Making sausage - an old time tradition

By Joan Janzen

Hunting season is on the horizon. After the hunt, there’s sausage making, something farmers have been doing for over a century. In the history book “The Wind Still Blows - Marengo Remembered”, a pioneer resident and his friends are pictured ‘making sausage’.

Bill Armstrong was born in Brock and moved to Marengo with his parents in 1921. At the age of 15 he began transporting kids to school by van for a period of three years.

After working as a truck driver in Vancouver and joining the Royal Canadian Signal Corp as a Dispatch Rider during the war, he returned to Marengo and began farming.

His wife was a great cook and it was always an open house at the Armstrong place. Bill and his wife enjoyed many varied interests including card playing, music, photography, gardening, poetry writing and sausage making. For many years hunters came from the United States, and sausage making always came shortly after the hunt was over.

It’s been said that ‘a picture speaks a 1000 words’. This photo from 1960 speaks a thousand words about sausage making. L-R: Bert Cathcart, Doug Ellis, Bill Armstrong, Dick Ellis. Photo (“The Wind Still Blows - Marengo Remembered”).