Extra choice specimens still come from some English hill farms, and the superexcellence of this bacon is due chiefly to its being skilfully smoked in the old-fashioned smoke house, which cures thoroughly while avoiding the rankness that comes from too rapid curing with very strong smoke. Properly smoked bacon is fragrant, like a flower. The other kind isn't. The test is a very simple one: if the odor makes your mouth water, it is all right.
Not only "hill-farmers" but thousands of others have a chance to get rich by catering to the gastronomic demands of the time for the best bacon, ham, and fresh young pork.
"The modern method of pig feeding has shown," as an expert informs us, "that a combination of separated milk and cereals is by far the best fattening material, and the future of the bacon-curing industry is therefore, to a large extent, in the hands of dairy farmers."
Important information on this point was gathered for the benefit of American farmers by Consul Homer M. Byington, of Bristol, and printed in the "Daily Consular and Trade Reports" for January 4, 1912. Among other things, he wrote that "Wiltshire cured hams and bacon command a higher price than the hams and bacon of any other country. It is therefore of interest to ascertain why this should be so. One of the most prominent experts in the industry has stated that it is almost entirely a question of feeding. The fine breed of hogs kept by the best farmers in Wiltshire, Somerset, and Dorset are fed principally upon skim milk and barley meal. It is claimed by the English producers that American hogs are practically all fed on corn, which, although a perfectly wholesome food, tends to make the hog fat, and a little mellow, whereas feeding by the British method gives a meat beautifully white and as solid as meat need be." Referring to a leading Wiltshire curer, the Consul continues:
"This latter firm, although purchasing 2,000 to 3,000 hogs per week from farmers in the surrounding territory, does not allow any breeder under contract to give his animals refuse for food. The pigs are subject to an ante-mortem and a post-mortem examination by a qualified veterinary surgeon and medical officer of health. No boracic acid or other injurious preservative is used in curing."
In Germany, where one gets not only hams of the best quality, but excellent roast pork, many others besides farmers have taken to raising pigs. In 1873 there were only 7,124,088 pigs in the country; in 1907 there were over 22,000,000. The number of sheep has decreased in about the same proportion because three hogs can be raised by a peasant where he could not graze one sheep.
Pigs are particularly profitable because they can be fed largely on kitchen refuse and unsalable skim milk and because a pig "will produce a pound of meat from a far less weight of food than will either sheep or cattle."
By "mixing brains with the food," the profits can be enormously increased. Let me ask every American and English farmer to put the following words of England's leading authority, Sanders Spencer, into his pipe and smoke them slowly and thoroughly:
"This selection of a compact, thick-fleshed, and pure quality sire is of even greater importance in the pig department of the farm than in many others, as our object is to breed a pig which is capable of converting a large quantity of food into the largest amount of fine quality of meat, and is so formed that the latter is placed on those portions of the pig's body which realize the largest price in the market."[17]