At about this time of year, Dad would look out the window at the deep snow banks and say to Mother, “Well it looks to me like the cold weather has settled in. Do you think we should butcher those hogs tomorrow?”
 

Of course, it was a rhetorical question since Uncle Ralph and Aunt Addie had stopped by earlier in the day and both ladies knew that butchering was the topic of conversation between the two men. It was a matter of importance to have enough help to know how many hogs were to be killed, who needed help next week and other small details. No matter if the ladies wanted to be putting up meat tomorrow, it was when the men could do the job that counted!
 

Mother always was ready. It just meant putting away her quilt pieces or her carpet rags. That was her winter work, just as canning, gardens, little chicks and cooking for hired help or thrashers was summer work. Every minute was full, winter or summer, so what difference did it make what the work was? Butchering meant a welcome change of diet, instead of chicken, eggs, mush, bean soup, and other in between foods.
 

Dad and Uncle Ralph always worked together, since they only lived about a mile apart. Butchering was done at our house. We had better facilities like a big barn to get in out of the weather. It had to be cold so the meat would cool quickly. We needed a barn to hang it high away from any wandering dogs who might be tempted during the night. It was always done early in the week, too, for caring for all the pork so it wouldn’t spoil took a lot of time.
 

Dinner was always liver and buckwheat pancakes which my mother was a past master at making. I suppose today they would be called “sourdough” pancakes. I never minded missing dinner that day, though, for I do not like liver but in those days you did not argue. If it was good for you, you ate it!
 

Supper was a different meal. We always had tenderloin, mashed potatoes, brown gravy, hot biscuits, pie and whatever vegetable was handy. Tenderloin is the meat from the pork chops without any of the bone. Dad just peeled it along the backbone in a long piece, and then cut it in thin slices. Mother fried it in her old iron skillet and it came to the table brown and delicious.
 

Butchering was hard work for both men and women. It was a job that took all available hands to finish. After the halves had cooled overnight, it was time to make sausage, lard, head cheese, scrapple, liver sausage, pickled pig’s feet and tongue and to put the sides down in brine to cure into bacon. Hams were also brined so they could be smoked. Uncle Ralph did that chore since he had a smokehouse.
 

Leaf lard was made from the long slabs of fat just inside the hog’s belly. It was very white and did not have to be ground up. It just melted in the pan set on the back of the old Monarch cook stove, done slowly so it would not get over hot. This lard made fine cakes and cookies. It had almost no taste but a texture like modern Crisco. The rest of the fat, trimmed off the carcass, was ground in the big grinder (by hand power) and “fried out” closer to the front of the stove. It too was not allowed to over heat but did not melt as readily as the leaf lard. It had to be heated until all the grease was extracted and all the water was gone. This lard was used for pies and for all frying of which we did a lot. Most meats were fried when I was a child and fried potatoes were on the supper table every night. Lard was the only shortening we had.
 

The sausage was also ground by hand. We did not put ours in casings. Instead, Mother made it into patties which she fried until done and “put down” in a crock, filling the whole thing with lard to make it keep. That way, we enjoyed pancakes and sausage for a long time. Steaks were treated the same way.
 

It took the better part of a week to get it all done and was a lot of work but it was the only way to do it. There were not modern pressure cookers to can with or freezers to store it in.
 

For Christmas, as long as he farmed, Dad gave us half a hog and it was a most welcome gift.

Florence Toburen, Onondaga