The Rich History of Hog Killin' Time

The air is crisp and clean, and the produce is brought in for the year and preserved and stored in one way or another, whether it be canning, freezing, root-cellaring, or dehydrating, like a squirrel preparing for winter.

Canning jars and lids were scarce, everything is back-ordered, and our food supply chain looks uncertain.

Welcome to the fall of 2021.

During these “modern” times we always seem to ask ourselves “how they used to do it back then,” as if back then they had it all figured out.

Well, let me tell you, they (meaning the common-day folk) weren't always so far off.

The food was real, the animals happy, and the people hardworking.

What happened between then and now is a rather sad story.

Traditions and celebrations have come and gone, lived and died, and we are left with just whispers of what used to be.

It is so easy to romanticize what it must have been like, and I'm sure it was all so much harder and dirtier than what we seem to think and they seem to remember.

But, I can't help but to wonder if after it was all done, if it wasn't so much more satisfying and fulfilling?

One such tradition that comes to mind is Hog Killin' Time.

If you are wondering what the heck I'm talking about, let me explain: “Hog Killin' Time” is the period of time in the fall where the air becomes cool enough for the family hog, that has been fattened all season, to safely be slaughtered, hung, and portioned out without the risk of spoilage. If you've never thought of it, and I'm sure you haven't (why would you?), the act of killing and cutting up an entire hog is exhausting and time-consuming. So much so, that family members and good neighbors were automatically recruited to aid in the task, and it became an exciting time and tradition.

The women-folk made side dishes and the necessary preparations for storage, while the men-folk took care of the majority of the heavy lifting. Cousins and friends laughed and played together, the men talked “shop”, and the ladies swapped gossip and recipes. The pig hung.

In Elisabeth Luard's book, “The Rich Tradition of European Peasant Cooking”, she recounts what a lady, born at the turn of the century in Provence, remembered for her of her childhood:

“By late October the vegetables were running out and the pig was fully grown...ripe for sausages and hams. The grandmother made wonderful hams. She had a special old wooden drawer for the salting. Her hams always took the salt better than anyone else's. It was the wooden drawer, grandmother said-it was like an old midwife that knew her business. And she would rub just a little pepper around the bone. That's all. Nothing else. Then when the brine had finished running, when there was no more juice, the hams would be bound in special clean white cloths and hung up from the beam. And there would be ham until Pentecost.

The rest of the meat was made into sausages. The grandmother prepared them with rosemary and thyme, with garlic, with pepper, the meat chopped sometimes large, sometimes small, the finished sausages, were salted and dried and then rolled in flour to keep them fresh. I would help my grandmother wash and salt the intestines, scrubbing and bleaching them until they were as white and clean as her ham cloths. I had a child's quick fingers and I was good at stuffing the skins. I would sit on the table pushing the mixture through the funnel into the long white tubes, while my mother made black pudding with the pig's blood. They looked like long snakes, the black pudding coiled into the enamel bucket until it was full. My sausages were salted and hung up to dry in the larder... Later in the year the grandmother would make her own specialty after the hog killing, her spinach boudin. Other people made these sausages- but they all said the grandmother's were a work of art.”

If any of this sounds barbaric, inhumane or inconsiderate for the hog, you have to understand that the pig was happy and fat, killed quickly, and proudly fed a family for close to a year. Not one bit went to waste, and everyone was thankful.

I remember reading a book years ago titled Folk's, This Ain't Normal by Joel Salatin, owner of Polyface Farms and crusader for responsible agriculture, that discussed Hog Killin' time, and in the chapter titled “Hog Killin's and Laying In the Larder” he laments that we just don't see this type of tradition and food security anymore. It is now as dead as the hog:

“My last hog killin' was on my father-in-law's farm in about 1985, and I still miss it terribly. It finally got too hard to get enough people together, what with Little League and soccer games, movies and night shift at the plant. The old folks gradually died off and the young people were too glued to the television to care. Now when they want tenderloin they go to Walmart or Kroger. Instead of all that food going home at the end of the day to people's houses, where it waited for a dinner to call it by name, those hogs aren't raised anymore. They are confined in factory houses, far away from our Shenandoah Valley, trucked many miles, and processed in huge factories by nameless, faceless people who are themselves employee numbers in an industrial system...Folks, this ain't normal...Witness the panic that sets in when weather forecasters warn of impending snow or other weather disturbances.

Without being cocky, I'm confident that our family could eat for months from what we have stored in our larder. It's right under our noses, in our own castle. This is not only normal, it's secure. When food is spread out among the households of the community, it's less vulnerable to anything, be it weather, politics, economics, or bioterrorism...True food security is the historical normalcy of packing it in during the abundant times, building that in-house larder, and resting easy... Historically, normal food could be seen by the community. Since it was grown in proximity to its use, people could measure how much was there. The farther food production moves away, the less we can really know what's out there. Do you think it's wise to depend on government statisticians to know whether enough food exists for you and your family? Who would you rather trust with your food interests- your local farmers or a beaurocrat from Washington D.C.?”

It is interesting to note that this was written ten years ago.

Have you ever went on a large grocery-spree, taking care to pick up “extra” of the necessary items that would “hold you over” for the winter? Dried beans, canning tomatoes, applesauce, salsa?

That feeling of comfort and relief just simply can't be beat. When the snow storms of the north make their way over, the power goes out, the grocery-line is as horrendous as the roads, or the shelves are empty, you can sit at home knowing that you took the extra steps and would be fine.

Well, that's how hog killin' time was.

Hams were hung, salted, smoked and the bacon sat in slabs ready to be sliced. The “trotters” were for the soup, and even the head was kept for boiling down into “head cheese.” The intestines were saved for stuffing into sausages, and the men felt proud, the women accomplished, and the children joyful, knowing that their bellies would be as stuffed as the sausages.

Dori Sanders, southern author of Dori Sanders' Country Cooking, now 87 years old, reminisces, saying:

“Butchering day involved a lot of work. In our family's log-cabin canning house, fresh sawdust was spread over the dirt floor. Hot-burning fires were built under the big, black cast-iron laundry pots, used not to boil clothes on that butchering day but to cook sausage and meat for canning and to make lard and cracklings. Kerosene lanterns were hung up from nails driven into the rafter beams over the long, wooden plank tables. Attached to either end of the tables were meat grinders with hand cranks to grind the sausage meat and the souse meat (what some people call hog's head cheese).

The work started in the early morning hours and lasted well into the night. As soon as the spare ribs had been removed from the hog carcass and the meat used to make bacon became accessible, a narrow strip of the meat was sliced very thin, and several slits were made in the skin. Then it was seasoned with crumbled dry sage, salt, dried red pepper flakes, and black pepper and placed in a dish of buttermilk to marinate while we continued to work. The side meat used for bacon is quite fat but is also streaked with lean, so we called it ‘streaky lean.’

The pig snouts were carefully cut and divided equally between two large pans. Since there was only one snout per pig and everyone wanted them, lots were cast to determine which cooks would have the privilege of making pickled pig lips. I have to tell you though, that once a woman had enjoyed that privilege she gladly relinquished it to some other cook the next year, because pig lips are by no means easy to make.

In the late afternoon, the streaky-lean bacon slices, which had been marinating all day, were removed from the buttermilk, coated with a mixture of cornmeal and flour, and baked in a hot, hot oven until they were crispy brown. Then they were wedged between freshly baked buttermilk biscuits and served to the workers, along with hot sassafras tea served in speckled enameled tin cups and recycled tin cans.

I still have one of the big meat grinders that we used during hog killing, but these days I use it to make chowchow, a traditional cabbage relish. Like many other events, hog killings seem to be a thing of the past in York County, South Carolina.”

It is so sad for me to ponder the traditions that have long since faded away, only to be replaced by counterfeit security and “better buying.

Just recently an article was released informing people that Smithfield, America's largest pork factory was purchased by China. A company, here in America, owned by another country (and not one known for being kind or humane to their animals or employees), planning to supply you with pork should be both alarming, and unthinkable.

But, I think that we can agree that the false sense of security that once had us duped has come to an end, and hopefully to be exchanged for the thought-to-be-obsolete traditions of real food and community. If we can get back to that, we all benefit: farmer, animals, and you.

Another article was also released in the latest Mother Earth news magazine, titled “Reviving Hog Traditions” that discusses how one farm hosted a bonafide Hog Killin' for the public. Complete with people coming in from numerous states to take part in the what the author of the article (who also participated) calls the “fine art of a hog harvest”, he goes on to explain why the hosting farmers felt the need for the event:

“America's industrialized agriculture system has brought us inexpensive food in grocery stores, but we've lost a connection to the land and the source of sustenance. And, with industrialization, we've also lost something of the connection to our neighbors.”

So this begs the question: Where does your pork come from?

Here on our farm we are not out here on a regular hanging up hogs for our customers during Hog Killin' Time (those are for us). But, they are humanely-raised and full of nutritional-goodness, so even when we drop them off at the small-town butcher for you, the idea is the same. Neighbors, friends, and community coming together and supporting small.

If you need to stock your larder for this upcoming winter, let us know, for time is running out.

Purchase by the cut, or in bulk by the whole and half (limited spots left), so that when the times become uncertain, you don't have to be.