WASHINGTON

Cattlemans on the men, Pinch Fronts on the ladies; if you grew up watching John Wayne movies and your closest encounter with a corn producer was called a supermarket, these are the hat styles you would expect to see in a room packed with cowboys and girls.

It wasn’t reality, however, at the Washington County Field & Friends Party held at the KC Hall in Washington on Saturday, Feb. 1. There were no hats on the ladies and baseball caps dominated on men.

But the focus of the night was not fashion, but rather fundraising, as the Washington County Cattlemen and Washington Keokuk County Corn & Soybean Growers sponsor some 30-40 events and scholarships every year.

After folks enjoyed a perfectly seasoned meal of prime rib, green beans, baby potatoes, and cornbread served by Flamin’ Flips BBQ Pit, sweetly finished with a slice of homemade pie by Janet Stutzman and Cathy Greiner, it was auction time, and this was where folks showed their generosity – and desire.

Auctioneer Dwight Duwa took the mic from MCs Greg “Kentucky” Koch and Stephanie Sexton for this portion of the evening, quickly raising funds from 10 donated lots, which included items both practical – 100 feet of Galvaneer fence, a metal feed bunk – and edible – a quarter beef, a whole beef. Sporting events were also on the block, including Hawkeye and ISU football as well as NASCAR tickets.

Mike Berdo’s whole beef brought in the highest amount at $4,500, followed by the metal feed bunk from Evans Welding, which sold for the high bid of $3,000. The donated items raised over $15,000 total.

It’s possible the dessert auction that followed was even more spirited; just how much money can 10 plates of cookies and candies raise? The answer: a little more than a whole beef.

Every dollar of raised from the desserts goes into the scholarship fund; the producers award several scholarships to high school graduates every year. Scholarship recipients baked some of the sweets up for auction, as did the Beef Queen and Princess, as well as Corn & Soybean board members.

Bidding for the first lot, cupcakes baked by Beef Queen Jade Sheetz, started out conservative; the cupcakes went to Rep. Heather Hora for $250. Things escalated by the third lot, brightly frosted sugar cookies by Beef Princess Averi Janecek, which sold for $800. But that wasn’t the top price reached in the sugar auction; the apex arrived with the tenth and final lot, Corn & Soybean Growers board secretary Kerri Bell’s Famous Scotcheroos, which sold for $900.

Not ones to waste food, the event organizers cleaned out the kitchen and brought out the leftovers at the end of the dessert auction. The remaining three whole pies and three prime ribs sold for over $3,000, bringing the amount raised for scholarships to over $8,000.

Many unique items were also donated to the silent auction, which remained open through the entertainment portion of the evening. Kansas City-based ventriloquist Kevin Horner made his audience laugh before they departed into the night with swag bags filled with items promoting Iowa corn and beef, including a steak knife.