Eastern Iowa Farmer Spring 2017

Life Lessons
high
standards
at your service
563-652-2439
Email: stickleyelectric@hotmail.com
Fax: (563) 652-2430
113 Western Ave., Maquoketa, IA 52060
Duane
Stickley,
Owner
Stickley Electric
Service, Inc.
The Kilburgs butchered hogs and beef simply for food, but
now it’s also for quality family time.
Marian Sprank of Springbrook, Larry’s sister, remembers the
frenetic pace of the day, but loved getting into the house at night
to eat fresh sausage and eggs.
Sandra Gerlach, Marian’s daughter, is also still involved in
the family butchering. They don’t kill and bleed the animals
anymore, but they still do the cutting and sausage stuffing.
“It really is a social event,” Sandra said. “Everyone brings
food, and we have a chance to get together.”
Day 1
The family farm has seen its share of butchering since Tony
Kilburg’s family bought the land in 1889. But the process has
changed since siblings Marian, Larry and Rosemary Roling
were children. Many Christmas vacations were spent butchering
hogs.
Without refrigeration in the early years, butchering day –
days, actually, with 11 kids to feed – was a calculated affair. The
temperature needed to be cold enough to cool the fresh carcass
yet not so cold that it would freeze. Snow on the ground was a
bonus.
The Kilburgs butchered five hogs at a time twice a year, or 10
at a time once a year with refrigeration.
The process started in the wee hours before milking. Larry or
a sibling started a roaring fire outside by the machine shed, then
filled the butchering kettle with water. It took two or three hours
to reach the temperature necessary to scald hair off a hog. A bar
of Rosella’s homemade soap was placed in the water to make it
cleaner.
The 300-pound gilts provided the choicest cuts, so the boys
would ride the hogs to the shed and flip them on their backs.
With two boys holding the hind legs, a third would stick the hog
in the throat, drawing blood and
killing the hog, said Larry, 74,
closing his eyes as he relived
the process.
“We had to catch the
blood for the blood sausage,”
Rosemary said. “You had to
put salt in the pan and stir it
up so it didn’t clot, then rush it
to the house. You’d put it in a
snowbank to cool.”
The next hog was ready for
the scalding pot. And there is a
precise method to it.
“It didn’t make
no difference
how tired you
was. You did it.”
— larry kilburg
“You dipped it in head and front legs first so you could hold
onto the tail and back legs,” Larry explained. “Then you put the
head hook in under the jaw to dip the front. You have to dip it
two to three times.”
Why scalding? To burn off the hog’s bristly hair. It was such a
tedious task.
The hogs would then be gutted – you had to do that while
they were warm – hung up on poles, and left swinging from the
windmill.
The women cleaned and soaked the hog intestines for later
use as sausage casings.
Then it was dinnertime.
Their stomachs filled, the Kilburgs returned to work. Choice
bits from the head, along with the heart, feet, lungs and more
were made into blood sausage. Meat scraps became headcheese.
Larry remembered the choice his father gave to his siblings:
30 Eastern Iowa Farmer | spring 2017