Self-sufficient living in the 1930s

Self-sufficient living in the 1930s

By Betty Henry and Sharon Wolfe Friday, 15 May 2009

There was no H-E-B or Randalls close by in the 1920s and 1930s, so every day was spent growing or preserving food to survive during these difficult times.

The closest grocery store was Giddens and Powell in Leander, but since money was short, only the things that couldn’t be produced at home were purchased or bartered for.

Many families had cows that had to be milked daily. The milk was strained and kept in a cooler that was three pans welded together on a stand.

The milk was kept in gallon syrup buckets or crocks that were placed in water that was put in the trays. A wet thin cloth was draped over the cans. The edge of the cloth reached the water and cooled the milk.

Each leg of the cooler was placed inside little cans of water to keep the ants away. When the cream rose to the top of the can, it was skimmed off.

Several days’ worth of skimmed cream was placed in a tall crock churn that had a wooden dasher. The dasher was a wooden stick with two little sticks on the bottom of it placed in the shape of a plus symbol. By churning this dasher up and down, the milk turned into a large lump of butter, which was then dipped out of the thick buttermilk and placed in a bowl.

A little salt was sprinkled on it and the excess buttermilk was worked out by folding it over and over with a wooden spoon.

When the field corn matured it was ready for canning. The corn was cut off the cob and then put in cans with boiling water and salt.

The can was placed under the sealer to crimp down all the edges and make the can airtight. The sealed cans were then placed in the pressure cooker and carefully cooked.

In early February, when the moon was right for planting things that grew underground, deep furrows were plowed in the soil to plant potatoes.

Onion sets were bought in January and set out in the garden. As the onions matured they were tied in bunches of eight or ten and hung with binder twine on the rafters of the smoke house.

On a really cold winter day families would butcher their hogs. Water was heated and poured into a 50-gallon drum. The hog was raised up with a block and tackle and raised and lowered in the drum until the hair was loose and could be scraped from the skin.

After removing the hams, shoulders and bacon, the rest of the lean meat was ground and then stuffed into cleaned hog intestines to make sausage or fried and packed in large jars. The sausage was covered in lard and would keep for months.

Once the meat was removed, what was left was the skin with the fat attached. This was cooked in a large black pot outside over a fire.

This mixture produced lard and cracklings. The lard was strained off, leaving crispy brown cracklings that tasted like pork rinds.

Most people had a smokehouse, which was a small building with a five-gallon can filled with cedar bark and leaves so that it would smoke for days. This cured ham, bacon and the sausage that was hung. The curing would take a week or so. The meat would remain in the smokehouse until eaten, which normally took about four months.

Grease from cooking sausage or ham was used to make milk gravy, brown gravy and red eye gravy. Gravy was called “365” as it was eaten every day.