Welcome back to our morning show visit today on WRCO.
We're talking next about the Blue River Autumn Fest, which is happening this very weekend.
Amazing that this time has gone by so fast summer time, but this is always kind of the sign of school starting again.
So joining us in the studio, Justin Dagenhart, and we're also going to be talking a little bit about Jason's smoke.
Jason is in the studio with us to talk a little bit about them.
They'll be in the action in Blue River this coming weekend.
But first of all, Justin, let's talk a little bit about what's, what's happening.
It looks like new and improved autumn fest this weekend.
Yeah, it's kind of the same old,
we had a Shassan in there this weekend.
Hopefully everything kind of works out together.
Um, for the crowd, everybody kind of come in the park at the same time and be busy.
Hopefully.
No doubt.
So it kicks off on Friday.
Maybe you could kind of tell about Friday events, first of all,
uh, so Friday night, uh, our men's fast pitch tournament starts, um, that's a staple and at autumn fest for 40 some years.
Um, that's, uh, I believe the first game starts six.
Um,
And then we have our, uh, Uker tournament in the park starts at seven.
Uh, and then our water fights under the lights, uh, fireman water fight starts at seven also.
You ever combine the two and get the water fights going with the Uker tournament, you know, somebody gets too hot with the cards or something.
Or do you ever do it?
Oh, no, I don't think they'd like that role.
Well, but when I think of blue river fast pitch softball has kind of been a staple there at the park over the years.
It has been, it's been fast
pitch
as
long as I can remember.
And so that tournament is coming in.
Any idea of number of teams and where they're coming from?
I believe they're at 10 to 12 right now.
There's a couple that are not totally committed yet, but it's always 10 to 12 usually.
Talk about to all of the people that helped put this on.
It takes an army to put on a festival of this size, doesn't it?
It does.
I mean, there's 38 members on the department and everybody is doing something at least two weeks ahead of time.
Um, and then the gentlemen that are like doing this, uh, fast pitch tournament, Matt Anderson and Stan Grimm, they've been working on this all summer long, going to tournaments, getting teams lined up to come in.
So it doesn't just start in August.
We started in January planning.
And those guys will get it going.
I'm guessing there's going to be some really good action for people to watch.
Isn't there?
There is.
And there's been, you know, years in the past, I don't, not a hundred percent on this year, but there, there's been teams in the past that have been, uh, Olympic.
quality teams.
I mean, literally Olympic quality teams playing in a blue river, which you're not going to see that this area of the state.
So
that tournament continues until Sunday then, just
correct Saturday and Sunday.
Um, I believe the last game, they'll try and have it four to six o'clock Sunday, depending on how all that rolls around.
But
well, so far we're reading you a good forecast.
Hopefully it stays that way.
Yeah.
Not real hot during the day, cool temperature at night.
It seems like it's going to be a really good weekend.
You've had all kinds of weather for the fest over the years.
We've had floods to 100 degrees.
Yeah, you certainly have.
This is a big fundraiser for the department as well.
It is.
It's the largest fundraiser that the fire department does.
We have a couple smaller ones throughout the year, but this is our main event.
And we're kind of looking into new gear for a few of the guys.
Our requirements say they're 10 years old.
They need to be replaced.
We've got quite a few that are 11, 12, 13 years old.
We're working on a couple every year trying to get it, which are three to $4,000 a set.
So we just try to keep up on it every year.
And this is.
pretty much where the money's going to go this year.
Yeah, it takes a lot of money to outfit the whole department,
doesn't it?
Well, 38 guys and $3,000 a piece, and that's quite a chunk.
No doubt.
Well, let's look ahead at Saturday at the Autumn Fest.
What's going on that day?
So Saturday, 10 a.m., the Friends of Blue River have sponsored some talks in the community building.
Chassan's back rib carp petition will start at 11.
We have a bean bag tournament, sign up at 1230, all starts rolling at one.
Then Saturday afternoon at two, we start our antique tractor pull, roll that in at six o'clock into the farm tractor pull.
Five PM at the gazebo above the park there, we're just right in with the tractor pull.
We'll have our scavenger hunt around town.
And then eight PM, high mileage starts.
How many years have you had high mileage at the park there?
I believe this will be
the fourth.
They draw a big crowd, don't they?
They do.
They fill in and the way they have everything set up.
If you want to be at the tractor pole and don't want to hear the music, you can kind of hear it.
but it's not super loud.
I've talked to the people that live across the street from the park and they really don't hear it.
It's just the way it lays in there and the way they've got everything angled.
It all kind of stays in the park.
So we're not upset in the whole town.
As we're talking about Saturday, maybe we need to talk about the backyard rib competition in a little bit.
That'd be a good idea.
How about it?
Let's put Jason on the spot.
Hey, good to have you.
Thanks for having me.
Tell us about your business if you would.
We're a small metal shop.
Our business started building custom smokers.
The business escalated.
Our has grown into a e-commerce business.
Most of our sales are online.
We manufacture everything right there in Bosqueville.
But we live in Blue River and this is our third annual backyard rib competition and the whole idea behind it was to help Blue River kind of raise some money our local fire department and
who doesn't like good barbecue.
So tell us a little bit about the idea for the smokers and where did that idea come from?
They say every man reaches a point in life and I had reached that point in life where I was either going to get into motorcycles or barbecue and I chose a barbecue and I built my own smoker.
So I built up my first offset at home in the shop and a
it was actually my brother-in-law that said, man, build me one.
And then before you know it, I was building smokers for a few people and we started putting our content online and on social media and the business just kind of grew from that.
That's how it all started as far as building smokers.
And do you ship them all over the country?
Yep, all over, all over the United States.
We also make other products as well.
We make rocket stoves and
Uh, collapsible fire pits and, um, hand rails and anything else.
You know, we do a lot of custom metal fab work.
How many people do you employ?
Uh, right now there's 12 full-time employees and my wife, Miranda and myself.
Yeah.
Miranda chose, she's kind of the silent part.
Oh
yeah.
Yeah.
Miranda rules the rules, the roost for sure.
But, uh, yeah, we've been.
We've been doing this since 2019 and it just we moved to Wisconsin I'm originally not from Wisconsin if you can tell y'all have accents Yeah, we moved here in 2018 and yeah hit that midlife crisis I guess and build a barbecue smoker and it's turned into our Our current business and that's and that's what we do
Um, currently,
there are worse things you could do with a midlife crisis.
Yeah.
Motorcycles.
I'll say either one of those.
They're probably safe.
Right?
Right,
Miranda?
Yeah.
No, I'm good with the barbecue stuff, but for the competition, we do have 22 teams competing.
We have a people's choice, um, where people can, um, bring in non-perishable foods or $10 and you get to participate and vote on your favorite.
They have appetizers and things they offer.
So that's a new thing we added this year for our third year.
And all the money goes to the Blue River Fire Department as well as we also do a rocket stove toss where we have a six inch rocket stove which is one of our staple products.
And they
throw beanbags.
They throw beanbags and see if they can get it into the rock.
So they
buy, buy bags and then they
win
the stove.
I think last year it was like 10 bucks, gives you five throws or something like that.
It's going to
say you're
not throwing a stove.
That would
be.
No,
no, no, you're throwing
the bags.
Throwing it into the stove.
Yeah.
So what have you learned about good barbecue over the years, Miranda?
It takes time.
It gets it gets better and better.
Let's put it that way It starts out kind of rough, but then he gets better and better at it and
every year every year Yeah, but
good barbecue is hard to beat.
Yeah, is there a secret Jason?
I can't tell you.
Oh,
there is a secret to it rest
time You gotta let the meat rest
trust me on this one the key to a great
brisket is at minimum a four-hour rest.
If you can give it at minimum a four-hour rest, it will change your whole brisket experience.
But that's so hard to do because you want to
eat it.
You want to eat it, right?
The timing is always off because you cook your brisket and then everybody's waiting to eat, so you cut it right away.
And if you would just let it rest for four hours at minimum.
It's a long day.
If you can go longer, even better.
But yeah, basically you got to stay up all night though, right, to get it good.
Yeah.
If your pit, if your pit's designed well and is efficient,
Um, you can usually get an hour or so sleep in every now and then, but, um, no, you got to keep the fire fed or, um, you know, you can do like some and get a pellet smoker and just,
you
know, let the easy bake oven work for you.
Did you have one Miranda when you were young, an easy bake oven?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Of course.
That's where it all started.
Yeah.
So we're encouraging people to come out here for the, for the Shayson smoke third annual backyard rib competition.
Um, can people still enter the competition?
The
competition is full.
We
have 22 teams, but we're asking for everyone to come out and join the, the autumn festival be going on this year.
Uh, there's a
lot to do.
And there's the people's choice.
So basically like Miranda has spoke,
you buy your tickets you have two tickets and you walk around and you try the the teams appetizers maybe try their ribs whatever they're offering and you vote on you know that team had a really nice display they were really nice their food was great i'm gonna give them one of my tickets and at the end of the competition they win
some cash
they'll win some cash as far as who wins the the people's choice award it's not the same as
the competition itself for the competition.
There's six judges that are judging all the ribs, but the people's choice will be fun and allows everyone a chance to participate and allows us to help Blue River help Justin and those guys buy a $3,000 new uniform.
I know if we can.
Right.
How far did the teams come from?
It was pretty much in the vicinity, Miranda.
We have them coming from all over Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri.
So.
They come, they come up here.
They've been, we have several team players that have been coming every year.
So they really enjoy
it.
I know we have one team that they travel like six hours.
So like a six hour drive for them to come up here.
It's just good fun.
It's
good.
It's
good fun.
It's that, um,
What do you call it?
You know when it's your buddy, but you there's you're still competitive So there's a little bit of poking
friendly friendly competition.
Yeah, my ribs are better than yours Well, not quite but you know, it's friendly competition and doing everything that we enjoy which is Barbecue and hanging around our friends and family
I'm wondering these people that come from different locations regionally.
Does the ribs to the barbecue, does it, does it vary like where you live sometimes or not?
So I've only been, I've only actually judged once.
It was the first year, but I will say there's a variety of ribs.
You're going to have spicy ribs.
You're going to have sweet ribs.
There's definitely a variety.
And it just whoever the judges are, you know, it's one of those games, right?
And if the judges like spicy, they like spicy.
If they like sweet, they like sweet.
It's just part of the competition.
And you get to experience a little bit of variety from everyone's, uh, I guess neck of the woods.
Sure.
People attending Blue River Autumn Festival, and though you can do the people's choice and you can pick whatever you want, right?
Yeah.
whether you like spicy or sweet or whatever.
Yeah,
you can decide what you want to try.
There's
bad too.
There's bad.
Sometimes you have bad ribs.
I've overdone my ribs before.
It's a fun
thing we added.
In the fall we do a chili cook-off and we did people's choice then and everybody loved it.
We got so much donated non-perishable foods so we're doing
it
again this year.
Um, it seemed to be a hit.
So we're doing it for our barbecue comp this year.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Good.
Sounds like a Friday on Saturday or action pack, but Justin, let's go to Sunday and let us know what's going on now that day at Blue River.
We start Sunday morning.
Um, we'll start off our chicken barbecue.
That starts at four AM Saturday morning.
We start cooking that, um, that'll serve at 11, but at nine of money burger and his cowboy church in the park, um, to go along with our chicken barbecue.
We have the pie and ice cream.
Um,
And then at two, we have a parade, rain or shine.
This year's parade theme is red, white and blue honoring our hometown veterans.
That starts, like I said, at two o'clock, one o'clock is lineup.
And if there is any veterans out there that would like to be part of that, because we don't have a parade marshal, a single parade marshal this year, it's the veterans.
So the parade marshals, the veterans are all going to be in the front of the parade.
They're going to be the marshals of the parade.
If anybody wants to come, we've got a couple people movers, wagons to put them on, we'll pull them through the parade, and that was kind of our whole theme there.
That's good to know that they'll be riding then, if somebody can't walk the distance then
too.
Right, right.
If they want to walk, they can walk or they can ride, but we're going to put everything, everything to do with the veterans is going to be in the front of the parade this year.
And your parade is usually many units long, isn't it?
Just somewhere
between 60 and 75 usually.
So it probably
takes about an hour or so.
Yeah, a little hour, a little less.
Somewhere in that area.
So the parade starts at two rain or shine.
What else is happening on Sunday?
Right after the parade, we have the sawdust money hunt, which is a good staple for the kids.
They really like doing that.
We have the kitty tractor pole put on by the Riverdale FFA in the park.
After the sawdust dig, kids walk right down and do the tractor pole.
And then while they're doing that,
We set up for the kitty water fights, uh, which would be in the same spot right where the parade was at and saw us, uh, money hunt was that.
Um, and then we'll kind of go through that, put the kids together and let them, let them do what the big kid do on Friday night.
Um, and then, uh, we have music in the park again on Sunday from three to six.
It's the JR brink dual.
Um, they're new this year.
The last band we've had for probably six, seven years, um, retired.
So we're onto a,
a different group there
live music on saturday night and sunday and
sunday up sunday afternoon three to six so like kind of last they kind of get done about the same time the ball games get done there we may have a game after that depending on how competitive the ball teams are but
so your fire department puts it on is there a backup plan for heaven forbid if you if you go on call somewhere during that
time there's a few people we have in town for
They're there if we need them inside the stands.
So there's, there's a few other people that are in them besides fire department members, but yeah, it'll get real slow real quick.
We have a call.
Well, let's hope that doesn't happen then.
You said 38 members then.
Do you have some younger members that have joined?
We
do actually.
We have a couple of 18 year olds, some older guys that have just got it on.
They're just going through the classes.
We've got a seven people going through the
emergency first responders class right now.
Um, so I mean, we're, we're building up and building, trying to keep everything going.
You still have the 100 year plus truck?
Yes, we do.
How's that doing?
Good.
It's sitting in the firehouse behind our brand new one.
They're 100 years apart, 24 and 19, 24 and the 20, 24, they sit right next to one another.
So,
I don't know that it'll be driving through the parade, but we'll have it out.
We'll put it on a trailer and haul it through the parade.
I remember when you got it back for the 100th anniversary, that was, that was really something.
Yeah.
And that's older gentlemen that were on the department.
They knew that we had had it at one time.
They never knew where it went.
And it was, they were just a static that we were able to get it back.
Good deal.
Uh, goals for the department this year, Justin, uh, for the, uh, coming year, other than outfitting more members, uh, what are some other things you're looking at?
Um, well, we've really got into the radio system, the Richland County, um, Grant County is in the same boat going through that, getting everything changed over.
So we have some radio stuff we had to do.
Um, just keeping that all up to date.
And biggest thing is getting the gear.
We did end up getting a, um, FEMA grant.
this year.
So we had new airpacks purchased in this year, which the old ones were almost 16 years old.
So that was good there.
I mean, that's another was the grant total was $360,000.
We split that up with us in a Volca fire, and we both got new airpacks and air compressors.
And so we've done fairly well that way with grant writing.
And you stay busy because you're also on call for accidents.
Everything
here.
Yeah.
We have the boat for the river and car wrecks and fires and EMS calls.
And yeah, we're, we're all on call 24 seven.
Indeed.
So certainly there, there is a need.
And the other thing is that sometimes overlooked is how often you assist other departments in the area too.
Don't you?
Oh,
correct.
Um, last year, I believe we had.
89 or 90 calls, and I'd say 70-ish of them were mutual aid calls, helping somebody else.
So that's what it's all about.
And that's a good point.
When people attend Bluer Rotem Fest, you're not just helping you guys in Blue River, you're helping the whole area.
And
we go, I've been as far as south of Cobb on a fire call.
So it's not, you know, just Boscoville, Blue River, Muscaday, Richland Center.
big area.
I mean, we could go as far as arena.
I mean, we go out a long ways.
I mean, they get the mutual aid systems the way they're set up now and everybody's in the same boat.
You don't have a lot of guys all the time during the day.
Cause like for us, my son and myself, I have my business in town.
We work in town.
So we're around the village employees are there, but other than that, we've got a few farmers that are
round during the day, but most everybody else has a job that's not in Bluiver.
So they're not round during the day.
So you have to count on people in the same boat.
Musketeers, you know, some of their village employees are, or basketball, their village employees are on the fire department.
So we come together and we can have enough together to make it work.
But by
ourselves, we're really short.
Right.
So certainly there is a need for that as well.
It's safe to say you probably go on most of the calls then.
I've missed a few this year.
Have you?
Between working and stuff,
I bet I get most of them, yeah.
Good.
Well, we hope for a good weather.
We'll continue promoting the Blue River Autumn Fest.
And it's really nice to meet you guys because we've talked about Chase on Smoke for quite some time in our area.
Good to see you guys.
Thanks for having us.
We're glad to be part of the community.
Listen to Justin talk right now is really interesting of how it all works and how it all comes together and we're glad to be part of it for sure
indeed and You have any future plans for your business to expand or anything you'd like to see down the road?
If Miranda lets me but yeah We bought three acres in basketball and
that shop.
There's room for
expansion is what he's trying to say.
It
would be nice to add a finishing department onto that shop or something so we could do in-house painting and powder coating.
Sure.
What about a motorcycle division?
No.
I skipped that part, I
guess.
People locally though, you know, not only do you help out at the community fest, but if somebody's interested in one of your smokers, you can ship them locally too, can't
you?
Oh, absolutely.
We'll deliver them locally.
Yeah, awesome.
Yeah,
we'll maybe help you cook your first ribs or your brisket.
Wow.
Wow, service.
That's
a
good deal.
Do
you have a showroom that people can go see?
We don't.
It's something we're working on, something we plan on having in the future, but we're
We're basically just a shop, a manufacturing facility is what we started off as a welding repair shop is how it all started, but we don't even do that anymore.
So
this is more fun.
Yeah, way more
fun.
Well, thanks.
It's so nice to meet you guys.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Chase on smoke will be there.
The third annual backyard rib competition right during the day in Blue River 11 until six on Saturday.
And anything else you'd like to add here today, Justin, wrap it up here.
But.
Just the whole, if there's any veterans that would like to ride through the parade and
be
honored for it and just be there, the old school in Tallinn era,
round one.
Okay.
And the parade steps off at two.
Correct.
Good deal.
Well, here's to a good safe weekend and good to see you again.
Thanks Phil.
You bet.
Justin Dagenhart joining us from Blue River Autumn Fest and also Miranda and Jason from Shaysan Smoke.
And we'll have more coming up tomorrow on the morning show.