Disassembling a Hog

A fifth-grade me stands knee deep in warm lake water, my back to the afternoon sun. Wavelets kicked up by a summer breeze lap at my bathing suit as I face the shore. My toes wiggle in the sand. A motorboat thrums rhythmically as it passes in the distance behind me. I fiddle with a small stone.

It is the mid 1970’s and we’ve come from New England to Michigan for our annual summer trip to see my grandparents at Otsego Lake, just south of Gaylord. Dad brought a wooden bench seat toward the water where Grandma and Grandpa sit side by side. Dad sits on a chair from the porch. They talk as a threesome. I observe from outside the orbit of conversation.

Grandma wears a neatly pressed, light blue linen dress with low heels. She sits erect with perfect posture, the composure and manner of the schoolteacher she once was. She folds her hands neatly on her lap. She is stern but quick with a smile and words of encouragement. She calls my father “Sam’l”.

Grandpa sits cross-legged, leaning on the arm of the bench: short-sleeved button down shirt and brown slacks, brown leather shoes. He is shorter than Grandma and his relaxed posture makes him shorter still. The three of them chat easily and I am content to watch and listen as they catch up on aunts, uncles and cousins.

That evening we sit on the screened porch watching pontoon boats cruise the shore: sometimes we wave, more of acknowledgement, Midwest nice, than recognition. Grandpa’s brought beef jerky from the packing plant. Wrapped neatly in butcher’s paper, strips of deep-red jerky eight inches long and as fat as a man’s thumb. My father cuts a few pieces with the Swiss Army knife he always seems to have at hand. The remaining jerky is rewrapped and put away, saved for another day. I savor every smoky bite.

Today I do much of my shopping at the local supermarket. Sixty thousand square feet of prepackaged convenience. The corporation that brings me the food certainly does a good job offering fresh and wholesome but there is little doubt, when I buy blueberries and mangos in January that the food is not local. Much of the beef may have started in Colorado but it was likely shipped to a CAFO in Kansas before being sent to a processing plant in some other state and turned into a product with uniform and predictable size and shape that can fit into my freezer with efficiency if not with regard for the welfare of the animal. It was not always that way.

My father grew up in upstate Michigan. His father and uncle operated a small meat packing plant that processed mostly beef and pork purchased primarily at auction across the Upper Penninsula but also from local farmers, some of whom worked at the plant. This was small-scale meat processing of the 1940’s and 50’s before the post WW2 industrialization of food production that dominates markets today.

My dad tells me how he loved getting up early to join his father on the delivery rounds. The door would creak open and a thin band of light would stream into his darkened bedroom. His mother leans in and whispers “Sam’l. Time to get up if you want to go to work with your father.” He’d throw off the sheets and blankets and pull on his pants, socks and shoes where he left them on the floor. From his dresser drawer he’d grab a clean white T-shirt and from his closet, a flannel shirt which he’d button as he raced out the bedroom.

Quickly he’d eat the bowl of oatmeal at the kitchen table. His father sips coffee and nibbles on a piece of toast, legs crossed, he sits back and watches his son make quick work of breakfast. As my father finishes his mother takes the bowl and places two sandwiches, neatly wrapped in foil, on the table.

“You take care of these” she’d say. “One for you and one for your father.” She’d smile. “Thanks Vi.” My grandfather would say. She’d hand my grandfather a metal Thermos. “Here’s your coffee for the road.”

At the plant my father would stand next to my grandfather on the loading dock. He’d look into the rear of a refrigerated box truck stacked with cardboard boxes, the names of small grocery stores, restaurants and a few hunting lodges scrawled on the side. Men would be rushing past, loading the last few boxes as my grandfather looked over the delivery list. Two hundred or so miles of travel across the upper reaches of the mitten of Michigan: Elmira, Mancelona, East Jordan, Boyne City.

“I put an extra pork loin in for that new restaurant in Alba” one of the men might say as he passed. “And I put a little something that Bill made on the seat for you and your help.” The man would wink and my dad would smile. My dad loved being part of the crew.

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Home from college my father would work in the plant for the summer. In the warmth of the boiler room he and Harold Cottrel looked over the list that my grandfather would have left the night before. Harold owned a farm about ten miles away in Vanderbilt where he raised beef and a couple dozen chickens.

“Fifteen hogs, Sam. You ready?”

Without waiting for a reply Harold would take a last sip of coffee and place the mug on a table. My dad would pull on his rubber boots and oil-cloth apron and together they’d head into the processing area. Harold and my dad would bring out fifteen hogs in groups of five from the cooler. The hogs were purchased from local farms at auction a week or so ago and then slaughtered and dressed shortly after purchase. They’d been in the cooler only a few days. Each hog hangs by its hind legs from a hook, connected to an overhead rail system attached to the ceiling, the hog’s nose about a foot off the floor. In one efficient movement Harold grabs a hog by the ear and with a three-foot cleaver he holds in his other hand, removes the hog’s head with a light touch of the blade. Harold drops the hog’s head into a stainless steel tub. Together my dad and Harold then swing the rest of the hog onto the long, wooden chopping block table and Harold severs the hog’s hamstring causing the hog to fall from the hook and onto the table. Harold examines the hog, now splayed on its back, while my dad rolls the empty gambrel out of the way.

Harold severs the short lengths of skin at either end of the spine thus splitting the hog into two, more or less equal, halves. My father holds one of the fore feet and Harold, in a single chop, severs the shoulder at a right angle to the spine just behind the fore leg. Dad spins the shoulder so the foot is over the block as Harold raises the cleaver again and with a light chop removes about six inches of hoof and leg. Dad tucks the hog shoulder under his arm and holds the hog’s other forefoot. Harold severs the shoulder, Dad spins the forefoot, Harold chops again. Dad then carries the two shoulders down the cutting table. Another member of the crew stands ready with sharpened knives to trim the shoulders as they come.

The two men then turn their attention to the back end of the hog. They cut out the hams in much the same manner as they did the shoulders. Dad rotates the rear legs into a position that allows Harold to cut off the foot, leaving the ham. Dad drops the two hams near the shoulders to be trimmed. That leaves two roughly rectangular pieces of hog on the block. Harold makes a chop parallel to the spine but about three inches out, to sever the smaller ribs. Dad then uses a handsaw to continue the line and cut the larger ribs. These cuts, the loins and the belly, are set aside for trimming.

Whoever is trimming the bellies, sometimes it’s Bill and sometimes it’s Lester, first carves out the spare ribs as a single slab by running a knife just under the ribs themselves. The actual bellies get trimmed to remove unwanted bone before being cured with a salt mix, freshened and smoked for bacon. The spare ribs go to market as is to be sauced, roasted and, likely, eaten by hand.

The loin is checked at the ends for bits of bone that don’t belong. Bill or Lester will remove the skin along the backside and with it some of the fat. What’s left is the pork loin, the source of pork chops, which is usually sold as is. Grocery stores and restaurants custom cut the loin into chops.

Most everything else that is cut away, trimmed from the shoulder, loin, ham or belly was saved. There were barrels for trimmed bones, stainless steel tubs for straight fat, tubs for fleshy trimmings, tubs for hooves and lower legs. The fat rendered for lard, the fleshy trimmings often turn into sausage.

Bill did most of the specialty processing: making three or four kinds of stuffed meat (sausage, bologna, liver sausage and kielbasa), he rendered the fat into lard, and smoked the ham and bacon. During a break someone might retrieve a ring of bologna that Bill had just made putting several slices out to be sampled by the crew. My dad would try a piece - delicious. “It’s a bit salty” Harold might say. Bill would harrumph. He’s heard that before. The bologna is just fine.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that several large meat processors are integrating robots into the “disassembly” of livestock including chickens, hogs and beef. The move is an effort to reduce the likelihood of injuries resulting from a job now conducted on an assembly line with low-skilled, low-cost labor where repetitive motion injuries occur all to often. Dad tells me that when he was working in the plant injuries were relatively few as there was less repetitive motion and the crew were better trained, more experienced.

The robotic butchering of animals seems the logical next step in the distancing of what we eat from where our food comes from. Livestock is bred not for the animal’s health but for encouraging the growth of choice cuts of meat, fed a diet leading to unnaturally fast growth, consuming feed filled with steroids and hormones, and then treated with antibiotics to counteract the illness that plagues any species fed a diet their bodies have not evolved to consume.

Jess, Harold and Bill all worked at the plant but they also farmed, often raising the beef and hogs they eventually sold, slaughtered and ate. They also had gardens where they grew vegetables. They knew where their food came from. I like to think I am starting to push back on Big Ag in my own little way, keeping a small vegetable garden, supporting the local dairy and farm stand, even if I do not raise my own beef, pork or chicken.

My father chuckles at the phrase “If you like laws and sausage you should never watch either being made.” He says “If they’d worked in the plant they’d have no problem with how the sausage was made.” I am not sure the same can be said for the industrial scale meat processing pressing out McNuggets and Whopper patties. I suspect Bill, who made the sausage, kielbasa and specialty meats would agree, even if others thought his bologna was on the salty side.