People so often ask how we got here. Sometimes life has a way of leading you where you never expected.

The Bakery just happened. It was never planned. If you had asked me in 2021 if I would ever open a bakery, I couldn’t have imagined it. My life had taken many directions, but never this one. I have been baking for over thirty years, for family and friends and anyone I could share it with. I adore it. But baking as a career was something I only secretly dreamed of. I never thought it could happen. Looking back, it feels like so many little puzzle pieces of my life finally fit together. For the first time. However, even when all the pieces were lining up, I needed a graceful nudge.

In the summer of 2021 Rob and I were putting the last of the paint brush strokes and cabinet knobs on what we thought would be our forever house. We had spent three years remodeling, down to the finest detail. It was, or so we thought at the time, perfect. But life has a way of changing things, dramatically, when you least expect it. Beyond our quiet home and hilly acres, things were rapidly becoming unfamiliar. Day by turbulent day. And not for the better. We were feeling more and more unsettled in the same town we had met in high school -so many years ago. Then, one afternoon I smelled the distinctive haze of smoke and looked up to see a thick, pink sky. A funny thing happens when you live in an area rampant with wildfires. It becomes normal to have a go-box with invaluable essentials next to your door, at all times, during the summer months. You have planned for the moment, knowing exactly what you need to load and when. It’s a grace and a curse, in many ways. It is chaotic, but the kind of semi-organized chaos that allows your mind and heart a little bit of time to feel. So, we did what we could do. Then opened our pre-loaded apps to the fire alerts and sat, for hours, watching the fire grow and the evacuation boundaries enlarge. By luck, grace, and skill, those firefighters stopped the spread when that red line was less than one mile from us. And, for the second time in three years, we were spared by less than a fingertip on a map.

Sometimes, whether through life changes, growth, or even wildfires, home stops being home. The ties fade, the differences and unsettling feelings grow, and you realize all you really need is each other and an opportunity to build a new life you love.

In August of 2021 Rob and I packed up the few things we couldn’t live without, said goodbye to the home we built piece by piece, and drove 2500 miles. Several exhausting days later, in the middle of the night, we pulled into a 151-year-old house we bought sight unseen. With no electricity or water, and barely a moon glow. If I’m being honest, everything about that night was terrifying. Being surrounded by a town we didn’t know, walking on loud creaky floors, and asking ourselves what in the world we just did. Not quite ready to go into the main house, we blew up an air mattress and did our best to sleep on the floor of the old soda shop building.

Then the sun came up.

We took our first steps into the house’s foyer and watched the sunlight glow on the original wood banister. We looked up and found a ceiling with exposed, hand-hewn wood beams and old, square nails. And we looked out at the vibrantly blue hydrangea leaves through panes of old, rippled glass. Room by room, we could feel the history and stories of this beautiful old house surrounding us. When we stopped and looked at each other, we knew it had to be shared.

Old houses have souls. They have stories. That have held lives lived with tragedy and happiness. They stood long before us, and (if we do our job) they will continue to provide a beautiful setting for incredible lives after us. They absorb little bits of everyone who walks through the halls. The smell of cooking in the old fireplaces, the lost pieces of a child’s artwork that fell behind a cabinet, the notches on wood from furniture moving in and out, and the whims and inspirations of layers and decades of fancy new wallpapers. Our stories become part of the house. We all become part of it’s history.

Within a year of moving in, I found myself with too little work and more idle time than I would like. I think we were also feeling like we hadn’t made this town our home. The holidays were approaching, and I was missing baking for family. I didn’t realize how much I loved filling holiday tables with every imaginable dessert. One day in November I asked Rob if I should bake a Thanksgiving tart and offer it on the community Facebook page. He absent mindedly said, “sure” and went on with his work. So I baked a pumpkin tart, and did my best to photograph it in a beautiful, but very dark wood filled house. Then I hit post, having already decided no one was ever going to respond. For the most part, that was true. Then the nicest woman messaged and asked for one for her Thanksgiving table. I set out to bake my very best. I made a butter tart crust and roasted the pumpkin. Spiced the custard with just the right balance of cinnamon, ginger and clove. Watched impatiently and nervously through the oven door glass as it baked. Then drizzled it with a homemade salted caramel sauce. On the morning of Thanksgiving, I received a message from the woman that she had gotten sick and wasn’t going to be hosting. However, she still wanted to pick up the tart and send it with her daughter to a friend’s house.

And she did.

About a day later I got a message from Synergy Herbal Works, that said they had gone to a friend’s house for Thanksgiving and had the most amazing pumpkin tart. She was hoping I would do a pop-up at the store for their Small Business Saturday event. I was so excited, I said “yes!” long before I realized I had no idea what a pop-up was. Everyone there was so incredible, they explained it and let us borrow a table and cloth. I baked everything I could, from bread to cake, for twenty-four hours straight. Still not finishing in time. Rob carried totes of baked goods over, and did his best to set up an attractive table setting. Hour by hour, I brought more and more. The truth was, I had no idea how to bake enough to fill an intimidatingly sized table, and I was shuffling in and out of a home oven as fast as I could. But I was terribly slow and threw half of it away thinking it wasn’t good enough. As I walked through the doors to Synergy with a delivery and finished spreading the pieces out, a customer walked in and turned the corner. She looked at our table and the cards I had rushed to make, and exclaimed, “You’re 1871! I am so excited you’re here; I’ve been looking at your pictures online and wanting to try your baked goods!” You could have knocked me over where I stood.

How did this woman know who we were?

Mr. Amazing and I, the first day of our crazy bakery dream.
Isn't he handsome?

From that moment, it never stopped. Week after week, orders would come in and I would bake everything I could. After a few months we began setting up a table in the foyer of the old house, and inviting people to come in. It was the world’s smallest bakery display on a round table, which still stands in the entry today. And it was all I could do to fill it. A few more months passed, I got a little better at baking quantities, and we were filling that table several times over each day. Rob and I moved my great grandmother’s furniture out of the dining room, and he built a case to hold the bread and pastry. That case became two and a register table and, before we knew it, there was a tiny bakery next to an old fireplace, under hand hewn ceiling beams, in a 153-year-old house. Somehow, it just fit.

For the past couple of years we have been learning and growing slowly. Somehow slower, and faster, than we’d often like. The old B&B kitchen that cooked meals for guests years ago, was now baking racks of sourdough bread, croissants, danishes, scones and anything that sparked an inspired whim. We saved every penny we could and bought equipment, piece by piece, desperately trying to keep up. We made plans, and more plans, and endlessly dreamed of what the future would be. All while waking early to bake everything fresh Wednesdays through Saturdays. As we have grown, through every trial and success, we have known that this quiet dream of mine was somehow meant to be in this very unlikely location. In the walls of a little piece of Sparta’s history, shared with a community that welcomed strangers and gave us a home. Which is why Mr. Amazing named it after the year its story began, in 1871.

We are open for walk-in guests and reservations Wednesday through Saturday, 8am-2pm. As was true the day we began, we continue to bake everything from bread to pastry in a handmade, small batch process. Always baked fresh each day. We spend the days we are closed sourcing and testing the very best ingredients, and being inspired by new whims. Which is why our menu changes every day. Each Monday we post a new menu on our website for the upcoming Wednesday through Saturday, focusing on a selection of artisan breads and seasonal pastries.