Good morning my friend. I certainly hope your scalding/scraping job went well. A hint I may have missed during the video is that a horizontal tank is easier to maintain a more even temp from end to end instead of a barrel or vertical tank is from top to bottom. The barrel will always be hotter on the top. When your scalding temp varies above or below 144F, it has a tendency to 'set' the hair making scraping much more difficult. And did you pick up on the part about stirring in ashes to create a mild lye solution for dissolving the hair...?? Let me know, if you will, about your set up and process. Oh yeah, while scraping, you can always help the process by sloshing additional lye water from the tank on small tough areas.
Ahhhh, memories! Best thing I remember about hog killings was the fact we had lots of people around the farm during them. Normally, Farmers worked their farms and you didn't see each other much but, come hog killing time, the whole community was there! 👍👍👍
Yes, you are right. With no refrigeration back then, we always butchered on Christmas week. That way the non-farmer adults were probably off from work and the kids were all off from school AND it was almost always coooooold weather for hog butchering. We needed that for the smoke house to stay cold. We'd kill, scald, scrape, gut, halve and hang the first day. They'd chill overnight to firm up the halves then we'd cut up the second day, ending with sausage grinding and salt curing the shoulders, hams and bacons. The sausage was squeezed into guts cleaned on day one and hung on broom handles to smoke. The first day also was boiling down the head meat, hearts, tails, ears, jowls, tongues, snouts and pig knuckles in the 5' kettle. And of course there was the milking of the dairy cattle before daylight then again after quitting for the day. Always on schedule though. My Dad had 8 brothers and sisters, most with families so we'd kill 15, 16 at a time and sometimes more.
Well John guys like me have a tendency to be a bit 'long winded' on occasion. Most of us that come up out in the country have more tales to tell than the average guy has the patience to stand for... The problem with me is that I should have spent more time listening to the old timers back when I thought I knew it ALL. I DID listen a lot, but not as much as I could have. Now they're all gone and with them went tons of things I wish I had recollection of first hand. I don't know if you've read all the comments in the thread but on quite a few I elaborated a bit more on the process...especially with Alice the Gmaw and Gator. Then there might be a little more in the description if you've a mind to read a bit anyway. Thank you sir for commenting and keep that old Massey 50 running good....
Like George and Gwayne already said they are hog scrapers. Got one but never used it. I picked up 3 of the hand punches like the one that is laying on your bench. You know how it goes. You find one. Then fix it up and spend time on it then they seem to jump out of the bushes. All of them in better shape than the first.
Its interesting to see how many people our age are at least familiar with the old scrapers anyway...but I bet the lions share of the under 40 crowd might be at a loss. Those old Whitney punches are handy as a pocket on a shirt. I too have several that size then one or two bench mounted (missing some dies) and a couple bigger handheld ones with 18" or 20" handles that will punch 1/4" mild steel by hand.
Hi T44! Thanks for giving me a nostalgic glimpse into a way of life gone by. We never dealt with pigs 🐷, but we didn’t have some cows. Kind of a hobby of my dads and my brother and I got conscripted into service taking care of them. When it came time to butcher them, my dad paid a guy down the road to handle the messy stuff, thank goodness! We just got back neatly packaged meat to go in the freezer. Ah, lye soap! Hadn’t seen any of that in a long time either. Thanks, for kindling some found memories!
You are quite welcome sir. Its actually enjoyable to me to kick up some of the old memories. We just did a beef last week and we have two more to do in the next couple weeks. It's not too messy unless you stick your knife in the wrong place... lol. We used to use freezer wrap paper but for twenty years or so have been vacuum sealing all the meat. Works wonderfully !! Thanks for stopping by and taking a gander sir. It is just about time for another batch of lye soap. I gotta get my daughter on it. I've got the lard and the drano ready !!
Thank you Jose. Home butchering puts us in a great minority. Its so far removed from the typical person in this century. Have you seen the actual meat cutting video by chance? ruclips.net/video/h_1C6dIo_N4/видео.html Thanks again for watching.
Thank you sir for taking the time to watch and especially for commenting. I can see how that would work as well. Many times we'd get the vat a bit hot and have to toss in a bucket or two of cold water to drop the temp. I'm glad you got some enjoyment out of the story.
Thanks for sharing Wendell! No need to say I am a bit too young to have known those items and practices. But I can tell you we used lye soap when we washed our hands and had fir resin on it! Other option was butter! Weird... but effective! Have a nice Sunday!
Thank you Joe for the comment. I was wondering if you and ol Dave had ever been around good old fashioned butchering or not. We still do it only one time annually. Was it your Granny's lye soap ?? Good stuff for tough ground in grease and oil on your hands too !!
When the roofers were painting the barn at the old house they were washing off the silver roofing paint with baby oil. That metallic roof paint use to get all over and I would have to wear it off. Now I just get out the bottle of baby oil and wipe the paint, dirt, and grease right off.
That's weird how sometimes the oddest product is used in the oddest way for something so far off from what it was designed for. Like using Dawn dishwashing detergent to clean up birds and other animals after a tanker accident. Certainly not what its advertised for....LOL And using baby powder on your table saw table to hold off rust....
Lydia always tells me to talk about the simple things because people don't know about them. You proved her point here for sure. I knew it was a hog scraper, but didn't even think about how it was used. I would have held it totally wrong. 😀 I would have never thought of what temperature the water should be for scalding a hog. I'm going to remember 144 degrees for while. I've butchered, rabbits, squirrels, racoons, and the occasional woodchuck, but nothing I would have pulled the hair off of.
Yes sir! There is nothing easy about scraping and butchering hogs, when you heard the gun crack it was nothing but asses and elbows! If I could compare it would be like pouring concrete when you seen the cement truck pull up you knew it was going to be a hard day to the end! We also had burlap with us when scalding, we would soak the burlap and use it for getting the tough areas. Take care Buddy talk at you later, great video.
Great video ! Never did any hogs, but used the hog scrapers for fleshing skins we caught trapping as kids. Also worked good on deer hides before I sent them out for tanning.
Our dad would just add ash mix and keep sloshing his hand in until it felt slick enough to his 'feel'. Other than that I don't have a clue. Our vat was at least 8' long, 2' deep and 30'' wide and he would start off with a shovel full and go from there. The biggest point and most important is the water temperature. Try to no exceed 144*F, or you will 'set' the hair making it extremely difficult to remove. Once the water is at temp and you are ready, control the drop into the water and slosh back and forth all the time sliding your hand across the shoulders or back if you can roll it far enough. When the hair slips off slick and clean as a whistle with nothing but your hand, its' time to pull out to scrape. As the hog cools, you may need a small bucket to dip more water out of the vat to pour over the trouble areas. Now I am talking about a horizontal vat or tank, not a barrel type. The temperature difference between the top and the bottom of a barrel type will give you scalding problems. Too hot on the bottom, too cold on top. Remember to finish shave the hog with your butcher knife acting as a straight razor. Also sometimes the hair around the ears, leg-pits and a few other areas will need the razor treatment too. Then you can always singe extremely trouble some hair with a torch...but wash the carcass before transferring to the area to gut and cut. I hope this helps you Bob. Sorry if its too detailed, I have no idea what your level of experience is with the process.
Wow T44! That was really interesting and enjoyable as always. I learn something new everytime I watch. Love the story behind it and enjoyed learning how to make soap. Heard the expression scalding hogs but never knew what it actually meant until about 5 minutes ago. Thanks for putting this together. I am thinking every week or two, you could pull one or two old tools or things out of that workshop, put them on the bench and tell us about it - probably take a long time before you ran out of things to find back there. LOL. Thanks again - two thumbs up!!
Thank you GP for the always supportive comment sir. I agree with you, there IS certainly a pretty good size pile of junk in my shop !! I'm afraid though that there's more stories than the average listener has the patience to sit still for. My one older sister called me 'loquacious' a few years ago and I gotta admit, being as how my predilection is towards words with four letters or less I had to go to Websters to find out she called just me kinda windy in a fancy way !! LOL The NERVE of that gal !!! I don't know if you read all the comments or not, but there's some ....uuhhhh...expansion on the topic of gut cleaning on Alice's comment as well on others. Thanks for tuning in..and I just may take your suggestion from time to time sir.
In my mind I was reliving every moment of your story but at our farm when I was growing up. I can definitely vouch for everything you said from start to finish on hog killing day. The double end scraper came in handy as you said. For some reason I was the only one who could stomach cleaning the intestines to make chittlins. I'd stand over a hole in the ground and well you know how it's done lol. Cutting the fat to make cracklins was something I considered fun to do for some unknown reason.lol Making lye soap was definitely tricky but we never had any of the take your hide off bars of lye soap. While the water in the wash pot was heating, I'd grate lye soap to go in the pot to wash my baby sisters diapers after using the scrub board to clean them. At 7 years old I was making a fire under the wash pot about 2/3 full of water early in the morning. on wash day. Anyone raised on a farm probably has experienced all these things. Wonderful memories for this old woman. Have a great day!
Good evening ma'am. Alice, I am glad to have sparked a fond memory or two !! Isn't it amazing when you think of the responsibility assessed to a little 7 year old girl as though she was an adult. I think back to some of the things that was expected of us kids and there wasn't even a thought in your head to even consider not doing it !!! We never made chittlins ourselves, but our prep work on the intestines might have been a bit similar. Once the guts would be pulled through your thumb and forefinger, they would be placed in large porcelain wash pans full of water. We'd have old worn sycamore boards that we'd rest on our chests with the other end in the wash pan with the guts. We'd each have a well worn butter knife and an old soda straw in our shirt pocket...the ladies surrounding the table in their flour sack aprons. We'd swoosh the guts one at a time into the water and up the inclined board and use the worn butter knife to scrape them meticulously to strip all residual 'coloration' (LOL) down the board. Swoosh into the water and stick the straw into the open end and blow like a long baloon to ensure cleanliness. Then repeat...then repeat again, and again...and again...each time sliding the cleaned portion of gut up the length of straw. Once thoroughly cleaned and flushed again, into a bucket of clean water they'd be tossed to await their reassignment as casings for the 'gut sausage'. The same press used to squeeze the cooked fat for the lard was used as the press for stuffing the sausage into the guts. Just the inner perforated basket would be removed prior to filling with sausage. Long lengths of stuffed sausage would then be coiled in circles then hung in the smoke house to then be smoked with hickory smoke for the next few days. Thank you Alice for enjoying the short ride down memory lane...I got a ton of stories and I am sure you do as well..... Seriously, I thank you for the time you spend here. Mary and I totally love your wonderful comments that a lot of time are either a corroboration of or even a continuation of the short stories I have a tendency to spin.
Good Day eh!!! An interesting video. I have heard of scrapping the hair off a pig but never heard of scalding. Making your own soap is a neat idea too, but my skin is way too delicate to use this product!!!LOL. Thanks for sharing and have a good week!!!
Well Mike... I can't believe you've never heard of scalding hogs !! Some guys heat water in a 55 gallon barrel and though adequate, it never works quite as well as a horizontal vat. The water temperature is too varied in a barrel due to the top being so far from the fire. The bottom is always hotter plus anything more than a small pig and the barrel overflows and wants to drown out the fire. Now you ain't gonna tell me a tough old bird like you has too delicate of skin to use some of this nice and mild lye soap made of rendered lard...why heck, we use that down this neck of the woods to keep out hands soft as a newborn babys behind..... That's why the ladies down this way really like us country boys !! Thank you sir for the comment.
Hahahahaha !! I have a matching orange jumpsuit that's really trippin' too. Hey man, my tractors ain't the only things wearing chains.....LOL !! Thank you sir as aways.
Good Morning Wendel, thank you very much for teaching us the old tools and making of soap. Have yourself a great a blessed Sunday ! Einen Shonen Sonntagomorgen !!! LOL What happen to your tumb ?
Good evening sir...the soap story was a 'cliff notes' version. It is a little more tedious than I quickly described, but you got the jist of it. I figure you and ol' Joe will be getting ahold of some old farmer up that way and making the purchase of a pig on the hoof and have go at scalding one in between your awesome welding projects !! Everybody likes ham and bacon. Dang, my thumb for years in the middle of the winter cracks deeply in the same place so to get it to heal up I have to keep it wrapped tightly with neosporin for a few days. I have one finger that does it also. About three times per winter both of them in the exact same place. Go figure huh. Einen Shonen Sonntagomorgen to you, my Canadian friend as well. Have a blessed Sunday.!!
@@tractorman4461 Thanks Wendel for the exemplation. Yes, i have the same problems with both of my thumb around nails full of cracks cause by wintercoldman,,, so at night I deep both of them into paraffin wax hand cream jar before I go to bed and during the day, I hand cream them often ! My great grandmother on my father side use to butchers pigs and deers and various wildlife animals but I do not remember since I was too young when they dismantle the family farm. Cheers !
My thumbs and fingers crack the same as you described. The best remedy I've found is to put a drop or two of Super Glue into the crack. It stings a bit but, I can work with alot less discomfort. Normally, the crack will heal up in a couple of days. Usually thats just in time for the next crack to appear on another finger.
That's a novel idea. I know any time I'm using it for something else, by fingers end up stuck together at least once !! So that really makes sense. I will try that. Thanks for the tip sir !!
Hey Gwayne thanks for tuning in and I hope you stick around and find some other stuff too. Are you one of us verified 'old timers' thats bore the brunt of scraping hogs ?
Yep 74 been there done that. I was a boy when it was common at my grandfathers to kill hogs in the fall and they were dipped in a big vat heated by wood. We used the scrapers to remove all of the hair. I don't remember the ash but I'm sure they probably used it. Enjoy your channel. Keep up the good work. @@tractorman4461
Thank you Gwayne for your input. We always waited until the dead of winter to butcher beef and hogs (not at the same time) due to the lack of refrigeration. Our scalding vat is about 30" wide, 18" deep and probably 7' long. The underside shrouded in metal it too was fired with sawmill slabs and straight pole wood. We'd kill, scald and halve one day and let chill overnight so the meat would stiffen up a bit then cut them up the next day, grind and stuff sausage and boil the head meat, pig knuckles, hearts, tails and tongues, ears and snouts to prepare for head cheeze. My brother still has the huge 60" head meat kettle and hinged wooden lid that's been in use since my dad (born in 1909) was a kid. I'm glad you are finding things that entertain you over here. Thank you sir, and please don't be a stranger.
I'm scalding a pig later on today. I always have a little trouble removing all of the hair completely. Thanks for the tips!
Good morning my friend. I certainly hope your scalding/scraping job went well. A hint I may have missed during the video is that a horizontal tank is easier to maintain a more even temp from end to end instead of a barrel or vertical tank is from top to bottom. The barrel will always be hotter on the top. When your scalding temp varies above or below 144F, it has a tendency to 'set' the hair making scraping much more difficult. And did you pick up on the part about stirring in ashes to create a mild lye solution for dissolving the hair...?? Let me know, if you will, about your set up and process. Oh yeah, while scraping, you can always help the process by sloshing additional lye water from the tank on small tough areas.
Ahhhh, memories! Best thing I remember about hog killings was the fact we had lots of people around the farm during them. Normally, Farmers worked their farms and you didn't see each other much but, come hog killing time, the whole community was there! 👍👍👍
Yes, you are right. With no refrigeration back then, we always butchered on Christmas week. That way the non-farmer adults were probably off from work and the kids were all off from school AND it was almost always coooooold weather for hog butchering. We needed that for the smoke house to stay cold. We'd kill, scald, scrape, gut, halve and hang the first day. They'd chill overnight to firm up the halves then we'd cut up the second day, ending with sausage grinding and salt curing the shoulders, hams and bacons. The sausage was squeezed into guts cleaned on day one and hung on broom handles to smoke. The first day also was boiling down the head meat, hearts, tails, ears, jowls, tongues, snouts and pig knuckles in the 5' kettle. And of course there was the milking of the dairy cattle before daylight then again after quitting for the day. Always on schedule though. My Dad had 8 brothers and sisters, most with families so we'd kill 15, 16 at a time and sometimes more.
I' m a bit of a history Buff and I grew up on a farm and I love stuff like this . I find it interesting . Thanks for sharing
Well John guys like me have a tendency to be a bit 'long winded' on occasion. Most of us that come up out in the country have more tales to tell than the average guy has the patience to stand for... The problem with me is that I should have spent more time listening to the old timers back when I thought I knew it ALL. I DID listen a lot, but not as much as I could have. Now they're all gone and with them went tons of things I wish I had recollection of first hand. I don't know if you've read all the comments in the thread but on quite a few I elaborated a bit more on the process...especially with Alice the Gmaw and Gator. Then there might be a little more in the description if you've a mind to read a bit anyway. Thank you sir for commenting and keep that old Massey 50 running good....
Like George and Gwayne already said they are hog scrapers. Got one but never used it.
I picked up 3 of the hand punches like the one that is laying on your bench. You know how it goes. You find one. Then fix it up and spend time on it then they seem to jump out of the bushes. All of them in better shape than the first.
Its interesting to see how many people our age are at least familiar with the old scrapers anyway...but I bet the lions share of the under 40 crowd might be at a loss.
Those old Whitney punches are handy as a pocket on a shirt. I too have several that size then one or two bench mounted (missing some dies) and a couple bigger handheld ones with 18" or 20" handles that will punch 1/4" mild steel by hand.
Hi T44! Thanks for giving me a nostalgic glimpse into a way of life gone by. We never dealt with pigs 🐷, but we didn’t have some cows. Kind of a hobby of my dads and my brother and I got conscripted into service taking care of them. When it came time to butcher them, my dad paid a guy down the road to handle the messy stuff, thank goodness! We just got back neatly packaged meat to go in the freezer. Ah, lye soap! Hadn’t seen any of that in a long time either. Thanks, for kindling some found memories!
You are quite welcome sir. Its actually enjoyable to me to kick up some of the old memories. We just did a beef last week and we have two more to do in the next couple weeks. It's not too messy unless you stick your knife in the wrong place... lol. We used to use freezer wrap paper but for twenty years or so have been vacuum sealing all the meat. Works wonderfully !! Thanks for stopping by and taking a gander sir. It is just about time for another batch of lye soap. I gotta get my daughter on it. I've got the lard and the drano ready !!
Thank you sir very nice video
Thank you Jose. Home butchering puts us in a great minority. Its so far removed from the typical person in this century. Have you seen the actual meat cutting video by chance? ruclips.net/video/h_1C6dIo_N4/видео.html Thanks again for watching.
Dip your finger in the water . If you can dip it three times the temperature is right. Just twice...too hot...four times too cold. I enjoyed this.
Thank you sir for taking the time to watch and especially for commenting. I can see how that would work as well. Many times we'd get the vat a bit hot and have to toss in a bucket or two of cold water to drop the temp. I'm glad you got some enjoyment out of the story.
Thanks for sharing Wendell! No need to say I am a bit too young to have known those items and practices. But I can tell you we used lye soap when we washed our hands and had fir resin on it! Other option was butter! Weird... but effective! Have a nice Sunday!
Thank you Joe for the comment. I was wondering if you and ol Dave had ever been around good old fashioned butchering or not. We still do it only one time annually. Was it your Granny's lye soap ?? Good stuff for tough ground in grease and oil on your hands too !!
I could not tell from where the soap came from...
When the roofers were painting the barn at the old house they were washing off the silver roofing paint with baby oil. That metallic roof paint use to get all over and I would have to wear it off. Now I just get out the bottle of baby oil and wipe the paint, dirt, and grease right off.
@@OldSneelock, I'll take good note of that! Baby oil!
That's weird how sometimes the oddest product is used in the oddest way for something so far off from what it was designed for. Like using Dawn dishwashing detergent to clean up birds and other animals after a tanker accident. Certainly not what its advertised for....LOL And using baby powder on your table saw table to hold off rust....
Lydia always tells me to talk about the simple things because people don't know about them.
You proved her point here for sure. I knew it was a hog scraper, but didn't even think about how it was used. I would have held it totally wrong. 😀
I would have never thought of what temperature the water should be for scalding a hog. I'm going to remember 144 degrees for while.
I've butchered, rabbits, squirrels, racoons, and the occasional woodchuck, but nothing I would have pulled the hair off of.
I was just telling my husband about this!
I hope you find an easy to follow recipe, of which there are many modern ones available, and have a go at making some soap. Good Luck !!
Yes sir! There is nothing easy about scraping and butchering hogs, when you heard the gun crack it was nothing but asses and elbows! If I could compare it would be like pouring concrete when you seen the cement truck pull up you knew it was going to be a hard day to the end! We also had burlap with us when scalding, we would soak the burlap and use it for getting the tough areas. Take care Buddy talk at you later, great video.
Great video ! Never did any hogs, but used the hog scrapers for fleshing skins we caught trapping as kids. Also worked good on deer hides before I sent them out for tanning.
Any idea how to find out how much lye to water ratio. I plan on processing hogs for the first time this fall and would like to know.
Our dad would just add ash mix and keep sloshing his hand in until it felt slick enough to his 'feel'. Other than that I don't have a clue. Our vat was at least 8' long, 2' deep and 30'' wide and he would start off with a shovel full and go from there. The biggest point and most important is the water temperature. Try to no exceed 144*F, or you will 'set' the hair making it extremely difficult to remove. Once the water is at temp and you are ready, control the drop into the water and slosh back and forth all the time sliding your hand across the shoulders or back if you can roll it far enough. When the hair slips off slick and clean as a whistle with nothing but your hand, its' time to pull out to scrape. As the hog cools, you may need a small bucket to dip more water out of the vat to pour over the trouble areas. Now I am talking about a horizontal vat or tank, not a barrel type. The temperature difference between the top and the bottom of a barrel type will give you scalding problems. Too hot on the bottom, too cold on top. Remember to finish shave the hog with your butcher knife acting as a straight razor. Also sometimes the hair around the ears, leg-pits and a few other areas will need the razor treatment too. Then you can always singe extremely trouble some hair with a torch...but wash the carcass before transferring to the area to gut and cut. I hope this helps you Bob. Sorry if its too detailed, I have no idea what your level of experience is with the process.
Wow T44! That was really interesting and enjoyable as always. I learn something new everytime I watch. Love the story behind it and enjoyed learning how to make soap. Heard the expression scalding hogs but never knew what it actually meant until about 5 minutes ago. Thanks for putting this together. I am thinking every week or two, you could pull one or two old tools or things out of that workshop, put them on the bench and tell us about it - probably take a long time before you ran out of things to find back there. LOL. Thanks again - two thumbs up!!
Thank you GP for the always supportive comment sir. I agree with you, there IS certainly a pretty good size pile of junk in my shop !! I'm afraid though that there's more stories than the average listener has the patience to sit still for. My one older sister called me 'loquacious' a few years ago and I gotta admit, being as how my predilection is towards words with four letters or less I had to go to Websters to find out she called just me kinda windy in a fancy way !! LOL The NERVE of that gal !!!
I don't know if you read all the comments or not, but there's some ....uuhhhh...expansion on the topic of gut cleaning on Alice's comment as well on others. Thanks for tuning in..and I just may take your suggestion from time to time sir.
I think I just added a new word to my vocab too. LOL
In my mind I was reliving every moment of your story but at our farm when I was growing up. I can definitely vouch for everything you said from start to finish on hog killing day. The double end scraper came in handy as you said. For some reason I was the only one who could stomach cleaning the intestines to make chittlins. I'd stand over a hole in the ground and well you know how it's done lol. Cutting the fat to make cracklins was something I considered fun to do for some unknown reason.lol Making lye soap was definitely tricky but we never had any of the take your hide off bars of lye soap. While the water in the wash pot was heating, I'd grate lye soap to go in the pot to wash my baby sisters diapers after using the scrub board to clean them. At 7 years old I was making a fire under the wash pot about 2/3 full of water early in the morning. on wash day. Anyone raised on a farm probably has experienced all these things. Wonderful memories for this old woman. Have a great day!
Good evening ma'am. Alice, I am glad to have sparked a fond memory or two !! Isn't it amazing when you think of the responsibility assessed to a little 7 year old girl as though she was an adult. I think back to some of the things that was expected of us kids and there wasn't even a thought in your head to even consider not doing it !!!
We never made chittlins ourselves, but our prep work on the intestines might have been a bit similar. Once the guts would be pulled through your thumb and forefinger, they would be placed in large porcelain wash pans full of water. We'd have old worn sycamore boards that we'd rest on our chests with the other end in the wash pan with the guts. We'd each have a well worn butter knife and an old soda straw in our shirt pocket...the ladies surrounding the table in their flour sack aprons. We'd swoosh the guts one at a time into the water and up the inclined board and use the worn butter knife to scrape them meticulously to strip all residual 'coloration' (LOL) down the board. Swoosh into the water and stick the straw into the open end and blow like a long baloon to ensure cleanliness. Then repeat...then repeat again, and again...and again...each time sliding the cleaned portion of gut up the length of straw.
Once thoroughly cleaned and flushed again, into a bucket of clean water they'd be tossed to await their reassignment as casings for the 'gut sausage'. The same press used to squeeze the cooked fat for the lard was used as the press for stuffing the sausage into the guts. Just the inner perforated basket would be removed prior to filling with sausage. Long lengths of stuffed sausage would then be coiled in circles then hung in the smoke house to then be smoked with hickory smoke for the next few days.
Thank you Alice for enjoying the short ride down memory lane...I got a ton of stories and I am sure you do as well..... Seriously, I thank you for the time you spend here. Mary and I totally love your wonderful comments that a lot of time are either a corroboration of or even a continuation of the short stories I have a tendency to spin.
Good Day eh!!! An interesting video. I have heard of scrapping the hair off a pig but never heard of scalding. Making your own soap is a neat idea too, but my skin is way too delicate to use this product!!!LOL. Thanks for sharing and have a good week!!!
Well Mike... I can't believe you've never heard of scalding hogs !! Some guys heat water in a 55 gallon barrel and though adequate, it never works quite as well as a horizontal vat. The water temperature is too varied in a barrel due to the top being so far from the fire. The bottom is always hotter plus anything more than a small pig and the barrel overflows and wants to drown out the fire.
Now you ain't gonna tell me a tough old bird like you has too delicate of skin to use some of this nice and mild lye soap made of rendered lard...why heck, we use that down this neck of the woods to keep out hands soft as a newborn babys behind..... That's why the ladies down this way really like us country boys !! Thank you sir for the comment.
I always learn something on your videos. Thanks. Also, thats a spiffy prison uniform shirt youre wearing.
Hahahahaha !! I have a matching orange jumpsuit that's really trippin' too. Hey man, my tractors ain't the only things wearing chains.....LOL !! Thank you sir as aways.
Good Morning Wendel, thank you very much for teaching us the old tools and making of soap. Have yourself a great a blessed Sunday ! Einen Shonen Sonntagomorgen !!! LOL What happen to your tumb ?
Good evening sir...the soap story was a 'cliff notes' version. It is a little more tedious than I quickly described, but you got the jist of it. I figure you and ol' Joe will be getting ahold of some old farmer up that way and making the purchase of a pig on the hoof and have go at scalding one in between your awesome welding projects !! Everybody likes ham and bacon.
Dang, my thumb for years in the middle of the winter cracks deeply in the same place so to get it to heal up I have to keep it wrapped tightly with neosporin for a few days. I have one finger that does it also. About three times per winter both of them in the exact same place. Go figure huh.
Einen Shonen Sonntagomorgen to you, my Canadian friend as well. Have a blessed Sunday.!!
@@tractorman4461 Thanks Wendel for the exemplation. Yes, i have the same problems with both of my thumb around nails full of cracks cause by wintercoldman,,, so at night I deep both of them into paraffin wax hand cream jar before I go to bed and during the day, I hand cream them often ! My great grandmother on my father side use to butchers pigs and deers and various wildlife animals but I do not remember since I was too young when they dismantle the family farm. Cheers !
My thumbs and fingers crack the same as you described. The best remedy I've found is to put a drop or two of Super Glue into the crack. It stings a bit but, I can work with alot less discomfort. Normally, the crack will heal up in a couple of days. Usually thats just in time for the next crack to appear on another finger.
That's a novel idea. I know any time I'm using it for something else, by fingers end up stuck together at least once !! So that really makes sense. I will try that. Thanks for the tip sir !!
Hog scraper.
Hey Gwayne thanks for tuning in and I hope you stick around and find some other stuff too. Are you one of us verified 'old timers' thats bore the brunt of scraping hogs ?
Yep 74 been there done that. I was a boy when it was common at my grandfathers to kill hogs in the fall and they were dipped in a big vat heated by wood. We used the scrapers to remove all of the hair. I don't remember the ash but I'm sure they probably used it. Enjoy your channel. Keep up the good work. @@tractorman4461
Thank you Gwayne for your input. We always waited until the dead of winter to butcher beef and hogs (not at the same time) due to the lack of refrigeration. Our scalding vat is about 30" wide, 18" deep and probably 7' long. The underside shrouded in metal it too was fired with sawmill slabs and straight pole wood. We'd kill, scald and halve one day and let chill overnight so the meat would stiffen up a bit then cut them up the next day, grind and stuff sausage and boil the head meat, pig knuckles, hearts, tails and tongues, ears and snouts to prepare for head cheeze. My brother still has the huge 60" head meat kettle and hinged wooden lid that's been in use since my dad (born in 1909) was a kid. I'm glad you are finding things that entertain you over here. Thank you sir, and please don't be a stranger.
I still use one often.. to scrape the hair off my wife's back lol 😂👌👍
Aw man...you're killin' me man. LOL Funny though !! Thanks John for the humor this fine fall evening !!