BELLE FOURCHE—A fun twist on a home-cooked meal was the draw to the annual Pitchfork Fondue. Steak cooked in the old western cowboy tradition of putting steaks on pitchforks and dropping them down into a barrel of boiling oil to create mouth-watering meat, crispy on the outside, soft and tender on the inside.
A nice summer evening featuring the deep-fried steak dinner and entertainment all while supporting area youth was the setting for the 8th Annual Pitchfork Steak Fondue for Youth held on July 15. The event was held under a tent at the Roundup Rodeo Grounds.
Hosted by Redwater Youth Leadership Fund (RYLF) and the Belle Fourche FFA Alumni Association, the event started with a thirty-minute social followed by a sit-down meal, with members of the Belle Fourche High School FFA Chapter serving guests tableside. While the meal was served, two FFA members, Atlee Olson and E.C. Blair, took care of the master of ceremonies duties.
The RYLF was started specifically to help youth. “This is a fundraiser. RYLF was started initially to raise money to send kids to national leadership trips and conferences and leadership opportunities in general—like the Citizenship Washington Focus and the 4-H conference used to all be things that the state paid for—if the kids earned the trip, it was paid for. About ten years or so ago, that funding went away, so we started this to fill that gap,” explained Amy Clark, Redwater Youth Leadership Fund board member.
After COVID, many of those opportunities were eliminated altogether. “So now we’re encompassing a broader scope of kids, but we’re still focusing on youth leadership. So if they earn a national trip through 4-H or FFA, we’re here to help fund—so it’s not out of the kid’s pocket,” shared Clark.
Kids that need help with money to travel or expenses involved in a national competition have to meet one basic requirement. “We require them to work at this event and help out in order to get funds from us,” explained Clark. “This is our only fundraiser that we do all year, and it’s very labor intensive for like a day and a half—but then we have the funding we need to help the kids all through the year—so we require them to put some skin in the game.”
Since the youth were serving dinners to the tables, this allowed everyone to stay seated and enjoy presentations. “The FFA kids are also doing their Parli Pro presentation and the things that they’re getting ready to take to national competition in October,” said Clark. “Sydney Baker and Zane Baker are over here talking about their national 4-H shooting sports.”
Sydney Baker has received scholarship money for her travel to the national 4-H shooting sports for the past four years. “It’s in Grand Island, Nebraska. You have to travel. You’re there a week. It can become expensive kind of quickly, so the RYLF helps with … money. You don’t have to be rich to be able to go,” explained Baker. “There’s really no requirements other than you help out, you come here and help out, you help set up, you help clean up, serve, you do all those things and they make sure that people don’t get left out just because they can’t quite make it.”
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