Doing What Comes Naturally...

The Sausage Story
It is only natural that growing up in a community of predominantly German heritage, that we would meet up with sausage early in life. Our grandfather, Poppa Joe spoke what he referred to as low German. He could also write with both his left hand and his right hand simultaneously on two separate lines, but that is beside the point. In the early 1900's as a young man, he clerked in a local grocery store in this town of Eden Valley. Customers and clerks spoke to each other in German. In later years, when he owned his own grocery store, we recall him taking phone orders and responding in German.

It was in his own "Gaspar's Grocery Store," around 1927, he perfected his own special sausage recipe which was still made by our fathers butcher in the 1980s. In growing up, this special sausage was served at our family table for dinner at noon or for supper in the evening. It was always served Christmas morning.

We recall Alex "Butch" Ludwig in the meat department behind his big wooden butcher block table, wielding evil looking cleavers and knives. The sausage making part of his day really dealt with scraps left over from creating pork roasts, steaks and chops. The scraps were ground and mixed with mysterious and wonderful smelling spices. Limp, wrinkled, string-like lengths of casing were attached to the sausage stuffer and like air filling a balloon, the pork mixture swelled into plump sausages.

Our father, Elmo Gaspar died August 27, 1999. He had always lived in Eden Valley within three blocks of his grocery store and this sausage history. When we came to dealing with some household and store memories, what would becomes of the butcher block table? It was then that the two Gaspar girls answered the question with the birth of our company: SAUSAGE SISTER & ME.