by Joe Ritter, 4 Nov 2006
My first recollection
of sausage making in our family
dates to about 1946 or 1947. My
parents, grandparents and various
cousins all chipped in for the
purchase of several piglets. These
were penned, fed and cared for on my
grandparent's farm until they
reached maturity. Then the pigs
were converted mostly into sausage
(or "wurst" as my grandparents
called it), although I seem to
remember pans of Schwartelmagen
(head-cheese) as well. Only the
older people ate the latter. We kids
wouldn't touch it!
The wurst making was a multi-level
activity with Großvater taking
charge of seasoning the raw meat
mix. He did this very well
considering that the mix could not
be tasted due to concerns about
trichinosis. As a young boy
watching all of this, it appeared to
me that operating the crank on the
sausage extruder would be a lot of
fun. However, after about five
minutes on this job, I found it to
be a lot of work, not to mention,
boring. Upon pleading extreme
fatigue, I went down to the creek to
do something really interesting like
skipping flat stones across the
water.
After all of the mix had been
stuffed into many feet of edible
cellulose-based casings, a portion
of the fresh wurst was divided among
the relatives. Later, Großvater
smoked the remainder, using a
mixture of apple and hickory wood,
cut from trees on the farm. The
smoked wurst was also apportioned
among the relatives.
While I preferred the cooked, fresh
wurst (usually served with boiled
potatoes, and either einbren
spinach or einbren
sauerkraut), I remember that my
mother would make delicious
sandwiches of the smoked wurst for
my school lunches. These consisted
of slices of bread coated on one
side with spicy mustard and covered
with thin slices of the hard
salami-like smoked wurst. I was the
envy of my classmates who were
making do with store-bought bologna
or cheese.
However, when all was done, someone
in the family, probably Großvater,
did a cost analysis on the entire
operation. The conclusion was that
it would have been less expensive
and certainly less labor-intensive,
to have purchased pork butts on
sale, rather than raising the pigs!
In subsequent years, this is exactly
what was done.
