Before the time that slaughter houses came into being most of the butchering was done on the farm. It was usually a community affair, where several neighbors got together and helped one another. In the late 1930's I was in my late teens. I had the opportunity to participate in several butchering operations. I'll try to describe one . This particular day we would be working at the John Erhorn farm on 124th street. The neighbors in attendance that day was Theodore Merkins; Fred Wickert; Forrest Easterly; my dad Wm Peterson and myself along with John and his father Charlie who at that time would have been in his late seventies or early eighties.
The operation started the day before , John would contact various stores and meat markets to make sure that he had a place to sell the hogs before they were butchered. It all started early in the morning . A 50 gallon scalding kettle would be hung on a pole so as to have room for a blazing fire underneath. Charlie was the fireman It was his duty to see that plenty of hot water was available at all times. When available the choice of wood for the fire was pine roots taken from old stump fences. I still associate the odor of burning pine with butchering to this day. Charlie would have the water rolling in good shape by the time Forrest returned from his morning school bus run. The pigs to be butchered had been separated to a pen that had been filled good clean straw. Being the youngest and perhaps the most agile it was my task to catch the pigs . I would grab them by the front leg and flip them on their back then straddling and sitting down on their belly at the same time grasping each of the front legs and pulling them rearward. Now my dad grabbed the snout with his left hand and with his right which held a double edge stabbing knife . He first marked the spot with a small cut on the skin then a strong thrust of the knife to the handle and a turn of the wrist cut the juggler vein causing blood to rush out. In just a couple of minutes the hog had bleed to death. Some people shot the pigs before bleeding them but some of the old-timers seemed to think that the pig would not bleed out as well that way. The pig was then dragged to the platform made of an old barn door placed on saw horses at the end a open ended barrel had been set a 45 degree angle and filled with the scalding water . Two men standing on top of the platform would plunge the pig into the barrel and work him up and down several times , then the pig was turned around and the other end received the same treatment . The hot water loosened the hair and every one present scraped the hair off with a tool like an inverted saucer that had a handle fastened to the bottom. After the hair was removed a gamble [apiece of wood two foot in length and sharpened to a point at each end] was placed under the tendons of the back legs allowing the pig to be hoisted up with the head down . From this position the insides could easily be removed to a dishpan and taken to the house where the women stripped off what we called gut fat, a web like layer between the coils of intestines. From which some lard was rendered when cooked. This operation was repeated over and over until the eight to ten hogs that had been sold were all hanging from the roof of the tool shed. After the hogs had cooled over night they were loaded on a truck and delivered to town. If Mr. Erhorn was lucky he might receive about ten dollars per pig but usually less.
One time another neighbor wanted us to do an old sow for him . His wife had an old polish recipe for blood sausage that she wanted to try , To do this we had to catch the blood as it gushed out. A large flat basin that had about a pound of sugar in it was used . As the blood entered the pan it was stirred into the sugar to keep it from coagulating. I never heard how the recipe turned out. it didn't look very appetizing to me.
It was about 1939 or 40 that we purchased a runt pig from a neighbor. We put him in a pen and fed him on ground wheat for almost a year. He became huge and so fat he could only waddel when he walked. I would guess his weight to be around five hundred pounds. We planned to butcher him by the corn crib. Everything was ready including the hot scalding water. It took mutch coaxing and nudging to get him to walk from the barn. When we got him there a little push and he went over on his back. To scald him to remove the hair we laid burlap bags on him and poured the hot water on top, a section at a time. I boiled out over fourty gallons of lard from the carcas . This was one of the last butchering jobs that I participated in.