North House Folk School

Craig and Dianne relocated to Grand Marais from Waseca, Minnesota, where they made their own Swedish Potato Sausage and demonstrated sausage-making at Farmamerica, the Minnesota Agricultural Interpretive Center.  With a focus on organic ingredients and healthy food products, they have been teaching classes at North House Folk School ever since the School opened its doors, starting the foods program  over twenty years ago with their class.  First classes were held in their “3/4 butt” kitchen at their cabin as North House had no kitchen facility at that time.  They have been featured in two books  and the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  They also demonstrated at Cabela’s during their Deer Expo and began incorporating wild game into the sausages.  

Over the years they have expanded sausage offerings to include German, Italian, Mexican, American, Moroccan, chorizo and their own North House Wild.  That started a lot of interest in smoking sausages so a new class was started, eventually morphing into a Meat Preservation class.  At the time they had no idea how to spell “charcuterie” or what it was or they would have called it “charcuterie” instead of Meat Preservation!  These preservation and wild game classes became so popular they are offered multiple times each year.

During that time they were able to work with Jay Arrowsmith Decoux and when it came time to cut back a bit from the teaching schedule, turn those classes over to Jay’s very capable hands.

Over many years Craig and Dianne developed a tasty recipe for braunschweiger and offered a class entitled “You’ve Gotta Love Your Liver…..in the Wurst Way.”  Much to their amazement, it became an instant hit so they continued teaching it once a year. During this time they also continued teaching lefse-making in the fall.  This fall, the very competent Cindy Muus will take over that class and Jay will pick up the braunscheiger class.

Due to popular demand, and against their better judgement, they will be teaching a last Potato Sausage class in November.  Their teaching “careers” began with that class and they are, appropriately, closing their careers with that class that started it all.