WEST PARIS — A church is upgrading its annual yard sale, craft sale and bake sale to a full-fledged Rhubarb Festival on Saturday.

The First Universalist Church of West Paris is taking the popularity of its rhubarb pies each year to celebrate the tart, leafy perennial while raising money for the church. The festival will include goods like rhubarb squares, rhubarb muffins, rhubarb jam and rhubarb delight, which is similar to coffee cake, according to church clerk Marta Clements.

“We were kicking ideas around,” Clements said. “They have strawberry festivals, lobster festivals, blueberry festivals,” she said Wednesday. A Rhubarb Festival made sense, she said, especially after years of selling out of rhubarb pies baked for the annual yard and bake sale.

She said members of the church are bringing out their family rhubarb recipes for the occasion.

Beverly Stevens, one of the organizers of the festival, said the expansion means they’ll be moving the yard sale outside under a tent, weather permitting, to make room to sell and serve rhubarb treats in the church meeting room.

Inside, they plan to serve coffee and tea, as well as ice cream drizzled in rhubarb sauce. “You have to put a lot of sugar in it,” Stevens said of the sauce. She said someone emailed her a recipe for rhubarb juice after hearing about the festival.

Proceeds will benefit work to the church’s stairs, parking lot and memorial garden.

Clements said she hopes the festival will be a success and become a new tradition for the church, which turned 100 years old in 2006. As the church’s Goodwill Fellowship works to update the membership cookbook, Clements said they plan on adding a rhubarb section.

The festival is scheduled for Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon at the First Universalist Church on Main Street in West Paris.

treaves@sunjournal.com

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