What is This?

A wine press? We had a similar machine my father used to make wine when I was at home.

Yes, that was one of its uses. It had a strainer inside that was used during pressing fruit and pressing rendered fat for lard. There were two lids that came with the press. One was used when you were stuffing sausage and the other smaller one was used for pressing fruit or lard. The smaller one had to fit inside the strainer. The larger one was used without the strainer and allowed the sausage meat to fill the casings on the tube at the bottom.

Made any sausages lately?

Not since 1984. We processed eleven hogs at my grandfather's house that year. The reason it was always done on the day after Thanksgiving was that in years past (not so much now with climate change) it was always cold by then, hence the phrase "Cold enough to kill hogs." The hams were hung in the smokehouse to be cured and it had to be cold and stay cold during the curing process.

Never butchered that many at once. Most was salt cured. Even though there was a smoke house. That's where they stored the barrels of salted hams.

I beleive they waited for cold weather as it helps rid the animal of parasites.

The salt was what got rid of the pests. The cold weather was to prevent spoilage.

Salt is a preservative. At high enough levels will even kill the bacteria that cause spoilage. Thats what they going for by salt cured. Also draws moisture from the flesh which the bacteria need to thrive. Cold weather helps to reduce external parasites(fleas & ticks) makes less likely for someone to get contaminated with them. As the cold will also have them leaving the body faster as it cools quicker. Unless your cold weather is freezing will not stop spoilage.

I'll defer to your expertise on that issue. By the time that I was old enough to remember we were taking the hams to a meat processing place to be cured and didn't use the smokehouse for anything but storage.

When we killed hogs at my grandfather's it was a community affair. The whole family would participate as well as several families that didn't have any hogs to kill. They would share in the outcome just like the rest of us. As a kid I was always the one that went with my grandfather to get the sausage meat ground up. When that was done we would take it back to the house and use the sausage stuffer to make fresh pork sausage.

Not many people now know what things like this are any more. I'm forty-eight and I've decided that I'm just on the edge of knowing what they are and having no clue. I went to the Georgia Agrirama lately. It's a village that Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College has put together showcasing late nineteenth and early twentieth century farm technology. I knew what most of the things on display were used for and the things I wasn't familiar with were mostly things that we didn't use. It's a shame that the old technology and techniques are being lost for the younger generation.

" It's a shame that the old technology and techniques are being lost for the younger generation."

Before long, people will look at things like this and say, "They must have had help from aliens to be able to build something like this."

That would be a lard press...

http://www.icollector.com/ENTERPRISE-MANUFACTURING-COMP-LARD-PRESS-GOOD-CO_i5210666

Sausage stuffer, fruit and lard press...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcpxO-sWn3w

All of which are well out of my wheelhouse of activities.....

String cheese press.

Well now that's a use we never thought of! That shows true pioneer ingenuity to turn a sausage press into a string cheese maker.

You mentioned "after Thanksgiving" did you make turkey sausage? I remember waiting until it got cool enough out to make sausage. I found out hot dogs were the hardest sausage to make.

No, we never did that.

I understand you are talking about Thanksgiving turkey but something that has amazed me in the last ten to fifteen years is the proliferation of wild turkeys in the south. I was grown before I ever saw one and now they seem to be everywhere. We have several droves of turkeys on our property that number in the twenties. When I was living in Atlanta I was driving through an office park and saw four or five of them walking around in a parking lot. I turned around and drove back to the lot and they didn't seem to be to anxious to get away. I asked someone that worked there about them and they said that the turkeys fed in the woods surrounding the lot every day and were used to people. The ones we have on our place now won't let you get within fifty feet of them without flying away (and yes, turkeys can most definitely fly - you have never been startled until one flies by your head in the woods).

Very few people have any recollection of butchering livestock on the farm.

Hogs, beef and chickens along with vegetables grown in the garden were staples on many family farms and are almost a thing of the past.

Many people have no real idea where hamburger patties and bacon really come from, except from the meat counter at the local grocery store.

True enough. I was lucky the other day to witness the cutting up of a butchered cow.

Only got to see the second half being hacked, sawed and cut into pieces. I was helping packing and marking the different kinds of beef.

Now I know where the silver side comes from and fillets.

As a kid the fire brigade made a feast every once a year slaughtering a pig.

It is worthwhile to know where meat comes from and milk is not made in bottles.

I am sure many would not want to Lyn. People have gotten soft.

I was 7 the day we pull into my Uncle John's farm and were greeted by Aunt June holding two headless chickens still flapping. She told my sister and me that was dinner. My sister who was 5 immediately threw up. LOL

In years past children in our area got biddies (young chickens) for Easter. My next door neighbor bought two for his girls one year. After a few months they decided it was time to turn them into dinner. They butchered the two chickens and made a big pot of chicken and dumplings. He said they all sat around the table crying and couldn't eat. They ended up having to throw the pot of biddies and dumplings out and make something else for dinner.

I have a friend who is a carpenter, who rented a farm house. Feeling farmerish, he decided to raise chickens and set about rebuilding the old coup. He ordered some chicks and let the whole crate go in the coup. As the chickens grew and being proud of his accomplishment, my friend showed them to a neighbor who was a real farmer.

The farmer said "You have too many roosters, you should have culled them" "How many do I need?" my friend asked. "One" the farmer replied.

So, another friend suggested we have a chicken fry and invite everybody. The day of the fry, The attendees were horrified to see headless chickens flapping about. There were also a pair of ducks watching who, after the first couple of executions, decided they needed to be somewhere else.

A few stalwart guests remained to enjoy the chewy fried rooster.

My friend the carpenter remarked "Oh well, I was getting tired of coming home from work to a bunch of escapee's waiting for me on my poop covered porch."

"There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace." Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

two part can sealer you put the stuff in the can boil it up in a water bath place lid on top and turn the handle...... seals the lid tight

I can remember years ago getting chicks for Easter that we kept in the back yard and fed for quite some time. Then the neighbors gave us theirs since we had the largest fenced yard. we wound up with almost 50 birds, we found eggs everywhere until one night I came home from delivering my paper route and found my dad and grandfather killing all of the chickens. My mom and grandmother were scalding them to remove the feathers and then plucking what was left then readied them for the freezer. I never in my lifetime saw so much blood. Needless to say I could not eat chicken for a few years after that. If only they had prepped me for it maybe it would not bothered me so much. To date I have helped several friends kill and butcher deer and hogs but i just can't do chickens. I guess that trauma still exists in my psyche, I know better but if it came down to it and I had to do it I could but I might screech like a little girl as I yanked their heads off. But if needed I could do it.