Debbie Wiehl has a love for baking, which she demonstrates each year during the Wood County Fair.

For over 10 years, Wiehl has been entering contests at the fair. She enters items into multiple categories in the gardening, canning and culinary departments.

She said her favorite contests are the pies, the cheesecakes, the gardening and the canning. Wiehle enjoys each one for different reasons, but said she likes them all so much because they go together.

“You need the garden to can and then you need the canning to bake and cook,” she said.

Along with her love for baking, Wiehl said she continues to enter the fair contests each year because she loves the challenges the contests present. Many people enter these contests, and she said she enjoys the good competition.

Wiehl has placed in many of the contests she’s entered. Over the years, she has won so many ribbons, that she said she can’t count them anymore. Even though she wins, she doesn’t just do it for the prizes.

“I enjoy baking because it makes me happy and it makes other people happy,” she said.

Wiehl doesn’t just enter the contests at the fair, she has also started recruiting and teaching others how to cook.

“I’m hoping that we can offer enough encouragement to get the younger ones interested,” she said.

As much as she loves baking, one day Wiehl won’t be able to take part in the fair contests anymore, so she said she wants to help the younger adults get started so they can take part in the fair themselves. She also said she enjoys teaching and loves the challenges it brings.

“I want those 20-year-olds and those 30-year-olds to try it because once you do it, it’s so much fun and it’s challenging,” she said.

Even though she loves to bake now, Wiehl said she hasn’t always felt that way. When she was younger, she was involved in 4-H and her parents would make her enter the baking contests. She said at the time she didn’t enjoy it, even when she won at the state fair with her rhubarb custard pie.

Eventually, she did begin to enjoy baking and now she said her favorite thing to bake are pies. She said she especially enjoys making lemon meringue and apple pies.

Wiehl said she makes her pies using an old family recipe and every holiday she makes them for family gatherings. She said they’re her families’ favorite as well as her own.

Throughout her time at the fair, Wiehl said she has met many great people and made many new friends.

“I really enjoy the camaraderie with all the other bakers and the canners because you get to stand and look at your canned goods and then they’re looking at theirs, so you make friends,” she said. “I’ve got a lot of friends that I’ve made throughout the years up at the fair.”

This year, Wiehl may not be able to enter as many categories as usual due to a knee replacement. Despite that she said she still plans on trying to enter the gardening and canning contests, and the pie and cheesecake contests.

“I enjoy it and I think that’s the biggest thing,” she said. “You have to enjoy, you have to love what you do, and I do.”