In my youth, butchering had to be done during a cold spell because there was no way for farmers to handle so much fresh meat in warm weather. The cold weather had to last for several days to allow time for grinding sausage, canning tenderloin and curing the hams, shoulders and bacon.

There was lots to be done before the hog killin’. Men set the hog trough over a fire pit. The trough had a metal bottom that came up and over the lower part of the wooden sides and ends. There was wood to split into small pieces so the fire could be controlled to just the right temperature. If water was too cool, the hair wouldn’t “slip,” and if it was too hot, the hair was “set.” When that happened, Dad would say, “That’s hell to pay” -- whatever that meant.

Men erected a tall frame on which the scraped hogs would hang for dressing. Older boys split wood and piled it near the iron kettle where lard was to be rendered and cracklings saved after the lard was squeezed out. At another kettle, the scrubbed pigs’ feet and heads were boiled for pickling and making souse, scrapple, etc.

Women, too, were busy ahead of time. They’d scrub the tables, tubs, sausage grinder and lard press with stiff brushes and hot, sudsy water. Several women, at home, were baking pies and cooking other food for the crew. They loaned large kettles, bowls and coffee pots because there were a lot of men, women and children to feed. Men sometimes brought a jug so they could nip a little whiskey “to keep warm.”

On the big day, neighbors and friends came early by horse and buggy or Model T Ford. Some came in wagons, bringing a hog of their own to be processed with the rest. On this bitter cold day, the hogs had to be stunned with a heavy hammer blow and bled by a slash of the throat. A team of men stood ready as one experienced fellow determined if the water temperature was exactly right. He’d quickly drag his finger through the steaming water, then he’d do it again and, if he couldn’t bear to make the third dip, they’d lift the lifeless hog into the water.

Experienced butchers knew how to scrape the hair off with a heavy butcher knife or with a special round metal scraper mounted on the end of a short stick. While some were scraping, others added water to the trough and built up the fire to get ready to dip and scrape the next hog.

Something happened in China to prompt me to write about home butchering. Eighteen of us ate lunch at a large commune. On my left was the overseer of 70,000 workers, and on my right was our interpreter from Hong Kong. I whispered to the interpreter, “What are these skinny, black things that seem to be swimming around in our soup?” She answered with one whispered word: “pork.” Later, in Hong Kong, I returned to the meat section of a store I’d visited 11 days before. I hunted the small square of dry pork skin with long black hairs still attached and asked the butcher, “For soup?” He smiled and nodded his head.

When Dad and his neighbors scraped one hog they discarded enough hairs to “swim” a dozen in each of the 70,000 bowls of soup in that Chinese commune!

To be continued another Tuesday.