VERBOORT SAUSAGE FESTIVAL

Every year, on the first Saturday of November, a small Dutch-Catholic farming community 40 minutes west of Portland holds a fund-raiser for the local parish school. Manifesting itself as an all-you-can-eat dinner, craft fair and bake sale, the real reason to go- the reason my father has been taking me here all my life- is the bulk sausage and sauerkraut.


Visitation Parish in Verboot, Oregon

Made on-site and available for sale exactly once a year, the smokey Verboort sausage and fresh, crisp kraut draw hungry people from all over the northwest. The sale begins at 9:00am, but the line begins to form around 6. Shivering and damp, people wait for hours beneath towering century-old sequoia trees to buy a year's worth of meat: the sausage holds up incredibly well in the freezer. My dad came here as a broke college student, and he and his friends would line their pockets with plastic bags so as to better capitalize on the low price of the all-you-can-eat dinner. There's even a beer garden, accessible only by climbing up onto the flatbed of an old farm truck and wishing for the best.


Those massive sequoias framing a sea of automobiles


Another shot of the line


Glory is the bulk sales counter at Verboort