Getting to Know…
Ever wonder how our amazing Apple Pies sales evolved to the production it is today? From 100 home-baked pies in 1972, each selling for $2 to cover the shortfall in Camp Cazadero registrations, we now produce over 1,700 pies each year in commercial, inspected procedures with the funds still used to augment our camping program.
Huge amounts of labor are involved for this event, from preschoolers folding boxes to 94-year-old Ilah Thorp spending two full days slicing apples just this past August. Workers are treated to a BBQ hot dog lunch each baking day.
Fascinating adaptations of used equipment for crust mixing and rolling, apple preparation, assembly, baking, cooling and delivery methods have been engineered by the likes of Bill Stillman and Lloyd Lerum.
Barrels of peeled and cored Gravenstein apples are picked up from the cannery. The apples are individually quartered and sent to our team of slicers in Fellowship Hall who trim and slice the apples for the pies. Meanwhile in the kitchen, a former Colonel Sanders biscuit mixer mixes the pie dough (using our own secret recipe) and then a former pizza machine is used to roll the piecrusts. Pie assembly is completed in Fellowship Hall using a carefully measured recipe. Two convection ovens bake trays of four pies each (the trays, racks and one oven are also former KFC equipment) and the fresh-from-the- oven pies are taken to Memorial Hall to cool. Some of the pies are sold out of Memorial Hall, while the rest are boxed whole or sliced and wrapped for sale at the Gravenstein Apple Fair. The wooden racks and trays taken to the fair were designed by Lloyd Lerum to replace the heavier metal units we used in earlier years.
Since 1979 our congregation has participated in the Farm Trails-sponsored Gravenstein Apple Fair and where for many years we enjoyed exclusive rights to the Apple Pie sales. Other groups also sell pies now, but our booth always sells out, and last August we made and sold 1,723 pies!
I quote Ellen Stillman, herself a former chairperson and faithful worker, “Countless hours have been contributed by hundreds of people to make the Apple Pies sales happen each year. Many friendships have been forged over pans of apple peels and hundreds of people of all ages have been helped so they could have the “Caz Experience” all because of this undertaking. It is a significant outreach program of our church.”
Elyse Mengle
Moderator
