Hogs and Ham

Hugh, JoAnn, Phyllis and David (around 1945?)  Clover Bottom, KY

I was talking to dad on the phone this morning about the hogs we are raising this summer.  He told me that as a kid, his family raised 3-4 hogs every summer to butcher.  They would butcher them in the fall, salt them and then hang them in the smokehouse.  They would usually wait until November to butcher because the weather was colder.  His mother (Grandma Mary Witt) would get indignant when the folks from "up north" would come out to Clover Bottom, asking them if they had any hams to sell.  "Those people think we're so poor we have to sell the hams?  We eat those.  They can buy something else."

I mentioned that I didn't really care for ham.  When we butcher, I might do 1 or 2 half hams, but mostly keep it as Fresh hams or fresh roast.  Dad said he never even tasted store bought ham until long after he left home.  The hams his family did were not salty like a store bought ham, but probably more like my fresh hams.

Every so often, I catch glimpses of the childhood of my dad.  Gardens, raising animals for food, shooting rabbits (and he claims possum) for hood.  He once told of his grandma and how she dried her beans by hanging them in the attic.

They had a cow and as early as 4 years old, his job was to go find the cow and lead her up to the house to Mammy could milk her (twice a day).

Every Birthday, Mammy would bake a silver dollar into a biscuit for the birthday child.  That was all they got for their birthdays.  Christmas might be an orange, but nothing else.