What meat did country folk eat in the 20's-30's in Georgia?

[Mauser]

They`re also in Stewart, Webster, and Terrell Counties too. I`ve also seen one in El Model WMA in Baker County.

Don`t trust google.

We had a few at our shop in Morgan,stayed aroud some big live oaks and old grain bins. But a dang cat wiped em out I think, would bring em the shop and leave em. Hadn’t seen any in a few years.

 

[Offshore]

We ate chipmunks, we shot a bunch one weekend, cleaned and froze them at my buddy's grandparents place.

Guess his grandpa thought they were squirrel, cooked and ate them. He said they were great, but smallest squirrels he ever seen

I have a white chipmunk, hanging around a couple of years. Not sure how it has survived that long. Meriwether County, GA.

 

[NCHillbilly]

I agree with you. That storebought fatback is nothing like the fatback we produced. I would even cut off a strip to use to catch redfin pike.

I think it`s the hog type, Doug. The producers of today are turning out lean hogs that don`t have near the fat that our hogs back then had. The public demand seems to be for lean pork instead. Personally, I`d rather have fat pork myself. Dry pork ain`t fit to eat.

Back when I was growing up, lard was as big a commodity as the pork itself. Those old folks didn't run out to the store for Crisco or Wesson oil, and they fried about everything they ate. People wanted and needed fatty hogs.

 

[fflintlock]

My grandfather would butcher every Thanksgiving. He would cook his hogs in large cast iron kettles, then rendered the lard. They would pack that meat in large clay pots and pour that lard over and around the meat. It kept for a good while. The lard would grow a little mold on the top, but you just scraped that off and you had snow white lard under it. He grow'd the best fat hogs in 3 counties.

 

[Artfuldodger]

I guess it would have been in the late 30's or 40's, my dad would peddle fish around the country side. The fish came iced down in a barrel to Uvalda from Savannah. It would be different every week. He would pick it up and try to sell it to his usual customers who were mostly farmers.
I said what did you do with the fish that didn't sell? He said we ate them.

 

[madsam]

poke sallet

 

[Spotlite]

Salt cured pork. Chicken. Possum. Coon. Fish. Squirrel. Rabbit. Black birds. Robins. Goat. Dairy farms all over the place then so beef wasn’t hard to come by if you were willing come get a downed cow.

My grandparents ate like that until the 90’s. I still remember loading up dairy cows that’d break down with a big calf.

My favorite as a kid. In the late 70’s was rabbit shining………….and slapping the belly of a dead cow in the bone yard so could catch possums to feed out when they ran out the other end.

 

[Artfuldodger]

Good friend of mine has a Sapelo sow, and soon as he gets a boar he plans to start some on his homestead. He also has old style sheep, goats, chickens, seed, and even dryland rice.

I think I follow him on Facebook. Glad he is learning from you and like minded folks on these matters. Especially the old seeds and livestock.

 

[WOODIE13]

 

[Doug B.]

View attachment 1211215

Won't be long!!!

 

[WOODIE13]

Won't be long!!!

Why wait

 

[Doug B.]

Why wait

I know a lot of people get them this time of year. I just never have. I always go in April. I may try to go within the next couple of weeks now that you mention it!

 

[jbogg]

I have thoroughly enjoyed this thread. I don’t have much to contribute other than some cherished memories of going from Georgia to my grandmothers farm in Minnesota for three or four summers when I was a young teenager. My best friend, and I were supposedly there to “help”, but I know we were more trouble than we were worth.

She had a small 60 acre farm with about 30 head of Holstein milkcows, pigs, chickens, geese, and guineas. She was the toughest lady I ever knew. She and my grandfather divorced sometime in the 1950s, and she stayed on the farm since it had belonged to her parents. She had one hired hand, and a couple of old uncles in their 80s that needed a place to live out their lives.

She had several tractors, and I think the newest one was built in the 1940s. We stacked a lot of hay, and combined oats. The farmhouse, barn and machine shed were all built sometime in the early 1900s and by the time I got there in the early 70s it was pretty rundown. Mucking out the barn by hand early each morning prior to the morning milking was not a task I looked forward to, but the payoff at suppertime around noon was worth it all. When we turned 14 she would let us take her car in the town to get some milkshakes after dinner.

I believe history will show we were the lucky ones. These kids today that spend all their time staring at these screens will have missed so much.

 

[oldfella1962]

plus the fact that the hogs could run wild in the woods, and basically fend for themselves. My Papa told me stories of rounding up hogs in the fall and driving them from Dahlonega to Atlanta. He said it would take a couple of weeks to walk down there from the hills.

Like a cattle drive but with hogs? That's pretty cool!

 

[oldfella1962]

I have a white chipmunk, hanging around a couple of years. Not sure how it has survived that long. Meriwether County, GA.

Didn't Ted Nugent do a song about that? Wait, that was a great white buffalo!

 

[NE GA Pappy]

Like a cattle drive but with hogs? That's pretty cool!

Yep. I have enough trouble with driving cows, I don't know how they did it with hogs.

 

[livinoutdoors]

Yep. I have enough trouble with driving cows, I don't know how they did it with hogs.

Thats a long way to shake a bucket filled with corn!
When did folks stop free ranging hogs in north Ga you reckon? Seems like most folks did that up till some point.

 

[Nicodemus]

Thats a long way to shake a bucket filled with corn!
When did folks stop free ranging hogs in north Ga you reckon? Seems like most folks did that up till some point.

I don`t remember when fence law went into place down here, but I remember when my folks and others in the community fenced around their homes so the hog wouldn`t root under the house. The only cows in the area were folk`s milk cow, except for the occasional wild Cracker cow or bull but they were wilder than deer and stayed away from people. Folks earmarked their hogs so they would know what belonged to who at hog killin` or sale time. Nobody drove hogs much around here. They`d keep em semi-tamed down with the occasional feeding.

 

[Doug B.]

I don`t remember when fence law went into place down here, but I remember when my folks and others in the community fenced around their homes so the hog wouldn`t root under the house. The only cows in the area were folk`s milk cow, except for the occasional wild Cracker cow or bull but they were wilder than deer and stayed away from people. Folks earmarked their hogs so they would know what belonged to who at hog killin` or sale time. Nobody drove hogs much around here. They`d keep em semi-tamed down with the occasional feeding.

I don't remember when fence laws went into place either, but I'm going to guess maybe the 60's. I do remember everybody having fences around their garden to keep livestock out of the garden.

 

[livinoutdoors]

I don't remember when fence laws went into place either, but I'm going to guess maybe the 60's. I do remember everybody having fences around their garden to keep livestock out of the garden.

Yup that was the ol timer ways wasnt it? Fence the garden n areas to keep stock out, not fenced to keep em in.