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Transcription: [00:04:23]
{SPEAKER name="Fred Lee Bentley"}
Would you like her to talk some?

{SPEAKER name="Gerri Johnson"}
No, I just was wondering if she, she looked like she had something to say, to add to your remarks.
{SPEAKER name="Corrie Smith"}[[crosstalk]]
No, I was listening.
[00:04:30]

{SPEAKER name="Gerri Johnson"}
So the hog then comes to you fully butchered and in all its, all the parts.

[00:04:35]
{SPEAKER name="Fred Lee Bentley"}
Yes ma'am, we have them broke down because a number one hog is a little bit too heavy for me to handle.
So we get them broke down which doesn't cost very much more. And so, uh, we send our hogs up to the packing house on Monday morning,
[00:04:50]
and they butcher that hog that day and chill it that night, and then I pick it up the next day and bring it to my store and we put it in the cutting room, and we begin to work on it.
[00:05:01]
The first thing we do is take all of the fat, excess fat, and we cut it up in little blocks and prepare it for cooking the lard.
[00:05:10]
That's the first thing that we do. After we get it cut up we put it in our wash pots. We have four big pots with burners under them. And we get that started to cooking and meanwhile, while we do that we're also boning out hams and shoulders for the sausage. We use about 80% lean meat and 20% fat which gives you a nice, perfect, blended sausage.

[00:05:37]
{SPEAKER name="Gerri Johnson"}
--For the sausage.

[00:05:37]
{SPEAKER name="Fred Lee Bentley"}
It's not too fat, because, when you buy sausage it's got a lot of fat, and you put it in your frying pan and cook it and it draws up the size of your finger, you do not have a good sausage at all.

[00:05:49]
{SPEAKER name="Gerri Johnson"}
Ah, I see.
So, you start on Monday taking your hogs in to be butchered and processed.
{SPEAKER name="Fred Lee Bentley"}
That's right.

[00:05:56]
{SPEAKER name="Gerri Johnson"}
And then Tuesday is a heavy workday for you, I remember that's the day I visited you, and it was, a Tuesday and you were busy rendering the lard, and you were busy grinding the sausage, making the sausage.

{SPEAKER name="Fred Lee Bentley"}
That's right.

[00:06:08]
{SPEAKER name="Gerri Johnson"}
Um, who does the, who does the cracklings, who makes the lard in the wash pot?

{SPEAKER name="Fred Lee Bentley"}
Either one of these two can do it. I let them do the cooking.

[00:06:17]
{SPEAKER name="Gerri Johnson"}
[[laughter]] Okay.
How do you go about doing that? Now let's talk about that first the cracklings.

[00:06:21]
{SPEAKER name="Corrie Smith"}
Well, you put them in the pot with the fire under them, and you keep it stirred as the lard cooks out of your meat.