Oh poop! I forget to put the October 29th activity for Howell Farm on here. It was blacksmithing. They may have had the farrier there too, to reshoe the horses. If the horses on a farm in 1900 just did field work and didn't travel over the roads too often, they may not have been shod, just trimmed periodically, which would have saved the farmer some money (or time, if he did the trimming and/or shoeing himself.) Since our horses often do wagon or carriage rides on the farm lanes, which are dirt but are pretty hard, and on the blacktop/macadam roads surrounding the farm, they are shod. During the winter, they will have calks, kinda like giant snowtire studs, added to their shoes for traction on frozen or icy ground.
This coming Saturday, the 5th, is one of my favorite activities - Bacon, Sausage, and Scrapple Making. A Mennonite family from Lancaster Co., PA, is kind enough to do their pig butchering at Howell Farm. The pigs, usually two, are killed, gutted, and sawn in half lengthwise at their farm the day before. The family, usually three or four siblings, their mother, their spouses, and some of their children, arrive around 8 am and set up their work area on a couple of picnic tables covered with plastic. They show where the different cuts of meat come from, how to cut a ham properly, what part of the pig the bacon comes from, etc. As the men cut the various pieces, the women wrap and label them and put them on ice. The woman also do some of the trim work (see below about scrapple, cracklin's and sausage).
When the work area is set up in the morning, two fires are built for two big iron kettles. Initially, water is added to each kettle - a little in the lard kettle while it's warming up so it doesnn't burn or crack, and a lot in the scrapple kettle.
Contrary to popular belief, scrapple is NOT made from lips and a**holes. LOL When the pig is gutted, the liver (and possibly some other organ meat) is ground and cooked. Then when the pig is cut up, other meat scraps are collected, ground up, and added to the kettle with more water, along with the liver, etc. This cooked meat is called the pudding. Flour, corn meal, salt and pepper are added. I can't remember if anything else goes into it or not. The flour and corn meal thicken it and it's spooned into loaf pans to cool and set up. This is the ONLY scrapple I'll eat. I do not touch the store-bought stuff. Ergo, I haven't had scrapple since around 2001.
Into the other kettle goes any and all fat trimmings, some with a little meat still attached. This simmers away all day and renders the pure lard out. The solids that remain are a little bit of heaven - cracklin's - not to be confused with chittlin's, which is fried intestines. Ewww! The hot, liquid lard and any solids are slowly ladeled from the kettle into the sausage press, which has been cleaned and lined with several layers of cheesecloth. Then any liquid coming through the spout is caught in storage cans about the size of those popcorn cans that are around at Christmas time. After most of the liquid lard has come through on its own, the lid of the press is turned down and more liquid is squeezed out of the solids. The disk of solid fat and meat that's left is then pulled out of the press, dumped out on the table, broken apart and salted. Tastes like bacon, but better.
Some of the meat is cut small and set aside for sausage. When it's all been cut, a big meat grinder is brought out and fastened to one of the tables. The grinder is powered by a belt run by a one-cylinder donkey engine or "One-lunger," the same one that's used to power the ice cream maker in the summer. The meat is ground, then seasonings are mixed in and it's ground again. The sausage is packed into a sausage press, casing is added to the spout at the bottom, and while one person turns the wheel to press the meat down, another person stoops in front of the press with a big basin or tub and gives the sausage an occasional twist as it emerges and fills the casing.
Visitors are allowed to sample the cracklin's and some of the scrapple (since it's been cooked). By the end of the day, every scrap of meat and fat is off the bones and has been used somehow.
No comments:
Post a Comment