Post fifteen: Hog Killing Day

     The work slacked off some in the fall. But Hog Killing Day, after it got cold, was a really big event at our place. Before daylight, 55-gallon drums were filled with water and leaned over on a hillside, with a fire built around them. The 3 hogs were shot with a perfectly placed bullet, then they were quickly bled out. They were then loaded onto a sled, and pulled down to the barrels at the creek. They were lowered into the boiling water, and after they were pulled out the hair scraped off easily. By daylight, they were hung up and dressed. By lunch time, they were cut up and on the wagon, and pulled up to the smokehouse. Lunch that day was always the best cut, the tenderloin. Relatives and friends would be there to help, and they always got some of the fresh meat. The cuts of meat were packed in salt and left for a few days. Other meat was ground into sausage. By the next day, much of the skin with a thick layer of fat on it was cut into pieces and put into big black pots full of boiling water. The fat cooked out, and by the next morning, a thick layer of fat had formed on the water. This was skimmed off and stored for cooking or making lye soap. After a few days, the salted meat was hung in the smokehouse, and smoked with hickory smoke for several days. This meat would then keep all winter.
     I helped bring about the end of the hog killing tradition at our farm. Early one morning Dad said, “Son, my eyes are getting bad. It's time for you to shoot the hogs.” Now, I had been feeding those hogs all summer, and I just did not want to shoot them. I didn't mind hunting for food, those squirrels, etc. were strangers. But I had given these hogs names. I knew them personally. Dad did it, did not hit the right spots, and we had screaming hogs running all over the pen. That was the end of our Hog Killing Days.
     Every fall, Dad and I went down to Pine Hill and pulled out a load of old, decayed pine stumps from the virgin pine cutting a generation ago. The rich pine made a great fire starter. We used our fireplace, our only heat in our house, and we needed a fire very quickly on cold mornings. We had lots of quilts to pile on, and when it was very cold, Mom would wrap up a hot flat iron and put it at the foot of our bed. In those days, used to sleeping in a room near freezing, it didn't bother me that my head was not covered. I was used to it, although I do admit that when I woke up, I was usually rolled into a round ball in the middle of the bed, everything under covers. Now, when I go camping in winter, my head gets colder than I can stand real quick. I've turned into a softie city slicker, I guess.