Every once in a while, we find ourselves part of something that becomes more than the sum of its parts. This happened to me again last weekend, when the Dayton Vineyard hosted the 2nd annual Pretty Good BBQ.

I got the idea to do this event about a year and a half ago. The Dayton Vineyard church had a new campus in an area of Dayton that isn’t going great, and I wanted to do something to help get word out about the church being there. I posted a short note on the BBQ-Brethren site, thinking I might interested some local cooks to help cook pulled pork and brisket for sandwiches to give away (the Vineyard is good at giving stuff away!).

Instead of just a few Ohio cooks, I got a bunch of cooks from the Great Lakes area that said they’d be here. That was last year, and we all cooked 500 lbs of meat. This year, I wanted it to be bigger… and it was!

This year, the idea was do double that much meat, and the week leading up to the event, everything fell apart. My co-organizer, Pat, went through a rough week, and we had nothing as of Wednesday morning. by 12:30, though, we had what we needed to buy 1000 lbs of pork. With other meat that Pat donated, we had close to 1200 lbs to cook.

Saturday rolled around, and cooks came into the church yard and started to set up. We had 4 cooks (Rick, Kevin, Chris and Rene) from the church. Mark, my competition teammate, brought Ralph, his catering trailer and our original homemade smoker, Bruce from Lebanon, and Roger brought everything he could load into his van from Cincinnati to round out the locals. Then we also had Clark from Wisconsin, Jeff and Ty from Illinois (and Wisconsin), Mike, Scott and Bubba from Michigan and Bob From Pennsylvania. And, as usual, Bob, another one of the vineyardMEN leaders, helped out with everything.

After just about everyone was set up, Pat pulled up in his pickup with half a ton of pork in the back, some of which had to be started quickly. The guys fired up their smokers and got started!

As the day progressed, a few guys made ugly drum smokers, including Ty, Jeff’s girlfriend’s 16 year old son. He didn’t know he was making his own smoker on Saturday, but was thrilled to do so. And the first thing he cooked on it, a bit Boston butt roast, came out perfectly, and he made it to give to people in need. Pretty cool.

Bob, a friend from Columbus, couldn’t stay to cook, but he came by and did a demo on how to roast your own coffee, which my wife loved, and we’re going to start doing that now, too. And Neil came by from Chillicothe to spend some time and to pass around samples of his Sweet Gold bbq sauce (review to come!).

Saturday night was dinner with the church staff. I think some of the staff thought it was for them, but what it really was for was to say ‘thank you’ to a bunch of guys that came out to cook. This event couldn’t happen without the cooks; it’s not just something that anyone can do or has the smokers to do. We filled up 4 huge smokers with meat to get this done, and it worked. I was glad to have the time to say thanks before the event was hectic on Sunday.

Each cook did his part, but put together, the event was much more than any one person. It was humbling to see these guys look at over half a ton of meat and just figure out how to get it done. I’m still amazed and humbled by the effort of these guys, and it proves to me once again what a great group of people barbecuers are.

I want to thank the men from vineyardMEN that helped with the event and all the servers that came to help. I couldn’t have done it without Steve, the outreach pastor, and Pat, who doesn’t really need me around to do this next year. I also want to give special thanks to two companies that donated to help make the event: City BBQ gave us enough sauce for everything, and Bob Evans gave us 36 pounds of sausage for Saturday’s dinner (which included a fatty competition). Their donations helped make the event happen.

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