It’s safe to say that in the old days, most every farm family butchered pigs when the weather turned cold. Meat, more than bread, was the “staff of life,” and meat at every meal was not uncommon.
There exist all sorts of recipes for fish, fowl, veal and beef from milk cows past their prime, but pork, eaten fresh or “put up” in any number of ways, was the everyday fare. Even people living in town often kept a backyard pen with a pig or two that would be duly slaughtered in the fall. Butchering itself and the methods of preserving meat had changed little in the 300-year history of this area until well into the 20th Century.
In the New Hanover area, butchering day was mostly a family affair with perhaps a few relatives and neighbors helping and receiving a share of the bounty.
However, it must be noted that itinerant butchers were found in most areas of the Pennsylvania Dutch region. These itinerants were skilled craftsmen who had a circuit of farms they visited and, like a general on the battlefield, commanded and managed the small army of family and neighbors who helped with the processing of several pigs or a cow in a day. They were not only skilled in the cutting and preparing meats, but in the seasonings put into sausage, scrapple and such.
Swine were first brought to the Delaware region by the Dutch, Swedes and then English in the 17th Century. They were let run wild in the forest to forage on their own, which they were happy to do. It is said that were it not for the predation of bears, wolves and mountain lions, wild pigs would have so multiplied as to take first place as a meat source in the colonies.
Every fall, the forest floor of the Appalachians and Eastern Seaboard was covered with literally millions of bushels of American chestnuts, acorns and beechnuts which fattened all wildlife for the winter, pigs included.
In any case, these semi-wild pigs were razor-backs, which some authors report could only be collected by shooting them. Fletcher in “Pennsylvania Agriculture 1640-1840” notes that: “Running wild, swine degenerated toward the wild boar type of Europe from which they had sprung—lean, swift, and fierce. They could out run and out fight most of their forest enemies.”
As late as 1798, one English farmer describes Pennsylvania hogs thus: “The real American hog is what is termed a woodhog; they are long in the leg, narrow in the back, short in the body, flat on the sides, with a long snout, very rough in the hair, in make more like a fish called a perch than anything I can describe. You may as well think of stopping a crow as these hogs. They will go a distance from a fence, take a run, and leap through the rails three or four feet from the ground turning themselves sideways…It is customary to keep them in the woods all winter…They are poor beyond any creature that I ever saw.” It’s easy to see why all early gardens were surrounded by a sturdy fence.
As time went on and the forests were leveled, the pigs started to be more farm-fed with kitchen and dairy waste and a little grain in the evening to call them home. Then it became the custom to pen them in the late summer and fatten them on whatever foods were abundant as the quantity of valuable lard could be thus increased.
As time went on into the 19th Century, the pigs were penned year-round in the pig-pen, which on most farmsteads was placed between the house and barn. Simultaneously the breeds were much improved to the point that some hogs, if well fed, could weigh over 400 pounds when a year old.
Pigs grow very fast. Piglets born in the spring were usually slaughtered that same fall or winter at the weight of as much as 200 pounds. Larger farms kept a boar and several sows, each producing a spring litter of about ten which were much more than one family needed. Small farms or village-dwellers who didn’t want the expense of feeding a sow and boar would then buy a few piglets from the breeder and feed them for winter slaughter.
Pigs will eat almost anything, but a high protein feed produces the fastest growth and best meat. High in protein and homegrown, corn was the ideal feed, but combinations of almost anything from distillery waste to apple pulp left after cider-making to dairy leavings and kitchen scraps were also fed.
Up before dawn on butchering day, the farm family would first bring great cast iron pots of water to a boil in the summer kitchen or on an open fire outside.
A luxury of modern life is that we can separate the killing from the meat on our plates. It must be admitted that in the very old times, the suffering of animals was not much considered. The quality of the meat is improved if the blood is drained from the animal before it dies, so the common way to kill a pig was to “stick” its throat and let it stagger around as it bled to death. By the 20th Century, though, most people stunned the pig with a blow to the head with a sledge hammer or the blunt side of an ax, or just shot it with a .22, and then cut its throat.
The dead pig was rolled into a wooden scalding trough and buckets of boiling hot water were poured over the carcass which caused the bristles to loosen. Chains previously placed crosswise in the trough allowed two sturdy men to manipulate the pig in a see-sawing motion back and forth so all sides were equally scalded. Using hog scrapers, most of the bristles were easily scraped off then, along with the mud, dirt and fecal matter.
Using the chains, the hog was next heaved out onto a sei-bawra (hog’s bier) where it was further scraped and cleaned. On the “bier,” it was carried to a tripod arrangement similar to a tepee. The butcher then cut through the hind legs just above the hooves and separated the tendons so each end of a sturdy piece of oak about four feet long can be slipped through the cut by which the carcass was suspended from the tripod with the back legs splayed open.
Skill was needed to slice open the belly from bottom to top without cutting into the intestines. In particular, the pubic bone had to be cracked apart and the large intestine tied off to keep the contents from spilling out.
Continued next week.The Historian is produced by the New Hanover Historical Society. Call Robert Wood at 610-326-4165 with comments.
