Revised 1997 July

Claude Eddleman Farm (1939-1958)

What we Ate

We grew and preserved most of the foods we ate. This page covers flour making and butchering. Canning, drying, and pickling is on the next page. Planned: soapmaking, cooking.

FLOUR. Before 1950, most counties had a local flour mill and while the Milltown mill went out of business in the 1940s, the English Milling Company in the county seat of English was in operation until the 1950s. We took our soft red winter wheat to the mill in English. They weighed it and gave us 25 pound (11.2 kg) paper bags of their White Onyx brand of flour made from wheat other farmers had brought in the week before. The mill took a share of the flour for the milling and sold it to non-farmers and the local grocery stores. The flour was fine for making gravy, biscuits, pie shells, and cakes, but we had to buy flour made from hard wheat to make yeast bread. That type of wheat is grown in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado over winter. Hard spring wheat is grown in Minnesota, Dakotas, Montana and Canada. Hard wheat contains more gluten protein which is needed for a good rising yeast bread dough. Making bread on the farm will be linked here soon.

The flour mill in Lanesville did not close until 1978 when forced to do so by the government bureaucrats. I happened to be there when they were cleaning the Lanesville mill for the final close. Tourist versions of the old grist mills that were so important to the pioneers are still operating at Spring Mill State Park and Squire Boone Caverns. John Eddleman, my first ancestor in Indiana, built and operated one of the early grist mills on Little Indian Creek.

Butchering. This was another activity which was conducted as a community activity. In most communities 2 or 3 families each brought a 250 to 300 pound hog to a farm where they had a steel barrel of water sitting an 3 stones and being heated by a wood fire. A hog was shot. The target was the center of an imaginary "X" drawn between each eye and the opposite ear. His throat was quickly cut to drain the blood and he was hoisted by ropes and pulleys and lowered into the 180F water to loosen the hair and dirty outer layers of skin. Sharp knives were used to scrape (shave) the hair and dirty skin away. In earlier days, the gushing blood was caught in a jar and made into blood pudding or blood sausage. While I was a soldier in Germany, I tried blood sausage (blut wurst) but could barely gag it down. It had a sweet taste due to blood sugar (?) but I suppose my problem was mostly psychological.

In our community, butchering was much easier. Matt Benz was a hard-working skilled butcher and Homer Froman had built a fine slaughter house with concrete floors and a large steel vat for scalding the hog. There was a 3 x 6 foot platform on each side of the vat. Two log chains were hooked to one platform and laid across the vat to the other platform and allowed to sag down into the hot water. The bled dead hog was lifted onto the other platform on top of the chains and using the free end of the chains gently lowered into the hot water so that none was splashed on anyone. Then a man stood on each platform and used the chains to gently roll the hog in the hot water so the hair was properly loosened all around the hog. The hog was then lifted out and several men began scraping the dead skin and hair off.

The hog was then suspended by each hind leg, washed clean and his belly split from tail to the head and the intestines allowed to spill out into a clean tub. The liver, pancreas (sweetbreads) were fried and eaten that night or the next day for they did not keep well. That was a feast we really anticipated.

The next two or three days were very busy. Hence butchering was usually done a couple days after Christmas so the kids would be home from school to help. The morning of the second day, the chilled hog carcasses were hauled home. The chilling was natural from the freezing weather. We did not butcher unless freezing weather was expected for a few days. Counting day 1 as the day the hog was killed, then Day Two opened with the farmwife cooking the head for it would not keep long. Meanwhile, the man and kids split the carcass along each side of the backbone and the backbone was cooked on day 2 or 3 for it did not keep long. The loins were removed and canned in chunks and made wonderful sandwiches the following summer.

During Day two and three, all the leaf lard, kidney fat, and other slabs of white fat were removed with sharp knives and cut into inch-sized cubes in preparation for rendering the lard. Early next morning, the iron kettle of 30 gallon size was set outdoors in a sheltered location or a wind break was built and a gallon of water poured in and a couple gallons of fat cubes added. The stirring began constantly so the cubes would not burn to the kettle. As soon as a llittle fat fried out, then burning was less likely and more cubes of fat were added. Quickly as possible all the cubes were in the kettle and a slow steady fire was maintained by adding wood under the kettle. After a few hours the water had boiled away and and the rendered lard was beginning to boil. This called for precise timing for the melted lard woul increase in temperature and there was a risk it would scorch and take on a burnt flavor and the family would be using burnt lard for a year. By this time the fat cubes had shrunken to 1/2 inch cracklings and were beginning to take on a golden color and every one looked forward to get some of them to eat. The cracklings were dipped out and the hot lard allowed to drain out of them. Lucky families had a lardpress and the hot cracklings were quickly pressed. That lard often had small flakes of crackling in it and did not keep as well and therefore was used first. Lard was a major commodity available in stores and most families had to buy some before the next butchering season. This was the way they got the large lard cans they now used to store the newly rendered lard. If the cans were tightly closed to exclude oxygen, the lard would keep fairly well, but by August it was becoming somewhat rancid making the cooking less palatable.

While the lard was being rendered or the day before that, sausage was being made. The hams and shoulders were trimmed and the meat trimmings ground with sage, salt, and pepper to make sausage. If the weather was freezing, the sausage would keep a week many, but most of it had to be canned. It was was stuffed into cleaned intestines or made into patties. These were placed in pans two inches deep and placed in the oven and baked until ready to eat. That killed the bacteria. The ready to eat sausages were packed in jars and the melted fat that came out during the baking was poured into the jars to exclude all air and the hot jars were sealed immediately so the meat was vacuum packed. Pork loins and shoulders were often canned in similar manner. Canning meat takes special care because it is good food for bacteria and can easily spoil.

Meanwhile the men were starting the curing of the hams and sides. The first step was to pack them in salt. A layer of salt was placed on a clean table and the slabs of raw bacon (porkbelllies) and hams were packed tightly together with plenty of salt between the layers. I did not help, but I watched as my dad had watched his dad. After a few days the sides and hams were restacked and more salt added to insure there were no unsalted spots which would rot. Some of the salt had smoke, sugar, and flavorings added. After curing was completed, about x weeks, the hams and sides of bacon were hung in a smoke house and a smoldering, smoky fire was built in a kettle with just enough air to keep it smoldering. The smoking lasted two days.

Warning: There are some errors in the details above. Experienced farmers will proofread the above procedures and make corrections during July/August 1997.

Properly cured and smoked hams and bacon were left in the smokehouse until eaten. Our smokehouse was about 40 inches square and 6 feet high, constructed of boards and galvanized iron roofing. The bacon kept longer than hams. We were still eating the bacon in August. Since the smokehouse was out in the full sun, it got hot in there during the summer. We ususally kept our sitting hens in the smokehouse in wooden crates on the dirt floor. There will be a link here to sitting hens.

We rarely bought any meat during the summer. At supper each person got an inch by 3 inch by 3 mm piece of bacon after frying. Thus, diets in those days were more heart healthy. Eggs, milk, and fried chicken or boiled chicken and dumplings were the meats eaten during the summer. Squirrel season opened mid-August after the baby squirrels could get along without parents. Rabbit season opened November 10. Woodchucks (groundhogs) had no closed season, but they were rare and I have never eaten one. Pigeons were another possible summer food, but the smell pretty strong when cooking. Squirrels and rabbits were eagerly looked forward to as tasty protein dishes. After the war every town built a frozen foods "locker plant" where a family could rent a locked drawer to store fresh strawberries and meats. That was an exciting development. My dad wired the locker plant in Marengo about 1947. I spent lots of hours studying the blueprints for that plant and was very proud that my Dad was deamed qualified to install the expensive equipment. Experts came to town to install the freon and make the final adjustments. Within a five years most families had home freezers and most lockerplants went out of business, but some are still in operation by merchandising frozen fruit in bulk quantities and catering to deer hunters and custom butchering for farmers. Because state bureaucrats put community slaughter houses out of business.

looked forward to.Some of the liver was cooked and ground into liver sausage. The intestines might be cleaned and use for sausage casing.

add headcheese to the above (cooked heat meat ground with cooked cornmeal for a fine food).

We did not make cured summer sausage which are known in some ethnic groups, but I have never known of them in USA farms.

To be continued.

Suggestions, corrections, and comments are appreciated: Contact Harold Eddleman indbio@disknet.com