(New Berlin) — A Guadalupe County Labor Day tradition reaches a major milestone this weekend as the New Berlin Sausage Festival celebrates its 75th year with a full day of food, family activities, auctions and entertainment.
The festival is set for Sunday, Sept. 6, from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. at the New Berlin Community Center.
The annual event benefits the New Berlin Volunteer Fire Department and New Berlin Community Club.
Rachel Howell, a longtime volunteer, says the anniversary is a chance to celebrate a tradition that has remained closely tied to the community’s German heritage.
“This is our 75th year. We’re celebrating 75 years. They started the festival in 1951 as a way to preserve the German heritage of New Berlin,” said Howell. “This is a big fundraiser for our community and for our fire department. The community club is responsible for taking care of the actual building where the location is, and their community works include giving out scholarships to children from the area for college and maintaining their community club, which is a historic building.”
Howell says perhaps the most important beneficiary is the volunteer fire department.
“Almost half the budget of our fire department is made from the sausage festival. So it’s a very important thing for our fire department,” said Howell. “Like many others in the county, they’re struggling because of the growth of our county and the cost of things going up. Things like tires- our normal tires maybe cost $100 a tire, but for our bigger trucks, they can range up to $500 just for the tire. We also have a lot of new costs with getting gear, like wildland gear for fighting grass fires, which we know we’re so dry right now.”
Howell says the main event will, of course, be the sausage supper.
She says the sausage plate includes homemade pinto beans, potato salad, sauerkraut and applesauce, along with the festival’s signature sausage. Sausage on a stick and sausage sandwiches will also be available later in the day.
“The plate is $15 and it consists of multiple homemade items, but the sausage, most people come for the sausage,” said Howell. “Our sausage is still made from scratch from a recipe that people have been making the same sausage for, I would say, at least 100 years.”
While the sausage supper will remain the same, she says there will be some changes to the overall event.
She says organizers have moved the traditional bingo fundraiser to a separate event in February, allowing this year’s festival to feature several new activities.
“We’ve made some changes due to budget kind of constraints, but we’ve made some great changes that I think will be fun for people,” said Howell. “We have events going on at different times in the pavilion this year, and that includes a sausage-tying contest with balloons, a pie-eating contest, chicken-poop bingo and some other fun things going on that we haven’t normally had in the past because we did live bingo. We’ve moved that bingo to February so that we can have a big, fun event for Valentine’s Day.”
The festival will also feature a silent auction, live auction, country store, and games throughout the day. The live auction begins at 5 p.m.
Sausage plates are available for purchase at the event, and only credit cards will be accepted.
Plates will be served beginning at 11 a.m. and will continue until the food runs out.
The New Berlin Community Center is located at 8815 FM 775, New Berlin.