A group of volunteers congregated in Ladysmith’s community centre kitchen on Wednesday to prepare a large batch of sauerkraut for this year’s Oktoberfest celebration, now just over two weeks away. 

The making of sauerkraut for Ladysmith’s annual celebration of German culture has been a tradition since 1985, the year the festival was first incorporated.  

Every year since then a group of volunteers have stepped up to prepare sauerkraut and meatballs ahead of the big weekend. 

Oktoberfest board members and volunteers Marguerite and Randy Born have been involved  with Oktoberfest for over 30 years, and have been organzing the sauerkraut- and meatball-making parties since at least 2021. 

Marguerite was at the community centre at 7:30 a.m. on Monday morning to receive a 700-pound shipment of cabbage from K&L Dairy, and on Wednesday she and Randy were there in the afternoon getting set up for the evening’s event. 

At 6 p.m. volunteers streamed into the community centre, signed in for their shifts, were promptly given aprons and gloves, and were then assigned a task. 

The Borns come from a military background, which showed itself in the efficient division of labour they created in the community centre’s kitchen.

First, a group of volunteers took cabbages from large bags and quartered them. Then, the cut cabbages were ushered over to a shredding station, where five people used wooden mandolins to thinly grate the cabbages. Next, large plastic buckets full of grated cabbage were toted into the back to be transformed from cabbage into sauerkraut. 

Gerda Bretzlaff, the resident sauerkraut mixer, added coarse salt to the grated cabbage and mixed it until it started to “weep,” or, in other words, until the salt started to draw out some of the cabbage’s water. This process creates the brine in which the sauerkraut then ferments. 

Bretzlaff, who immigrated to Canada from Stuttgart, Germany in 1958, has been making sauerkraut most of her life, and makes it all by feel — no math or measurements needed. 

When asked how she knows how much salt to put in, she vaguely gestures with her hands. “This much,” she said. 

Once the right amount of salt had been added to the cabbage and it has been sufficiently mixed, it was dumped into one of two large vats, where volunteer David Schock used his 100-year-old wooden tamper — a tool with a handle and a large, blunt end — to pack the cabbage down into the bottom of the vat. 

Once the vat was about three-quarters full of cabbage, weights were placed on top of a large wooden circle to top the cabbage, which ensured the mixture will remain submerged under its own juices.

Then, the soon-to-be sauerkraut was left to ferment for what will be 21 days, at which point the volunteers will remove it from the vats ahead of the Oktoberfest weekend and put it into serving-sized containers so it is ready to be piled high onto freshly grilled sausages, or served as a side. 

Marguerite was happy with the turnout at the sauerkraut-making party. 

“We haven’t had this many volunteers in at least a few years,” she said, noting the 18 volunteers who helped out on Wednesday.

Many of the volunteers who were there on Wednesday have been around since the very first festival in 1985, including Bretzlaff, who has been volunteering since day one. 

Marguerite said it’s thanks to the hard work of volunteers like Bretzlaff that the festival is possible every year. 

“There are many, many hours devoted to this,” she said. Randy chimed in too, saying “it takes a village to put this thing together.”

Marguerite said the planning committee meets once a month, year-round, to make the festival happen. 

“Planning for next year will start the day after the last one,” she said. 

She said the festival is a staple of Ladysmith life that gives people a sense of pride about their community.

“It gives people a sense of community and remembering our forefathers,” she said. “This is the biggest time of the year for a lot of people.”

She said volunteers work hard, but they look forward to it all year round and they enjoy giving back to their community.  

In an email to THE EQUITY, Randy Born wrote: “Since the start of Oktoberfest Ladysmith in 1985, in excess of $300,000 has been donated to various community organizations, food banks, churches, and hospitals,” adding that they also donated money to the former Thorne Community Recreation Association for building improvements and maintenance. 

He added that many local seniors and other individuals are delivered a hot German-style meal during the event by various volunteers when such individuals are not able to attend in person.

Randy and Marguerite will do it all over again this week as they and a group of volunteers will prepare hundreds of beef meatballs at the community centre.  

Oktoberfest will take place from Oct. 4-6 in Ladysmith. There will be live music, camping, a bar, a canteen, craft and vendor booths, a truck and tractor pull, and of course, German food — sauerkraut included.

(If you’d like to try your hand at your own batch of sauerkraut, see Pontiac County Recipes on page 9.)