Passport to Texas

Hanging sausage to dry at Sauer-Beckmann Living History Farm

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This is Passport to Texas

Buying ready to cook food wasn’t an option for early Texans. Most grew vegetables and raised animals to feed their families. Timing was everything when processing certain foodstuffs.

05-Things like this butchering that we’re doing today, or making sausage, has to be done in the wintertime.

Summer heat would spoil fresh meat. The Sauer-Beckmann Living History farm, at the LBJ State Park and Historic site, interprets early Texas life.

05-What we’re doing on a daily basis down here is just trying to show you how people would have lived a hundred years ago.

Which means this early 1900s farmstead did not have the benefit of refrigeration. If families wanted bacon or sausage in summer, for example, they had to plan ahead and make it during the cooler months of the year.

05-Because a lot of the meats we prepare, they take about ten days to cure.

Attempting to cure meat in 10 days of Texas– summer heat would raise a stink. Staff uses 60 % beef to 40% pork when making sausage, a favorite of the German families that settled Texas Hill Country communities.

10-You know, these people ate a lot of lard, they ate a lot of fat. But they were working so hard that it really didn’t make them fat, because they burned it all off. They worked their way through all those calories.

Something to consider next time you’re in air conditioned comfort, eating a sausage sandwich, unbuttoning the top button of your jeans.

That’s our show… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I-m Cecilia Nasti.

Buffalo Soldier Reenactors

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This is Passport to Texas

With a lack of relatable role models, it’s easy to understand why some urban youth may feel estranged from the outdoors.

04— You get raised thinking: Okay, these things are not really for me.

Twenty-two-year-old Devonte Hill recently graduated from college, and makes short documentary films about the outdoors. Meet him on the Texas Parks and Wildlife TV show.

07—What I really want to be is a storyteller. I just want to show people things that maybe they hadn’t seen before – give them a
different reality.

Hill learned about the Buffalo Soldier Program when he was a State Park Ambassador, and started sharing their reality with other young people.

13—The Buffalo Soldiers were created in 1866 to assist and protect the settlement as it continued to move further out west. Luis Padilla works with the Buffalo Soldier Program; he says they were the first black professional men in the US Army.

14—When the Native Americas saw the Buffalo Soldier, he wasn’t used to seeing a man of this color in the wool uniform. So, the only thing the Indian could do at that point is compare this new soldier to something he knew out on the frontier. And that something on the frontier just happened to be the buffalo.

The soldiers also had a reputation for being fierce fighters. Learn about their contributions to Texas history on the PBS Texas Parks and Wildlife TV series the week of March 29 through April 4, 2015. Check your local listings.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.