Jerry Crownover Mom’s cooking

just athoughtWhat’s On Your Mind, Ozarks?

Life Is Simple

By Jerry Crownover

Life

is Simple By Jerry CrownoverAgricultural news became consumer news last week, when 25 million pounds of hamburger meat were recalled by one of the nation’s largest meat processors. The meat was recalled because of possible contamination by a potentially, deadly bacteria. Being a consumer, as well as a producer of beef, I felt good that our system of food inspection had caught this problem before the masses became sick. But, I couldn’t help wondering why I didn’t die as a child. Every Sunday morning of my childhood, Dad or Mom would go to the chicken house and catch the noon meal. They would take the chicken to the old block of wood (that was stained with the blood of hundreds of Sunday meals before), take a rusty ax, and chop off the Jerry Crownover is a farmer and former professor of Agriculture Education at Missouri State University. He is a native of Baxter County, Arkansas, and an author and professional speaker. To contact Jerry, go to ozarksfn.com and click on ‘Contact Us.’ head of the fowl. The headless chicken would then flop around on the dirty ground for a few seconds before it was plucked, gutted, and cut up to fry. It was good.

There was also the annual autumn ritual of hog-killin’. Friends and neighbors would gather at our farm to insure the winter’s meat supply by processing a couple of 250-pound hogs. The sanitary processing included scalding the carcass in a rusty, 55-gallon barrel (that probably once contained something poisonous), laying the carcass on some old wooden planks in order to cut it up with that same rusty ax and an old handsaw that Dad retained just for this job. There had to be some bacteria somewhere, but it was delicious.

I’ve been inside modern meat processing plants. There is absolutely no comparison between them and the primitive ways we used to handle meat. Today’s meat plants are

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Julie Turner-Crawford,Managing Editor Jerry Crownover,Columnist Jody Harris,Columnist Production Amanda Newell,Production Contributors Jessica Allan, Larry Burchfield, Erin Harvey, Kaylea Hutson-Miller, Ken Knies, Chad Pittillo and Terry Ropp About the Cover Daniel Potter became the George’s cattle division manager in 2020, managing the herd and the land. See more on page 14. Photo by Terry Ropp

Ozarks Farm & Neighbor accepts story suggestions from readers. Story information appears as gathered from interviewees. Ozarks Farm & Neighbor assumes no responsibility for the credibility of statements made by interviewees. © Copyright Ozarks Farm & Neighbor, Inc., 2021. All rights reserved. Printed in USA.

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