Our Underdog Story: Who are the Pells?

I wasn’t always a baker.

I’m not the kinda gal that’s been baking since she was twelve, and always had a knack for it.

In fact, I took a cooking class after school once in elementary school and failed.

Okay, I didn’t actually fail, but I would’ve if I could’ve.

The first couple of meet-ups in the Commons were, well, elementary, and were so boring I’m surprised impatient me stuck it out.

But, the draw of food had me in its clutches.

We talked about measuring cups and oil vs. water.

Blah blah.

Then, the Big Day finally came! We were finally going to cook! “Get ready everybody!”

And….we made pancakes.

On a plug-in hot plate, and I swear it was Bisquick.

Fast-forward to young adult years, and I am moved out of the family-nest and away to college with the live-in boyfriend. (Steve. Yeah, we weren’t always so great- live and learn)

I couldn’t boil pasta. (“The water has to be boiling before you put the noodles in?”)

I couldn’t cook a dang thing.

I decided that I would follow Steve’s lead and just eat out about every meal. We were in New Castle after all, and while it wasn’t a food utopia by any means, it had more than just a handful of cuisine choices.

Well, as you can imagine, that got old, unhealthy, and obviously unrealistically expensive real quick.

Back to the drawing board, and the kitchen.

Downtown New Castle, Pennsylvania

I decided to try boxed meals and cheap cuts of meat at first, and, while there were a few booboos, I gained at least a little bit of confidence and persevered.

After I got the hang of a few recipes and realized that when a recipe called for LOW on a stovetop it wasn’t 6 or 7 on the dial, I was making all of our meals at home, albeit they were still mostly canned and boxed.

After that I decided to dive right in and try desserts.

My first cheesecake was a disaster.

Who chooses orange swirled cheesecake with chocolate graham cracker crust as their first dessert?

(Photo from Kraft Foods)

I managed to make RootBeer Float Cookies, and proudly walked them up the alleyway to the neighbors, head held high. They weren’t impressed. Whatev.

Finally, the pie maker of the family, and requested the apple pie recipe. Probably on the morning of a holiday, I stood in the kitchen on the telephone and frantically scribbled the details onto a piece of lined notebook paper.

I’ve just recently burned that paper, the evidence, even though it was so faded by this time that no one would be able to read it anyway (the bad handwriting helped).

One can’t ever be too careful with secret recipes.

Anyway, I bombed that. Bombed the next one, and probably quite a few more after that.

Call home:

“How’d your apple pie turn out?”

“Great! Terrific! Probably the best I’ve ever had!”

I eventually got one right, and then another, although pies were usually all over the place and hit or miss.

I would take them to gatherings and barbecues, and hope and pray for a good one as I prepared to slice and serve.

Steve and I finally tied the knot-I had to convince him that he didn’t want to live the rest of his life without all of the “plans” I had for him, and along the way discovered that I definitely didn’t want to do cakes.

I wanted to surprise Steve by making our own wedding cake (hey, we were young and “thrifty”, yeah, we’ll call it thrifty…) so I researched and tried to find the best recipes I could. I chose a yellow cake with vanilla Italian Buttercream Frosting (because Steve likes chocolate, of course), and went to work.

Three pounds of butter and a mess later, it was complete.

We said our “I Dos” and cut into it, looked at each other, and gave it to the dog, who also turned his nose up to it. (Ungrateful)

We decided to freeze a slice for our first anniversary, hoping it would get better with age like a fine wine, and went grocery shopping instead.

Exactly a year later we discovered that our freezer wasn’t a magical freezer: it was still a stick of butter.

Offer to dog. Ditto. This time we went out to dinner.

Yellow Cake with Italian Meringue Buttercream Frosting

Photo obviously not mine, credit Wilton

I got better with pies, thankfully,, and an entrepreneural seizure took me.

“Why not sell these? Everyone says they are great?”

“Pells Pies & Baked Goods” set up shop in our rented farmhouse in New Galilee, PA.

I mostly sold to church family, bus drivers and teachers, and a few factory workers that a close church friend of ours worked with and he printed and circulated order forms for me.

I was on top of the world!

Photo of an actual business card… I even mis-typed New “Galilee

I went to a few craft shows, and I hated it. I was so proud of my pies, sitting there in their plastic cases on the table, just begging to be purchased.

“How much?”

“Fifteen dollars!” (smile)

“Fifteen dollars?! I can get a pie for three ninety nine at Save-A-Lot!”

Deflated.

I eventually slowed my baking and closed up shop (my kitchen). I was still baking and taking orders, but, I was pregnant (who, me?), and we were preparing a move to the UP.

And we did. We moved and I didn’t bake again until we purchased our current farm. I built up my confidence, decided that my pies were worth twenty, and I skipped to the local farmers’ markets.

Fifteen blasted dollars be damned!

We built up our customer base, a dang-near cult following, and opened up a small farm store on the property.

The pies have only gotten better. Our customers sweeter. And our hearts bigger.

Our cup truly overfloweth.

Nowadays, Steve does the majority of the baking: the pies, and we added top-notch sourdough to our repertoire.

As you know, we are now “Pell’s Pie Patch & Family Farm”, and we have six beautiful children that share our journey.

With high-end cuts of meat and poultry, plus fantastic raw milk for you and the rest of our community, we’ve become a one stop shop that frees our customers from the grip of “corporate” and provides food security and real relationships.

The farm is a sanctuary, our family our life, and our customers like family.

We couldn’t have done any of it without our customers. You.

Always engaging, pre-ordering, cheering us on and letting us know that we are on the right track.

Sometimes life on the farm is crazy and I want to get off this train, but I wouldn’t trade it in for the rat race for a second.

We may be the underdog in this world, but I can’t wait to see where the next year takes us.

Thanks again for coming along for the ride.