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Health & Fitness

Hog Killin' Weather

Sure I eat dead pork, it's the main ingredient in bacon. Chocolate covered bacon can it get any better than that?

It generally happens in the fall, but anytime during the winter will work. It must simply be cold enough outside to get the job done without letting the meat go bad in the process. I guess it doesn’t happen much anymore, but I remember when it was a yearly ritual.

Many family members and neighbors, who had nothing to do, would show up at my grandparents’ house. Several tables would be placed end to end in the yard. All the pots, pans, lard cans, knives, wrapping paper and black iron kettles needed to do the job were placed in the right spots along the table.

The hog, which had been working hard all year just to build up the weight to be lucky enough to be selected, was escorted to one end of the table. At my grandparents’ house it was always more than one. In the early years I think they killed it with a hammer, not a memory I don't want to go into detail about. After a while a rifle took that job, I was glad when it did. I think the hammer was a leftover from the Depression.

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 The hog would be hung on a hook and cut into sections. Then he would start his way down the tables. The adults would cut and prepare the meat into all those hog things we love. Bacon, hams, ham steaks, roasts, pork chops, ribs and what was left was called sausage. Every piece was used, including the stomach, brains, skin, tongue and chitterlings. I know that looks like it’s spelled wrong, but that’s it. Cracklings were made, souse and head cheese, too. Some meat was hung to be smoked in an old smokehouse in the yard.

The kids ran up and down the table, taking the fat to a large kettle at the end of the set up to be rendered into lard. Those of us old enough to remember this will smile thinking about it, those not old enough may get sick.

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In some way this was like a great family reunion. You saw family members you hadn’t seen all year. As the meat moved along this ancient assembly line, it was prepared while it moved. It was separated and packaged before it slipped off the end of the tables and went into the freezer. Once everything was cleaned up and put away, the job was done, it took all day. Many of the men would be drunk by the time it was over.

You finished the job with more than a little blood on you and tired as all get out. This set of grandparents had a hog farm and ate hog three times a day all their lives, much of it salt cured. I guess the only reason they lived so long was because nobody told them it would kill you.

Not only did they eat hog, but there was also hog in every dish. The lard was used as cooking grease and small pieces used to season vegetables. Even the corn bread was cooked in lard, the biscuits made with it. When you went to their house, there was pig on the plate. Every holiday they killed a hog. Where else did cooking a pig come from? Eating pig and drinking was a part of life. I’m sure glad nobody told them how bad all that was for them, they lived to be quite old.

 I remember sitting on the tailgate of grandpa’s truck as he moved across the farm slowly. My cousins and I would slowly spread five-gallon buckets of corn in the road. From the front of the truck he would sing out in a voice so loud it could be heard all over the farm, “Sooouuuueeee, sooouuueee, pig,” he would yell while we tried to imitate him from the back of the truck.

As we crawled along, all 400 hogs would fall into line behind the truck for supper. This would probably pain some if it were one of their memories, not me. These were indeed the good old days. The days before you knew what was waiting for you in adulthood. The days when people got things done because no one told them they couldn’t do it. A time before people died from eating too much pork, simply because they didn’t know any better.

I’ll never stop hearing my grandpa yelling from the cab of that truck and the way all those hogs came a-runnin'. Truth be told, there was probably a big jar of corn liquor on the front seat beside him all the while. I look forward to hog killin weather every year as I look forward to the planting season. Both are just memories for the most part, but I can feel and smell it in the air every year no matter how old I get.

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