Makin Bacon

Decided to dip my toe into the bacon pool.
This is my first attempt.
Divided up a 7# belly
#1 is plain
#2 is maple and brown sugar
#3 is black pepper
Now the waiting begins. They have to sit in the fridge for the next 10 days.

Gonna be a loooooong 10 days! Very cool

Kinda like making your own pastrami. The end justifies the wait tho.

Watching......

X2

My daddy always waited until hog killing time.

Your patience will be rewarded and you will never want grocery store bacon again . Looking forward to the finished product .

I really want to try this and homemade sauerkraut....

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Here you go.

https://www.statesboroherald.com/life/its-hog-killing-weather/


“It’s hog-killin' weather.” That once was a common way to describe a time of sharply, persistently cold weather. That sort of weather is now uncommon and the descriptor even more so. During the decades when farm families depended on that which was provided by their fields, flocks and the natural environment, the sentence made perfect sense. Harvesting their hogs for meat and lard to last most of the year required cold weather and hard labor.

Cold weather was necessary to keep meat from spoiling. Lacking electricity for refrigeration and storage, people relied on January’s arctic blasts. Man-handling the hogs' carcasses of 200 to 300 pounds meant hard labor.

Preparation began in advance. Animals to be butchered were selected, moved into a pen and fed plenty of corn to “clean out their system.” Wood for the big boiler and wash pot was brought to the site. The 60-gallon boiler used to wash clothes, make syrup and scald hog carcasses to remove hair was filled with water the day before. Knives and a hatchet were sharpened and cleaned. January days are too short to get the job done unless everything was ready as soon as it gets “light enough to see good.”

I have always heard the term "Hog Killing Weather" but it seems we don`t have that kind of weather very often any more. I do remember when I was about 4 or 5 in the early 60`s when my dad and uncle and 2 men I do not know, killed, scalded a butchered a pig out by the barn. So I do know that "Hog Killing Weather" really did exist at one time. That must have been "back in the day".

My grandfather always butchered and processed hogs every year in South Texas. Always in the winter. I remember asking why do we butcher the hogs in the winter. I still chuckle at his one word response. FLIES.

It was always a neighborhood event when I was growing up.

Great start

A good scald is another country boy saying. If you don't know, you just don't know. Just like a city boy in the country mounting a horse on the offside.

Born in Atlanta, and lived all over the East Coast, but raised in the summers in south Georgia on the farm. We used to kill two hogs in the summer; did a giant family reunion with pork BBQ and Brunswick Stew from one. The other went to the butcher for processing for the winters meat.

Funny story: If you're gonna be stupid, ya gotta be tough! I was about 8 or 10 years old (enough to be able to climb trees by myself, but young enough not to know better). I decided to help the men folk out by roping a hog, and bringing it to them. Climbed out on that big oak limb over the trail, and waited to drop a noose over a hog. When you pick on one about three times your size, it will flat clean you right out of that tree in a hurry!!!!

Great story.

My grandfather would butcher a hog in Jan, or Feb. it was always cold. I could never understand why they waited for this one guy to arrive and shoot the hog. This was a annual event and this same guy did the killing with a rifle every time.

Blank, that’s funny.