prosperity is a hog scalding pot

What you see is a picture of a hog scalding pot, taken at the Foxfire Museum grounds.

Anyone who had any kind of money got one of these pots. I've also seen a larger version of this at the Traveler's Rest historic site.

Depending on your economic status, some would consider this a necessity for farm life and some would consider it a luxury. Set into an outdoor fireplace, you can fill it with water, set a fire burning underneath, and use it for all kinds of chores. The biggest thing is, as the name implies, to use during hog killing time in the fall.

First the hog would be killed, which would need to be done with the onset of cooler weather, so the meat would not go bad. When killed, the carcass would be hung, usually with a rope and pulley system, and drained. The same pulley system would be used to move the hog, suspend it over the pot, where they would dip the hog to clean the body and loosen the hair for scraping.

This may be the stuff of vegetarian's nightmare. Following this violence, the carcass would be butchered and prepared -- meat for smoking, meat for salting into salt pork or fatback.

But as they say in the commercials: BUT THERE'S MORE.

Because no farm implement has one use only. The pot could also be used to make lye soap, for large quantities of food during community events, and for dying wool. In fact, different types of pots made from different metals would cast a different color to the dye. For example, an iron hog pot such as this would impart iron into an existing color and "sadden" it. So if they made a dye with marigolds, it would be one color in a tin pot, and a "saddened" color in an iron pot.

Today, they artificially create that effect by adding iron. They didn't have to back then.

Hog scalding pot equals invaluable farm tool. Pretty amazing. And thanks to Foxfire for all the information.

--Laura