SPRD buries the beef

It takes hours and hours, sometimes, to prepare a feast that is consumed in a matter of minutes.

Some 150 people turned out to Fir Street Park on Saturday evening to feast on "buried beef" in a fundraising event that supports Sisters Park & Recreation District (SPRD) programs and scholarships. As they ate, they enjoyed a perfect, bluebird fall day and country music from Dry Canyon Stampede.

The feast was days in the making. SPRD Executive Director Liam Hughes secured a cord of white oak wood from the Valley, as a City of Sisters public works crew brought out a backhoe and dug a pit in the vacant lot directly across the street from Fir Street Park. The use of the lot was donated by co-sponsor Bank of the Cascades.

At 8:30 p.m. on Friday night, Craig Rullman led a small party of fire-tenders in touching off a blaze in the pit. Fed by about three-quarters of the white oak cord, the blaze burned for five hours before the fire-tenders got it settled into a thick bed of coals.

Passers-by were drawn to the blaze like moths, intrigued to see such goings on in the middle of Sisters. Strange and wondrous tales were told, dating back as far as the ancient strains of "Beowulf."

At about 1:30 a.m., Rullman tossed bundles of foil-and-wet-burlap-wrapped meat into the coals, where Hughes and the fire-tenders buried them. After securing the pit with snow fencing to foil accidental intrusion, the crew departed to let the beef cook in its primal oven. Some 12 hours later, it came out of the ground as succulent as expected.

SPRD staff and volunteers made a feast of it, rounding it out with beans, corn-on-the-cob and strawberries. Co-sponsor Three Creeks Brewing Co. served up a selection of their fine beers and ales. At 5:30 p.m., the gates to the park opened and patrons hit the food line, then ambled off to find seats to enjoy the music.

Dry Canyon Stampede - Kurt Silva, Lilli Worona, Mike Biggers, Jim Goodwin, Mark Gillam, Matt Engle, and Dave Holmes, with Pete Rathbun handling sound engineering duties - offered up a fine feast of their own: country music from classics like "Crazy" and "Big City" to a few gems that crop up in the contemporary country world.

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.

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