Paula was one of the seven Christian College girls who went with me on a bicycle tour in Europe in 1970. She and the others taught me a lot about how consumers view farmers. I learned that students who make A’s in biology and chemistry might have no idea where their bacon and eggs come from.

Our friends Richard and Ann Williams were showing the students and me their Sussex farm. At their automated “piggery,” Richard said, “We collect swill from restaurants and hotels, steam cook it, sieve it and pump it through pipes to the sows’ feed troughs.” We crossed the clean barnyard to the barn where sows were in sanitary pens about three feet above the floor.

Some sows were waiting, some were in labor, and we saw babies being born. Farther along, Richard reached into a pen and got out a wiggly, white pig with a pink nose and ears. He handed it to Paula who cuddled it in her arms. She carried it as he told more about producing pork. Later he said, “These will be two months old tomorrow.” Paula wasn’t listening. She was stroking the sleeping piglet in her arms. At the last pen he said, “These will go to market next Wednesday.”

“Market!” Paula screamed. “You can’t send these pigs to market! I’ll never eat another bite of pork as long as I live.” That decision lasted almost a week.

Farmers are frequently reminded that consumers don’t like to relate the steak on the grill to Ferdinand, that darling “bull with the delicate ego.” Yes, Paula, pigs will go to market as long as people eat ham and eggs.

Home butchering was a necessity, and pork was a staple on farms. It could be “salted down,” “sugar cured” or home canned. Spices, too, helped preserve the meat. People had ice boxes but no home refrigerators.

In trimming the fresh hams and shoulders, the lean scraps were saved for sausage, and the fat went into the lard kettle for rendering. Lard, the farmer’s Crisco or Canola, was boiled in a big iron kettle and then strained through a cloth into 50 pound cans and stored in a cool place.

Seasoning the sausage was an art. Dad brought in a huge washtub full of freshly ground pork and put it on the kitchen cabinet. He’d mix Mr. Easley’s recipe of sage, red and black pepper, allspice, etc., while Mom and I scrubbed our hands and arms to be ready to mix. Dad sprinkled the spice mixture over the meat, which we squeezed with our bare hands. The way we knew when the seasoning was just right was to taste it. We ate more than was necessary because it was umm-umm good! Everybody ate raw sausage as they seasoned it and no one seemed to know that that wasn’t a healthy thing to do.

We stuffed the sausage tightly into long slender cloth bags that Mom made out of flour sacks. We tied them up tight and hung them from the rafters of the smokehouse to use as needed.

Mom also “fried down” sausage and placed the pats in a big stoneware jar and poured grease over the top to seal the meat from the air. Mom and I cooked, ground and seasoned the head meat and used it to make liverwurst, spiced hog’s head pudding and scrapple. There’s something special about eating the products your farm produces, in spite of the hard work involved.