My wife likes to say that Patchwork Farm and Bakery was an accident, a very wonderful accident. Back in 2002 we had a 3 acre market garden and were in the process of building a winter vegetable storage barn. My wife Anne informed me that I needed to find some kind of work for the upcoming winter, seeing as I did not do well the previous growing season, or for that matter the season before that. Watching our two daughters of five and three would not be enough, we needed some more dough.
Flash forward a couple weeks. After landing a job selling books for my friend Linda, who owned the Galaxy Bookstore in Hardwick, I picked up a book about sourdough, brick ovens, and how to build them. Having baked most of my life, I think I was about 7 or 8 when I discovered oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (how to make them and eat them). I had also learned how to bake bread from my mom and so the prospect of a bakery seemed perfect when brought up as a joke at the dinner table one night. I mean we already had a building going up - why not make it a Bakery! That was close to 2 decades ago and now we bake around 25 varieties and still counting