To enable any person to understand the matter, I will explain by briefly stating what we are now doing in the way of preparing our fresh meat for next summer’s use. In the first place, we have as many lard or pork barrels as will be necessary to hold a supply of meat for the family. These barrels are clean, sweet, and tight, one end taken out. They are arranged on a bench in the cellar, open end up. The pigs are killed and cooled in the usual way. When the animal heat is all out they are cut up, cutting off the sausage and lard, the lard cut up ready to be rendered out. The shoulders and sides are then cut up into such sized pieces as may be convenient for table use. These pieces are washed cleanly, and boiled in large kettles, seasoned with salt and pepper to make palatable, and when sufficiently boiled for table use they are placed in a barrel closely together, but not pressed or mashed, thus leaving each piece as near in the shape cut as possible. When the barrel is filled within two inches of the top, we then pour in warm lard until all the crevices between the pieces of meat are filled up, covering the top with one or two inches of the warm lard. Next day we find that the lard has settled down; we fill up again to the top and keep filled until all has become a solid mass of meat and lard. This is the whole secret. You can fill any tight vessel from a one gallon jar to a forty-five gallon barrel in like manner, and if properly done, and kept in a cool place the meat will keep fresh and sweet the year round. The advantages of this process of keeping meat are manifold. You can kill a fat hog at any season of the year, and its own fat can preserve it, and the fat can be used for culinary purposes just the same as when put up in cans for home use. The shoulders can be thus prepared, and when cold are far superior to salt meat, even after being boiled. The sides when cut in square pieces, with the ribs on, are just as good as when cooked fresh in the fall of the year. Hams, whole, when well cooked and seasoned, retain all their sweetness, and that without being impaired by the excess of salt necessary to keep them. Then, there is no trouble with flies, bugs, or skippers; the meat remains sweet, wholesome, and palatable until the last piece is taken from the bottom. All the care necessary in taking the pieces from the barrel is to press the lard down closely over what is left, and thus exclude the air. There are two great advantages in this mode of keeping meat; one is, it is fresh, easily digested, and consequently more healthy, and decidedly more pleasant to the taste; and it does not create that burning thirst that is so hard to quench on a hot harvest day. Then it is always ready for table use, and that without requiring your wives, daughters, and house help to melt over a hot stove when the mercury is up among the nineties, a no small saving in threshing time.