Dressed in her distinctive Grannie costume, Jen Peddlesden has been a fixture of the Red Ribbon Competition at the Chestermere Country Fair since the very beginning.
But after 20 years as Red Ribbon Coordinator, Jen Peddlesden is calling it quits.
“There’s always a time you feel you’ve done enough, or you get old,” said Peddlesden, “And you know I’m 70.”
With a comment like that, one would expect that in stepping away from the Country Fair that Peddlesden plans to slow down which isn’t the case.
While she does plan to spend some of her new found free time with her grandchildren, Peddlesden said that her volunteering with the Chestermere Historical Foundation has been increasing.
“I’ve really been involved with the historical foundation,” she said, “so I was just moving some of my volunteer time.”
She said she’d also consider volunteering on the day of the fair, she simply wants to cut back on her responsibilities to the fair during the rest of the year.
“The work gets very intense and it’s very hard,” she said.
Peddlesden has been involved with the Red Ribbon Competition since the fair started, helping in small ways until eventually growing into the role of coordinator.
With her long history of volunteering, Peddlesden has a hard time narrowing down the memories that stand out over the years.
When they needed advertisers for the Country Fair booklet, Peddlesden baked muffins and then went door to door to businesses.
“I can remember Dorothy and I going around… door to door asking [and] giving them muffins to see if they’d put an ad in the country fair booklet,” she said.
“That was kind of fun.”
Or 2017 when the Red Ribbon Competition had a banner year for prize donations.
“We had nearly $6000 in donations of prize money,” said Peddlesden.
Possibly the most memorable year was when the pies entered in the competition had such bad crusts the judges wouldn’t award a first-place prize.
“I think this was in 2008… The judges called all of us volunteers over and said we can’t give a first prize to any pie here because the crusts are so terrible,” said Peddlesden.
“We were so embarrassed, we think we gave people like third ribbons just, so they wouldn’t feel that we were really mean,” she said.
“The pie crusts were just awful,” said Peddlesden, “It was terrible.”
The following year, the Town of Chestermere had a consultant in for Active Creative Engaged Communities.
After talking with Peddlesden about the bad pie crusts it was decided that she would lead a class teaching how to make pies.
“I practiced for a whole week making pie crust,” she said.
“I really can make a pretty good pastry now after all that practice,” she said.
Peddlesden dressed up in her Grannie costume and had her husband Bill help her teach the class.
“We had 40 people there that ranged from children to a 90-year-old,” she said.
Not only was the class well received in the community but Peddlesden said, “we really turned around the pies in the next two years.”
“And still we have lots of pie entries and people know how to make pie,” she said.
With the success of that workshop, not only did the pie competition entries improve but the Chestermere Agricultural Society started sponsoring a series of workshops titled Preserving You Skills.
“In the spring or early summer the red ribbon committee would pick a thing to do,” said Peddlesden.
“At any one time we made jam, bread, salsa, cupcakes, pies twice, we made butter tarts we made sauerkraut and I think a few other things,” she said.
Peddlesden thinks that those workshops really boosted the quality of entries in the Red Ribbon Competition.
Having stepped away from the competition, Peddlesden thinks that she might enter something into the competition.
“I’ve never entered a pie in the pie making contest so maybe that’s in my future,” she said.
