Food is, of course, a big part of the event, and eats included freshly made soft pretzels, raspberry soft serve ice cream, lemonade and a barbecued chicken dinner. Additionally, baked goods were auctioned off and for some reason, there seemed to be dozens of ground cherry pies at auction. By the end, these pies were going very slowly, so out of sympathy for the last lone pie, J. and I bid on it. It was a ground cherry crumb pie and turned out to be absolutely delicious.
Out of the 100+ quilts for auction, we settled on a few lovely, old fashioned ones, wedding rings in yellow and cornflower blue and Irish chains in dark green and white. As our quilts came up for bidding, the prices rose, some well past 1000 USD. We were soundly outbid, but we certainly did our bit to push the prices up for charity. As the quilt auction continued, we became determined to go home with a quilt. J. selected a raspberry Trip Around the World patchwork quilt, and we bid until it was ours. And here it is, modeled by our cat, Kusa.
The Fairmount Auction wasn't the only auction in town. My aunt told me about a produce auction that takes place early in the morning in a corn field not far away, so I stopped by early one morning to bid on some end of the season tomatoes. And here they are, my tomatoes, each box costing 2.00 USD. Not a bad deal! (The lot of peaches went for 6.00 a box, also a pretty good deal!)
When you have hundreds of tomatoes, you do what my people have done for a hundred years: you can them! At my favorite dry goods store in Pa, Goods Store, the canning aisle is will stocked with everything you need.
