My Old Fashioned Life: Butchering Day

This is the Butchering Day segment of the Old Fashioned Life series here at Farm Home Life. If you haven't read the first posts in the Old Fashioned Life series, click here to get started.

*if you are squeamish about how animals are turned into dinner, this is not the post for you. Consider yourself warned.

We raised most of our own meat on the farm. We supplemented the farm raised meat with fresh fish, game and the occasional purchase from the grocery store. Every year I can remember we butchered a hog or two in late fall. While we also butchered chickens and fresh game, the term 'butchering day' was used only for the day we butchered a hog. Butchering a hog is long, hard and grisly work. Despite this, we were always very excited as butchering day neared. We were happy to know a good share of our meat for the winter would be laid by. The whole family was thrilled with the prospect of a meal of barbecued spare ribs. Mom served barbecued ribs once a year and I remember we were all just about busting at the seems to eat this meal.


An aside:


While writing this series, I can't help but notice how many times I've written that we were so happy to know that a supply of food was safely store for our future needs. Goodness, it sounds like we never had a thing to eat! But that wasn't the case.


Growing up on our farm, each of us took a vital role in the production, preservation, storage and cooking of our food. All of us kids understood what food was, where it came from, the true cost of food- the life of an animal, the time, labor, equipment, money, it took to produce the food. We comprehended what a tremendous accomplishment it was to have most of the winter's food supply safely stored for the months when there was little income. We were proud, happy, contented, and thankful, all wrapped up in one.




Back to Hog Butchering,

Early in the morning we started preparations for butchering day. Daddy rigged up some sort of metal/wooden hoist type structure to hang the hog (will explain more later). This structure was a little taller than my dad, very sturdy and close proximity to the barnyard. Near this structure he built a fire and situated a deep metal basin a few inches above the fire. The basin was shaped much like an old kettle you would use for boiling sap out in the woods. We filled this basin/kettle about half way with water.


While the water was heating, my dad went to kill the hog. Killing the hog was a serious, solemn event. In our family we didn't kill animals for sport; we did it to eat. I usually hid upstairs and peeked out the window under the eaves.


Warning, graphic explanation below

So, How Do You Kill a Hog?

For the home producer, there are two common methods for killing a hog. One is called "sticking". Sticking involves getting in right up close to the hog (usually two people) and cutting it's throat in one fell swoop with a very sharp knife. The hog then runs for a moment and all the blood is let out. When killing any animal, it is very important to make sure there is no blood left in the meat, as it taints it. Sticking a hog is considered the best method of ensuring there is no blood in the meat. However, this method is more risky for the farmer because you have to get so close to the hog, plus the animal also doesn't die immediately. We didn't use this method.

We used the shotgun method. This was partly because it was much safer for my dad and partly because you get a more immediate kill. My dad didn't believe in killing for sport, only to eat and support the family. It was very important to Daddy that animals be killed in a manner that caused the least amount of suffering.

What Do You Do With the Hog Once It's Dead?

Hang it

Once the pig met it's fate, we hurried to get the animal strung up on the hoist as quickly as possible so we could let the blood. Basically you were looking at trying to haul 200 pounds of dead weight 6 feet up in the air. Not an easy task. My dad, mom, brothers -- usually the strongest 2 or 3 adults present would put a chain and spreader bar through the hind feet and then attempt to carry/lift/push/drag the hog close enough to the hoist so they could hoist it up to the top of the hanging structure where the animal would hang by it's hind legs.

It was very important this task be accomplished as swiftly as possible so you have enough time to let the blood before it coagulates. There are two schools of thought on the letting of blood. Some farmers preferred to do it the second the hog dropped. However this is very messy. My dad preferred to do it while the animal was hanging so the blood could be contained and disposed of rather than letting it dry on the ground.

Let the Blood and Scrape the Hide

Once the hog was strung up, my dad let the blood by swiftly making a incision in the large artery that runs through the neck. Once all the blood was drained out, we lowered the hog down and over into the boiling water 2 or 3 times to make it easier to scrape the hide. We scraped the stiff bristles off the pig's hide with long thin knives that were extremely sharp. In retrospect, we were shaving the hog -- we never called it shaving, though. The process was always referred to as 'scraping'.

Most animals (think cattle and deer) are butchered without the skin on, but hogs are butchered with the skin on, or at least we butchered them that way, so it was important the skin be clean and clear of any bristles.

Once my parents deemed me ready to work safely with a knife (which was the year I turned 8) I got to help scrape the hide. I really liked this chore; it was precise work and it was a good feeling to be able to do it well. Scraping the hog hide rated much higher on the satisfaction scale than plucking chickens because there wasn't that unusual pungent odor of wet feathers.

Gut and Cut

After all the scraping was done, the hog was cut wide open from 'stem to stern' along the belly. All the guts were cleaned out and the head was cut off and buried. Sorry, but we weren't big on using every single part of the animal. Not much about gutting an animal grosses me out like the thought of actually using some of those parts. Sometimes my dad saved the heart, liver or kidneys to explain to us kids how these organs worked.

Once the hog was gutted we left it to hang a couple of hours so it could cool. While the carcass was cooling, we had lunch. After lunch my mom and dad made sure we had all all the necessary knives and saws ready. My dad would often re-sharpen the tools just to make sure they were as sharp as possible. He was vigilant about only using sharp tools.

After Daddy deemed the hog cool enough, he proceeded to saw and slice the carcass up into portions small enough for my mother to handle. The basic smaller sections of a hog carcass are two front leg quarters, two hind leg quarters and two long sides of ribs. Most of the meat was cut down into roasts. All of the kids that could safely handle a knife were allowed to trim some of the fat. We tossed the fat into a big kettle to render the next day. We all worked right up to suppertime trimming, cutting and packaging the meat for the freezer. After an hour or so of trimming, butchering becomes tedious and you are pretty sick of seeing so much meat at one time.

It was a very long tiring day for all of us. We went to bed thinking of our good spare rib supper the next day.

How We Made Sausage

The next morning we began making sausage and rendering the fat. To make the sausage my mother ran all the meat trimmings from the previous day through our little hand cranked meat grinder into a big bowl. I loved to help feed the little pieces of meat into the grinder. That grinder was an amazing little machine! Once we had enough fat and meat Mom mixed up a portion of seasonings (sorry, can't remember what these were) and we all took turns mixing the meat and seasonings together to make sausage. We children formed the sausage into little patties. My mother wrapped meal sized portions of the sausage patties for the freezer.

How We Rendered Pig Fat into Lard

While we made the sausage the pig fat melted slowly in a kettle on the stove. Rendering pig fat into lard is a slow process. We used a big heavy kettle; usually we had two or three going at the same time. When rendering, you have to keep a close eye on the melting fat so it doesn't burn. As the fat melts down into a liquid we added more fat and kept watching and stirring and watching and stirring. Once the little bits of meat that were attached to the fat turned brown and crispy and sunk to the bottom the rendering process was done. We ladled off the liquid fat into various jars and crocks and stored them in the refrigerator. The next morning we had what's known as lard. It's pure white and doesn't taste or smell like meat at all. It has a fairly neutral odor. And, yes -- all those things you've heard about lard making ideal pie crusts is true. It really does make the flakiest pie crust, and the tenderest biscuits.

We finished up the second day with a good spare rib dinner with homemade barbecue sauce. A good end to a couple of days of hard work.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or comments. This next week I will be working on the final chores post, but don't have a plan yet for the next segment in this series. Please let me know if there's anything in particular you would like to read about, by leaving a comment or sending me an email.

To read more about my life growing up on an old fashioned farm, click here.