Old Family Traditions pt 1

One recent very cold and very early Saturday morning I had the privilege to photograph a group of local guys who get together every few Saturdays in late winter to work together and provide food for each family's freezers. There's probably a little gossiping, drinking and a lot of nibbling.

There are no graphic images here. Most of what you see are the helping hands and dying traditions that are being lost by superstores and the way people choose to ignore where the food they eat comes from.

Actually the room was so small the work had to be done in shifts. Half the group waited outside near the door for warmth and the other half working around the small table.

Sadly this very old fireplace was completely useless to provide heat into the room. It all seemed to go straight up the chimney.

In older days one kettle was used to make lard and the other kettle used to cook meaty bone scraps for making pudding or scrapple. Sadly lard isn't used as much anymore, so the kettle is used to keep water boiling for sterilizing or washing any utensils.

If it were me--I'd be makin' lard.

Even the floor gets easily rinsed with boiling water once in a while since it is sloped and all the water runs towards and out the front door.

When I arrived the guys had already divided much of the large meat and were trimming up the smaller pieces to be roasts and such. Under the table were 3 buckets. One for trash. One for scraps of meat to be used for sausage and one that would held bone scraps that would be cooked in the large kettle for making scrapple.

Here they are are trimming the slabs from the belly for bacon. You want a good balance of fat and meat on it. It also should be nice and even in shape for the curing time.

Actually anyone can make bacon at home by ordering about a 5 pound slab of pork belly from a butcher-with or without skin.

I believe the cure they used was just salt and light brown sugar. Maple sugar is also a nice flavor.







No ingredients are measured.

I'm still not sure how they know things will come out, but I imagine after generations of careful tinkering, it all comes out just to perfection in the end.

The slabs are covered with the salt cure mixture and will sit up to a week until firm, then rinsed and hung for a day or two. Then to the smokehouse for a smoke of a few hours, then cooled and sliced for cooking or frozen for future use.





Mmmmm... salted hams in different stages of curing. The closest is the oldest and the furthest was just cut during the morning waiting for it's salt cure. I thought someone said they can sit from anywhere to a few months to a year or two.


The bucket of scraps and some fat for sausage that was under the table gets unloaded onto the table. This is the easiest way to distribute seasonings into the meat. The very basic of seasonings-S&P and light brown sugar.

After grinding, the sausage is put into this antiquated press which is cranked and pushes the meat out the bottom and into the sausage casings.



Apparently cleaning their own casings from the intestines is a lot of work and ordering them from the local butcher shop is much easier and this will take a lot of work out of a small part of a long day.








All that meat seen on the table is now ropes of sausage. The lucky owner did manage to have a few tubs of loose sausage too.

The only way to know if the sausage is properly seasoned is to cook small pieces and taste. The highlight is when the person (who everyone is here working for) gives the nod of approval, then sausage patties are cooked and there are sandwiches for everyone!

















I don't think I ever appreciated a sausage sandwich as much as at that moment after seeing the work and care going into homemade food.