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Wildflour Cottage bakery owner Sarah Slick with her sourdough starter 'Doughlilah.'

Adams Home Bakery Preparing for Business

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff
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ADAMS, Mass. — A new home bakery is looking to pop up in the Adams community.
 
The Wildflour Cottage, owned by Sarah Slick, will be offering baked goods like bagels, muffins, bread bowls and more.
 
Slick was inspired by her mother and family traditions to start baking again and she wants to make it into a business.
 
"Growing up, my mom was always baking in the kitchen, and every holiday she had, like this giant spread, a bunch of different stuff, and we lost her about nine years ago," she said. "So I'm trying to restart traditions with a bunch of baking and whatnot. And growing up, it was always homemade everything. So I'm trying to get back into that kind of habit."
 
Slick is waiting on her business permit and is currently taking donations toward ingredients for orders. She hosted a sampling event in July for people to try her goods as well as a lemonade stand to help raise donations.
 
"Technically, I'm not selling right now. I'm asking for cost of donation toward ingredients. And we did do a lemonade stand during the sampling day, because I don't have the business license yet, so I'm just asking, if you want me to make it for you, just help me pay for it to get the ingredients going," she said.
 
Once she gets up and cooking, she hopes to eventually expand her space or have a storefront. She also hopes to go to farmers markets in the future.
 
"The dream would always be like a commercial space. Tight now, obviously I'm just doing it from my home kitchen, but eventually we want to get a house and maybe run it out of that," Slick said. "Or if I can find somewhere commercial that would be affordable, I would love to do it that way as well, because that would be a lot more space."
 
Her favorite items to make  "is always going to be the bagels," she said, especially the white cheddar. "If you put a little jalapeno cream cheese on it, it tastes like a jalapeno popper."
 
"I like to incorporate the flavors into the dough rather than just top it, because nothing I hate more than an 'everything' bagel and all the everything seasoning pops off of it," Slick continued. "So I actually put it inside of the dough as well, so that you're not losing it when you eat it."
 
Slick said baking is her passion and she loves to make good things for people to eat, always making sure it's her best batch.
 
"It's my hobby. It's one of the one things I do for myself that relaxes me, and I put love into it. So when I'm working with it, I'm thinking about what flavors I can make next, or what different sizings of things I can do," she said. "I'm always trying to nitpick how I'm making my things so I can make them not just perfect, because I like perfection, it's unrealistic. I want to make sure what I'm giving to people is also I would eat myself."
 
She also hopes to be able to offer fresh bread with no secret ingredients. Her sourdough starter "Doughlilah," which she started in November, is her base ingredient. 
 
"If I could do this full time that would be amazing. So that way, I can just have fresh bread for everybody. That would be amazing," she said. "But I just want people who enjoy fresh baked goods, I can tell them exactly what's going into it. So you don't have to worry about added chemicals and whatnot."

Slick can be contacted through her Facebook page but notes there is a two-day turn around for baked goods. if they would like anything but to note that there is a two day turn around because of her starter.


Tags: new business,   bakery,   

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Letter: Progress Means Moving on Paper Mill Cleanup

Letter to the Editor

To the Editor:

Our town is facing a clear choice: move a long-abandoned industrial site toward cleanup and productive use or allow it to remain a deteriorating symbol of inaction.

The Community Development team has applied for a $4 million EPA grant to remediate the former Curtis Mill property, a site that has sat idle for more than two decades. The purpose of this funding is straightforward: address environmental concerns and prepare the property for safe commercial redevelopment that can contribute to our tax base and economic vitality.

Yet opposition has emerged based on arguments that miss the point of what this project is designed to do. We are hearing that basement vats should be preserved, that demolition might create dust, and that the plan is somehow "unimaginative" because it prioritizes cleanup and feasibility over wishful reuse of a contaminated, aging structure.

These objections ignore both the environmental realities of the site and the strict federal requirements tied to this grant funding. Given the condition of most of the site's existing buildings, our engineering firm determined it was not cost-effective to renovate. Without cleanup, no private interest will risk investment in this site now or in the future.

This is not a blank check renovation project. It is an environmental remediation effort governed by safety standards, engineering assessments, and financial constraints. Adding speculative preservation ideas or delaying action risks derailing the very funding that makes cleanup possible in the first place. Without this grant, the likely outcome is not a charming restoration, it is continued vacancy, ongoing deterioration, and zero economic benefit.

For more than 20 years, the property has remained unused. Now, when real funding is within reach to finally address the problem, we should be rallying behind a practical path forward not creating obstacles based on narrow or unrealistic preferences.

I encourage residents to review the proposal materials and understand what is truly at stake. The Adams Board of Selectmen and Community Development staff have done the hard work to put our town in position for this opportunity. That effort deserves support.

Progress sometimes requires letting go of what a building used to be so that the community can gain what it needs to become.

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