However Did They Survive Without
Refrigerators?
Pork was the most popular meat found on the pioneer farm table.
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Meat, not bread, was the staff of life for colonial farmers. Frontier farmers who didn’t yet have much livestock lived largely on deer, bear, turkey, grouse, pigeon, squirrel and other wild meats. Bear and possum fat were rendered into lard, which was stored in deerskin bags, as Native Americans had done for centuries.
Pork, though, was the most frequent meat on the pioneer table. Hogs were produced relatively easily, since they were allowed to forage in the wilds for virtually all their food.
Salt pork was standard fare the year ’round. Every farmer slaughtered his own animals, usually with the help of neighbors. After crops had been harvested, the fall seeding done and the winter’s supply of firewood cut and piled, butchering was in order.
The farmers would gather on some chilly November day. It was a festive day, not just because fresh meat was a welcome change in the diet, but because it offered a chance to visit with neighbors.
A 40- or 50-gallon kettle was hung over an outdoor fire to heat water for scalding the carcasses. Another kettle was used to prepare the lard. The slaughtering was done in early morning so the meat would be hard and cold by the time it was pickled at nightfall.
Butchering was also a very busy time for the farm wives. The meat had to be pickled, smoked, dried, salted or potted so it would keep throughout the year. Pork was preserved in barrels of brine or in tubs packed with lard. Hams, shoulders and sides were hung in the smokehouse to cure. There was sausage to make, lard to be rendered out, tallow to save.
Hog meat was made into a tremendous variety of food products: salt pork, bacon, ham, souse (seasoned and spiced trimmings,) scrapple ( a mixture of ground pork and cornmeal set in a mold, sliced and fried,) head cheese, cracklings (the crisp residue from the rendering,) spare ribs, jowls, pickled pig’s feet and many others.
The standard cereal food of the pioneers was corn meal. It was consumed mainly as cornpone or hoecake, but corn meal mush and milk were staple foods. Wheat was a cash crop and rarely used to make bread for the farmer’s table. Rye was used for bread because it was cheaper and equally nourishing.
There were no nutrition experts to tell about vitamins and minerals, but the pioneer women well understood the need to eat quantities of fruits and vegetables throughout the year. Huge quantities of wild fruits and berries were picked in season, and preserved by drying or by packing in honey or sugar.
Sauerkraut was an important source of vitamins for many farm families during the winter months. It was made by packing cabbages in salt and changing the brine from time to time as the cabbage fermented. Sweet corn, beans, pumpkins squash and other vegetables were dried.
Apple trees soon came to be grown on many farms, and this fruit was made into cider, dried apples and apple butter. Apple pie came to be the almost universal dessert, but not all of it was the kind that made grandma famous.
One farmer, writing in 1759 about his fellow pioneers from Sweden, said, Apple pie is used through the whole year and when fresh apples are no longer to be had, dried ones are used. It is the evening meal of children. House-pie in country places is made of apples neither peeled nor freed from their cores. And the crust is not broken even if a wagon wheel goes over it.”
From “Bicentennial Farm Features,” provided by the Sperry-New Holland company.
During the current recession, many folks are once again planting their own gardens and doing more home cooking. If they find it a burdensome chore, hopefully this article will remind them that at least they don’t have to do their own butchering - and presumably they won’t be forced to make souse or scrapple.
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