AuSable Forks Fire Department president Dan Deyoe plates up his signature loaded French toast at the department’s monthly big breakfast on Sunday morning.
(Enterprise photo — Sydney Emerson)
AuSABLE FORKS — On the first Sunday morning of every month, the volunteer members of the AuSable Forks Fire Department are at the station before the sun rises — not for training or a fire call, but rather to cook.
They spend hours making bacon, sausage, eggs, pancakes, French toast, biscuits and sausage gravy, home fries and more ahead of their first guest’s arrival at 8 a.m. Then, over the next three hours, the firefighters will serve hundreds of people breakfast. Their monthly “big breakfast” has been going on since before the coronavirus pandemic, said member Louis Garso.
“I can’t even remember when we started, that’s how long we’ve been doing it,” Garso said.
The breakfast is a fundraiser for the department’s new station, which is currently under construction on Mc Crea Street and came with a price tag of $5.9 million. Guests pay $12 — $8 for children under 12 — for an all-you-can-eat breakfast cooked fresh by members of the fire department. Garso estimated that each big breakfast serves more than 200 people. At times, the department has even pulled their trucks out of the station and set up overflow tables in the empty bays. Though in its professional capacity the department serves the hamlet of AuSable Forks, which straddles the border of Essex and Clinton counties, hungry guests come from all over the North Country.
“People come from Beekmantown, Chazy, Plattsburgh,” Garso said.
AuSable Forks Fire Department members Howard Drake, left, and Dan Deyoe serve up breakfast to go at the department’s monthly big breakfast on Sunday morning.
(Enterprise photo — Sydney Emerson)
The big breakfast’s head chef is department president Dan Deyoe, who takes particular pride in his deluxe French toast.
“At first it was just pancakes, then we said we’ll do some French toast,” he said.
Deyoe had seen a recipe for stuffed French toast on TV and thought it would be a perfect treat for the big breakfasts. Every month, he also tweaks the recipe and toppings on the pancakes to fit a certain theme, adding just enough novelty to keep people coming back to try the new flavors. In February, there were red velvet pancakes in honor of Valentine’s Day. On Sunday, the department had decided on a tropical theme and served Hawaiian pancakes with a pineapple-coconut glaze.
“It’s about five hours worth of work,” Deyoe said.
“We’ve got it down to a science,” added Garso. “We’ve got a system.”
The AuSable Forks Fire Department serves its big breakfast — which always features pancakes and French toast — the first Sunday of each month.
(Enterprise photo — Sydney Emerson)
Many members of the AuSable Forks Fire Department are cooks, according to Deyoe and Garso. The department enjoys monthly dinners together and plenty of meals in between calls at the station. Most recently, when powerful winds had the department out on calls well past midnight last Wednesday, the firefighters regrouped at the station and made breakfast together at 1 a.m.
In times of emergency, the department’s kitchen is open to the public, too. Garso said that more than 4,400 meals were served out of the kitchen over a two-week period during Hurricane Irene in 2011.
Local children’s groups such as scouts and sports teams also use the department’s kitchen for fundraisers. Deyoe said that he prefers food donations go to those groups instead of the department.
“Sometimes we do have — some of the local farmers that have a lot of chickens will donate eggs,” he said. “But I don’t like to ask for donations because the kids do their fundraising and it’s better for the little kids.”
If there are few fundraisers in a month, though, the department may accept some donated eggs to lower the overhead cost of their big breakfasts. Deyoe said that the department has never lost money on a breakfast. They always either break even or turn a profit, which goes toward building the department’s new station.
The AuSable Forks Fire Department’s monthly big breakfasts help raise funds for the department’s new fire house, pictured here on Sunday, which is steadily taking shape on Mc Crea Street.
(Enterprise photo — Sydney Emerson)
The station is about 60% complete, fire captain Howard Drake said, and is projected to be finished in the summer. The project faced delays, with scarce construction materials and inflated prices making it hard to secure supplies. Garso credits the community of around 500 people with helping the department realize its dream of a new station.
“That was a big reach for them. That was tough, it was a tough call,” he said. “But we just outgrew this place. The trucks, the spacing, basically the utilities — modern-day fire stations are very heavy on utilities and we don’t have those.”
The new station will not have a kitchen when the department first moves in, as a cost-saving measure during construction. They plan to build the kitchen later. However, this means that the big breakfasts will likely have to go on hiatus, according to Deyoe.
He said that the kitchen portion of the new station will probably need to be funded by grants, which the department has yet to secure. The price tag of the kitchen is in the tens of thousands, more than the department could ever earn just from monthly big breakfasts.
In the meantime, though, the department’s big breakfasts will go on, serving as a gathering place for the community.
“The community loves it. They just really love coming here and having breakfast,” Garso said. “We’re there for them and they’re there for us.”
