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 up the road, had cleaned her out — and paid in full for their purchases. So Kelly continued to offer goodies on the honor system, eventually adding cookies and jam to the mix and building a four-by-eight-foot wooden shed on her property, at the base of Puzzle Mountain, to display them in. An old, concrete-filled, cast-iron air tank with a slit cut in the top became the cash box. In 2006, Kelly expanded again, installing a kitchen in a shingled building outfitted with three ovens and a 12-foot-long pine work surface, a few yards from the shed.
Today, Kelly’s son, Ryan Wheeler, and his wife, Devon, who took over Puzzle Mountain Bakery in 2010, bake in the roadside kitchen from Memorial Day weekend through November, filling the unmanned stand with some 3,000 pies in 20 different flavors each season, plus chocolate whoopie pies, three kinds of jam, and signature treats, like maple-cream cookies. (Hours vary, but the shed tends to be fully stocked by noon and closed up just before dark.) Theft can be a problem. A couple of times, kids cleaned out the entire shed. The most persistent pie pilferers, however, have been bears. “Their favorite flavor is blueberry, just like everyone else,” Ryan says.
All in all, though, the honor system has kept people pretty honest. “Many customers leave notes saying they will come back to 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 as easy as pie.
Open Thurs.–Mon. 806 Bear River Rd., Newry.
HONOR ROLL
Four more help-yourself bakeshops that merit a slice of your time.
In a red-clapboard ell 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 one his Albanian grandfather, also a baker, had in his Lewiston basement. Grab a loaf from the wire shelves and leave cash in a vintage Oreo tin. Open Mon. 3:30–7 p.m., Tues.–Sat. 7 a.m.–7 p.m. 235 Plains Rd., Litchfield. 207-268-9927.
Stop by when the wood-clapboard farm stand opens to snag one of Melinda Anderson’s quick-selling pies, along with homemade cookies, scones, granola, and grocery staples like butter, milk, and eggs. Log your purchases in a notebook and drop cash through a slot in the wooden counter or use your credit card at a self-service kiosk. Open daily 9 a.m.–6 p.m. 3 Bryant Ln., Kennebunkport. 207-286-9848.
Brenda Ledezma, aka Momo, keeps her cherry-red garage stocked around the clock with more than 60 cheesecake varieties — like lemon- blueberry, pumpkin, pistachio, and cookie dough — baked in her home kitchen. Walk in anytime, grab a prepackaged slice, or even a whole cake, and leave money in the red metal cash box — and some words of thanks on a sticky note. 471 Main St., Ellsworth. 207-598-8772.
Sarah Brown furnishes this little roadside pie-and-coffee stand, perched in a wildflower field on her property, with full-size and hand pies, lattice-topped and crumble, filled with inventive combos like blueberry-plum and blackberry-pear. She also makes cakes, scones, quiches, and more. She’ll take phone orders for pickup too. Open Mon. and Fri., 7 a.m.–sell out. 635 Naskeag Rd., Brooklin. 207-412-1290.
