In Little House in the Big Woods, Pa has a hollow tree smokehouse. I always wondered what kind of tree it was – hickory, maybe? Somehow it always bothered me that Pa reached up inside through the door and down through the roof to hang meat on nails he had nailed inside – again, as far as he could reach to nail from both ends.
There was a smokehouse story edited out of the Farmer Boy manuscript before publication, also a maple-sugaring story edited out, among others. But in the Farmer Boy smokehouse tree, Father Wilder hung his meat from nails at the top of the tree, on strings of varying lengths so that the meat was suspended throughout the hollow cavity.
We know the Ingallses had string, because Pa used some to tie the end of the pig’s bladder. Not that there needs to be a vote or anything, but I like Father Wilder’s way best.
