Jean Campbell Drayton Community News 30 January 2009 Mapleton Musings

The Ring

Did you ever wonder how our ancestors kept fresh food, especially , before they had refrigeration?

Pork was cured so ham and bacon were available. Most households kept chickens for their eggs as well as for the pot.

In order to have fresh beef in the warmer months a group of about 20 farmers would form an organization that was called a beef ring. Each farmer would have a share or a half share. An executive was appointed every year. A president, secretary-treasurer and several members as directors or a managing committee formed the executive.

A shareholder was required to supply, in rotation, a young beast to be butchered. The animal would dress out at about 400 pounds of meat, thus supplying each farm family with 20 pounds of fresh beef each week.

There was a butcher in each ring who weekly butchered the animal, weighed the meat and assigned each shareholder their portion. The portions were varied so that , roasts and soup bones were fairly distributed in rotation.

The butchering was done on the same day each week and by late morning or early afternoon all the members of the ring would have picked up their weekly allotment.

At the end of the season all the weights were reckoned. If a family received more than their share they paid for the extra. The money was in turn paid out to those who had received a bit less.

They had an annual meeting at the end of the season to announce the final reckoning and to appoint or elect the executive for the coming year.

There were rings formed at several places around Mapleton Township. One reads of annual meetings being held for the Alma, Goldstone, Zion and various concession roads. These gatherings were not just business meetings, but rather social events including a dinner and games.

James Doig was a shareholder and the butcher for the Zion beef ring when I was a child. The Doig's children were grown and no longer lived at home. My mother and Mrs. Doig had some bartering deal going on. .We had jersey cows so Mom made butter from the cream. She then traded butter for beef.

By the mid-1940s, although refrigerators were not common in homes, there were several cold storage facilities, such as the Drayton Creamery, where one could rent a box and store their frozen meat. The creamery had installed refrigeration to store the butter made there. One wrapped and labeled each portion of meat according to the requirements of the family.

It was always an adventure on a hot summer's day to go into the storage area and try to pick out the package of meat your mother had requested. Sometimes soup bones seemed to be wrapped just like a roast.

With the advent of commercial refrigeration, beef rings were another custom that became a thing of our past.