When members of the Pinetown Volunteer Fire Department say not to show up too late to their biggest fundraiser of the year, they mean it.

Saturday at 11 a.m., they’ll be packing up and selling their plates of barbecue, chicken and combo plates of both to the line out the door of North Boyd Road fire station. Being late means they could be picked clean of all of that, plus potatoes, cole slaw, hushpuppies and a wealth of desserts generously supplied by Pinetown VFD’s Ladies Auxiliary.

More than 20 years of hosting the fundraiser has honed their culinary skills.

“It’s a product and a process, and it’s something we’ve not necessarily perfected, but each person has their own job, and know what they’re going to do,” said Pinetown volunteer and Washington EMS Battalion Chief Doug Bissette. “All of our officers — we all have something that we do: one’s in charge of getting the pigs off the grill, one gets chickens off the grills, another, chopping the barbecue; a guy that’s in charge of making the hushpuppies.”

The popularity of the event has put their skills to a different use: teaching people how to cook at pig through Beaufort County Community College’s continuing education program—a class that drew one man with family in Beaufort County to come from as far away as Alaska, and prompted another family to delay moving out of state for a week so they could attend.

“We taught a class about just cooking pigs. I think there was 25 people maybe,” Bissette said.

With the completion of the new Long Acre substation, proceeds from the barbecue sale will return to funding the department’s continual needs, such as keeping fire equipment up to date and meeting today’s standards.

The Pinetown VFD has 32 members on its roster — the youngest is 18, the oldest in his 70s. All of them pitch in to help with the fundraiser.

Pinetown Volunteer Fire Department is located at 7262 North Boyd Road. Suggested donation for the barbecue, chicken and combo plates is $8 each. Department members will deliver for orders of 10 plates or more. Order by calling the department at 252-927-3400 or messaging the department’s Facebook page.

Pinetown VFD will also launch its annual turkey shoot Saturday night at the Long Acre substation. For the next four weekends, they’ll be giving away prizes of pork loins, turkeys, a 5-pound package of sausage and packs of steaks to their winners.