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SHARON — Local French pastry buffs do not mind a bit that the lines are sometimes long at the Blue Gate Farm Bakery in Sharon. After a few years of offering baked goods at a variety of area farmers’ markets, the bakery settled down and opened for business nearly a year ago.
Located on the Sharon side of the Housatonic River where Routes 7 and 4 meet, the bake shop is the work of pastry chef Bruce Young, along with his wife, Yobana, both owners of Blue Gate Farm in Warren. They paused for an interview on Thursday, March 21, after a busy day of preparation for Friday’s sales.
“We’re a small community in Warren,” said Bruce Young, who recalled the beginnings in 2020 at a farmers’ market behind the Warren General Store, later adding a similar farmers’ market in Washington Depot, and then others. Young grew up in Warren and he and Yobana still live there in his boyhood home that had been built by his father.
A Washington Montessori schoolteacher during the week, Yobana welcomes customers at the bakery on weekends. She also handles the bakery’s business details.
Transition from farmers’ markets to retail location came suddenly, according to Young, who recalled the day that he pulled into the gas station and convenience store that stands along Route 4 on the Sharon side of the river just west of Cornwall Bridge.
“I stopped for gas and ran into Liz Macaire, a long-time acquaintance,” he said. She pointed to the building across the road and recommended that he look at it. He remembered that she insisted that he needed to open his bakery there “immediately,” so 48 hours later, he was open for business.
“We haven’t had a slow day since we opened,” Young reported, pleased that the line of customers extends out the door, and that people are sometimes waiting in line before the bakery opens in the morning.
Baked goods are all baked on site. Breads include traditional, European, and the baguettes are done to French weight and size standards. Sourdough is naturally fermented. Multigrain and variations seasonally rotated.
Croissants are made on site. “I start with a scoop of flour, water and yeast, and very expensive French butter,” Young said. The French butter works the best for laminating pastry.
Hard rolls are made fresh every morning, Young said. “I cut and weigh and shape every one of them, about 85 each day.
“I’m pretty fast,” he added.
Young said that he arrives at the bakery each day at 3 a.m., working six days a week. The schedule is necessary in order to fill the bakery shelves with the variety that is sold on the busy weekends.
Area towns have their own designated rolls. “We always have a local roll,” he said. The Cornwall roll is topped with a pistachio ganache, for example.
On a Saturday, Young expects there to be seven types of breads available, and always baguettes. Blue Gate bakes varieties of tarts, and regional French specialty items, including short-crust pastry with black cherries, walnuts, or red plums as a few examples.
Delicate barquettes, shaped like small boats, are filled with lemon curd or fresh fruit as some of the choices. French caneles, local to the Bordeaux region, are a frequent feature.
“We have an astonishing variety,” Young said. “We do what we do best.”
The coffee comes from Sacred Grounds in Sherman. Choices include latte, cappuccino, or espresso. Hot chocolate is made with Lindt chocolate truffles topped with handmade marshmallows.
There is no indoor seating, but customers are welcome to find a spot outdoors to enjoy their purchases. Many summer season patrons walk over from the Housatonic Meadows campgrounds for warm pastries and coffee in the mornings, or some prefer the fresh breakfast sandwiches.
“I’ve been cooking since I was 14,” Young said. He lived in England for nine years working for a French chef whose father was a baker from whom he learned much. He noted that he has been largely self-taught and is always learning.
An unusual companion to a bakery operation, a design and décor note is added by Ivy’s Collective, stylishly occupying the other half of the building’s interior. In high spirits from having acquired pastry before the bakery sells out, visitors can shift gears and view an array of antiques and collectibles. Prices from a few dollars to higher. Ivy’s is owned by former New Yorkers, Ivy and Daniel Kramp, and managed by Liz Macaire, merging talents to create an ever-changing display in an unrushed country environment.
Both the Blue Gate Bakery and Ivy’s Collective are open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. (the bakery closes earlier if things sell out).
LAKEVILLE — At long last, there is progress to report on the subject of spraying herbicides along the Housatonic Railroad Company (HRRC) tracks.
State Representative Maria Horn (D-64) and State Senator Steve Harding (R-30), interviewed on Sunday, both said that language was added to proposed bill 5219 requiring railroads to use the same herbicide standards in Connecticut that they use in Massachusetts, in accordance with that state’s regulations.
Horn said “it’s been very difficult to pin them down” regarding a meeting with railroad officials and a group of legislators and first selectmen.
But after the committee added the new language, the railroad agreed to a meeting on March 26.
Horn said, “It’s clear they are complying with Massachusetts regulations,” Horn said. “So, let’s do the same thing here.”
Harding said he and Horn “are on the same page” on the issue and looked forward to a satisfactory result for his constituents.
Both legislators are on the Environment Committee, Horn as a regular member, Harding as ranking member.
Conservation dreams become reality
SALISBURY — Robert Boyett’s long-time vision to conserve a large swath of more than 1,000 contiguous acres of scenic pastures, forests and farmland in Northwest Connecticut and Southern Berkshire County became reality earlier this month.
On March 13, Boyett, 82, a retired television producer and Salisbury resident, sold 75 acres off Cooper Hill in Sheffield, Mass., to the Trustees of Reservations for $1.3 million, which will be placed under conservation restriction.
The Sheffield land deal was the fourth and final transaction aimed at protecting Boyett’s land holdings from development, made possible through a coalition of eight conservation groups spanning two states, and two Limited Liability Companies (LLC’s) comprising private donors.
Through the multi-faceted effort, hastily organized last fall as the Cooper Hill Conservation Alliance, roughly $12 million in transactions were completed, protecting more than 1,000 acres from development.
“Mr. Boyett always wanted to keep the land all together, and this whole group, they worked together for a common goal to make it happen,” said Elyse Harney Morris, owner/broker of Elyse Harney Real Estate, who with co-agent Bill Melnick, helped Boyett piece together a complex conservation plan.
The 75 acres in Sheffield, unlike the other acreage in his land portfolio, were never put on the market. “It was something that the Trustees had been looking at for 15 to 20 years. They had to raise $1.3 million, and we bought them some time,” she explained.
“I think that 75 acres is one of the most beautiful sites. It sits up high, away from the road and has beautiful western views, and Bartholomew’s Cobble is right there,” said Morris, who on numerous occasions joined Boyett on rides around the properties that he so cherished.
“People have been coming up to me saying they didn’t even realize that area existed, but once they saw it,” she said, they were in awe. “It’s God’s country up there. It’s just so beautiful and now it’s protected forever.”
“I’m just so glad it is staying in perpetuity in conservation, and now the Trustees are working with an abutting neighbor for an additional 85 acres,” said Morris.
The additional parcels in different stages of preservation include: 297 acres on the north side of Twin Lakes on Tom’s Hill, which was taken off the market by an LLC comprising private donors who raised nearly $2.5 million to give the Salisbury Association Land Trust (SALT) time to apply for state and federal preservation grants; A second LLC comprising a half dozen donors, formed to purchase 220 acres on Miles Mountain, which leads to Cooper Hill, for nearly $1.5 million; and more than 440 acres at Cooper Hill Farm in Sheffield, Mass., which sold to Louis Aragi and Louis Aragi Sr. for more than $5 million, the majority of which will be protected as agricultural land.
Tim Abbott, HVA’s Regional Conservation and Greenprint Director, who has been a strong advocate for regional conservation partnerships for the past quarter-century, referred to the Connecticut portion of the Boyett land as “off the charts for biodiversity.”
In an interview last fall, Boyett said he was “thrilled” to be able to transfer Cooper Hill Farm “to younger hands. The Aragi family, he said, have farmed the land for 20 years and have been wonderful custodians of the land.
“They have been very earnest about it. We never signed a piece of paper. It was a gentleman’s handshake.”
Morris praised the “epic” response from the coalition of conservation organizations for mobilizing quickly, and for Boyett’s part in turning down lucrative offers and buying time for the conservationists to put a plan in place.
The coalition involved in the multiple transactions included, in addition to the Trustees of Reservation and SALT, the Housatonic Valley Association (HVA), Northwest Connecticut Land Conservancy (NCLC), the Connecticut and Massachusetts nature conservancies and Sheffield Land Trust.
“Everything came together because we had spent time building the trust, capacity and collaborative culture that could act when something of this size and complexity came available,” said Abbott.
Now that the land is preserved in perpetuity, there remains much to be done, said Morris.
“The work will continue between the conservation groups and the community, which is needed to help support what they bought. Yes, they will apply for grants, but it won’t pay for everything.”
Boyett said he received many offers for his land from developers over the years, “but I wanted to wait until I could just hold onto it and do the right thing.”
Morris noted that her client’s devotion to land preservation had an unexpected side effect.
She noted that Melnick was so inspired by Boyett’s dedication to conservation that he recently joined the Sharon Land Trust board of directors.
FALLS VILLAGE — Around the turn of the 20th century, Falls Village was a bustling hub of commercial activity.
Especially if you were in the market for new clothing.
That was the surprising message from Michele Majer’s talk at the David M. Hunt Library Saturday, March 23.
“Dressing Falls Village at the Turn of the 20th Century” was the second of two talks given in conjunction with the library’s current exhibit, “From the Great Falls to the Hilltops: Early 20th Century Photography from the Falls Village-Canaan Historical Society,” which runs through May 3.
Majer, from Cora Ginsburg LLC, a New York-based company specializing in textiles, and who taught courses in textiles and clothing at Bard College for almost three decades, said when she looked at the photographs in the exhibit, she wondered where the people bought their clothes.
She dug into the question, relying heavily on the archives of the Connecticut Western News, published between 1871 and 1970.
Here are some of the options Falls Villagers in search of sartorial improvements had in town: Mrs. E.C. Cowdrey, milliner; F.C. Peete, shoemaker; John Belden, clothier.
And that’s just a sample.
Majer noted that by 1900 the emergent ready-to-wear clothing industry was changing the way Americans of all stripes dressed.
While the wealthy could still opt for custom made clothes, there were high-end RTW options.
And for ordinary citizens, there were an increasing number of affordable garments.
Majer said that New York City was the hub of the RTW business, with recent immigrants, many of them Jewish and with prior experience in the clothing trade, staffing the factories and, sometimes, sweatshops.
New York was close enough to Falls Village by train for merchants to replenish their stocks.
The women in the exhibit photographs are mostly clad in variations of a shirtwaist and skirt. Majer said this was a practical choice, as the top could be swapped out to create a fresh outfit. “It was a new freedom in women’s dress,” she said.
She said it is not a coincidence that this new freedom coincided with the rise of the women’s suffrage movement.
Men typically wore three-piece suits starting in the latter half of the 19th century.
Like the women, men swapped out the tops — but just the collars and cuffs.
Majer said this did not mean that people stopped making their own clothes. She showed newspaper ads for bolts of cloth, and noted that Mrs. E.C. Crowdrey was also a representative for the Singer Sewing Machine company.
There was a highly technical discussion of women’s underwear that was beyond this reporter’s scope. Majer did say that at the turn of the 20th century women’s undergarments were “much more erotic” than what came before.