The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-09-05

I in which saltpeter and brown sugar are the principal ingredients and hung up in the house and smoked.
 The smoking of the meat is one of ] the points about which our old planter | friend was most particular, I remem-
 Der he cautioned my mother against | the use of pine wood-llght wood he
 called it-telling her that oak and hickory chips were the ou1y proper
 combustible to be used. He may Ihave been wrong; any other wood may
 be as good for the purpose, but his
 meat was just the thing I wished to make, so I have always followed his directions.
 Tn his letter his son wrote that his 1 father sometimes added the hair talk
 en from the pigs. to the fire used in smoking, He said that personally he didn't think the hair at all necessary, 1t was only burned when it was not wanted for something else, and he had never been able to detect any diff ference in the taste of the meat.
 After the smoking has gone on for six or eight weeks a last coat of the sugar curing is applied, the meat is covered with a layer of four and wa ter and then sewed up in a thick can vas bag. It is not yet packed, but again hung in the top of the smoke house, where it remains until the time comes for me to fill my orders.
 From time to time during this hanging period have the smoke re newed for day or two at a time. I am very particular to give it this ad- ditional smoking when there is an unusually wet spell of weather, and sometimes I throw little saltpeter on the fire
 While I think much depends on the curing of the meat, I also am con vlnced that the breed and care of the porkers have much to do with the quality and taste of the meat. Our old friend in Georgia was convinced that meat was sweeter and more nutritious where the animal had been forced to work for it's living.
 He said that too much fat destroy ed the taste of bacon and for that req son six week or two months was as long as a hog should be penned and fattened. He didn't believe in the sweetness of the round-limbed varie- ties of por1ers, not only because they were prone to take on too much fat, but also because the thickness of the hams and shoulders rendered it diff1- cult to cure evenly.
 Four years ago I did experiment with half dozen Berkshire pigs. I bought them of a neighbor and put them in pen to fatten at the same time that I began to fatten my other stock. l fed them with the same food and slaughtered them in the same way and in every particular the cur ing was the same.
 There was no mistake about it. there was a great difference in the taste of the meat. The Berkshire hams were not to be compared to the razorbacks, My mother said it was a waste of food and advised me to let well enough alone.
 "The only addition that I have made to my fathers little farm was by the purchase of a field infested with nut grass. You know that grass kills out everything in the way of crops, and so far as I have ever been able to learn there is no way of getting rid of It.
 "The neighbor was willing to get rid of his patch of grass and it was the only addition I needed to make my hog pasture all that our planter friend considered necessary. There are sev- eral acres of it, and morning, noon and night when the hogs are in that pasture they are busy on it.
 q raise allAthe root crops and the green food on the farm, but I am not always successful with my corn As I feed them almost entirely on corn during the time that they are being fattened, oftener than not l have been forced to, supplement my own corn with the bought article.
 For a woman with a small farm I know of nothing that is less trouble some and brings a more certain profit than raising and curing bacon for pri- vate customers. Of course, the woman who undertakes it must be wide awake, industrious and of sufficient intelligence to conduct her farm on business principles.
 Hike all other animals, to be healthy and in good condition hogs must be kept we'll nourshed and clean. have been just as careful of my porkers as have of my horses, and as a result have never had one die of disease.
 "To any woman think of under taking such a business I will say that she has public sentiment in her favor. Careful people are only too glad to get bacon about which there is no doubt as to cleanliness and health. The work is not hard. and so far as experimenting the slaughtering and curing-well, our grandmothers al- ways did it and I have never heard that they were any less womanly than the present generation
 That, I believe, is the modern woman's greatest op- portunity, doing for market the little homely things that our grandmothers used to do for their immediate fami- lies. So far as I'm judge, good common sense, energy and strict in- tegrity are the only essentials of the success of any woman along these lines"