State curator Leo Landis opened the latest Tomorrow Plan Speaker Series session — which focused on food and battling hunger — with a look back at canning practices historically. He described Iowa State College’s work to train women to can vegetables during the world wars, such as pressure-cooked green beans. Landis noted that the canning jars are still on store shelves. 

Then there was the preservation of meat. Some was pickled, or canned. But when it came to pork, preservation was a community event, Landis said. “This was a beautiful way to cheat nature,” Landis said. “You butcher the hogs in the winter,” he said, showing a photo of several hog carcasses hanging on a wood frame. The meat was scalded, then left out in the cold air awhile. Then it was cured with salts, and didn’t even need refrigerating. “I’ve had a friend cure a ham for me and had it hang in my unrefrigerated cellar from January to the following the November, and I ate that pork … and I’m here today,” Landis said.