"I
write this in mid-July. We are still far away from the first nip of autumn weather, but
already the chicory, AKA Blue Tailors, are blooming and that evocative sight sends my
thoughts forward to blue autumn skies, crisp breezes, and, still vivid in my memory, the
now almost extinct home chore of butchering and
attendant sausage making.
My thoughts wing back to the eleventh of
November—St. Martin’s Day—usually considered the first acceptable day to
butcher in those pre-refrigerator days of the early thirties. It was also a day that I was
allowed to stay home from school to help.
What an array of sights and sounds that day provided! As my duties were mainly of the
run and fetch order, I was able to see it all and smell it all. I watched Grandmother
scrape the intestines for the next day’s sausage stuffing. Cloth sleeves were already
sewn for sausage stuffed in this manner.
All this time, over an outdoor fire, Grandmother cooked the hog’s head and other
bones in a large black iron kettle with feet. I got the task of scraping off every fleck
of meat. Not a shred was to be wasted. When I had approximately two pounds, I added five
cups of water, one teaspoon salt, one-half to one teaspoon freshly ground pepper, one
quarter teaspoon sage from the herb garden, and two cups of white corn meal. The mixture
was simmered, put into a flat pan, and then chilled in the icehouse. While I was doing
this, Grandmother would make "puddin," blood pudding and souse.
I was allowed to turn the handle of the sausage stuffer-grinder and it fascinated me to
see the intestines plump up. Every five inches, Grandmother would give a twist of her hand
and make a link. Father and Grandfather carried great loops of sausage into the
smokehouse---Oh the smokehouse. By this time of day it began to grow colder but you could
snitch some cracklins and dash into the smokehouse with its hickory smelling fire.
It’s been many a year since the smokehouse was used as it was intended, but
whenever I visit the home place, I check out the tool shed, the two and a half hole privy,
the barn where I put away fragrant hay. But, my best olfactory treat is furnished by the
old smokehouse and it smells just like so many yesterdays ago."
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