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).
Photo contributed
Sample baked goods offered by the Blue Gate Farm Bakery in Sharon. The rolls with the pistachio ganache (green) topping are called “Cornwall rolls.”
The Berkshire Resilience Brass Band brought lively brass and jazz-inspired music to the lawn at the David M. Hunt Library on Friday evening, July 24.
Audience members became part of the performance as well. During one number, the horn players switched to percussion, while a basket of rattles and other handheld instruments was available for audience members to play along. Sadeh and O’Dea encouraged several young children to shake along with the music.
The audience continued to grow throughout the evening, including a family who stopped after hearing the music while driving by.
Although the band’s performances sound spontaneous, they begin with a shared musical framework.
“We start with a tune or arrangement,” Rogers said. “Then we do or don’t follow it.”
Rogers estimated that any given performance is at least half improvisation.
It’s not left entirely to chance. O’Dea said the group rehearses once a week, on Sundays.
Patrick L. Sullivan
Deanna Hearn opened Lucky Orphans in 2003.
Growing up in the Bronx, Hearn was captivated whenever she saw horses. Her grandfather, a Korean War veteran, had cared for military horses during the war. After returning home, he struggled with addiction, and the invisible wounds of military service. Through every difficult chapter of his life, however, one thing consistently brought him peace.
“Horses bring peace,” he told his granddaughter.
When Hearn was 11, after years apart, Hearn and her grandfather began spending weekends riding together. Less than a year later, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Before he died, he asked family members to help buy Hearn’s first horse — a stubborn paint horse that bit, kicked and frequently threw her off. She wanted to sell him. Her father refused.
“Every life has value,” he told her.
Looking back, Hearn says that lesson became the foundation of everything she would later build.
What began as a boarding stable in 2003 took a different direction after the Dutchess County SPCA asked Hearn to care for horses seized in cruelty cases. She soon realized that although Dutchess County had one of New York’s largest horse populations, there was no dedicated nonprofit equipped to care for neglected and abused horses. Lucky Orphans officially became a nonprofit in 2008.
Some of the more than 40 horses at Lucky OrphansProvided
Today, Hearn is quick to point out that Lucky Orphans is not simply a rescue.
“We’re a sanctuary,” she said.
Many of the more than 40 horses living there arrive with broken bones, chronic illnesses, heart conditions, missing eyes or other injuries that make them unsuitable for riding or adoption. Rather than rehabilitating and rehoming them, Lucky Orphans makes a lifetime commitment to every horse.
In 2013, Hearn became certified in equine-assisted psychotherapy, combining her lifelong relationship with horses and the lessons she learned from her grandfather to create programs for veterans, trauma survivors, children and families facing emotional challenges. The transformations she witnesses continue to surprise her. She recalls one woman who arrived convinced she would not fit in with a group of strangers. During the session, a horse quietly chose to follow her without a rope or commands. For the first time in years, the woman said she felt truly seen.
Another memory has stayed with Hearn ever since. A teenager in a juvenile probation program, wearing an ankle monitor and struggling with anger, entered a round pen with a horse. As his frustration grew, the horse moved farther away. When he finally calmed himself, the horse walked directly toward him and rested its head against his chest.
“I told him, ‘If you can control your energy, you can control the world around you,’” Hearn said.
Stories like these sustain her through the difficult realities of running a nonprofit. Operating the sanctuary costs roughly $52,000 each month, and Hearn lives on the property, where the work never truly ends. Veterinary bills, staffing, fundraising and the daily care of dozens of horses are constant concerns. Then someone returns years later and tells her that the horses changed their child’s life.
“That’s why I keep going,” she said.
Looking ahead, Hearn hopes more people discover what makes Lucky Orphans unique. The organization is expanding its community programming with educational visits, yoga sessions, horse encounters, volunteer opportunities and family events designed to reconnect people with horses and with one another.
Her vision is simple: to create a place where people slow down, reconnect and remember something modern life often makes us forget. If horses could speak, Hearn believes they would offer just one piece of advice.
“They’d tell us to slow down,” she said.
After spending an afternoon at Lucky Orphans, it’s hard to disagree.
For more information or to plan a visit, go to luckyorphans.org
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