Submitted by Ellen Knoernschild and written by her husband, Bob, who lived from 1935 to 2017. Bob wrote about life growing up in Augusta at Centennial Farms.
Before the sausage making could start, the hams, shoulders, feet, bacon and ribs had to be separated. In earlier times, there was no way to keep pork chop or loin meat, so it was separated from the backbone and used in summer sausage. The remaining backbone was split down the center and kept for as long as possible in the smokehouse. It was cut into sections and boiled with sauerkraut. Ribs were also cooked with sauerkraut. Barbecued ribs were unheard of.
The hams would be trimmed to shape them, rubbed with salt and later with sugar and curing mixes. The real country ham was a far cry from the soft, watery ham of today. It was usually fried but sometimes boiled with potatoes and green beans.
Shoulders were usually put into sausage, but later they were cured and called "picnic hams." Bacon was trimmed and treated with salt cure. It was laid down in a large wood barrel, about three feet deep and across, and salt was sprinkled over each layer to keep it from spoiling and to cure it.
The rest of the meat was brought to the women to prepare and grind for frying sausage and summer sausage. The leanest meat would go into summer sausage. Anything that was pure fat would be trimmed off to be rendered into lard. The trimmed meat was put through a large grinder and put into the sausage stuffer. The casing was slipped over a kind of spout and the stuffer turned to press the meat out and into the casing. The sausage links were tied off on both ends, with a loop for hanging. Both the frying sausage and the summer sausage were hung on racks in the smokehouse.
After smoking, the summer sausage would be partly dried but would be hung for 5 months before it was ready to eat. There was some controversy about its safety, as it was never cooked. The hogs could have trichinosis, a worm that gets into muscles through contaminated food. It could be passed to those eating the sausage. Washington, MO, became famous in the sixties when it had more trichinosis than the rest of the country put together. It involved 20 people and came from a party where summer sausage made by a local grocery was served. You can freeze summer sausage to kill the worms and make it safe.
Once locker space could be rented at local butcher shops, butchering changed. You would have a metal compartment locked with a key in the freezer room and pay rent each year. By freezing the meat, you could have pork chops from the loins instead of summer sausage. The locker plants would cut and wrap the meat if you wanted this done.
