February 16, 2004
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Dave Uphoff

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Butchering time on the farm

For those of you who have a week stomach, I suggest you skip this editorial and go to the photo section instead. This past month's extended cold spell reminded me of my father telling me that the coldest time of the year is when you butchered hogs. I think the reason for that is because the meat will not spoil as easily if the temperature is really cold.

About every part of the hog was used when butchered. The intestines were used for casings to make blood sausage. Some of the fat was rendered into lye soap. You had to be very careful when washing your face with lye soap. If you got some soap suds in your eyes, you would be blinded for a few minutes. Sometimes people would fry the porkchops from the hog and then place them in barrels of fat rendered from the hog. This would preserve the pork. Whenever you wanted a pork chop, you just dug it out from the fat in the barrel and heated it up.

I am more familar with the raising of chickens than I am of hogs. As a child my first source of income was from the chickens I raised. In 1950 my father bought me 100 White Rock chickens from Gardner's Hatchery on South Chestnut. The chickens became my pets. I even gave names to some of them. Each Saturday I would clean the chicken house out and put in fresh straw. I still remember how beautiful those white chickens looked against the bright yellow straw. My chickens really had it made compared to those poor fowl that are enclosed in cages in our modern egg plants.

Every Saturday night I would take a crate of eggs to Gil McKeon's Produce Store which was located in the IOOF building where I have my office. It seems amazing to me that the spot in which I am now writing this editorial was probably not too far from where Gil would grade the eggs that I sold to him each week.

While raising chickens introduced me into the world of commerce, it also introduced me into the harsh reality of animal husbandry - roosters don't lay eggs. Therefore, the rooster was only useful for two other purposes - to fertilize the hens or for providing food for the table. Since it only takes one rooster to keep 50 hens happy, the other 49 roosters faced a dismal future. Butchering the remaining roosters may sound cruel but it really is humane. If you put 49 roosters together on a farm or in a building eventually there will be only one left after they get done killing each other off. It is the nature of the species. This fact was driven home to me this winter when I went to feed some chickens for a friend who was on vacation for a week. When I got to his chicken coop, there lay 4 dead roosters as a result of fighting amongst themselves.

Usually around early June was butchering time for the roosters. They were about 2 months old by then and would be tender and fat and ready for market. The art of butchering chickens on the farm was crude but effective. We would drive in two nails in a tree stump just wide enough apart to place the rooster's neck in between. Placing the poor creature's neck between the nails, we would pull on the legs to stretch the neck and then take an axe and swifty chop the head off. If you left the rooster go, it would flop around for awhile. Sometimes people would stick the decapitated chicken inside a field tile so that it wouldn't flop around and bruise the skin.

The next step was to stick the rooster inside scalding hot water in order to tenderize the skin so that the feathers can be plucked more easily. Then the feathers are quickly plucked by hand. The last step was to light a newspaper and fan the flame over the chicken to burn off the pin feathers. This process left a very unpleasant odor that is hard to describe.

All that remained to finish the job was to remove the insides of the chicken and then cut it up for storing in a freezer or for eating at next Sunday's dinner. Take it from me, the taste of fresh spring chicken straight from the farm is infinitely better than store bought chicken.

It seems strange that the building where I started my career in commerce is the same place in which I will probably end my career in commerce. I would like to end this little story with another story related to Gil McKeon's egg produce store in the IOOF building. Minonk native Albie Johnson was a friend of one of Gil's sons, Bob "Red" McKeon, who used to work at his father's store. Years ago Albie happened to stop at the Ambassador Hotel in Pasadena, California to visit Red who was a doorman at the hotel. Red was a very good looking fellow with a polished manner. Red greeted Albie at the door and ushered him in to introduce him to his fellow workers at the hotel. Red asked Albie to tell his co-workers what he (Red) used to do back in Illinois. Albie hesitated to say anything. Red kept prodding him to say something. Finally, Red said, "Go ahead, Alb. Tell them that I used to sandpaper s___ off chicken eggs back in Minonk, Illinois."


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