Hackney City Farm. Photo K Flude
Following Martinmas, farmers used to slaughter a good many of their animals because of the difficulty of feeding them during the winter. So this was the time to make sausages from all that meat and guts. Follow this link for a Tudor Sausage recipe.
Pigs were a very productive part of the Medieval and Early modern farmers’ economy. Almost as much pork was eaten as lamb. The upper classes, of course, preferred beef. But even the lowliest family would keep a pig. They would be pastured in forests, commons and fallow fields around the village, foraging for themselves on whatever they could get. In Autumn, they would be taken to specially grown copses of pollarded oak groves. The farmers pollarded the trees to keep them short and bushy. They could use the wood they pruned for wood working projects, or for firewood. When the acorn season came, they would hit the low branches with cudgels to release a lovely torrent of acorns on the floor for the pigs to feast themselves upon. So they grew fat for Martinmas when they were slaughtered.
Another benefit for a community of peasants living on the margin was that the sow might have 6 – 14 piglets. When the time came to slaughter the pig, the small holder could swap piglets with others, and share the bounty of the slaughtered animal. This would be reciprocated, and help made good food available more of the time.
For more on the benefits of pigs to agroecolog, have a read of this fascinating site: forests-of-pork-the-agroecology-of.
Random Sausage Fact
Sausages were severely rationed in Germany in World War 1 because they used nearly 200,000 cattle guts to make gasbags for each of the Zeppelins that bombed London. This made them very difficult to shoot down as the gas was held in so many separate bags.
To read my Zeppelin post look here:
First published November 2024, revised 2025