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[Rob <becida AT comcast.net>]

At  12/8/2007 04:29 PM,Robert Walton wrote:

> Anyone made a simple (cheap) smokehouse? I'm googling away on this,
> but thought someone here might have some ideas, too.

I'm searching my Tvo posts for "smokehouse"

Rob
becida AT comcast.net
Western Washington
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Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 19:02:36 -0500
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clanSkeen wrote:

>
> I don't know anyone who sold pigs myself (in collective family memory) --
> not that it didn't happen, but maybe they were so far back there that it was
> less feasible . . . .  But don't forget that parts of pigs are also salted
> and/or smoked and the meat is good for the best part of the year.  James
> actually remembers his grandparents having meat hanging in the smokehouse
> and going out and cutting off enough for the meal.  Most often it was
> covered with green he says, and this was just trimmed off.  A lot of folks
> don't seem to know what to do with salt meat, which my grandparents ate
> every day.
>
> Denise
>

For those wealthy enough to own two or three stoneware crocks (one for
sauerkraut), some was cooked in saltwater, packed in the crock, and 
covered with
a thick layer of liquid lard.
Lard from pigs eating chestnut was unlike the lard you are familiar
with---soupy, not hard.
People up North looked down their noses at near-liquid lard, though it was
probably better for them to eat than lard that is hard.  Chestnut lard would
become semi-hard in cold weather, in the cellar or other below-earth storage.

The old smokehouse here was built next to the house where I now have 
a peach and
pear orchard.  I tore it down seven years ago.  Don't raise any hogs, 
and didn't
need it.  Yeah, the green mold was only on the surface, didn't hurt anything.
The dry salt cure made better ham than the liquid presently used, 
though you had
to be careful about temperature so the salt penetrated to the bone before the
meat would spoil.  After salt cure the smoking went on for a couple 
weeks.  Some
people put cotton gauze on the hams to keep off flies.  The hams developed a
hard, fly-impenetrable surface in the smokehouse, so the gauze was really
unnecessary.

Salt Cod was also both a staple and a delicacy---came from New England of
course.  In the Upper Lake states, there was twenty pound boxes of salted
bullheads instead of Cod.  In Beaver Dam Lake (Wisconsin), the 
bullheads were so
plentiful, farmers used to seine the shallows and haul off hundreds of
wagonloads for fertilizer.  Later, when the lakes started to degrade in water
quality, "Buffalo" carp replaced bullheads and became fertilizer in turn.