Sometimes we would use a rifle, usually a 22 caliber, and shoot at tin cans for practice.  This was not often because of the cost of bullets.  Remington Arms was usually the brand of bullets.

Hunting was a serious endeavor.  Sometimes if you were unsuccessful hunting there was no meat on the table.  Deer, squirrel, rabbit, quail, rabbit, and sometimes possum were eaten.  Once the game had been shot it had to be cleaned.  The hides of deer were saved and either made into chair seats or sold.  Deer meat was prepared just as cow meat which I will write about later.

Almost every farmer had at least one cow and often three or four.  During the year a cow does not give milk everyday.  You would have more than one cow so there would be a steady supply of milk.  These cows had to be fed and milked everyday.  Water also had to be provided for them.  A water trough was in the cow pen.  It was filled by carrying water by the bucket full.  Sometimes the cow pen would be next to a creek so the cows could help themselves to creek water.

Sometimes a portion of the farm would be uncultivated.  This was called a pasture.  The cows would be turned out during the day to graze in the pasture.  Also sometimes the farmer would build a stock tank in the pasture.  This would be built by digging a hole in the ground perhaps 50 or sixty feet or larger across.  The dug up dirt would be banked  on three sides to create a pond.  Rain water would run off from the sides of the tank and fill the dug up area.  If the farmer was very lucky he would strike a spring as he dug his tank.  The dirt would either be dug by hand or with an implement hitched to horses or mules.  Later in the late 1940s and early fifties a tractor could be used with an implement attached to did out the tank.  Even with a tank water would still be carried to the water trough when there was not enough water in the tank.

Most farmers did not have bulls.  At the appropriate time a cow would be introduced to a bull.  Sometime later the cow will produce a baby cow called a calf.  Often the farmer would have to assist the cow in delivering the calf.  Male calves would either be sold or kept for slaughter.  Female calves would be kept to replace older cows who could no longer produce milk.

When the male calves were old enough or milk cows got too old to produce milk they were slaughtered.  At that time fresh meat was on the table.  Of course not all of it could be eaten before it spoiled.  Some would be boiled and canned.  This was the same with deer meat.  Some of the meat would be smoked.  I will write about the smoke house later.  The fat was kept and used to make soap and for lard.  Everyone had a meat grinder.  This was a metal device which clamped to a table.  Inside the device were gears or teeth.  There was a funnel shaped piece at the top into which pieces of meat were placed.  The device had a handle.  As you turned the handle you would push the meat through with a piece of wood.  For beef what came out of the grimder was ground beef or hamburger.  The hamburger was fried or made into meat loaf.  Sometimes the ground beef was used to make chili.  To make chili spieces, water, ground beef and tomatoes are mixed together, brought to a boil and let simmer for a while.

When the cow or deer was slaughtered the hide was removed.  The hide was either sold, cut up to make seats for chairs or sometimes just kept to put on floors.  Some very few farmers would make shoes from the hide.

Most farmers had pigs and hogs.  They were usually fed table scraps and corn.  A bucket would be kept in the kitchen in what was called a slop bucket.  Table scraps would be put in the bucket and then fed to the hogs.  When the pigs grew into hogs and the hogs were big enough they were also slaughtered.  

Slaughtering was a messy hard job.  For hogs, the dead pig was cleaned of its insides, washed with hot soapy water and rinsed.  The water was heated over an open fire in the yard. Almost every part of the pig was used for something.  Farmers never wasted anything.  The hog skin was sometimes cut into pieces with the bristles used to make brushes.  Other times the bristles were removed from the skin and the skin used to make chitlins.  From the hog one gets ham, sausage, bacon, souse, chittlins, pork chops, and  ribs.  Even the fat was used.

After the  pig’s skin was removed the carcass would be cut up into bacon, ham, chops and ribs.  These would be trimmed.  The tounge, ears and snout would be cooked with vinegar and spices which would result in souse which was eaten.  The intestines would be emptied and clean and the scraps from the trimming would be ground and mixed with spices to become sausage.  The sausage woukd be packed into the cleaned intestine.  Today intestines are not used.  A synthetic is used now.

Some of the ham would be eaten right away.  The rest along with the bacon and ribs would be smoked.  A fire would be built either in the open or in a small building called a smokehouse.  The fire with dry wood would not smoke much.  Freshly cut or green wood was hard to start burning.  To this dry wood fire would be added green wood as green wood creates a lot of smoke.  The hams, bacon, etc. would be hung over this smoky fire.   The meat would then become cooked with smoke.  Smoked meat would keep for a long time.  It would be stored in the smoke house.  Some of the homes in town would also have smoke houses.

The fat from the pig is used to make lard which is nothing more than fat dissolved in water and left to cool.  There was noWesson Oil then.  Everything was cooked with lard or to a lesser extent, butter.  The tallow from beef was used to make soap.