Schulenburg Sausagefest Salutes The Historic ‘Beef Meat Clubs’ and Traditional Sausage Making During This Saturday’s Event
To celebrate the local heritage of sausage-making, the 11thAnnual Schulenburg Sausagefest invites anyone with family stories related to this tradition to share them along with pictures and artifacts.
This year’s event will be held this Saturday, April 11 downtown on North Main Street between Lyons Avenue and Wolters Avenue, including the Railroad Park. Admission is free to everyone.
A booth will be dedicated to story-telling on the east side of the main stage from 2-4 p.m. and possibly longer depending on interest. The Sausagefest Committee provided the following information in a press release: “If you lived in small farming communities or had parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents who lived in small farming communities prior to the 1950s, when electricity and refrigeration was non-existent, you probably have stories, books, and pictures that allow us to reminisce.
“Our descendants were innovative where they helped each other as a community to live off the land by living off what they grew as crops and meat products. The ‘beef meat clubs’ allowed them to join with neighboring farms so they could more safely share a protein source that allowed them to survive as farm families.
“Making sausage has been around for many centuries, although your heritage dictated the types that were made and how they were preserved.
There are many stories here relating to the many different types of sausage made. We can bet one thing, they made use of the full animal - head (liver) sausage, pork/beef sausage, blood sausage, scultz, cracklings, and the list goes on.
“You can bet the stories will be bigger than Texas as a salute to our descendants who made us the fabric we are today. We ask everyone to come share their stories, books and pictures. We will have maps of surrounding counties for you to pin the location of your beef meat club or location where your family lived and made sausage.
Anyone with questions or comments can contact Rodney Kalich at (979) 208-9414 or at
rkalich88@gmail.com.
In followup with Kalich,
he talked to a few individuals who gave more details on how the ‘beef meat clubs’ worked: “They were prevalent in many farming communities where 20, 30, or even 40 neighboring families would create a club. Each family would raise a calf and then each week one of these calves would be taken to a designated farm who had the facilities to butcher the calf. The owner was proficient in meat processing and cut it into different cuts. Then, each family would take the portion allocated to them. Supposedly, it was tracked so that each family would receive different cuts throughout the calendar cycle, preserved by putting in cheese cloth and hung it somewhere cool such as down their home water well.
“The processing normally occurred between Easter and September since, during the fall/winter months, families would butcher their own pigs to make sausage and other salt-cured products that were cured in large crocks and covered in lard.
“There was a log book that the butcher kept - the family that had a building to process animals - who kept track of the history of what type of meat cuts each family received so therefore each
Saturday, April 11 • Downtown Schulenburg
9 a.m. - Fun Run 11 a.m. - Arts & Crafts / Food Booths Open 11 a.m.-6 p.m. - Children’s Activities 11:15 a.m. - Walking Parade 11:30 a.m. - Opening Ceremonies 11:30 a.m.-Noon - SHORTHORN BAND & ST. ROSE BAND Noon - Grand March Noon-3 p.m. - Music by THE CZECHAHOLICS 1 p.m. - Kolache Eating Contest 1:30 p.m. - Celebrity Kolache Eating Contest 2 p.m. - Winners Announced For Wine, Pickles, and Sauerkraut 2-4 p.m. - Story Telling of the Beef Meat Clubs & Traditional Sausage-Making 3 p.m. - Hog Calling Contest 3:15 & 5:45 p.m. - Chicken Jackpot Bingo 3:30-6:30 p.m. - Music by MARK HALATA & TEXAVIA 4:45 p.m. - Best Wurst Dance Contest 5:30 p.m. - Sausage Toss Contest 7 p.m. - Winners Announced for all Sausagemaking Categories 7:30-10:30 p.m. - Music by THE MATT BONNER BAND would be treated as equitably as possible. The way it sounds is that there were not many rules except each family had to provide a calf. One person joked to me that they remember their parents saying, ‘That calf must of had a lot of liver,’ since they must have gotten a lot of liver back.
“The clubs were named after the head butcher family name or the community they served. Their main purpose was to allow families to have beef available throughout the season of Easter to September.”
Kalich also shared that, in reading about these clubs, that they later fell into the creation of meat markets and barbecue markets in the small communities. And there were waiting lists for families to join the Beef Meat Club. As we kick this discussion off - we know that there were many Beef Meat Clubs and would like people to come visit and discuss. There will be a prize for the most representation from a particular meat club.
As always, the sausagemaking contests will highlight the event. Teams and individuals will be entering their creations in the following categories: Klobasniky, Sausage-Based Concoctions, Smoked Sausage, Everything-But-The-Oink!, Dry Sausage, and Fresh Sausage. In addition, there are competitions for homemade wine, pickles, and sauerkraut.