By Angela Godac
Yes, maybe we should take heed. With all the unrest and the unreliable supply lines these days, as well as the many fires/explosions at warehouses, manufacturing plants, etc., etc., we could very well end up (again?) in long, volatile lines to get toilet paper, canned goods, eggs and more only to find them all gone from the shelves! Or, they may be priced higher than our budget allows. Speaking of eggs…a friend sent me an email recently that listed 10’s of millions of chickens that were destroyed at multiple facilities during just a part of last year, 2022! I stopped counting at 50,000,000!
I looked up some articles Avian Flu; 1.8Million Destroyed and it was confirmed that these millions of chickens, as well as huge numbers of turkeys and ducks had been destroyed due to bird flu (Gee, couldn’t they come up with a vaccine real quick? And do I really believe that was all the reasoning?). Soooo, this is the reason eggs are so high-priced!
Back to my original story! My great-grandparents, John Bartolomeo and Mercedes Mungarro Belluzzi, homesteaded Rim Trail Ranch which is where Washington Park is now, just past Whispering Pines and about 15 miles north of Payson. This was in the late 1800’s/early 1900’s. They raised their family of 7 children and farmed and grew hay and corn and had a major apple orchard among other crops. They raised some cattle and had hogs and would of course, butcher both. The Apaches marauded nearby ranches and killed a few people (interesting article here about the beginnings of our rodeo, and one of these killings– Read it Here) but always left the Belluzzis alone because my great-grandfather would leave a half or a quarter of a beef hanging in a tree for them.
My Aunt Margaret told me that my great grandma (her maternal grandmother) and the children would grow a huge garden and would harvest and can a minimum of 900 quarts of produce to get them through the winter! And I whine at canning 75 quarts!!! Not really.
When the hogs would be butchered, Grandma would fry up a great amount of chops and pour them and all the fat into a huge crock that was kept in the kitchen. Whenever they would want pork chops for supper she would just stick a big fork down in the crock and throw some chops on the frying pan and cook them up again!!! They were tough people back then and must have had cast-iron stomachs!!! I actually claim that today as I can eat some questionable things!! Haha!
I know they also cured meats and had a root cellar–all those lost arts and preservation methods that kept their families fed and alive.
Last week I bought a large quantity of sea salt. I have some meat in my freezer and I’m going to try my hand at curing it with salt. I’ll let you know how that turns out.
And to talk about eggs again, I have 3 dozen eggs in a big jar that I water-glassed in August of ’21. They are in the shell and covered in a lime solution and they are fine!!! This is a wonderful way to preserve eggs. They cook up just fine and taste perfect. The yolk is just a tad bit runnier than fresh eggs. This is yet another of the amazing ways that the pioneers invented to preserve foods. I’m always fascinated by the things people can conjure up to make things work or make things better.
We’ll have occasional articles here on prepping and preservation of foods and such. Keep coming back y’all!
