. You learn not to have an overblown estimation of yourself. You learn to embrace humility. And you learn not to tote hogs with a tall guy. I hoped that one day, even Al Junior might learn these lessons.

But not that day.

Once the hog was on the pole, the next step was gutting. This job required special care. You could not afford to nick an intestine or puncture a bladder because fecal matter or urine would contaminate the meat. You didn’t throw out the hog; you washed it off and kept on going. But you sure don't like to think about it come eating time.

Removal of the intestines began with cutting around the rectum. After you cut it all the way around, you grabbed it and held it shut (for obvious reasons) as you pulled the intestines away from the abdominal cavity. Someone had to stand at the ready to catch the guts in a foot tub. After you severed the esophagus, the guts easily rolled into the tub. You had to be sure to hang the rectum outside the pan.

Then, you removed the heart, lungs, and liver and hung them up for later use. You chopped off the head and feet and processed them separately, throwing away nothing but the burr of the ear and the hooves.

There was a special implement called a meat axe that you used to separate the hog into its several parts: Hams, shoulders, and sidemeat, so these could be strung and hung in the smokehouse. This axe had sort of an offset J shaped blade so you could cut straight down or straight ahead. You didn’t use if for anything except hog killins’.

Meantime, the guts were delivered to the women for skinning. You can understand, I think, why my sisters hated coming to a hog killin’. I once tried to imagine Elsie sitting there with Aunt Bessie and the other farm women, chatting away while they cleaned hog guts. Sure.

Anyway, they removed the gut fat, and put it in the lard pot. Ordinary fat would go in with it later. Then they sent the guts to the gut hole.

The gut hole was a 5 or 6 foot trench dug in the ground with boards along one side to keep the manure off you. There, you poured large quantities of water through the intestines to wash them out. You then dropped them in a vat of lye for a while, then washed them out some more. Eventually, you turned the intestines inside out, scrubbed them with salt, and rinsed them several more times. Aunt Bessie said "You wash them until they don't feel slimy anymore". These were chitlings.

You could use them as casings for making sausage, but mostly, you cooked them. You tied them in a clean feed bag and boiled them until they were tender. Salt them, dry them, and later you could fry ‘em up like bacon.

Boiling in the same pot as the chitling bag would be the pigs’ feet, snouts, ears, and the rest of the head – minus the brain, of course, which we ate quickly. The women took all this meat, once boiled off the bone, and seasoned it with salt, pepper and vinegar to make souse.

There is an art to rendering the lard. It is a long, slow, careful process, done in large cast iron pots, black from long years of use. If you cooked it too fast you ruined it. You started off with the gut lard and slowly add in more of the ordinary fat. Cooking the lard usually took two to two and a half hours of constant stirring with a lard paddle.

When the cracklings were a golden brown and floated to the top of the lard, it was time to take up the pot. We strained the lard, then, through a clean white cloth, to catch the cracklings. It took some effort to squeeze all the lard out of the cracklings, so they’d be as dry as possible before we dumped them into a tub for salting. Sometimes, the women gave cooked sweet potatoes to the children, who dipped them into to the cracklings and ate them.

The cleaned, cooled lard was all the cooking oil a family needed for the year. Everybody got a share.

Everybody got a share of everything, especially the brains and organ meat that you couldn’t smoke and keep. We all ate real well for a while.

CARM Posts

1. I think that I, and my many brothers and sisters, must have eaten our weight in dirt as children, running barefoot through the fields, the chicken yard, the pig pen . . . . Glorious!

2. But the fields, the chicken yard, and the pig pens were full of dirt of all kinds. We plucked the eggs from where the hens had hidden them; squished through the hog wallow to see the new piglets; weeded the string beans; smashed pecans and black walnuts on the back stoop - all without coming in to wash up. We'd suck on sour grass, eat new corn right off the stalk, or apples right off the tree, or fresh peanuts grandaddy pulled up still covered with the black sandy loam that was Eastern North Carolina. Black, sandy loam that felt glorious between your toes, and made you want to dig in it. Heck, the water table was so high, if you dug far enough, you could get to it.

3. That is true. Fortunately for us, Daddy had a day job as a sheet metal worker - Granddaddy ran the farm - but still, many nights all we had for supper was collards. Not that we cared; Momma was a good cook, and with a bit of fatback and corn mean dumplins, collards makes a whole meal. The best part was the pot likker; we always saved that for Granddaddy. I have a neat description, btw, of a hog killin from those days - it's longish, so not really postable here. Getting up a chicken for supper is quicker:Grandma Reel would start out by drawing a big circle in the dirt, chopping the chicken’s head off with a hatchet and putting the chicken in the circle to flop until it was still. The chicken never flopped out of the circle. I’m not sure what bad luck it would have brought if the chicken did flop out. Grandma Stapleford had a different style: She held the chicken by the feet and put its head on the ground, then put a board on the chicken’s neck, standing on either end and yanked the chicken’s body from its head. The next step in either case was to toss the body into a pot of scalding water, so you could pull out the feathers and pinfeathers.

4. Not sure where granny got the circle thing; likely she just did that because her mother had, and her own mother before her. Chopping off a chicken's head is a fairly humane way to kill it, and it's life before that was reasonably pleasant. We fed ours scraps from the table as well as chicken feed, and Granddaddy would let them out of the chicken yard from time to time to peck around for worms and bugs. Come nightfall, they'd all head back to the henhouse, but they were too stupid to go through the gate; they'd just pile themselves up on the fence, nearest the henhouse. We'd have to go throw them over the fence, or herd them to the gate. We mainly kept pullets for eggs, not to eat. Every so often, Granddaddy would decide to restock the chicken pen, and we’d all go down to the hatchery. The hatchery was a wonderful place - almost as good as the Green Grocery. It wasn’t just a hatchery, but a feed and farm supply store located at Five Points. There were barrels of feed you could stick your arms in, up to the elbows, and wiggle your fingers. There were smells, like fresh-ground corn. There was always grain dust in the air, and on the floor. We would always get a mixed batch of chickens. A batch of pullets went for $.30 a head; roosters went for $.10 a head; and a mixed batch went for $.15 a head. They came in a flat, square box of thin cardboard, with quarter-sized holes. We would bring them home, and set them in the kitchen next to the gas stove for a few days, so we could be sure they were all right. Then Granddaddy would put them in the biddy pen until they were big enough to go into the regular chicken yard.After a while, the biddies would start to sprout white feathers, and their combs would grow. Some of them would start to poke out their chests, and make adolescent attempts to crow. This was a mistake. The biggest and juiciest of the obviously male chickens then started to disappear: chicken for supper! Old laying hens past their time were stewed. You had to boil them a LONG time to render them chewable; but the dumplings were great. For their part, the pullets would start to lay tiny brown eggs - a signal that they were old enough to join the rest of the herd in the main chicken yard. Granddaddy always kept one rooster there, figuring, perhaps, that it made hens happier. It also kept down chicken yard warfare.The rooster was the worst thing about the chickens. Free of any competition, the resident rooster would grow to enormous size - easily as tall as a six or seven-year-old child, when stretched to fighting length. Our chores included feeding the chickens and fetching the eggs. The rooster’s chores included protecting his hens and eggs from us. We used to go into the chicken yard in pairs: one, with a large stick or broom, to do battle with the rooster; one, basket in hand, to collect the eggs. How wonderful to know, now, that they were the first cousins - a million times removed - of T Rexs! That rooster would be sooooo proud!

5. The sheep slide sounds like fun! You are right about the machinery et. al. We'd often cut ourselves on sharp implements or bits of barbed wire, so Mom would have to haul us down to the clinic for tetinous shots. We'd complain bitterly, but Mom had a really lurid side, and her description of the symptoms of "lockjaw" had us begging for the shots. (Her description of being "hanged, drawn, and quartered" as always kept me from seeing "Braveheart.") Cars? When I was growing up, nobody had seat belts; even when I was an adult, you occasionally saw lap belts in the front seat, but nobody wore them. There were no proper child's seats; you carried babies in your lap, or loose in the back. Heck, I frequently saw piles of kids stuck in the back of pick up trucks, along with a couple of dogs. It's a wonder anyone grew up.Added in edit: Another way my brothers and their friends found to harmlessly hurt themselves was to dare each other to pee on the electrified pig fence.