On the farm in the thirties

Columnist Roy Tuggle 

rtugglejr@gmail.com

One item that I remember being made on the farm was lye soap. The soap was made in a large iron pot over an open fire outside. There are several different recipes for making the soap and I am going to describe the process we used.

The basic recipe was 10 ounces of Red Devil Lye, 2 gallons of water and 5 lbs. of lard. We used the lard that we had rendered from the fat when we slaughtered hogs. Many people in the old days, made their own lye by leaching water through hardwood ashes.

The lard was put into a large iron pot and heated until it melted. The water was added at this time and the fire under the pot was built up and when the water and fat blended, the lye was slowly and carefully added to the pot. A long wooden paddle was used to stir the mixture as it cooked.

When the soap was ready, it was poured into a container and after it cooled and cured for a time it was cut into cakes.

The floors in kitchens were often scoured with the lye soap. Some of the people I knew when I was young made corn shuck brooms.

The corn shucks were gathered into bundles that were about two inches thick. For a broom that was twelve inches by seven inches, you would need eighteen bundles. The bundles were firmly tied with twine about one inch from the top.

One hole was cut at a slant in a one inch board to hold the broom handle. Nine one inch holes were drilled on either side of this hole. A layer of glue was spread in these holes and the corn husks were forced into the holes. The bottoms of the husks were trimmed off even and you were ready to mop or sweep.

We had a large chicken yard where a large number of hens were kept for egg production. A small house had raised wooden nest for the hens to lay its eggs. I did not like to gather the eggs as the hens were sometimes protective of the eggs and would peck when you reached under them to gather the eggs.

The eggs were kept in a bowl or basket in our dining room which was one of the cooler rooms in our house. We would have never thought of putting eggs in the refrigerator as the “so called experts” now tell us we have to do to keep from having some dire disease.

We also used the chickens for frying and boiling. We had a long wire with a loop on the end that we used to snare the chicken that we wanted to kill. There were two methods of killing the chickens. My grandmother would grab the chicken by the neck and spin it around until its neck broke. I could not stand to do this and when I killed the chicken, I used a hatchet and chopped its head off. Much quicker and easier.

We would put the chicken in extremely hot water that loosened the feathers and then pick the larger feathers off. I will never forget the smell of the wet feathers. Not good! If there were any small pin feathers left, we would singe them off with a burning rolled up newspaper.

This was far different than going to the grocery store and getting the neatly packaged, already cut up chicken.

Many people, after reading my articles about the old days, ask me if I prefer the way we lived then or the way we live now. I really think that I would like to go back to the slower, quieter times of my youth.