Country Connections
by James and Ellen Perry
I look up at the sky and see white and dark clouds moving southeast like a herd of sheep being driven by the winds behind the weather front that passed over East Tennessee.
The frontal passage from the northwest brought in much colder temperatures. It was 36 degrees at 10 a.m. on this late November morning.
Our family got up early. Mama had breakfast ready at 6 a.m.
Today is a very important day in our way of life in 1958. It’s hog killing day.
Our three hogs were dispatched by Dad with .22 cal. short cartridges from a bolt action Remington rifle. The meats from the hogs are being processed by the family and a few relatives and neighbors.
Our family will help the others when they kill their hogs in return. When all the meat has been processed, we will take all the fat and skins from the hogs and render the lard for cooking and baking over the next year.
I had already built a fire under our outside cast iron pot to boil water to scrape the hair off the hogs, which was done in a modified barrel; then we drew more water to clean the meat as it was taken from the carcass before being taken into our house for packaging and processing into sausage.

Without the “pot” it would have been impossible to process the meat. By boiling the hide more lard was rendered and the hide became cracklings (bought in cellophane bags nowadays and called hog skins). The cracklings were also put into cornbread for crackling bread.
The cast iron outside pots were as needed by farm families as were the mules and horses in rural Tennessee until the 1960s.
As spring came, one morning in April my mother again had breakfast ready at 6 a.m. Today was spring cleaning.
I had to draw water and fill the pot five times that day and keep the fire under the pot to heat water which my brother and I would carry from the well to fill her Kenmore wringer washing machine to wash the bedclothes, curtains and use the soapy wash water to mop the entire house. We boys dreaded spring cleaning more than the hog killing.
Next on the pot list (other than the weekly clothes washing) was in May—before we planted tobacco came the lye soap making day. Again, up at the breakfast table at 6 a.m, build a fire under the pot, fill with water from the well, and bring to a boil. Mama would bring the lye. I would bring the lard, which was the main ingredient, dip out any excess water and make sure the fire didn’t go out.
Mama would mix the ingredients for the soap and when it was ready would ladle the liquid into pans to cool and then cut it into bars of soap for the year. I didn’t know soap could smell good until our parents started buying Lux soap in 1957.
I would keep the fire under the pot as Mama empties it, then draw more water, dip out the water and let the fire dry the pot, then reseal the pot with lard so it would not rust.
Next came carp canning day, when the carp fish would shoal (spawn). Our uncle who had a farm next door would come with his 1946 Ford pickup. We would get our tubs, which were put on the end of a cured 10-foot pole and head down to the Poly Cook place on Norris Lake where there was three acres of thrashing carp spawning in the shallow water. We would put the tubs over the fish, drag them to the banks, put them into and fill the bed of that 1946 Ford truck. We would divide the carp and immediately start processing 200 pounds of carp. Dad would skin the fish. My brothers and I would cut the fish, bones and all into chunks and fill that pot with fish chunks. Mama would put the chunks into half-gallon Mason jars, seal and can them in her pressure canner.
Later during the winter Mama would take the canned carp (the bones were included as canning them made them edible), put them through the sausage grinder, add onions, garlic, tomato juice, flour and salt, and fry some of the best fish patties ever eaten.
Every Monday was wash day: heating the pot and drawing water for wash day.
Next came the day to make hominy from the previous year’s corn, which was in the corn crib. Again, up early for breakfast, draw water, build a fire under the pot, bring the shelled corn for Mama to add to the pot with the right amount of lye to take the husk off the corn kernels. Mama would again put the hominy into quart mason jars, into the canner to seal and preserve the hominy for future eating. We were 80 percent self-sufficient on the farm, which the pot provided for us.
We and others at that time heated water in the pot for our Saturday night baths in a #2 wash tub (which when no longer usable was used for carp shoaling).
A young lady I know told me about a pot they have that her great grandmother gave her mother that the great grandmother used to cook chicken in. I don’t know if she cooked the chicken for canning: maybe to be prepared for church spring homecoming services. The pot has been passed down through three generations and is on display as a beautiful flower garden ornament.
Well, it’s now late November and we have four hogs to be butchered as we boys are getting older and bigger and eating more pork.
Time to get the firewood burning under the pot and start again.