Photo Essay: A Sauerkraut Party for an 80-Year-Old!

What kind of a birthday party do you throw for someone turning 80? Well of course, you give them any kind of party they want. And if it means a hundred-people-or-so making a ton of sauerkraut and then square-dancing, so be it!

At the far left in this image is one of mom’s brothers, my Uncle Al. High school football player, a Navy man, and a high school teacher for many years, he’s still as vibrant and busy as he’s ever been. Making sauerkraut is such an event for this family that, when one of the younger girls had an engagement party this year, a sauerkraut-making party was what she requested! When it came time for Al’s kids to ask what kind of party he wanted for his 80th birthday, yesterday’s sauerkraut party was what became of it.

The setting for yesterday’s party was this gorgeous location east of Birch Run, Michigan. Al’s daughter Kim and her husband Hal had once owned the house next to this property, sold the house and kept this larger portion. It’s just incredible up there, and yesterday was a perfect day for this event..

In the title for this post I, started with the words “Photo Essay”. Once you click below to make the jump, there are a total of fourteen images, most of them fairly large. If you’re on dial-up, you’ve been warned!

Of course you have to start by trimming the cabbage down for the mandolin shredders. Any damaged outer leaves are removed from the heads of cabbage. The heads are then quartered and the cores removed. Al told us not to remove too much of the core as he didn’t have as much of the cabbage as he wanted. He also said it really didn’t matter though, as leaving the core in with the leaves doesn’t cause any problems. He just likes his sauerkraut to be made without the cores, that’s all! So, out they came. Cutting the heads turned out to be more difficult than it looked. The handle of the knife would become covered with juice almost immediately and would become slippery, making the knife hard to handle.

My dad was at one of the four shredding mandolins when Mary and I showed up at the party. Dad’s 84, but still worked as hard as anyone and had a great time doing it. You can see some of the mound of unprepped cabbage behind him.

These large wooden mandolins, owned by Uncle Art, have three razor-sharp blades that are on three slightly-different planes. With the mandolins each placed over one of four 5-gallon stone crocks, the cut cabbage is set into the box and the person doing the shredding pushes down on the cabbage while running the box back-and-forth across the blades. Making life a little easier, the far end of each mandolin was up against one of the support posts for the porch roof.

Here’s my mom helping with the shredding. No, she’s not smiling like that just because she’s lost a fingertip! You do stop shredding before the cabbage gets too low in the mandolin’s box … More is added to help push the lower stuff down. Shredding the cabbage for sauerkraut this way is seriously hard work. But everyone took a turn who wanted to, and it seemed the older the individual, the more they wanted to do it. I’m beginning to wonder if sauerkraut-making parties may have been even more prevalent than barn raisings at some point in history, particularly here in the midwest.

That’s Uncle Al standing to the far left in this picture. What was interesting to see was a photo on the wall in the other building of the two of them, probably in the mid-to-late 1940s. Mom and Al are standing side-by-side in that earlier photo … and mom’s smile there is just as big as it is in this photo.

Someone shredding the cabbage would shred a couple heads (sometimes three depending on who was with them I guess) and then could take a break. At that point, some table salt would be added to the shredded cabbage and it would be tamped down with these freshly-whittled tamping poles. As more shredded cabbage was added to these crocks, and the more it was tamped, a salt brine would begin forming in the crock, making the whole of it fairly juicy. And in case you’re wondering, at no time is vinegar added to this cabbage. In fact there is no vinegar whatsoever in real sauerkraut. This is a more recent and commercial addition to the sauerkraut-making process, and has no place whatsover in this very old-fashioned party. If you want to know what real sauerkraut tastes like … minus the vinegar … you’ll either have to make it yourself or find a manufacturer who does is right. Both GFS Marketplace and Kroger carry the Hirzel Silver Fleece brand of honest, old-fashioned kraut. Even if you don’t like kraut, you should still try the real thing sometime.

Below, you’ll see Amy. Poor gal … this was the first time she’d ever met this bunch, her boyfriend’s family, and she ended up literally up to her elbows in brined shredded cabbage! She was quite the trooper though, and just kept on laughing at the ridiculous nature of the situation. I guess maybe she was expecting to meet the gang over a quiet dinner? Yeah … right!

Some of the brined shredded cabbage was removed from the crocks and packaged in a couple dozen of these buckets to be sent home with the participants’ families. A plastic bag was placed over the raw kraut. A wooden disc was placed into another bag, the covered disc was placed on the kraut over the other bag, and a large rock was then inserted into that second bag, which was closed with a twist-tie. The first bag was then secured around the bucket with a length of twine prior to the kraut’s instructions being tied to the bucket’s handle. Here Kim and Al finish one, which Kim then showed off for the camera. And all the while the rest of the process was continuing, the mess on and around the porch just kept continuing to grow. Ah, but it was a happy mess though!

Once a participant had shredded cabbage for a while, they received a large pin to wear with pride.

And as the kraut-making party came to a close … that’s right … Uncle Al, on the left in the straw hat with the yellow button … he was still dancing …