From experience participating in family, rather than abattoir, centered
butchering of domestic and wild animals in the upper midwest (Minnesota)
and Southeast, (Florida and Georgia) during the 1940's, 50's, and early 60's.
If saws are used in butchering the cuts are comparable to what one
encounters at the meat counter.
 
If the cutting is done with knives, cleavers, and axes the cuts will be
   somewhat different.
        - Ribs tend to be left whole, the loin is removed boneless, and the
           vertebrae discarded.
        - The ribs are either stripped of meat for sausage, stews etc. or
            cooked on the spot to feed the butchering crew and may not make
           it into the household refuse.
        -The appendages are separated at joints and are either deboned or
          used whole.
 
The head, feet, and mandibles of pigs are food not waste  (head
cheese, souse, hog jowl, sausage, etc). These parts tend to be
boiled for hours and the meat stripped for use.  Pig bones cooked in this
manner are comparatively soft and are readily consumed by dogs, without
gross (pardon the pun) observed changes in their droppings.
 
-Soap is chiefly fat, saponified by mixing with a strongly basic aqueous
solution.
 
In pigs most of the fat is located just beneath the skin, sort of between the
pig and the skin.  It is turned into lard by cooking the skin and attached fat
in large kettles until rendered and stored in wooden, later metal
containers--check your late 19th century catalogs for lard cans--
(cracklings are French fried skin after the fat has been cooked away).
 
Lard is used for many things, including soap, and is not generally made at
the time of butchering.  Different practices and personnel are involved in
butchering and soap making.   Butchering is a male dominated activity and
soap making a female dominated activity; though the same kettles and hearths
may be used for soap making and
rendering.  Bone has no appreciable usable fat and the inclusion of bone
into soap making would, I am sure, be regarded as ridiculous by those
involved.
 
 
 
 
 
Curtiss Peterson
THE RESCUE COMPANY
Box 88
Rescue, Virginia
23424