Wendy, Moon Scones: Baking scones to start a conversation with people
This is my craft
It’s the classic tale of changing careers: After 30 years in teaching across the world, Wendy starts her own baking business at age 55. Like many of us turning our lives around the pandemic played a big part in Wendy’s life, too.
But not as you may think it did. An ice-skating accident put a halt on her educational career and made room for something new and completely different: Baking scones.
The first to benefit form Wendy’s scones were a bunch of firefighters that had been called to - you might guess it - put out a fire in Wendy’s home.
Wendy lives in a historical building built in the 1860s, the former home of Shirley Jackson, a horror writer and author of The Haunting of Hill House.
How’s that part of Wendy’s baking story, you’re wondering? Well, Wendy often jokes that Shirley’s ghost might’ve kicked her ass to finally get going with her baking business.
After many back and forth - the logo was ready way before that decision, designed by Wendy herself -, Wendy sold her first scones on Small Business Saturday, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, on her porch. What a great omen.
From the very beginning the connections with people, the 1:1 interactions with her customers that Wendy calls patrons, is what Wendy’s business is all about. Hearing their stories, building relationships. “I want to be able to connect with my patrons, answer questions about baking and what’s in my products,” she tells me.
Wendy is always thinking of them when she is making her scones, she knows people want something cozy and real, made from the heart, something that actually tastes like what’s in it.
With that being said, treating everyone equally is important to her. For Wendy everyone is welcome and literally all ages walk in. She practices what she preaches: “I want people to feel welcome and at ease.”
Her patrons often say how they love the warm environment in her house and especially rave about the smell walking in. I personally believe, seeing the beautiful display of her treats in the glass cabinet does help a lot with that.
On her website Wendy shares a weekly calendar showing where her customers will be able to find her and her baked goods and also what’s available for purchase.
One of this week’s specials, Kythira moon scone, is another example of benefitting from local ingredients, King Arthur flour, Battenkill Valley cream, and Cabot butter, local goat cheese and local honey. These local gems are accompanied by almonds, figs, maple sugar, orange zest, and orange oil. Hmmm…
Moon Scones is growing and word is spreading quickly about Wendy’s delicious sweet treats. But scaling a business isn’t always easy, especially when you want to keep the conversations going with your community, she says.
So even though Wendy is looking into potential grants and aims to hiring someone to support her, growth shouldn’t mean that the people working for her don’t know what’s happening anymore, and aren’t able to talk about what’s inside of her scones.
As a former teacher Wendy loves educating herself and keeps learning something new everywhere she goes, about baking and cooking and experimenting with natural food colors, such as butterfly pea flowers for her Equinox moon scones recently.
Besides that she loves to read books, keeps her own poetry on her phone and shares with me that she always dreamed about becoming a writer. Isn’t it such a coincidence that Wendy now lives in Shirley Jackson’s former residence?
I’m wondering, when Shirley will kick Wendy’s butt to start with the writing… ;-)
Moon scones is located in North Bennington, Vt, and uses the sweetness from local maple trees and honey bees for most of its products.