WHERE PIGS IS PROFITS 113 



ing room fireplace, which would have been all 

 right if the damper had been high enough to per- 

 mit hanging the meat well up the chimney. As it 

 was we had to use so low a fire the chimney never 

 warmed up properly, and the back draft kept the 

 dining room full of smoke. Then for a season we 

 took our meat to a small near-by packing plant 

 (Pennsylvania is thickly studded with little, inde- 

 pendent packers) and got it custom smoked. The 

 pure food sleuths ruled that out after one short 

 year. Now we smoke in a hogshead that has the 

 end knocked out of it. The fire is built outside, 

 the smoke led into the barrel through a short cov- 

 ered trench, and the draft checked by a covering 

 of wet gunny sacks. 



Occasionally instead of smoking a ham we bone 

 it and simmer it twenty minutes to the pound at 

 one hundred and seventy degrees. Sliced down, this 

 sort of ham usually retails at from fifty cents to a 

 dollar a pound. It is fine toas they say hereabouts 

 "eat along": meaning to sustain life between 

 meals or late at night. 



The experts make considerable pother about 

 the proper way to preserve hams, after they have 

 been salted and smoked. My own observation is 

 that they and all the other pork products are a 

 good deal like what I said a while ago about cold 

 'possum meat. We have never yet butchered enough 

 pork to last over into the next season. But we have 



