What is a pork barrel

     My Mom grew up on a farm during the depression.  To give some idea about how she lived her early life, she was 12 years old before the farm had an indoor toilet.  Her life was hard because she was the  oldest of 12 children and had a lot of responsibilities.  One of the jobs she was given in  the fall during the pig slaughter was the scraping of the pig intestines.  Just so you know, when you are in the grocery store and the sausages say "natural casing", they mean pig intestine.  My Mom told me the job of cleaning the intestines was a high status job....I am wondering now if someone was tricking her into doing a really crappy job (pun intended).  Anyway, she had to turn the pig intestines inside out, then scrape and clean all the junk out of the "casing".  She had to do this while making sure the casing was intact so it could be filled with sausage.

     So, what is a pork barrel?  It is a barrel filled with pork.  Of course, there was no refrigeration, so the barrel had to be filled in a specific way.  First they poured fat in the bottom of the barrel, then a layer of pig parts.    They filled up the barrel in successive layers, sealing each layer in fat.   The layering was important because they had to use the pig fat to seal the pork parts away from bacteria and oxygen to preserve it. My Mom did not mention salting the pork which was a common method of preserving as seen below.  I wonder if it was a difference between northern climate and a southern climate.  I know they definitely used fat as a sealant though.

     The Pork Barrel was stored in the cellar.  They slaughtered the pigs in the cool of the fall so the cellar was fairly cool since the farm was in Ohio.  Over the winter, when pork was being served, one of the kids had to go to the cellar and reach into the barrel and pull out the meat cuts needed.  They had to pull out a layer and then reseal the fat back over the remaining layer.  Having kids responsible for this seems a bit scary because of the chance of contamination, but, apparently, they all had very healthy immune systems because they all lived to a ripe old age.

     And now you can guess what is  meant by scraping the bottom of the barrel.

From Wikipedia - http://bit.ly/EN7S
         More generally, a barrel of salt pork was a common larder item in 19th century households, and could be used as a measure of the family's financial well-being. For example, in his 1845 novel The Chainbearer, James Fenimore Cooper wrote, "I hold a family to be in a desperate way, when the mother can see the bottom of the pork barrel."^[5]