Rais'n hogs on the farm in the 40's was an easy task if done the old time way. No fancy feed laced with steroids and anti-biotics etc. If you wanted to add calicum etc, in the feed --it was added in the hog trough. "Shorts" was the most common "store bought" feed along with "tankage". We always had our own ear corn we'd grown oursleves. When a hog got sick we never had the vet out-we doctored that hog ourselves and if we needed any medicine we usually bought it from a farm/feed store. At other times we'd use a home remady to whup whatever was ail'n the hog. One addative for the hogs was COAL! Hogs love coal! Full of minerals and whatever else they need and desire. For the mange, pour used motor oil in a thin stream right down their backbone. Killed lice too. Worms we treated with kerosene in the feed. Not a lot but don't shy on it either. Table scraps were never thrown away. Was more valuable for hog feed than to compost--that is if you had hogs.

I remember when new lard cans [5 gallon metal cans with lids ] could be bought at the feed mill for .50 each. When we'd butcher and cook the hog skin and fat in the big iron kettle, the lard was stored in these new cans. We'd also use lard cans to store flour and other dry food in. All kinds of dry beans we'd grown in the garden or even in the fields. Soup beans were the most "field grown" of all the beans.

Smokin hams and bacons in the smokehouse over hickory chips smolderin. Mortons sugar cure as well as Mortons salt cure for those hams and bacons.

We always raised Hampshires [black with the white belt around the middle] while some neighbors raised the "Landshire" and "spotted poland hogs. Ours were bigger hogs but theirs were longer--makin more bacon!

Home grown eggs, bacon, hams-fried up in lard and with homemade biskits and gravy, homemade jelly, surp. A big pot of coffee--all this went well on a cold winter's mornin for breakfast. If that wasn't enough--fry up some taters and onions too!

Check on your neighbors. The old and feeble needs looked in on often--even in the summertime. Jesus is comin soon. Prepare yourself for His appearance in the Eastern Sky! Matt.24:44

-- hoot (hoot@pcinetwork.com), May 27, 2001

Answers

old and feeble well any one who works alone i always tell the wife roughly what field i will be in acidents do happen and iv only had a few close calls but i always wonder how long it would have been before somone found me if i had been hurt or pinned down by a tree or equipment

-- george darby (windwillow@@fuse.net), May 27, 2001.

Hoot - you made me jealous (can't feed 'em that way now without going to jail, it seems...) AND you made me hungry!!

Please don't ever stop writing these posts! You should keep a copy and turn them into a book - I would buy it!! Sometimes you make me laugh, but you always make me THINK.

-- Sue Diederich (willow666@rocketmail.com), May 30, 2001.

Hoot, are you sure they were Hamps? Seems to me Pap liked Berkshires because they had short turned up noses. He thought that made it harder for them to root under the fences.

-- ruth in se Illinois (bobtravous@email.com), May 30, 2001.

Hey ole sis! Yeppie! He may have grown Berks earlier but when I was help'n out it was Hampshires. Still good et'tn. Matt.24:44

-- hoot (hoot@pcinetwork.com), May 30, 2001.