Mennonite Country Auction coming Saturday
A young volunteer scoops apples for apple cider during a previous Mennonite Country Auction. This year’s auction is Saturday.
File photo
Dozens of tables were set up for attendees to mingle and enjoy food for sale, from sausage on a stick to ice cream, at the 2021 Mennonite Country Auction. This year’s auction is Saturday.
Michele WhiteEagle, regional chair of Mennonite Disaster Service, stands in her information booth at the 2022 Mennonite Country Auction.
RITZVILLE — The quilts will be hung, the hymns will be sung and the cider will be pressed this weekend when Menno Mennonite Church holds its annual Mennonite Country Auction.
This is the 45th year the church has held its traditional fall auction, according to the church’s website. Besides the auction itself, the festivities will include hand-pressed apple cider, food vendors and music.
As of Monday, there were 84 items for sale at the auction, 52 of them quilts, according to the catalog. The styles are varied. One, called Rainbow Rose, depicts a butterfly flower in scintillating multicolored sunlight. The Fiesta quilt uses bold colors on a black background to striking effect, while the Mousetrap quilt turns a mundane instrument of rodential death into a stylized block pattern on a floor-like background. There are quilts with stars, squares, trees and tulips, many of them hand-made by local donors.
Besides the quilts, there are hand-crafted knives, a hand-made wooden truck, a U.S. Mint proof set and hand-made lazy Susans created from sagebrush and corks. There are antiques galore: kitchen tools, model cars, a miniature tractor and a box of toys dating to the 1940s. There’s a quarter beef, bred half-Angus, half-wagyu, cut to the buyer’s preference. Several getaways are offered as well: Leavenworth, the Spokane Symphony, a pumpkin patch firepit evening for eight.
The auction also features a performance by the Liberty Quartet, a Gospel singing group from Spokane. They’ll perform on the sale stage at 10:30 p.m. and again at Menno Mennonite Church’s regular Sunday service the next day.
All proceeds from the auction will go to the charitable work of the Mennonite Central Committee, which provides food, water and education to vulnerable communities and offers disaster relief all over the world, according to its website.
The gates open at 7 a.m., according to the church’s website, which also recommends that attendees come early to be sure of getting a parking space. Breakfast will be available from 7 to 9 a.m. The sales booths open at 10 a.m. and the auction starts at noon.
Menno Mennonite Church is located at 1378 N. Damon Road between Moses Lake and Ritzville. From Moses Lake, take Interstate 90 to exit 196 and turn left onto Deal Road, then turn right on Rosenoff Road, and right again onto Damon Road.
