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Barefoot In The Sand: Remembering the Waning Days of the Hopewell Community (1998) Bruce C. Gragg 15/123

eating. The best way to eat it was to cut a slab of cane peel about
one half to three quarters of an inch wide and about eight inches
long, and scoop up a big 'gob' of it, blow on it to cool it, and
enjoy it. Only the skimming that collected near the end of the
cooking was good, the part from the early cooking had too much water
and other impurities in it to be any good, except to feed the hogs.

Most of the time the biggest worry was the constant threat of being
stung by a bee, yellow jacket or hornet. They always managed to show
up for a cane grinding. Handling hot syrup is like handling hot
grease, it will stay hot for a long time and it can put a burn on the
careless handler in a hurry. But, the pure pleasure of all the many
good things to eat, that could be made with it, made it worth the
risk of a sting or two or a not very serious burn.

More help was needed for hog killing, because the cold weather needed
to help keep the meat from spoiling usually lasted a few days. Hog
killing is a very hard way to spend several days in the winter. It is
hard on all involved, very tiring work. The day begins very early and
ends very late and there is always a lot of work to do for the next
couple of days. Burnette, usually stayed in the kitchen and cleaned
up from breakfast and cooked dinner before getting involved with the
meat processing. As expected we usually had fresh pork for lunch.
After dinner she would join others at the work bench and begin
cutting meat for the sausage making. By the time I was old enough to
do much we had stopped killing hogs. Vera and I helped with the
process portion of the hog killing, trimming fat for rendering,
cutting up the meat to be ground for sausage and what else needed to
be done, I was for the most part the go-fer.

For us the real work came in grinding sausage. The sausage grinder
was hand powered as we had no electricity, and that was very tiring
work. The most dangerous thing was the possibility of getting a
finger caught in the machine. Someone could lose a finger in a hurry.
We always thought of our sausage as being the best in the
neighborhood. Burnette had her own way of seasoning to "her taste."
Then cooking (in a small iron skillet)a few little patties to test
the flavor. Of course, it was especially good to have a few biscuits
left over from breakfast to go along with the sample sausage. For a
brief time the aroma of fresh pork cooking was spread all around.
When it was to her liking, only then would we begin stuffing the
casings with properly seasoned sausage. Not a hard job, but a bit
tedious, to get them filled just right. The stuffed sausages and
seasoned meat, hams, bacon and shoulders were then smoked with
whiteoak and hickory to preserve it. After smoking, the sausage was
placed in a lardcan full of fresh lard for

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