Anybody got one of these?

Not for me...

http://nwct.craigslist.org/wan/2862382565.html

Pig scalder (roxbury) Date: 2012-02-20, 11:38PM EST

Reply to: hdgs8-2862382565@sale.craigslist.org

I will be slaughtering a couple hogs and need to borrow a scalder, bathtub, or large metal container. I would appreciate the use of any of these items.

Thanks

Location: roxbury
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 2862382565

My bathtub may be needing replaced...

Huh. You would think a guy who has hogs would have the right equipment to make them tasty. Maybe this is his first. Can you dabble in slaughter or do you have to go whole hog?

My buddy's family has a slaughter house outside Chicago just over the Indiana border; they have one. I've never been there yet.

My father grew up on a farm. Once, to save a few bucks, he bought some live chickens, and after "storing" them in the basement for a few hours (or it could even have been for a day or two) he slaughtered them and we had one of them for dinner and the other was put in the deep freeze before my mother "spilled the beans". Mom and Dad were the only ones who would have know we had had 2 chickens slaughtered in the cellar for dinner, if they hadn't said anything.

My grandfather used to use an old cast iron bathtub. Long since gone to the scrap yard though.

My in-laws had one. Used it quite a bit. Don't know where it ended up when they sold the farm but somebody in the extended family probably still has it.

My grandmother hung the chickens upside down on the clothesline - you know they still flap for a while after the heads come off - grim, yet oddly hilarious. Hogs got lifted by a bucket on the tractor. Fresh is very very tasty.

oldtin wrote: you know they still flap for a while after the heads come off

And that got my grandfather and I in a lot of trouble with my grandmother. I was ~5 years old when my grandfather took me out back to kill a chicken for dinner.

He chopped the head off and then put the chicken on the ground where it ran around flapping its wings and spraying blood everywhere. We thought it was hilarious, but grandma was not impressed.

I remember the threat of both of us being sent to bed without our dinner!

I grew up on a small farm & we raised our own meat. Had the beef commerciallly slaughtered & butchered but did our own hogs & chickens. We didn't own a hog scalder but that sort of thing was shared in our community, as was much of the whole hog killing process.