When most people retire, they dream of afternoon naps, long vacations and loads of spare time — but not Argentina-born Grace Brock of Vienna.

Once she left her job as a software analyst five years ago, Brock quickly grew bored with organizing her home and wanted more of a challenge. So after two months of rearranging closets and reading, Brock tackled another endeavor: making traditional Argentine criollo and chorizo sausages from her grandfather’s secret recipes.

“My husband said, ‘You have recipes from your grandfather, so why don’t we have a party?’” Brock said. “I started out and asked a friend at a farmers’ market to see if these sausages would sell.”

Apparently, the sausages — her first efforts included a Mexican chorizo with Argentine chimichurri sauce — were a success, launching what has become Brock’s Ole Pioneer Kitchen brand of freshly made sausages and other meat products.

The name of the company — which Brock and her husband came up with during a trip to Kentucky to visit relatives — reinforces Brock’s do-it-yourself aesthetic, which began with 16 weeks of teaching herself how to cook the sausages. The business formalized in 2005 and is truly local, as all products are processed and packaged in Fairfax County.

“My recipes are heirloom recipes, and I am using my kitchen,” Brock said of the conversation with her husband. “I am making bacon the same way pioneers used to.”

When starting out, Brock told her husband that she needed to take sausage-making seriously, so she obtained the proper licensing and inspectors from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services came to inspect the facilities where it was all made.

“At that time, I was working from my home kitchen, and it was pandemonium,” she said. “It was too small and the equipment was too bulky.”

Brock realized she needed more space, and expanded her house to incorporate a separate kitchen and a separate storage room. Now, with “a place to work,” Brock makes about 200 packages of her products, which include 10 kinds of sausage, a week.

On any given day, Brock and her assistant, Milagros Urbina, are hard at work grinding sausage meat, stuffing sausage skins or putting labels on her many products, which include smoked shoulder bacon and the Argentine typico sausages to Italian mild and hot sausages.

“I learned how to make the smoked shoulder bacon from a man who used to make bacon the old-fashioned way,” she said.

Because her sausages and other products are for sale only at local farmers’ markets, Brock finds herself on the road several times a week, setting up in three markets in Maryland and three in Virginia — Manassas, Great Falls and Vienna. And now that she is no longer bored and found something she enjoys, Brock finds her full-time sausage schedule satisfying.

“My husband doesn’t have to see me moping around anymore,” she said. “This makes me very happy.”

Brock is also pleased by the final product itself, made from only top-quality meats (beef, pork and 97 percent fat-free ground turkey).

“This is the way my grandparents used to eat: no preservatives and no artificial colors,” Brock said.

For more information, visit the company’s Web site: www.opkfoods.com.

Recipe

Mexican Country Rice

Grace Brock provides an easy-to-assemble dish that showcases her chorizo sausages; however, you may substitute another brand of chorizo if the OPK brand is not in your fridge.

Serves 4

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 Ole Pioneer Kitchen Mexican fresh chorizos, about 1 pound, sliced or out of the skin

1 medium onion, chopped

1 medium green pepper, chopped

10 baby carrots, julienne

1 cup basmati rice

1 can green beans

1 can red kidney beans

Grated Parmesan cheese for garnish, optional

Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the sausages, onion, and green peppers, and cook until the onion browns. Add 2 ½ cups water and the carrots, and bring to a boil; cook for 5 minutes. Add the rice, reduce the heat to medium low, and cook for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the rice is tender. Turn off the heat, and mix in the green beans and kidney beans. Let rest for 5 minutes, and garnish with the Parmesan cheese, if using.