Meet one man with passion for local event 

••• 

Ted Burkhart started preparing for New Year's Day in September, but he was asleep on the couch at midnight when the ball dropped and the rose ascended.

For Burkhart, the most important part of New Year's was the pork and sauerkraut. Lots of pork and sauerkraut.

Burkhart, of Leola, has been a co-chairman of Upper Leacock Fire Company's annual pork-and-sauerkraut dinner for "more years than I care to remember," he said.

For Burkhart, 43, and about 100 other volunteers, preparation for the county's longest-running pork-and-sauerkraut meal began more than three months ago with 7 tons of fresh-picked cabbage. It continues today as the last of the equipment is stored until the last calendar page of 2009.

In all, about 2,000 two-quart containers of sauerkraut were sold, beginning just after Thanksgiving, and 2,150 people were served Thursday at the Leola fire hall.

People come from as far as Allentown, Philadelphia and Maryland for the traditional Pennsylvania Dutch promise of a year of good luck for consuming pork and sauerkraut as their first dinner of the new year.

The volunteer fire company began serving the meal 42 years ago to raise money for its operations. It has grown in size and scope. Now, the $20,000 profit from the event covers about a third of the firefighters' annual expenses and provides savings for equipment purchases, Burkhart said.

But the event has transcended its original purpose. It has evolved into a community tradition.

"It's not only a traditional fundraiser for us, but it's a family event for people," he said.

Fire company members and former members return each year to volunteer to serve the meal.

"It's become their New Year's tradition," he said. "Some people we only see on New Year's Day."

Patrons return every year not only for the food, but also to see people they haven't seen since the year before, said Harold Hoover, longtime fire company president.

"People come back for years and years," Hoover said. "I see people with their children and grandchildren."

And, with the meal, they are helping to keep alive a Pennsylvania Dutch tradition.

"We have a lot of people who come in and say how they used to make it themselves and now they buy it from us," Burkhart said of the sauerkraut.

Burkart's family also used to make sauerkraut. He recalls cabbage being grown in a small garden plot, shredded and placed in crocks in the cellar.

"It was part of the summer and fall events," he recalled of his childhood. His family stopped making it years ago.

He began helping to make sauerkraut — on a much larger scale — after joining the fire company about 18 years ago.

A paramedic, he started with an ambulance company, then began running to calls with both ambulance and fire companies. Burkhart now divides his time between his job selling wheelchairs, hospital beds and other equipment for Ephrata Medical Equipment, his part-time job with Susquehanna Valley EMS and volunteering with the Leola ambulance and the Upper Leacock fire companies.

Burkhart, who is not married, became president of the fire company while still in his 20s. Now, the rhythms of the sauerkraut process are part of his annual routine. It starts with two workdays in late September when the cabbage is cleaned, cut and "stomped," he said. Bruising the cabbage releases its moisture, which is mixed with salt-water brine for fermentation.

The cabbage is packed into 37 plastic barrels for eight weeks. About a ton of the sauerkraut that emerges is packed into the two-quart containers for sale at $5 each. The rest is baked and sold on New Year's Day.

Along with the sauerkraut, the fire company volunteers prepare 2,000 pounds of pork and 2,000 pounds of potatoes — and 300 pounds of beef hot dogs for people who do not want pork.

The beginning of the week was spent pre-baking the pork and sauerkraut, which were reheated Thursday.

Today, a crew of about a half-dozen people will complete the cleanup.

They will wash all the equipment before packing it away for a year.

Burkhart said he has never tried to calculate the number of hours that go into preparing the meal. If he did, he might add to the rumblings of others that the event has gotten too big to continue.

"We might feel exhausted after the next couple of days, but that's not really an option," he said of stopping the tradition. "As long as we can keep going, we will."

E-mail: bharris@lnpnews.com or call 481-6022