sausages and biltong

"Wake up!  It's time to make the sausages!"  This was one of the most exciting times of the year for us as children.  The time to make sausages and biltong once more. The slaughtered pig had to be lifted up on hooks attached to a cross bar at the end of a long pole, and dunked into a forty four gallon drum of boiling water.  This enabled the hair on the pig's body, which was hard and bristly, to be softened and thus more easily scraped off using a knife or a piece of tin.

There was always an air of great excitement, as together with the farm labourers we crowded round to get a piece of the action.  Once the hair had been scraped off, it was then time to remove the toenails, using a large pair of pliers.  As a child I was always intrigued by the pink toes which emerged.  To my young mind, it looked as if the pig had had her toes painted with nail polish.

The smooth pink body of the pig was hung overnight in our garage, together with the ox, ready to be cut up in the morning.  Somehow, the skinning of the ox wasn't quite as exciting as the scraping of the pig, and so the words, "wake up, it's time to make the sausages", was a stimulant like no other.  In a flash we were up and dressed and with the morning just beginning to show signs of breaking, we burst into the garage, ready to do battle.

We all had a chance at turning the handle of the mincing machine.  Once all the meat had been minced and seasoned, a funnel had to be placed on the end of the machine and the sausage skins pulled onto it.  The skins we used came from the pigs small intestine, which had to be turned inside out and thoroughly washed to rid them of all impurities.  The minced meat was then pushed once more through the machine to come out the other end as one long sausage, ready to be twisted in to a bunch of smaller sausages.

Then came the biltong.  What wasn't cut into joints for roasting, or minced up to be made in to boerewors, was then sliced into large strips for biltong.  This was threaded on to long pieces of thick string and hung from the rafters in one of the out buildings.  After a few days, the temptation to cut small pieces of meat off the ends of the strips was always there, and we found ourselves going again and again to sample the product and determine how much more drying was required.

The highlight of the sausage making was that at breakfast that morning we always had wonderful, fresh, juicy sausages and succulent pork ribs.  A sort of piggy heaven had descended upon us once more for a short time.