Boonville/Philo to Lead Mendocino Fair Interfaith

Boonville -- July 6, 2005

Anderson Valley UMC and Philo UMC, which for 50 years have had a presence with apple pie sales, this year will again also take the lead for an interfaith Mendocino County Fair presence -- and is encouraging all the churches in Boonville and all the county UMCs to participate.

St. Paul's Community UMC of Point Arena will be bringing a string band. The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, the Buddhist center in the town of Talmadge (near Ukiah), will come to share their Word and will lead chants at the fair, which hits its stride on Saturday, Sept. 17. The fair is held in Boonville. An interfaith service will be held Sunday, Sept. 18 at 8:30 a.m.

Since the 1950s, the Anderson Valley and Philo churches have baked apple pies. For 210 pies, that's 420 pie crusts! Jo and Jim Gowan of the Anderson Valley church donate all the needed apples from their orchard. Pat Hulbert of the Philo church coordinates the baking, done in the fairgrounds kitchen. In August and September, they do the work in stages: mixing the pie crust dough from scratch, rolling out the dough, freezing it, assembling and baking, wrapping, and freezing the pies for the big weekend.

The two churches net over $6,000. After paying for the ingredients and the fair fees, there is enough left over for both churches to pay their apportionments in full, as they have done for years. Hulbert and her crew just had a pie/ice cream sale for the Fourth of July celebration in Boonville. For that they baked only 30 pies -- huckleberry as well as apple -- as a warm-up for the big show.