Virginia Festival Obtains Grass Roots Community Support

Thanks to all the competitors coming out to cook at the KCBS BBQ competition. All are helping us with our cause.  This one: Aporkalypse Now just won at  Swinetastic 2013!

I wanted to give a great big thank you for everyone who is helping me get this festival going in Winchester--well, I call it Winchester but it's really the tiny hidden unincorporated town of Clear Brook that houses the old Frederick County Fairgrounds. 

Thanks to my vendors like Jay Dickey's Sauces who are coming out to sell their wares!

I explained to the Winchester Star that when I was 19 I set up a food stand and started my career there. The fair used to be jammed with people and they would come from neighboring counties. It's a tradition, the old Frederick County Fair.  It's not the newest fairgrounds, or the biggest,  but it's the one that means something to me.  It's country.

Kirsten Sowers, is coming all the way from Philadelphia in the middle of her vacation to perform for us.

I really couldn't do it without all the help from the bands or the community. People don't realize how much effort or cost it takes to have a festival.  You have bands to pay, a soundman, ASCAP & BMI fees (even after you pay the bands to sing), security, permits...............

 

MIK Woodworking helped us set up our cornhole area!

..............  fairground rental, insurance, dumpsters, cleaning, port a johns, attractions advertising, radio ads, cable tv ads,tshirts, flyers, signs,  and trying to get an electrician to modify or generators to give enough juice to your competitors, oh my gosh it all costs a pretty penny.

Centennial Broadcasting was willing to work with us. Shout out to Mario Ordonez. The other station thought $67 for 15 seconds was a great deal. Um, no, those dollars need to be raised for Cancer Care pal!

Thanks to all the local companies like Johnny Blue for helping us by giving us a great deal!

You try to cover some costs from vendors, sponsors, or admission but in this case we've decided to drop so many free passes or discount coupons just to get the community involved. On top of that, a portion of the gate we feel strongly should go to the Clear Brook Volunteer Fire and Rescue because volunteer firemen don't nearly get enough thanks period.  Additionally some of the gate will  help the local Clear Brook church who is helping  us with the parking.

The local Exchange Group is doing the alcohol sales and they do a lot of good for the community. Come out and support their organization.  As for the food, we are giving a portion of that to CancerCare, so we hope you will come, drink and eat!  

Did we mention we will have deep fried oreos and kettle corn ?

So how do you come out on top so that you can donate a nice sized chunk to charity? You hope for good sunny weather and lots of Community Support.  I was in shock that even people from Pennsylvania wanted to help me - they were willing to donate generators (Keystruct) if I needed them or propane (Thanks Suburban Propane).

Companies like AskNeal, helped reduce their normal rates to help us with this festival.

Countless hours, planning, and still so much to do.  So why even do it?  

My wife (left) learned how to cook from her mother (right). She had her when she was 21.

For us, it's personal.

When my Mother-in-Law told us she had colorectal cancer in September 2010, she had decided to go thru chemo and get a small tumor removed. Routine operation, and she was in good health. She cooked for a living, loving her job and the town of Danforth, Maine where she lived. Two weeks before Christmas in December 2010, her surgery was a success in a Maine hospital. She was declared cancer free--the tumor removed and her lymph nodes were clear. Plans to take her home the afternoon of the next day were foiled when they got the call later that evening that she was dead from unknown circumstances. Even after an autopsy, no one to this day will ever know why.   

Sending light to all of those battling or that have lost someone to cancer.

My mother in law told me when she died, not to mourn or have a funeral. Have a damn big party, lots of food and music and celebrate her life.    We couldn't seem to regroup fast enough when seven  months almost to the day, my wife's stepfather took his own life. After 33 years of marriage and a broken heart, he drank himself to death, taking off his wedding ring and writing a note. He could not bear life without her and carried her tin of ashes with him wherever he went.   Our family was in turmoil.  When you are faced with something so horrible, it is sometimes hard to shed light on it. 

CF Sauer helped us with banners, free spices, and more. Thank you!

Our first ever HoggingUp.com is dedicated to her. and that's what we are doing.  That's why we are putting our money, and our soul in it. It's purely a do good festival.   We've  cut our competitors off to give them personalized service.  We've not sold tickets to avoid passing ticket fees to the public. We've gone grass roots and knocked on doors of businesses in Clarke, Stephens City, Winchester, Martinsburg, Inwood, Clear Brook and Shepardstown to tell them about this.

Signet helped us with a giant sign, reducing it by LOTS off the regular pricing. That's community support!

If it's a success, we will damn sure make this an annual event. We would want to choose different area non profits each year to help. 

Thanks for big names like Hatfield for believing in us!

It's a hell of a lot of work, and it's not going to be perfect, but it's going to be our best shot of giving something back to the world and the community.  Turning a bad situation into something good.

So much support from West Virginia, and from  Around the Panhandle Magazine, check them out here!

Thanks to the companies who helped me with donations for the public, the hotels for giving great discounts, and for all the help I received from Richard Leight and the Frederick County Fair board.

Grand Rental Station has helped with product donations.

So the next two weeks I will spend modifying the Frederick County Fair into Virginia's hottest new festival......I will be busy as all get out and unable to talk to you guys.   I hope to see you there.

Virginia Festival Uses BBQ To Raise Money and Awareness

Barbecue is magical to me.

Barbecue: What Does It Mean to Me 

I've not  talked to you all about what barbecue means to me. Barbecue is something more than just a past time, hobby or career for me. I choose barbecue when I was still young and dumb, not sure where I wanted to go in my life.  I experimented with rubs and smokers and open pits, different woods and different methods. In Baltimore, back then, dry rubbing was not as familiar as it is now. After the little barbecue shack my brother and I had made the papers, and Pit Beef was deemed Baltimore's BBQ, the rest for me was history.


However, for me a life in barbecue takes a lot of work.  I took the hard road. Barbecue in my world means an old stick pit, feeding the fire with hardwood,  turning my beef , pork, turkey legs, chicken or ribs tirelessly for hours.  I don't have a fancy smoker, and no electronic devices to keep my pit going. It's 100% my manpower and I'm an old dog now, gonna be the big FIVE-O this year.   After a long day at the fair feeding the masses, I can barely walk, my hands are swollen and I'm a burnt up mess. All in a day's work for me.

Look how purdy. Wouldn't change a thing.

I don't want to change my way of doing things, even though I wish I could sometimes.  What's really important is the things I've learned along the way.  For one, I learned to follow your dreams. Sooner or later you will succeed.

I've also learned you can make some of the best friends in Barbecue. Some of my pals are my fellow food vendors--we can sit right next to each other at a fair, sell the same items against each other, and still talk at the end of the day.   They eat my beef and I eat their ribs. That's how it is in Barbecue.  You can eat twenty different kinds and they all taste different and all taste good.

I eat at other barbecue guys' restaurants when I'm not selling my own and I buy their spice and barbecue sauces to use at home on my own food.  The Barbecue competitors wow me, and I've met some great people along the way.  Eric, the Hess brothers, and Myron Mixon gave me some tips on competing but I'm too darn busy selling each weekend to try.  Retirement for me will mean competing although I never see that day coming. I'll probably die with tongs in my hand, at least that's how I envision going to barbecue heaven.  You see, barbecue is in my blood.

What BBQ Really Means to Me  : Raising Awareness

Two years ago, something I don't like to think about, was when my wife's mother beat cancer. At least that's what the doctors said.   I saw her fight for her life with the chemo and I had to go back to Maryland while my wife, her brother and stepfather drove back to Maine for her routine operation to remove a small intrusive tumor in her rectum.

It was that day at the hospital the doctor said he removed her tumor successfully, and surrounding lymph nodes just to be safe, and they tested negative for cancer. My wife, her brother and stepfather were celebrating her success that day, while my mother in law recuperated in the hospital.  They left her about 7pm, to get some rest.  I was so happy she was okay.

They would never see her again.  A call from the hospital at 1am would put everyone in shock. Calls from my wife in Maine to Baltimore to wake up our whole family, she was gone. Just hours after they celebrated her life--she was dead.

Even an autopsy would not explain just why. She didn't appear to have a blood clot or heart attack.  Was her system depleted from worrying for months about it?  Did the chemo drain her?  Was it just her time?  Only God knows I suppose. We will never figure it out.

What's worse than that?  After 33 years of marriage, my wife's stepfather would die only months later.  He took off his wedding band and wrote a note.  Suicide, you may say so, but a broken heart, for sure.

The family was immobilized by all of this. There were no funerals or viewings. Everyone was in shock. That's when my wife said, "Mom always said if she died to throw a big party and celebrate her life. Why not try to raise money for cancer awareness?"

Raising Awareness Through BBQ  Find a Cure and Stop Procrastination

If you ask my wife about Cancer she is very jaded.  Perhaps because it's taken her whole family from her. Her mom (colorectal), her grandfather (lung), her grandmother (colorectal and pancreatic) and of course had a direct result on killing her stepfather.  She complains that  Cancer is all about the research and chemotherapy when in fact it should be about truly finding a cure.  Is it impossible because there are so many toxins on our food, in our water, and in the very air we breathe? Or  is it possible and just simply a money maker and form of population control?

So, when something bad hits you it's time to move in a different direction. The Hogging Up BBQ & Music Festival started out of an idea that we can make a difference. I can use my voice in BBQ to do something GOOD.  The first festival is in Winchester, Virginia. This location is because it's one of my very first fairs (ever.)

First and foremost one benefactor will be CancerCare.org, who wish to thank for helping my mother-in-law when she was so stressed about her bills. They gave her options, ways out, free counseling and loopholes to get some of her excessive copays and coinsurance paid.  They aren't into the drug end of it, or the treatment end of it, but all about the patient and their families. That's why we are doing it.

Let's not forget how we will be helping three area non profits :

• Beer & Wine 100% profits the Winchester Exchange Group
• Some of Gate: Clear Brook Volunteer Fire Department
• Some of Gate:  Local Church

 If that doesn't tell you what BBQ means to me, I don't know what does.  I'd like to thank all my supporters of this festival, but will do that in another post. Stay tuned. 

What Does BBQ Mean to You?
Shoot me an email and tell me for a feature.