Nile Valley Days followed a familiar, sad pattern amid the COVID-19 pandemic: A beloved community event canceled, highly anticipated social and entertainment opportunities missed, multiple fundraising chances gone.
Nile Valley Days usually features offerings like black-powder and gold-panning demonstrations and wood-splitting and ax-throwing competitions, plus horseshoe contests and kids’ games.
Not all is lost, though. Members of the Nile Women’s Club are still selling their luscious pies and huckleberry cinnamon rolls — and for an entire month instead of just the third weekend of July as they usually do.
People call club president Janet Ahrens and order from a list of 11 choices, with curbside pickup in the parking lot of the clubhouse at 1891 Nile Road in Naches from 10 a.m. to noon every Saturday in August. Pies cost $12 (a $3 discount from the Nile Valley Days price) and six generously sized huckleberry cinnamon rolls cost $20. It’s by preorder only; that way there won’t be any leftovers, Ahrens said.
Pie leftovers? is that even possible?
“Everybody likes pie,” Ahrens said.
Anybody who would like a Nile Women’s Club pie should call 509-658-1610. When orders hit about 30, Ahrens cuts them off for that Saturday. Anything after moves to the order list for the following Saturday. After two Saturdays, Ahrens estimated the club had sold 52 pies.
“It’s been going pretty well. Last week I turned people away ... because we can only bake so many. They have to baked on Friday and you can only make so many pies,” she said.
Customers pay for their pies when they pick them up. Everyone working at the pie pickup wears masks, Ahrens said, with just one person who wears gloves handling the money. All the pies and rolls are tightly wrapped.
“We’re trying to be as safe as we can,” she said.
More important than ever
Members sold $1,200 worth of pies and huckleberry cinnamon rolls at last year’s Nile Valley Days. They usually have other ways of raising funds: They took over the event’s bingo games when the Lions Club folded, rent out their building and hold a fall bazaar and a spring sale. But the pies and rolls have been the club’s biggest single fundraiser for years.
“We’ve been at a loss. We’re not eligible for the COVID-19 emergency funds ... and we had absolutely nothing coming in since March,” Ahrens said.
Though their building is paid for and the Nile Women’s Club is a nonprofit, members still have bills such as insurance, utilities, property taxes and upkeep costs. The clubhouse serves as the member-run Chinook Pass Lending Library, with a few thousand books, a computer and Wi-Fi service.
The idea of selling their pies with preorders and curbside pickup came from Nancy Michel.
“We had talked at a board meeting about doing preordered pies for Thanksgiving and Christmas,” said Michel, a member for more than 20 years.
She follows the Chinook Pass & Nile Facebook page, which mentioned that the Nile-Cliffdell Fire Department couldn’t have its usual Nile Valley Days pancake breakfasts, a big fundraiser. Several clubs and organization in the Nile area host fundraising events during Nile Valley Days.
Michel talked to Ahrens about making preordered pies and asking the Chinook Pass & Nile page administrator, Lisa Todnem, to share the information on the page. Todnem is a big booster of local businesses and organizations and enjoys seeing residents get creative in supporting them during the pandemic.
She called the effort by the women’s club “pies on the fly.”
“I’m so very pleased that our community is supporting their efforts and enjoying delicious pie,” she said in a Facebook message. “I’m proud of our community! We like pie!”
While Michel came up with the idea, she and her fellow members work as a team, she said: “It’s not just me. There are a lot of working hands and they deserve a lot of the credit.”
Ahrens described the club as a social rather than service club, but members support their community in many ways. Along with their much-appreciated library, they raise funds for Dollars for Scholars, the Flying H Youth Ranch and the Nile-Cliffdell Fire Department.
“We just do that because we like to help. It’s not a women’s club project sometimes. It’s just the women’s club is part of this community,” Ahrens said.
The club has served the Nile Valley-Chinook Pass area for more than 100 years, according to its Facebook page. Members estimate it’s been about 110 years. Membership is around 40 and annual dues are $10.
Its community focus is more important than ever.
“We want to help our neighbors. We keep track of each other, give the older ladies a call: Do they need something in town?” Ahrens said. “Especially right now. ... It’s pretty hard because people are pretty worried about coming out. The age of (some of) the women kind of makes them a little leery about stepping out of their comfort zones with the COVID.”
Self-reliant but ready to help
Ahrens is a self-described newcomer to the Nile Valley; she and her husband, George, a volunteer firefighter, moved there nine years ago after building on land they bought in 1989. With his firefighting, her club membership and their church, they’re fully immersed in the community. They help out with cleanup at Jim Sprick Park and other projects.
Many homes are remote, some especially so. Families are self-reliant, even in the worst of weather. Heavy winter snow and summer wildfires can be challenging. A 2009 landslide caused considerable damage to the area, closing State Route 410 for a while and forcing a detour until a replacement road could open.
In lieu of their usual monthly luncheons, Nile Women’s Club members stay connected with phone calls, emails and text messages. Some of the older members don’t have email, so Ahrens calls them. She talks regularly to a few who attend her church, which holds services in its parking lot as per COVID-19 rules.
“It’s better than not going at all and I think people need to see other people, whether they’re in their cars or not,” she said.
Pies, pies and more pies
Club members bake the pies at their own homes on Fridays. Pie choices are mixed berry (raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, huckleberry); blueberry; apple; raspberry cherry; raspberry rhubarb; cherry; peach; apricot; blackberry; pecan and pumpkin.
Apples are donated by Washington Fruit & Produce Co. “They do that every year. They’re really, really nice,” Ahrens said.
Because apple pies are so popular, members usually get together and make up a couple dozen apple pies to get started. Several helped out with that this year.
“We also have women who don’t bake but when we do our apple pies, we have an assembly line,” Michel said. “We have women who will come and peel the apples and prepare. We have women who don’t actually bake but they are helpers.”
Ahrens likes the mixed berry pie and the berry pies. Someone always orders a pecan pie. There’s something for everyone.
Thanks to pie lovers and many other supporters, the future looks bright for the Nile Women’s Club despite current challenges.
“I think we’re going to be OK,” Ahrens said. “We’ll survive this.”
August 16, 2020 at 05:00PM
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Nile Women's Club keeps pies coming despite cancellation of Nile Valley Days - Yakima Herald-Republic
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