When I posted this story on Medium, I gave it the following tag line. But in the name of Independence Day, this project could also be considered year-round. As with many lost arts, all you need are elbow-grease, a hot fire, a big pot, sharp tools, a gun, and a really fat pig. But you have that out back, don’t you?
A winter activity for all of us…if you need to keep your children occupied
My mother, born in a log cabin in 1919, was the daughter of a sharecropper in rural Utah, the middle child in a large family with ten children. Money was scarce. Everyone in the family old enough to help had chores. There was no electricity where they lived, no power-driven appliances, and no running water or indoor plumbing. Transportation was by horse and buggy.
Nearly everything the family needed they made or grew themselves. If they weren’t out in the fields, they were tending the garden, cleaning the house, sewing clothes on a treadle sewing machine, cooking, washing and drying dishes by hand, baking bread from scratch, washing clothes by hand and hanging them to dry, feeding and tending the horses, pigs, cows, and chickens. Nothing was wasted.
Mom loved to tell her children and grandchildren what life was like when she was small. She and her brothers and sisters planned their own entertainment and made their own toys. She had memories and skills that amazed this city girl (me), but these skills allowed her family to survive and thrive. And no one was allowed to be bored.
Her dolls were made of cornhusks. She and her many siblings built playhouses and forts out of tumbleweeds. They played baseball, dodge ball, and other team sports with balls made of tumbleweeds and bats made of sturdy twigs. Games of jacks, checkers, or marbles were played with collections of small pebbles. Mom shared with us many of the creative skills that produced these items.
As a celebration of her 85th birthday, we collected her stories and recipes in a booklet for the family. One of those stories, the project below, was a yearly activity when Mom was growing up. No quick run to the store for them!
These are her own words:
How to Make Soap
Soap-making is a wintertime activity.
First, kill a pig: Go out back and catch a big pig. Catch it between your knees. Shoot it in the head. Lay it on a board that is knee-high off the ground. Pour boiling water on the pig and scrape all the hair off the pig with a knife. Clean it well.
Fix the pig for meat: Cut off the meat you want to eat and put it away. In the winter, hang the meat on the back porch if it is screened in. As you cut the meat off, also trim all the rind and fat layers off. Cut the pieces of rind and fat into 4" by 5" squares. Put the fat and rind into a big pan. Place the pan in the oven. Bake and render all the fat out. Use the rind to eat as cracklings.
Use the fat that is rendered for the soap. Be careful the fat doesn’t catch fire. We burned the house down once doing this.
Build a hot bonfire in the back yard. Put a big wash tub (at least two feet in diameter) over the fire. Pour the freshly rendered pig grease into the tub. Add water, two parts water to one part fat. Add a can of store-bought lye. Cook until the mixture begins to solidify. Stir as needed off and on all day until it thickens. Peel or skim the grease off the top.
Pour the mixture into a flat pan and set it aside to cool well and solidify. Cut soap into 2" x 4" pieces. The recipe makes 20 to 30 bars. Use for laundry soap and bath soap, as well as for the animals. It takes off tar, dirt, and manure. This soap burns a little and is rough, but it really takes off the dirt.
The animals were not pets at that time. They meant survival. I believe there are a variety of fats used to make soap available now.
Oh, the poor pig!