what did farmers traditionally feed pigs to fatten them up
Historically, no farm creature amend represents rural life in the mountains than the squealer. It was by far the most numerous and prolific of subcontract livestock and was the most important source of meat.
The Oconaluftee area in the North Carolina portion of what is now Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a expert example. According to the 1880 Agricultural Demography, 59 families in the Oconaluftee portion of the Smokies reported owning a total of more 830 pigs in 1879. Individual ownership ranged from as few as two to more than l.
By comparison, the next most numerous livestock was sheep, with only well-nigh half as many. Hogs not only provided meat for the family, they were too ofttimes a source of boosted income. As a greenbacks crop, there was a big advantage to livestock—they could walk to market.
Pigs were the master source of meat for mountain families for several reasons. For one, almost every part of the animal could be used. Secondly, pigs were self sufficient and could be raised at trivial cost to the farmer. Pigs were especially adept foragers and were immune to roam the forest in search of food. They would eat many things that other livestock could not. Hogs used their tough snouts or "rooters" to dig up plant bulbs, roots, and insects, and would too eat frogs, snakes, and lizards. In the fall, they feasted on chestnuts, acorns, and other wild nuts.
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In an try to avoid ownership disputes, hogs were "earmarked" with a diversity of notches, slits, and holes that were cutting or punched into their ears. Each farmer had his ain earmark to distinguish his stock and the mark was oftentimes registered with the county court.
To keep the animals from wandering too far afield or becoming wild, many farmers would periodically take salt and corn to a feeding spot in the forest. This as well made it easier to catch the animals in the fall when it was time to select hogs to be fattened before butchering. Older hogs were usually called, while younger animals were left for next twelvemonth.
The pens used to house the hogs for fattening often resembled small log cabins, three to five logs loftier, and sometimes fifty-fifty included a split log floor to keep the animals from rooting their way out. The structure was commonly topped with a roof of heavy planks or logs which in plow were weighted down with big rocks. These measures were needed not only to proceed the hogs in, but also to continue bears out. Sometimes these pens were so small there was not even room for the animate being to plow around, the idea being that the less they moved the faster they would gain weight. One farmer liked to say he fattened his hogs "till their eyes swole close...." Even though hogs fattened on wild chestnuts produced tasty meat, many farmers preferred corn fattened hogs because they felt corn produced improve lard.
The animals were penned and fattened for anywhere from several weeks to more than than a month. Butchering took place afterward the atmospheric condition was common cold enough to help preserve the meat until the curing procedure was complete. This activity oftentimes occurred around the end of Nov, although many farmers likewise waited until the moon and signs were correct, preferring to kill the animals at total moon. Many felt that if the pig was killed during a shrinking or waning moon, the meat would also compress a lot when cooked.
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On hog killing day, families ordinarily started their preparations well before daylight. The number of hogs butchered depended on the needs of the family and might range from one to eight. The animals were normally killed by a sharp blow to the head or past shooting the animal in the head. The jugular vein was cutting to bleed the blood from the body, after which it was immersed in hot h2o or had hot h2o poured over information technology to loosen the hair so it could be scraped off. The carcass was then hung by its hind legs and the animal was gutted to remove the organs and intestines which were set aside for later use.
It was moved to a table where it was butchered into various cuts such as tenderloin, shoulders, hams, and side meat. The fat trimmings were put into a large pot and heated to render the lard. Almost every part of the sus scrofa could be eaten, from the feet to the tail and right on out to the snout. The sometime saying was that you could use every part of the grunter except the "squeal." Some of it was eaten fresh while other parts were preserved for later on employ.
Although fume was sometimes part of the preservation process, salt was the principal ingredient for curing meat. Many families used salt mixed with other ingredients such every bit pepper, saccharide, molasses, or saltpeter. Whatever the mixture, it was spread over the big pieces of meat. These were then placed on shelves or in boxes in the meathouse where they were stored during common cold weather condition while the curing process took place. A meathouse of this blazon is preserved at the Mountain Farm Museum.
Several boosted applications of the salt mixture were usually made to guarantee penetration into the meat, which would retard the bacteria growth. Depending on the size of the cuts of meat, the curing procedure could have up to several months. If the family needed meat during the wintertime, it was only cut from a slice in the meathouse, washed to remove the salt, and cooked.
Equally the weather warmed, families needed to protect the meat from insects. Most farmers done the meat and coated information technology with a mixture that often included combinations of the same ingredients used in curing. Some would then hang the meat in the meathouse, while others placed the meat in boxes that might be filled with shelled corn, cornmeal, or even clean, sifted wood ashes. Many felt that this not only helped protect the meat from insects, merely "sweetened" information technology as well.
If meat was to be smoked, information technology was hung in the meat or smoke house and subjected to a smoky hardwood burn for upward to a week. Many families smoked meat simply because they liked the added flavor, although chemical compounds found in smoke did help protect it from bacteria and insects.
Text by Tom Robbins
christensendaudgessed1982.blogspot.com
Source: https://www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/historyculture/pigs.htm
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