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Page 38 PIONEER HARDSHIPS
kettles that had been used for making hot water were turned into
cooking vessels for cooking that part of the hog and beef that could
not be turned into hams, side meat sausages, dried and pickled beef,
for making of Liverwurst and Ponhaus.
As soon as the hogs were butchered, if there were a
beef, it was killed, skinned and treated in the same manner as the
hogs. The women had very hard work on butchering day, in preparing
the sausage casings and getting ready for the making of sausage and
rendering of lard. That part of the meat that was trimmed off the
side meat, the shoulders and hams went into sausage meat and often
some of the beef was mixed with it. After supper the process of
cutting the sausage meat started. Each family had a sausage block
made from a section of an elm or cucumber tree. This block was about
two feet thick and probably thirty inches to three feet across the
top, and stood on legs raising the top a little over two feet from
the ground. On this the sausage meat was spread, and a man with a
cleaver in each hand commenced to chop the meat. Finally, someone
constructed a rude sausage grinder, worked with a crank. When this
came in, butchering days had to be arranged so that the sausage
grinder could be loaned from one family to the other. After the
sausage was cut and mixed and seasoned, it was stuffed in the
casings that had been prepared during the day. Butchering lasted
from four a. m. to one a. m. the next morning. After all this work,
it became necessary for the owner of the meat to pickle it and
preserve it for smoking. When the process of salting the meat and
changing the pickle from time to time was completed, it was finally
ready to hang up in the smokehouse, which was a small structure
about ten feet square and eight feet high, in the center of which
was built a fire of green hickory or maple wood. The fire had to be
kept burning for as much as two months before the meat was
thoroughly smoked, but it must be remembered that there were no
butchers in the community who hauled meat from door to door, and
that the meat might last through the summer, it had to be carefully
preserved in the manner indicated. Fresh meat came in the spring
after the sheep shearing time when the sheep had run in the woods
sufficient length of time to become fat, or probably a calf not
wanted to be raised for beef would be killed, which would be divided
up amongst the neighbors, to be returned in kind when the neighbor
killed either a sheep or a calf.
Another item that entered into the domestic economy of
the home was feathers. Each family kept a flock of geese, not for
food purposes, but to
secure the feathers for feather beds, pillows, etc. A good house
wife had a job of picking the geese once a year, and this was not a
matter of pleasure, but rather a strenuous job. The goose had to be
caught and held and the feathers plucked.
The feathers from the wings were used for making pens,
and in the early days, the lawyer, minister, doctor and farmer kept
a small knife for the shaping of a quill pen, hence we have the word
"pen-knife."
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