Even the rain couldn't spoil the 2009 New Holland Summerfest. This is my favorite BBQ competition. Melvin Stoltzfus and crew do a great job organizing this event. There were 76 teams competing. We had the same site as last year and were happy for that. Ron, Mike, and Stephanie got there around 10:30 Friday morning with Brian arriving shortly after and all began setting up our site. The early arrival proved a good decision, what with the tight ingress into some parts of the grounds and the weather deciding to let its presence be known. The weather turned out to be a big factor for the 2 days we were there, raining all of Friday afternoon and most of Friday night, quickly turning our site into a muddy mess. We thought of reenacting the famous Woodstock mudslide, but nobody wanted to shed their clothes. (Thank God for that). Saturday was a full day with 6 categories to be turned in, starting at 11:30AM. First up was sausage which we mixed and stuffed Friday afternoon, followed by chicken, ribs, pulled pork, brisket and chef's choice, which in our case was pecan pie. This made for a fairly hectic morning, but everything was turned in on time. We were pretty happy with most of our entries and awaited the judge's decisions. Our smoked mozzarella cheese and roasted red pepper sausage placed 33rd. Our Chicken placed 40th, our ribs placed 19th, our pork a dismal 63rd, our brisket got us a walk with a 7th place finish and our pecan pie placed 19th. Overall we finished 29th. Not a great performance, but not terrible considering the level of competition here. As always, we saw some old friends from the circuit, and made some new ones. Friends and family also showed up to show their support and root us on. I think the hardest part of the competition was cleaning the muddy mess that our trailer turned out to be. Thankfully, my wife Norma and son Ron helped me with that chore. The trailer is cleaned, packed and ready for the Southern York County BBQ Competition in Shrewsbury on Sept 11-12. Stop by and have some good food and camaraderie. |
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