Thursday, May 29, 2008

Chapter Twenty-One - Mortality (conclusion)

One of the last jobs of butchering was rendering the fat. Hog fat was kept separate during the butchering process and then melted in the kettle. It then re-solidified when cooled as lard. Amazingly, unless exposed to summer-like temperatures, it kept very well. We used the lard for frying, making piecrust, or some other uses if butter-churning had lagged behind.
Beef tallow was rendered the same way. Somewhere in their past, perhaps at some folk life fair, Jean and Dianna had both learned how to make candles. The cleanest tallow, that with the least blood or meat clinging to it, was melted separately for Jean, Dianna, and me to make candles. It was a hot job, but I was glad to help. It was fun and a wonderfully warm job during the winter. Finding the right material for wicks was challenging. Baler twine was plentiful, but too thick. Shoestrings were the right thickness, but who wanted to waste shoestrings on candles. We tried twisting straws or other plant stems, but they burned too quickly. We had a small ball of packaging string; you know, the kind you used to wrap packages. It was nice and round, the right thickness, burned at a decent pace, and the hot fat clung to it fairly well. However the supply was soon exhausted. We had to settle on spitting the sisal baler twine and retwisting it. We tried the same thing with plastic twine, but it burned kinda funny, so sisal was the best choice. We certainly had plenty of it, but sometime in the future, the supply would run out because of all the other uses we had for baler twine, like our braided ropes.
“One day,” Jean had said, “we’ll have to find some fibrous plant or weed that we can make wicks out of.”
“We’ll have to experiment next summer,” was my response.
After settling on the wicks, the trickiest part was getting the candles started. Poppop had handcrafted a dozen candle holders that eight wicks could be fastened to. The first dip in the hot tallow was the most difficult because the wicks didn’t have enough weight to make them go down into the fat. So we used a thin stout wire to force each of the wicks into the grease. It was a job we did as a team; more hands making it easier. Even then, when you pulled out the wicks, there was barely any coating on the infant candles. Every dip after that became easier and easier, as long as we waited long enough between dips, so the fat had solidified enough onto the wick to prevent it from melting off the wick on the next dip. That was why we also had to be careful not to get the fat too hot or we’d be melting the candles away faster than we’d be building them up. Grandpop was a big help with that aspect, carefully monitoring the heat. It was neat to have him find a way that he could contribute and for me to spend some time working with him. Plus he really seemed to enjoy it.
We probably had to dip the candles 12 to 15 times until we got the thickness we desired or the level of grease had gotten too low in the kettle to dip. Our finished candles weren’t always works of art. They smoked a little too much, smelled a little, and could have burned more slowly. Our flashlight battery supply would soon be exhausted and even the rechargeable ones would not last forever. So our candles became a valuable asset to the community during the months of fall and winter when we only had nine to ten hours of daylight. In addition, artificial lighting was preserved exclusively for use in the barn where no flames were permitted.
When we had finished dipping all the candles, all the dirtier, poorer quality fat and tallow and any grease leftover from frying (remember, we threw nothing away), was added to the remaining grease in the kettle for soap making. Most of us had never seen soap being made. Dad said Poppop used to make homemade soap when Dad was growing up and Grandmom used to help her aunt make soap for years. But that was years ago and neither of my grandparents remembered the precise formula and method. Fortunately, Wayne came to save the day, because he knew how to make soap.
“There’s a catch,” Wayne said when first approached about lending his expertise. “We need lye to make soap.”
“That figures,” lamented Harvey, “we couldn’t think of everything when we started to stockpile supplies for the collapse. I’m not sure where we even could have bought lye.”
“Could have checked the pretzel factories,” Jeremiah offered. “They use lye for some pretzel products.”
“Or a plumbing supply store,” Aaron said. “They use it for unclogging pipes.”
“Then we have some,” Dad announced.
“Where?” Joe wondered.
“In our bathroom and kitchen cabinets - Liquid Plumber, Drano. Most products made to unclog drains have sodium hydroxide in them – lye. I’m sure we brought three or four quarts from our house. Others could have too. Remember, cleaning agents, soaps and chemicals were high on the list of priorities of materials to salvage.”
“Yes, you’re right,” Jeremiah agreed. “I’m sure I had one or two bottles. We can check our inventory in the upstairs kitchen. Wouldn’t they be stored there?”
“Yes,” Harvey answered, “there might also be some up at Butch’s.”
“And when we need more,” Joe added, “we can have Titus trade some of our meat or flour or even the soap we make for more. Or we can make our own salvage run; check out what’s left behind in the stores in town or in abandoned homes.”
It was a touchy subject. Trading was one thing; others could use some of our produce including the soap we’d make. But was just going into someone else’s home or store and taking what was left behind appropriate, ethical, or moral?
“I guess there are a couple theories concerning scavenging,” Dad said. “Some would say you have to do what you have to do to survive.”
“Others say it would be stealing,” Barry interjected.
“But it’s on abandoned property,” Jeremiah countered.
“It’s just laying there, going to waste,” Bruce offered. “You know how our culture abhors resources going to waste.”
“Not to mention that our situation demands we waste nothing,” Jake added. “And I don’t mean only our little group, but all of society. We’ve wasted too much the last couple generations. That’s part of what got us into this mess.”
“Sounds ethical to me,” Harvey concluded. “Not immoral either.”
“Definitely appropriate,” Joe concluded, “besides, we’d take those resources to turn them into products that we’d eventually share with any folks that needed them. Only makes sense to me.”
All eyes turned to my grandparents and Wayne. I guess this was one of those issues where even my parents and their generation, already in their 40s and 50s, looked to the previous generation for wisdom. The question didn’t even need to be verbalized.
Grandpop spoke first. “You do what you have to do,” he said. “It would be best is we could trade for everything we need, but we might not always be able to do that.”
“Especially if you can’t find the owner,” Grandmom added.
“Choose the crew carefully,” Wayne proposed, “that would venture out on any scavenging missions. Choose men with sound judgment. Have them take trade goods with them and seek out the remaining neighbors first. They should announce who they are, what they’re looking for, and what they’re intending to do with it. Don’t take anything the neighbors might need in the future, but take what they agree to part with. Mention we have things or will be producing things that they might need someday. Use the trade goods as peace offerings. If our men feel it best to compensate the owners – leave them some money. I know the money is practically worthless and that the owners might never return to claim it, but if it brings peace, then so be it.”
“Then so be it,” several echoed.
Turned out scavenging, while important and necessary, wasn’t that big a deal. Many abandoned homes and stores were well emptied when the scavengers arrived. However, there were items that were left behind, like drain openers that were thought of as useless or worthless by their previous owners, but became useful and worthwhile in the hands of the industrious and ingenuous members of our community.
So Wayne helped us make soap. It took a lot of boiling and stirring and somehow adding the lye to the boiling fat enabled it to solidify when cooled. Later when the supply of lye ran out, we learned that wood ashes could be substituted. I don’t know why they worked and it was a more difficult and trickier process, but it gave us the same results –soap. The stuff actually worked, too. It didn’t smell that great though, so we tried adding perfume, after-shave, or cologne (some things we really had no other use for) to a couple batches to spice it up a little. That made it more pleasant to bathe or shower with, which was the homemade soap’s primary use. But soon we were using it for laundry and dishes as well, so we could save all the laundry and dish detergent we had on hand for sanitizing the milking equipment when Larry’s commercially produced cleaners would run out. Down the road, we even had to use homemade soap for that job as well. For the ensuing months it was an ongoing burden – finding homemade products to replace the ones we had been able to purchase just a few months ago.

To be continued……..Mort

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Chapter Twenty-one - Mortality (cont)

Death was not an uncommon experience for us. We had been killing a hog a week for a few months now and had butchered several small steers as well. We still had not tackled a larger animal because of the warm weather and the fact that at this point Joe had not perfected methods of preserving that amount of meat.
One morning Larry discovered a cow lying dead in the pasture. She was part of the nursing herd, those that we let the calves suckle instead of us milking them. Why she died, we didn’t know. That herd wasn’t attended as regularly as the milking string, making it less likely to notice any sick cows. She was old as far as cows go – eight or nine years as best Larry could recall. With no other evidence of disease or injury, we could only assume old age was the culprit. We weren’t about to do an autopsy to determine cause of death….. or were we?
“Shame to see her go to waste,” Harvey began.
“Absolutely,” Joe agreed, “we shouldn’t throw any meat away.”
“But how long has she been dead?” Dad wondered.
“Hard to say,” Larry answered, “she’s not stiff. She’s not bloated from the fermentation going on in her rumen of the last feed she ate. Couldn’t be more than two, three hours. Four at the most.”
“Then I say we tackle it,” Joe concluded. “The meat can’t be bad yet, depending on what she died from. Let’s have a look and if anything looks suspicious, then we’ll abandon the meat. At least Patsy and the cats can have some.”
After hanging the cow in the tree next to the ground cellar with the head up, skinning it wasn’t really that hard. At least not with the skill that Joe had. Next he removed the entrails, carefully inspecting them for signs of infection or any other indications of disease. Nothing seemed abnormal. But when he pierced the diaphragm to remove the heart and lungs from the cow’s upper cavity, gallons of blood spewed into the tubs we had positioned under the animal for the waste to fall into.
“Whoa, that’s not normal!” Joe exclaimed. “This cow must have bled to death. It wonders me what caused it.”
After removing the organs and examining them, he continued, “Look at the heart. Now I know why she died. It’s not easy to see, but there’s a hole, I guess you call it an aneurysm, in a large vessel right where it goes into the heart. Not a gaping hole that your thumb would fit through, but a slit no more than half an inch long. Big enough, however, for all this blood to be pumped out.”
“If it’s an artery,” Josh chimed in. “If it’s a vein, it just leaked out.”
“Either way – she bled to death,” Harvey concluded, “fast enough to make the meat safe to eat, I’d say. Everyone agree?”
No one disagreed, so the cleaned carcass was sawed into quarters and carried into the ground cellar to cool. Much of the fat and tallow was removed from the meat and stored separately in buckets to be rendered later. Under normal circumstances, like the beef we were to slaughter as winter progressed, we would have cleaned up the liver, kidneys and heart and prepared them for supper on the days we killed any livestock. This time, however, because we weren’t one hundred percent sure how long the cow had been dead, all the organs as well as the head and hide were hauled for disposal to a far corner of the farm where no livestock were pastured.
“The skunks, possums, and vultures need something to eat too,” Dad had said. “It’s a shame we couldn’t use the hide, though. Don’t know if we could have turned it into leather or not.”
“We can’t waste the salt we have,” Larry said.
“I know,” Dad agreed. “Maybe someone will show up one day with the knowledge and ability to tan hides. Commercially they use tannic acid; we might be able to use oak leaves.”
“I read once,” Jake added, “that the Indians used the organs for tanning. Some chemical in the organs, when rubbed into the cleaned hide helped the process. The Indians didn’t have salt or tannic acid, but somehow they made soft buckskin. Maybe one day we’ll have to experiment.”
So for the next few days we ate old tough beef at every meal. Joe did learn some things from the incident.
First, he wished he’d have been better prepared. Second, meat won’t keep real long in the ground cellar. At 55 degrees it’s a great place for the meat in the summertime, but the meat’s actually preserved better outside in the winter and the months around it. Third, and fortunately so, the drying racks actually worked. We successfully dried some of the meat that Joe had skillfully sliced by hanging the slices next to the butcher stove on the racks we had used to make the dried apples. Joe knew how to make beef jerky, but lacked the ingredients and the electric dryer he usually used. The dried beef would have to be a weak substitute.
One of the hind quarters was roasted the first day over an open fire outside. Some of the other large pieces were cooked in the kettle of the butcher stove; it certainly made enough heat for the drying racks. Once the meat was cooked and deboned, we packed it in jars and added boiling broth to enable the jar lids to seal by creating a vacuum when the broth and jar cooled. We cooked and canned two full kettles of meat, using most of the jars we had lids for. Joe kept the leftover broth cooking after screening out any small pieces of meat and bone. We carefully separated the meat from the bones, and then using a small hand food grinder, ground it like hamburger and tossed it back into the kettle with the broth. He added a little salt, pepper, our home ground cornmeal, and a little wheat flour until it had cooked to a pasty consistency like the mush we made. We poured it into pans to cool and set-up, and then fried it in the morning for breakfast. Like I said, beef every meal. It really wasn’t that great; later batches we made that winter were a bit tastier because pork was added as well. It became a staple for two mornings after butchering. It was called scrapple, because it was made from the scraps leftover from butchering.
Also, Joe wished he could have made bologna with some of the meat, so steps were taken to have what he needed ready for the next time. Aaron rigged up Joe’s power driven meat grinder with the motor we had used to fill the soybean bin. Then Joe was able to grind the beef, add pepper and salt and a few other ingredients he had saved. The mixture was stuffed into bags that Sandy and Mom had sewn into tubes from old clothing or towels. When these tubes of meat were smoked, they kept for weeks, especially in winter. I don’t know why, but it was called summer bologna or summer sausage and unlike some of the other food we had, it was delicious. We ate it as a luncheon meat or fried it and made a milk gravy with it.
Eventually Joe started making regular pork sausage when we butchered hogs. We usually just fried it as patties, but it also made pretty good milk gravy as well. In freezing weather it kept indefinitely or could be kept a day or two in the springhouse by putting it in a sealed bucket in the cool water, but Joe knew it would keep longer if smoked, like the summer bologna. But we needed casings into which to stuff the pork sausage. The casings we used came from a job no one was thrilled to do. We had to clean the pig’s intestines. Grandmom remembered how to do it and thank goodness, out of the 60 some people in our community, there were a few people willing to tackle the task. At least I didn’t have to. The benefit was great, however, for once the sausage was inside a casing, it could be hung on racks to smoke and then it would keep for days if not weeks if necessary.
In order to smoke any of the meats another project had been tackled. There was no smokehouse on Harvey’s farm, but Joe had one at his old house. One day during the second week of November the men using, Brutus, took a hay wagon, tools, and blocking to Joe’s house and retrieved his smokehouse, cement blocks and all. Somehow they were able to tilt and lay the structure right onto the wagon without it falling to pieces. The smokehouse itself was six feet by eight feet and nine feet high, so it fit in a standard hay wagon. Once again, with some thinking, planning, muscle and extra effort we had taken another step toward meeting the food needs of our community. It was neat watching Joe tend the smokehouse. After starting a fire, it had to be tempered or smoldered to make the fire smoke all the time and not get too hot; you didn’t want to cook the meat, just smoke it. Joe used green wood (not dry), or wet sawdust and sometimes he even had to throw water on the fire itself.

To be continued…………Mort

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Hard to Imagine

Following is a question and answer session between a gentleman at an election rally and a presidential candidate. You pick the candidate, they’re all the same.

Q = questioner
C = candidate

Q: I understand your health care plan will provide health care for everyone in the country.
C: That’s correct.
Q: Well it’s about time. My daughter just received the immunizations for uterine cancer that the media, medical community, and the insurance companies touted so much. Our doctor billed us over $600 for the three shot series. I’m still fighting with the insurance company over getting it paid. How would a cost like that be handled under your plan?
C: Everyone would receive it at no cost.
Q: You mean the doctors won’t charge anyone anymore? And the pharmaceutical companies will give us the vaccine for free?
C: No, not for free. We will pay for it.
Q: We’re paying for it now. What’s the difference?
C: The difference is, the government will pay for it.
Q: Where’s the government going to get the money? They’re broke. There either going to have to get it from us or China.
C: From employers
Q: I thought you pledged not to raise taxes on middle class Americans, those earning less than $200,000 per year. There must be millions of small businesses and farmers that make less than that. Would you still tax them to fund your plan?
C: Well, it wouldn’t really be a tax – more like an involuntary contribution.
Q: Sounds like a tax to me. And where are employers supposed to get the money to pay your “involuntary contribution”?
C: From their profits.
Q: Oh, that’s right. You believe companies make profits they don’t deserve. Did you sleep through all of Economics 101? Companies get their money from the consumers, that’s us. Every cost they entail, including taxes, drives up the cost of their products and services to us. We would end up paying for your health care plan. The consumer always pays. So, who’s going to administer your plan?
C: We have insurance companies doing that now. They can continue.
Q: You’re kidding, right? The same insurance companies who drive up the cost of health care now and have used the money we pay in premiums to contribute generously to your campaign? For your plan to succeed, the extra costs tacked on by the insurance companies have to be eliminated. They’re not part of the solution; they’re part of the problem.
C: Next question.


Next installment, I have some of Alyssa’s story written…. Mort