AMESVILLE, Ohio — The first Amesville Homecoming Festival is set to take place next weekend in the village, Saturday, Oct. 11.
The festival runs all day and will consist of a community yard sale, soup and pie contests, historical displays and more, said Ames-Bern Volunteer Fire Department Chief Brad Maxwell, lead organizer for the event.
The homecoming festival arose because organizers sought a fall event for the village, Maxwell said. The village historically hosts the Amesville Firemen’s Festival every summer, which celebrated its 75th year inJuly.
The homecoming event is also supported by the the Amesville Grange #798 and Amesville Masonic Lodge #278. Maxwell is a member of both the fire department and Masonic Lodge.
“Come back, set a spell and visit friends, family,” Maxwell said. “If you’ve ever been to Amesville, you’re always family, so to speak. You can come back and run into old classmates, whatever. It’s a homecoming — come home to Amesville.”
The homecoming festival will consist of an “anything legal” sale that anyone can participate in, 9 a.m.–5 p.m. The Masonic Lodge will also do breakfast 7:30–10:30 a.m.
Pies for the pie contest are due by 11 a.m.
“If everybody bakes two pies, brings them in, we’ll take the top three pies, auction them off,” Maxwell said. “And then the runner-up pie, or everything that didn’t get voted in, we’d do a pie walk to get rid of or to give them away to participants, and the pies that we sampled for the championship, we’d sell by the slice at the Grange.”
Setup for the soup cook-off starts at 10 a.m. and it runs 11 a.m.–3 p.m. Winners will be announced at 3:30 p.m.
“[The soup cook-off] it’s people’s choice,” Maxwell said. “[For] $5 you can get a bite, buy a bowl and the spoon. You go through and sample it soups], you vote for your favorite one, then you go back and get a full bowl and have whatever you want. That’s your lunch.”
Proceeds from the activities will support the organizers, Maxwell said.
The Mason Lodge supports “all sorts” of charitable causes, Maxwell said. “We donate to organizations or individuals that are having a rough time.”
The lodge typically has only a breakfast to support itself, Maxwell said. However, “This month, since it’s during homecoming, we have a brother that has been — he’s a young man in his 40s, he had a surgery, got infected and has been unable to work and stuff like that,” he said. “So we’re doing the breakfast as a benefit to his family.”
The Grange holds community events and supports charitable causes, too, Maxwell said.
Proceeds that support the fire department will go towards “tools, equipment, whatever we need,” Maxwell said. “It actually benefits the community. It helps us keep everything up to date.”
Maxwell suggested that folks could make a day out of the event and also visit the Appalachian Color in the Hills festival, just 10 miles up SR 329 in Glouster.
Stay up to date with the homecoming festival on its Facebook page.
