Church Suppers

I’ve been thinking about, for sometime, getting more active with this blog. My original thought was to use it to record an uncommon way of life and that is still my predominant intention. I have not pursued that intention really, with any consistent activity, and have mostly used this blog to participate in the annual Blog Action Day event, coming up in mid-October. I intend to post a blog again this year.

There won’t be any photos, though I think they would have been a great addition to this blog. I have been thinking about that also. Photos give the eyes some visual candy to help the wordy stuff go down better. It was on our drive to an annual “church supper” fundraiser yesterday that my mind was caught up in the realization that the event would be great in pictures. I did have my iPhone 5 with me and considered that but for now I stayed my inclination, it felt “intrusive” somehow but maybe I will grow into it.

Our closest neighbors belong to a humble, little rural country church, a Methodist associated religion, called Rhodes Chapel. For most of the 25 years that I have lived here, we have gone most years to participate in their fund raiser, though we have missed a few. So, first we went with my in-laws, then we added children to our family, then my in-laws left us and so, now it is my husband, my self and our boys.

They serve fried chicken (they have a little enclosure out back to cook in) and dumplings, green beans, mashed potatoes and corn and a few other sides along with ice tea and lemonade. The dinner cost us $8 for adults (of which my oldest son now belongs to that category) and $5 for children. There are homemade desserts – pies and cakes – as well. I ate too much, even though I took small servings.

After supper, they have a quilt auction. We usually look at the quilts before leaving. I always looked for the traditional quilts, pieced together in traditional patterns, from scraps of fabric. My favorites are generally the tiny floral and patterned kinds of scraps. Some of the quilts are modern printed material, batted and embroideried and well “quilt” stitched. There was one like that with a Buck Deer and Doe embroidered over the print.

We have stayed for some of the auction, in the years that my in-laws were alive. It is a “true” auction with a fast talking auctioneer and pointing at people who fidget in the least. It always amazed me, the prices the quilts would fetch. $100, $200 and more sometimes. This is not a wealthy church nor people with a lot of disposable income. It is quite humble in size and décor and it is a “family-run” church to a great degree. The family that our closest neighbors are part of and why we go to be supportive of their fund-raiser.

We are always at the end of supper serving time each year and so, we go the fastest route, over the one-lane, cement bridge that the Castor River (tiny yesterday – raging when it floods and closes the road) flows over. We always take the “long-way” home, past the natural artesian well that still flows and was once crucial to early farmers and pioneers in the area. The water is sweet with minerals and very cold.

We pass Denman stables on the way to Marquand. They always seem to be ending a day-long trail ride as we pass the place after a Rhodes Chapel supper on a Saturday evening in mid-Autumn.

These are some of the things I love about living in rural isolated wilderness, long-haul community, simple pleasures and basic living . . . maybe next year, I’ll take some pictures of all this.

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Tags: Artesian Wells, Church Suppers, Community, Fund-raisers, Horses, One-Lane Bridges, Quilts