A passion for the meat business started in the Curley family in 1903 when Russell Curley opened a small butcher shop along a creek just north of Fairbank, Iowa. Local farmers would bring in their beef and hogs to be butchered. People from all over town would line the creek on butcher day as the blood (pre-inspection days) from the animals would run down to it and make for the best cat fishing this side of the Mississippi, well, this section of the Wapsie River anyway. Then the carcasses were loaded up and hauled into town to a building to be cut and frozen. Huge blocks of ice were cut out of the Wapsie River in the winter and taken to a corked room and covered with sawdust so it would last all summer. Well, now as years have passed, generations came and went, buildings bought and sold, awards won and won, the Curley's are still making sausage, only in a little different way. With the loss of so many small farmers, big corporations eating up little ones, we turned to the internet to continue our business. The sausage is made in our kitchen and smoked in our garage. This sausage is for our own consumption. And people still come from all over town, not for the cat fishing, but for the smell of the sausage smoking in the garage in  hopes  that  Keith will be handing out free samples of whatever it is he is cooking today.

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