By Chelsea Diehl
Photos by Cait Bourgault
From our August 2024 issue
Twenty-five years ago, Mary Jo Kelly set some fruit pies with handwritten price tags on a table at the end of her driveway on Route 26 in Newry and screwed a metal cash box into a nearby tree. Soon, hikers returning from Grafton Notch State Park, six miles away, had finished it all—and paid for their purchases in full. So Kelly continued offering treats on trust, eventually adding cookies and jam and building a 4-by-8-foot wooden shed on her property at the base of Puzzle Mountain to display them. An old cast-iron oxygen tank filled with concrete with a slot in the top became the cash box. In 2006, Kelly expanded her business again, setting up a kitchen with three ovens and a 12-foot-long pine countertop in a clapboard building a few feet from the shed.
Today, Kelly’s son, Ryan Wheeler, and his wife, Devon, who took over Puzzle Mountain Bakery in 2010, bake at the street kitchen from Memorial Day weekend through November, filling the unmanned stand each season with about 3,000 pies in 20 different flavors, plus chocolate whoopie pies, three kinds of jam and specialty treats like maple cream cookies. (Hours vary, but the stand is usually full around noon and closes just before dark.) Theft can be a problem. A few times, kids have cleaned out the place. The most persistent pie thieves, however, have been bears. “Their favorite flavor is blueberry, just like everyone else’s,” Ryan says.
Overall, though, the trust system has kept people pretty honest. “Many customers leave a note saying they’ll come back and pay if they’re a dollar short,” Devon says. Others leave tips. Such gestures, the couple says, make the decision to stick with the self-service model a no-brainer.
Open Thurs.–Mon. 806 Bear River Rd., Newry.
Honor list
Four more self-service bakeries that are worth some of your time.
Bakery Schwarz
In a red clapboard house attached to his 18th-century cape, Mark Mickalide bakes baguettes, boules, cinnamon rolls and focaccia, rye and anadama breads in
a wood-fired brick oven modeled after the one his Albanian grandfather, also a baker, had in his basement in Lewiston. Grab a loaf of bread from the grates and leave cash in an old Oreo tin. Open: Mon. 3:30 p.m.–7 p.m., Tues.–Sat. 7 a.m.–7 p.m., 235 Plains Rd., Litchfield. 207-268-9927.
FIVE HECTARE FARM
Stop by when the clapboard farm stand opens and grab one of Melinda Anderson’s fast-selling pies, as well as homemade cookies, scones, cereal and staples like butter, milk and eggs. Record your purchases in a notebook and drop cash into a slot in the wooden counter or pay with your credit card at a self-service kiosk. Open daily 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., 3 Bryant Ln., Kennebunkport. 207-286-9848.
WILD FERN CAKES
Sarah Brown supplies this small roadside cake and coffee stand, set in a wildflower field on her property, with cakes large and small, lattice-patterned and crumbly, filled with inventive combinations like blueberry-plum and blackberry-pear. She also bakes pies, scones, quiches and more. She also takes phone orders for pickup. Open: Mon. and Fri., 7 a.m. – sold out. 635 Naskeag Rd., Brooklin. 207-412-1290.
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