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Comments about Hog Butchering

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Phillip Stalnaker says...

On 04/28/16
at 12:08 AM

I am quite familiar with the Hog Butchering you speak about. A couple of additional events during our Butchering was the saving of the hair removed by scraping for chinking the cracks between the logs of the barn. Mixing the hair with red clay mud provided a fiber to hold the clay together when it dried out, very much like fibers mixed with putty even today. Like wise the blood was save for blood Pudding by some of the European families.

Our hanging equipment consisted of a post set in the ground, it was about 6 feet high. A large pole was pinned to the top of the pole with a large bolt or rod, off centered. This provide a lever to enable two men to lift the 3 to 4 hundred pound hog from the sled turn it to the side and dunk the hog into a metal barrel of hot water to enable the hair to be remove. Once dunked you could swing it back over the sled Scrape it clean or skinned and then finish butchering.

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