"Schlachterei" reads the invitation by the Jasper Deutscher- verein. It announces that on Saturday, March 19, 1994 beginning at 8 a.m. members will meet to make pork liver sausage, blood sausage, and head cheese. Everyone is to bring a favorite sharpened knife to help cut up meat and maybe a cutting board. Served for lunch at 11 a.m. will be liver and onions; supper at 5 p.m. will be sausage, mashed potatoes, sauerkraut, ribs and beans. Following supper the cold-packed meat and sausage not used that day will be auctioned off.

It is an old tradition in Dubois County. An entry from the "Jasper Weekly Courier" of December 2, 1876 reads: "Several of our citizens killed their hogs, this week, and some of the on-lookers were surprised, on reaching home, and feeling for their handkerchiefs, to find a piece of hog's liver or a tail!!!"

In the rural days and areas of our state, butchering a hog was an important and joyous occasion, for there was the prospect of good meat to go along with the usual staple of potatoes and kraut, and of soup (Metzelsuppe) from the broth you cooked your sausages in. It was also a great occasion for socializing. Butchering required much preparation ahead of time and a lot of work on "Schlachttag," especially with the cutting up and cleaning of the guts. So you had relatives or friends and neighbors who would come and help.

Lillian Doane of Jasper remembers it from her childhood:

When I was a child we lived on the farm and we always butchered. My brother had to do the shooting. When I asked him why it was so important that the hogs be killed that very morning, he explained that it was to save the blood for blood sausage (Blutwurst). The men would bring the hogs up, dip them in boiling water and hang them up, and scrape and gut them. And the women would empty the entrails and bring them in and would wash them and scrape them and wash them and wash them. Eventually by the time the entrails were cleaned, the hogs were also cut up, and there would be the hams and all the meat trimmed, and out to cool. All the red meat would be ground up for pork sausage (Bratwurst) and the liver had been cooked and mixed with other things for liver sausage (Leberwurst). The blood pudding (Blutwurst and Pressack) had been put into the large intestines and cooked; then for the "Schwartemagen" (head cheese or souse) the mixture was put into the stomachs and they were also cooked. And then you had the wonderful broth (the "Metzelsuppe") in which all of this had been cooked. If it was cold enough most of this broth was frozen and later it would be cooked into mush, together with cracklings. To render the lard, it was put into a press to be squeezed out and it left clumps of cracklings. These cracklings were broken up into the broth and then a cornmeal mush was made and we would have that for our supper with milk, it was called crackling mush.

Only one man in our neighborhood knew how to season the regular pork sausage ("Bratwurst"). George Miller would come and they would bring in the tubs full of meat for him to season. As he seasoned it, my mother would cook a little to see how it tasted, and if it was alright the sausage was stuffed into a round press which had a long round spout and a wheel to turn it. The clean intestines were pulled over the spout and as the wheel was turned it would press the ground meat into the intestines, and then each link was tied and that was your sausage. And this is where the Indiana breakfast sausage comes from, it is actually "Bratwurst."

Today very few Hoosier farmers are still butchering themselves. Those from the Dubois County area will take their animals to Merkley & Sons of Jasper, a German style butcher, who makes wonderful sausages. Besides Merkley there are other good German butchers in Indiana. The best known is Klemm's Meat Market on South Street in Indianapolis. However, you can get good bratwurst, knockwurst and headcheese (also called souse) in most Indiana food markets.

To this day "Leberwurst, Blutwurst und Bauchfleisch/Suppen- fleisch" (liver sausage, blood sausage, and boiled pork belly) with "Spützle," or potatoes boiled in their skins, or "Bauernbrot" (dark bread) and--of course, Sauerkraut--are the elements of every "Schlachtplatte" (butchering platter). In rural Wuerttemberg and Black Forest restaurants butchering was/is a regular part of the business. On "Schlachttag" a broom is hung outside the door to let people know "what's cooking"--"Schlachtplatte" (butchering platter)--served with a glass of beer, apple cider or new wine.

From "Hoosier German Customs, Beliefs and Traditions"
collected by Ruth Reichmann, Max Kade German-American Center, IUPUI

FURTHER RESOURCES by Robert Shea