Butchering is a chore

Butchering is one of the chores facing subsistence farmers, but on the fur farm butchering became a family project with block and tackle,

Beef were big, heavy, and took time and muscle. Many people had animals they wanted to be rid of — the old, lame or mean — so they either gave them to us free or sold them cheap for us to feed the fur farm animals.

We butchered in December or January to take advantage of freezing weather. We had no refrigeration, so meat had to be frozen, salted, canned, dried or used fresh, i.e. taken care of so it wouldn’t spoil. Daddy built a two-story smoke house to dry and smoke the meat for the fox feed.

The meat was cut into long strips and hung on nail hooks driven through long slats that spanned the space in the smokehouse. A smoldering fire was kept in a stove underneath until the meat was dried and smoked. It was then stored and chopped into a large pot to cook with vegetables, fruit and mash to feed the foxes, raccoons, chickens and pets.

An old, retired milk cow was our hardest job. We were glad when Daddy announced “We’ll butcher her tomorrow.

She’d broken into the hay mow and guzzled hay. Her belly was so full she could hardly move. “We’ll butcher anyway.” Daddy said, and put the snatch blocks in the oak tree, put the cow down, hooked her to the gambrel and we started skinning.

All five of us pulling on the blocks could not raise that belly off the ground. Daddy had to cut the ribs loose on both sides before he could roll that huge stomach out. It was snowing as he finally finished the job by kerosene lantern light — just in time to come in out of the snow.