Split Day (Boating V)

Today was a split day. Usually, in a typical day, I have one major event, such as church or a boat ride or a project to work on at church (like the bean supper). But today I had two major events. I helped out with the pie baking for our blueberry festival this morning and then, this evening, I went for a boat ride.

For the last five years, we have had a blueberry festival in August to benefit a charity. The charity generally changes with each year. Last year we helped out a free clinic. This year we are helping out a battered women’s shelter.

The blueberry festival has different kinds of homemade crafts for sale and all kinds of baked goods made with blueberries. I made cupcakes with blueberry filling for the event yesterday. The festival is tomorrow so today was the major pie baking extravaganza.

My job was to put the tops on the pies, crimp them and then poke steam vents in the tops. Three other people rolled out the pie crusts, someone else mixed the filling, another person filled the pies and put sugar on the top when I was done and someone else was in charge of baking them. We have three ovens at church and two of them are convection ovens so it actually went rather quickly this year (they are new ovens – what a HUGE blessing!).

We ended up with five large pies and about 100 small six-inch pies. WOW!!

Here are most of the pies lined up and cooling (some were still in the ovens when I took the picture):

And here is a close up of some of the pies:

Aren’t they beautiful??? I’m sure they will sell out quickly tomorrow! They usually do.

Later in the day, my brother, Ted, e-mailed me and asked if I wanted to go boating. Of course!

When I arrived down at the dock, there was a duck playing in the water next to the dock:

Here is another view of him swimming:

I think he was looking for something to eat. I wish I had some bread to feed him. I will have to try to remember to bring some next time we go out boating.

It was a wildlife kind of night. When were were at the end of the lake, we saw a flock of geese and one of them became startled and took off while I was trying to turn to take their picture:

Here is a close up of the same goose taking flight:

Can’t believe I managed to take that picture!

As we were floating along the lake, I decided to take a picture of someone’s yard filled with wildlife. Ok, they are skeletons of dead wildlife. And before you think that is really gross, look at the picture to see what I mean:

Yes, those are statues of dinosaurs skeletons. Not sure what that is all about but I thought it was worthy of a picture.

All in all, it was a busy day but very satisfying. I was able to do two of my most favorite things all in one day…baking and boating. Made it a perfectly wonderful split day!