April 27, 2024
It’s Pie Contest Day. Pies have to be dropped off by 10:00 AM and the winners will be announced at 11:00 AM and you must be present to win. So after breakfast we got the tables cleared and all the dishes in the dish room. Nancy and I took the pies to the church. We were not sure how many pies to make. If you read it one way, it sounded like you needed one to judge and one to auction. Actually we only needed one. So we decided to keep one and share it with our guests. Plus I really wanted a slice of it. The smell was driving me crazy. On the way back, we stopped at the Wildflower to talk to Chris. We sat and talked for a while and left there and went back to the church. While waiting for the judging to end and awards to begin music was provided with a little sing a long. It was wonderful. At breakfast, Nancy announced to our guest about the pie contest/auction. As we were sitting in the pew, one couple from the Inn stopped by the church. I had befriended the local “Pie Lady”, Reda. She works at the Rainbow Cafe and we have eaten there a few times. Her pies are awesome, especially the Banana Split Pie. The others look awesome and the patrons of the Rainbow Cafe rave about them. The true pie lovers actually come in, order their pie with their meal. Not after. Reda entered two pies.
The church started a program to provide beds and bedding to local students that had none. Some families are so poor that they cannot afford beds for everyone in the family. The church has developed the Blessed Beds charity. The pie auction is one of their fund raisers. Church members were actually doing the auction. Before the start of festivities, one church member introduced his family visiting from Florida and Indiana. They had a family activity so all were at the pie auction. The one relative from Florida belongs to a quilting club. She rallied here club to make quilts for the children’s beds. She had two large totes full of bedding and books for Blessed Beds. Very touching moment. After that the winners of the pie contest were announced. My pie was not among them. Then the fun began. The auction. There were certain pies that a lot of people wanted. The auction process was fun to watch. A couple of pies actually sold for over $100. My pie did bring $40. Not bad. We had some money so Nancy decided to bid on a couple of pies. She bid on one but was out bid as we only had $30. Then came a pie that was very interesting. It was called an Arkansas Trash Pie. It contained pretzels, chocolate, nuts, and many other snack items. As the bidding progressed, the guests decided to chip in some money. First was $20 and once the bid reached $50, they handed over another $20. The bid was holding at $70. Nancy’s bid. Another relative of the church member told Nancy she would give her $15 if her husband could have a piece of that pie. She said that the $15 would just be given to the charity. Nancy bought a pie for $85. We found a knife and the husband tried the pie. In the meantime, the out of town family bought about 5 or 6 pies. They donated easily over $400 to the charity. Awesome family. Then they told everyone there that they would not be able to eat all of that pie so they took them to the kitchen and sliced them. Then offered up pie to anyone who would like to sample any of them. Nancy did find a couple of small pieces to try. All of them were very good. My friend Reda did win 1st place and that pie sold for $125. The Arkansas Trash pie was the Grand Prize winner.
We took the pies back to the Inn and sliced them up into small pieces and put them out for our guests to enjoy. I got my slice of apple crumb too. Was a very good day. I think I finally finished the dishes by 4:00PM. Then at 7:00PM we headed over to the Square for some great music. What a day!
