Liver, Not Leather

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that enjoys cooking.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
addie, you only ate meat in the fall?

No, we had the canned veggies to fall back on if the garden was empty. And there were fall veggies like the squashes. We also had a root cellar full of potatoes and other root veggies. Most of the meat went into the freezer for the winter. In the spring, we would get new animals and chickens.
 
Last edited:
addie, you only ate meat in the fall?
When my family owned a farm, we did the dame thing; Each spring, we bought yearlings and a supply of chicks, (about 300). During the year, we fattened them up and lived from the previous years supply. Each Fall, we butchered the animals and put the meat into the smoke house and freezers (We had 4 very large freezers.), and that smoked meat and frozen meat is what we lived off until the following fall. We always had chickens "On the hoof" so to speak, and us kids were trained to capture, decapitate, clean and pluck a chicken for supper. We also had ducks, geese and deer meat. A farm family seldom runs out of meat. One calf would go from auction to freezer and a lamb or two would keep it company.
 
Last edited:
To this day, I miss living on a farm. We kids never ran out of things to do. Even on a rainy day, we could play 'in the barn.' But we knew, the first thing every morning, even before breakfast, the animals had to be fed. :chef:
 
To this day, I miss living on a farm. We kids never ran out of things to do. Even on a rainy day, we could play 'in the barn.' But we knew, the first thing every morning, even before breakfast, the animals had to be fed. :chef:

I really miss it too.

It takes a tremendous investment to live like the poor honest Walton family these days.

If I could afford it I would become Aunt BeaBob. :ermm::ohmy::LOL:
 
To this day, I miss living on a farm. We kids never ran out of things to do. Even on a rainy day, we could play 'in the barn.' But we knew, the first thing every morning, even before breakfast, the animals had to be fed. :chef:

I was a little kid when my family had the farm. It was during my 2nd and 3rd grades in school. My day started at 4am with everyone elses. It was my chore to make sure the wood box next to the kitchen stove was always full of cut wood and kindling. It seemed like everything on the farm revolved around that stove.

Then I had to take out the slop buckets and dump them into the hogs trough. That chore scared me badly. The hogs were so huge and I was so small. I was afraid they would eat me. I dumped the buckets and ran like hell for the fence, slinging the empty buckets over the fence and climbing as fast as I could with my heart pounding and the sound of blood rushing in my ears. Every morning, it was a race of life and death for me. I truly hated feeding those damn hogs.

Then it was time to collect the eggs. I used a woven straw basket with a dish cloth in the bottom. Usually, I'd get about two dozen eggs.

Then I topped off the chickens feed dishes and water.

Then it was time for breakfast. A platter of eggs cooked in every way an egg can be fried, another platter of bacon and sausage adn platters of pancakes and toast (homemade bread of course). Every morning, we also had at least two types of pie. My favorite was cherry.

A tall, ice cold glass of fresh cows milk, only an hour from the cow and that was breakfast.
 
Last edited:
I really miss it too.

It takes a tremendous investment to live like the poor honest Walton family these days.
If I could afford it I would become Aunt BeaBob. :ermm::ohmy::LOL:

On a family farm today, you need all those kids to help with the chores. The cost of labor is just too high.

When I worked with 4H kids, some of those kids had purebred animals registered in their name. They were worth more than their parents. :ohmy:
 
On a family farm today, you need all those kids to help with the chores. The cost of labor is just too high.

When I worked with 4H kids, some of those kids had purebred animals registered in their name. They were worth more than their parents. :ohmy:


It was the same in the little town where I grew up. Some of the teenagers earned as much in spare time farm related activities as adults did with full time jobs.

They used to call Corvettes, Cowvettes because only the farm boys could afford them. :LOL:
 
A tall, ice cold glass of fresh cows milk, only an hour from the cow and that was breakfast.

I love fresh milk right from the cow. There is a whole different taste from pasturized milk. It only takes a couple of drops of raw cream instead of a couple of glugs for your coffee. Now they ultra pasturize dairy products. That means it has been pasturized twice instead of once. In this state, you can't buy raw milk or cream. City folks will never know what they are missing.

But you can get single pasturized products if you own a restaurant. :chef:
 
Last edited:
I love fresh milk right from the cow. There is a whole different taste from pasteurized milk. It only takes a couple of drops of raw cream for your coffee. Now they ultra pasteurize dairy products. That means it has been pasteurized twice instead of once. In this state, you can't buy raw milk or cream. City folks will never know what they are missing.

But you can get single pasteurized products if you own a restaurant. :chef:

You're right on target, Addie. That milk was absolutely De-licious! Rich, creamy thick goodness.

The drinking milk was poured off before taking the cream from the crock. Then the cream was skimmed and saved for butter making and cooking/coffee.

We had a manual butter churn. Us kids would stand around it and take turns with the churning. I didn't like that chore much either. It made my arms hurt. I was a tiny little skinny kid. Hardly enough meat on me to do hard work, but there are no slackers on a farm. You work or you starve.

We had one hired hand and he worked every minute. I never saw him standing still. He had a room in the barn and ate all meals with us. I liked him a lot. He had a million stories and would tell them to me while he worked. My Dad would yell at us sometimes and tell us to leave him alone so he could work in peace, but we knew he liked us to listen to his stories.

Before working for us, he was a cowboy out west somewhere in Texas. I must have heard a thousand cowboy stories.:rolleyes::mrgreen:
 
Last edited:
Another item found on a farm is fresh rggs. Those yolks are bright orange and stand up so high. We had to wash them since the chickens would often leave something on them. Baby roosters made it to the freezer as soon as they were old enough to start crowing. We didn't want the eggs fertilized. You could tell which ones were going to turn out to be roosters as soon as their combs started to grow. And their waddle was always bigger than the hens.

If any of you are ever out and just driving and you see a sign that says, "Fresh Farm Eggs" stop and get a couple of dozen. You will never forget them and probably plan of going back for more. :ohmy:
 
Back
Top Bottom