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Bill Penhollow, left, carries two sacks of barbecued meat while his uncle, Carroll Penhollow, lifts another sack out of the barbecue pit Saturday at the Lord’s Acre Day celebration at Powell Butte Christian Church.
Scott Hammers / The Bulletin
Take a ton of food and volunteers - mix
You’d have yourself a Lord’s Acre Day, a Powell Butte fixture in its 63rd year
By Scott Hammers / The Bulletin
Published: November 08. 2009 4:00AM PSTPOWELL BUTTE — When Chuck Smee, of Tumalo, first started volunteering at the annual Lord’s Acre Day celebration at Powell Butte Christian Church, he tended to end up with less-than-desirable assignments.
After 16 years, he’s finally won himself a coveted role, hoisting steaming bags of slow-cooked meat out of the church’s barbecue pit.
“I’ve finally graduated to pulling meat,” said Smee, 50. “You really gotta put in some years for that.”
Lord’s Acre Day is for those who’ve put in their years, according to Jeri Kula, of Redmond. At 63, Kula is as old as the event itself, and she’s volunteered at Lord’s Acre nearly every year since she was 6 years old.
Kula spent this year’s event helping to sell nearly 1,000 pies, each one handmade by members of the church.
With pie sales, the barbecue lunch, an arts and crafts auction and a fun run, the money raised at Lord’s Acre funds missionary work, college scholarships and improvements to church facilities.
For Kula, the highlight of the Lord’s Acre experience is the opportunity to work closely with her fellow volunteers, and to see old friends who’ve left Powell Butte behind.
“A lot of people who don’t live around here come back for Lord’s Acre,” Kula said. “It’s kind of like a homecoming.”
At age 73, Carroll Penhollow, of Redmond, is the undisputed champion of Lord’s Acre Day volunteers. His father was the minister at the church when the event was created, and Penhollow has volunteered 62 out of 63 years.
Penhollow said Lord’s Acre Day began when his father and other church members learned of a similar practice in the south, where farmers were encouraged to donate an acre of whatever crops they were growing to support the church.
Early Lord’s Acre Day celebrations in Powell Butte featured nothing but donations from local farmers and ranchers, Penhollow said. Now, they’ve evolved to include a few store-bought items.
In order to prepare enough food for several hundred lunches, work at the barbecue pit begins early. Penhollow said they lit the coals in a pit roughly 6 feet wide and 60 feet long at 6 p.m. on Friday, and allowed the fire to go out around midnight.
Pieces of beef, ham, goat and lamb were wrapped in bedsheets and then in burlap bags, and placed on the warm coals, he said, before the pit was covered with boards and a mound of dirt. Almost 12 hours later, the dirt was swept away to reveal the fully cooked meat.
Struggling against a brisk wind to keep her plate and her last piece of ham from blowing away, April Carr, of Redmond, said she and her husband, Steve, decided to come to Lord’s Acre Day for the first time on Saturday as a way of getting out of the house on a cold morning. April said she was shocked at the number of people who showed up.
“It’s hard to believe,” she said. “A traffic jam in Powell Butte? Crazy, right?”
Scott Hammers can be reached at 541-383-0387 or at shammers@bendbulletin.com.
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