“There are two things you don’t want to see being made—sausage and legislation.”
—Origin uncertain; often misattributed to German Chancellor Otto von Bismark
Driving along Route 116 between South Deerfield and Conway, just as the road rises into the hills, you’ll find Pekarski’s Sausage standing at a curve in the road, about a mile west of Interstate 91. From the road, the white building seems almost like a modest New England cape, but the unadorned clean lines, spacious parking lot and chimneys billowing sweet-smelling smoke let you know this is a place of business.
Inside, the space is austere. Instead of an establishment that’s been going strong for nearly 20 years, as this one has, it’s as if the business moved in yesterday and has just set up. Surfaces are polished and gleaming. The floors could have been installed and walls painted a day ago. It’s almost antiseptic.
But the whiff of something savory you had outside is suddenly pungent and enveloping. It doesn’t matter if you just ate—instantly, you’re hungry again. Inside the shining glass cases are neat piles of perfect sausage links, and standing at the counter in a red apron is someone—quite possibly a Pekarski—happy to help fill your order, give advice, or discuss options.
The place is also a lot larger than it appears from the outside. If the people tending the counter can’t answer a question, or a customer needs something prepared for a custom order, they call for the owner—not via an intercom or telephone, but by turning and shouting down one of the two large hallways that lead to the distant and cavernous back of the building.
“Mike! Customer!”
Mike Pekarski looks as if he were born to work with great slabs of meat and make his own sausages, and as it happens, this isn’t too far from the truth. Tall, with massive shoulders, he’s a man you could easily imagine growling, “Fee, fi, fo, fum” as he lumbers from the dark depths of his workspace, which is filled with ovens and racks of smoked meats. But he is every inch a gentleman. He has a wide, youthful face that suggests someone younger than his 40 years, and he speaks softly, with an enthusiasm for what he does, that’s reminiscent of a person who’s only just discovered their vocation. When you ask him questions, he fixes you with eyes full of earnest attention.
*
When I was in fifth grade, as part of a class assignment, I wrote a letter to some national brand hot dog maker, asking them to send me a photo of what their product looked like without the food coloring. When I told my dad what I’d done, he shook his head at the fecklessness of my effort and repeated for me the quote that opens this story. I thought it was both funny and profound. Not surprisingly, I never got a response from the hot dog maker; hence the lesson learned from the assignment was not one particularly favorable to those who make meat links.
Though I’ve ever since been dubious of what’s inside them, this has never affected my enjoyment of hot dogs, kielbasa or any other kind of sausage. I’ve learned to suppress any squeamishness, and since no dog maker was around to challenge my suspicions, they became truth by default.
This may be why, when I called to see if owner Mike Pekarski was available for an interview, I was half expecting a rejection, or at least some hesitancy. Instead, he was ready to oblige. I explained that I also wanted to take a few pictures. If he could recommend a time when something photogenic might be going on, perhaps I could come then?
He thought for a moment. “We’ll be stuffing sausages tomorrow at two. We just got a big order. If you’d like, you could come in then…”
When I arrived, Mike had been called to the counter to help a customer who had driven for an hour across the Berkshires just to get her roast for a weekend family meal. She described what she was looking for, and he invited her into the back to inspect the huge roast herself and personally advise the cut. I followed.
Like a furniture builder examining an expanse of mahogany, Mike laid a slab of meat on a stainless steal counter and studied the grain of the meat and light swirls of fat, looking for the cut that would match his customer’s needs. “This look good?” he asked.
“I don’t want anyone to go hungry. Better to have more than less,” she replied, and he moved his thick blade a few inches higher and sliced the meat effortlessly. As he trimmed the fat from the roast, his customer explained to me that she’d been a regular customer for years. Nothng anywhere else tasted as good as what the Pekarskis offered.
“How do you recommend I cook this?” she asked Mike as she headed to the register. She began to suggest possibilities, but Mike was decisive.
“Crock pot,” he said. When she seemed taken aback by the simplicity of his approach, he explained, “I’ve tried everything else—sometimes I get good results, sometimes not. It’s always perfect with the crock pot. Stick it in in the morning and come home to it that night.”
When he’d said goodbye to his customer, he invited me into the back to meet his family and some of his employees, all of whom were busy stuffing sausages.
*
I’d built this scene up in my head as something grim and forbidding—as if I were about to be allowed a privileged peek at the seamy underside of the sausage business. The atmosphere couldn’t have been more different, though.
John, Mike’s dad, sat at the head of the table, manning the large device that pumped the well-ground sausage contents through a long nozzle and into their casings. Using a mechanized foot pump, he filled different lengths of casing and then twisted them off and put them on the table where his colleagues were waiting to tie the ends together and finish them off. It was a bit like watching a magician make party balloons, but instead of helium and rubber, they were working with ground-up beast and intestine.
Mike sat next to his mother Charlotte; two other employees were at the far end of the table. At the moment, they were making a batch of their Andouille variety, a mildly spicy sausage that they offer both smoked and not. But the same machine was used for all their varieties—only the spicing of the contents and the size of the casing changed. All their casings are made from pork except the casings to their smaller breakfast sausages, which are made from sheep.
As they worked, Charlotte offered me an apron and a chair, which I declined in favor of taking pictures, and John introduced me to the rest of the staff. Melany had been there for nearly six years, and Tim was their freshman member, having been there four years.
“Tell him your last name,” John said as I was busy jotting down notes.
Tim grinned. “Tim Sinkowiczichotzkowalowski,” he said. When I looked up, defeated, and asked him to spell it, everyone laughed. “It’s Tim Smith, really,” he confessed.
John explained that when his father owned the business in the ’40s, it was a regional custom slaughterhouse—a place where local farmers brought their livestock to have it killed and prepared. The room we were standing in, he told me, was where the actual slaughtering occurred. He pointed to the door where the animals entered and the place where they were shot.
These days, though, the meat is trucked in (chiefly by New Hampshire and Canadian distributors) to be prepared on site. Across from where everyone was stuffing the sausages, the room had two giant smoking ovens. Tim was collecting the completed links from the table and preparing them to be smoked on the massive iron racks.
In around 1967, John explained, the Pekarskis ended their slaughterhouse business and started making kielbasa.
“That’s right around when we first met,” Charlotte said, and John nodded.
“You met over making kielbasa?” I asked.
“Not quite,” Charlotte said. “But almost. No, we met at a polka dance in Deerfield.”
The business closed in 1981 for reasons that were more personal than economic, and for 10 years both the building and the family’s reputation as fine sausage makers were neglected and fell into decline. It was Mike Pekarski, then a student at UMass, who recalled the good old kielbasa days. Feeling aimless and uncertain what to do with himself, in 1990 he suggested the family try to make a go of it again. His parents and sister Karen agreed.
It took a year and a half to get the building back in shape, and the four of them made their first new kielbasa on August 13, 1991. In the early years, they sometimes barely took home a salary, and they were open seven days a week. But, as Mike explained, “Every year we grow a little. We’re always playing catch-up with the amount of business we get.”
They put in a retail space in 2001, and a 2004 expansion added the tremendous smoking ovens. Several years ago, John and Charlotte sold the business to Mike.
“We’re his employees now,” John said.
“Semi-retired?” I asked.
“I hang around here a lot, but I’m going to get out early today,” John said.
“I’m out of here at three,” Charlotte said with her eye on the clock. “Not going to miss Judge Judy.”
*
After hanging out with the sausage stuffers, Mike wanted to show me the walk-in refrigerator where his larger smoked works are kept. Behind a huge wooden door, there was a small room filled with dark brown meats hanging suspended from the ceiling. A pair of smoked chickens hung in netting near the entrance with a note explaining that they were reserved for a customer. Beyond them there was a forest of hams and bacons. Nearby there was a cascade of ribs. The delectable odor was strongest here.
It felt like what a devout carnivore might find inside C.S. Lewis’ magical wardrobe.
As I marveled, Mike explained that while he deeply enjoys what he does, it’s hard work: “It’s more of a lifestyle than a job. That’s what I told my wife when we met, and it’s still true today.”
Several years ago, when his son was born, Mike’s mom declared that they needed to close at least on Sundays, and while he knows it affects their business, he recognizes the importance of taking a break.
Still, it’s clear that sausage making has shaped Mike. When he talks about time, he thinks first in sausages, and then translates for everyone else.
“This morning we did breakfast sausage, then the bratwurst, and now we’re doing Andouille,” he explained. If I wanted a chance to see the smoking ovens in action, I’d need to come back Friday at around three. “Three-thirty they’ll be pretty brown,” he explained. “A bit later might be better.”
Mike began introducing variety to their standard kielbasa offerings a few years ago, starting with the Andouille sausage. A friend had brought him a sample from Louisiana, and it inspired him to make his own. It usually takes him around four or five batches—adjusting each to taste—before he finds a recipe he’s happy with. More recently, he’s added Linguisa and Chorizo varieties, all of which appear to have been well received by a wide spectrum of customers.
“At any time, you might see a beat-up 1990s Ford pickup truck from up the hill out in the parking lot,” he said, “and it will be right next to a 2011 BMW from Connecticut. We don’t ship our products, but people come from about a 200-mile radius. I have people who drive up here from Manhattan, where they can get anything they want, but they need to get their smoked ham from here.”
Mike is very conscious of his pricing and says he takes pains to keep what he makes affordable for as many customers as possible. While Christmas is a busy time for them, the busiest is now—between St. Patrick’s Day and Easter.
That was why I limited myself to one last question. What were his future sausage-making ambitions? I expected him to name some foreign variety I’d never heard of, but he surprised me again.
“Hot dogs,” he said with relish. “I want to make a hot dog the way a hot dog should be made. I want my hot dog to be perfect. The Cadillac of hot dogs. Texture. Casing. Flavor. Nothing full of fat, grease and chemicals. I want to make a hot dog. I want to put it in the smoke house for 45 minutes to an hour, get a nice golden brown color to it, and then pop it in a steamer to finish it off.
“I made a couple batches a few years ago, and the only way I could cook them was in the smoker. And they came out really dark. They tasted really good, but that’s not what people want. People used to make hot dogs around here [in the Pioneer Valley], and I keep hearing old-timers say, ‘That was the best hot dog I ever had.’ Well, that’s the dog I want to make.”
Clearly, it’s not just the succulent meats the Pekarskis prepare that attract customers from hundreds of miles away—Mike and his family are pretty special, too. They inspire trust. And for me, at least, that’s not something I’ve ever anticipated finding inside a sausage casing.
