The origin story of Canaan, NH’s Red Wagon Bakery is pretty cute. Back when she was a kid, Nellie Smith would bake chocolate chip cookies and wheel them in her wagon down the hill from where she lived to the Massachusetts boarding school where her parents worked—and soon enough, she was fielding orders from students. That love for baking—and the pleasure of discovering that people like what you bake—stuck with her.

But Red Wagon’s survival story: Now, that’s inspiring. Smith (who now uses her married name, Kondi) opened the Red Wagon Bakery in the spring of 2019 after her mother, Laura—who’d moved to Canaan and gone to work at the Cardigan Mountain School—convinced her to buy the Dishin’ It Out diner from owner Roxie Lemieux, who’d been looking to sell, and convert it. For a year, Nellie baked and Laura made quiches, soups, salads and other savory meals for the breakfast and lunch menus. Then the pandemic hit and the bakery was forced to shut down: Baking for takeout or curbside delivery was too risky, Nellie thought, because it would be impossible to gauge demand.

But then a customer told her, “I’d love to pick up a handful of baked goods once a week.” And that’s when Kondi hit on the idea of adapting farms’ community-supported agriculture model: Once a week, people could order a box of muffins, cinnamon buns, pies, quiches—whatever Nellie, Laura, and a small crew of volunteer helpers could pull together in a few days. And customers could also pay for baked goods to go to frontline workers, hospital nurses, people in need, single moms with kids. “It was wildly successful,” Kondi says. “It got us through.”

The Red Wagon Baker display case on a recent Sunday, undressed cinnamon buns up front

These days, things at the Red Wagon are pretty much back to normal—helped out by the addition of a front porch and a backyard garden that a friend spent the better part of a year pulling together. Still, Kondi says she’s been struggling with rising prices: like, flats of eggs she used to be able to buy for about $1 a dozen are now $4 a dozen. And her mom has pulled back from the kitchen. “She used to be here every day all day running the grill,” Kondi says. “But she’s a retired teacher of 50 years, so…” She looks around. “This was not her dream. She lovingly gave me years of her time, but it’s finally been cut down to she comes in and bakes quiche, frittata, soup, does prep for bacon and potatoes, then leaves around the time we open at 8 am.” Instead, Kondi relies on local high school students.

Kondi never went to baking school or took a pastry course, and prefers down-home baking. “I like to eat complicated pastries,” she says, “but when it comes to being very scientific and careful with amounts and the chemistry of it, I’m like, No. I like a pie that looks a little nobbly and the crust looks homemade and it’s not perfect. I like making things pretty, but not like they look in a book.” She’s also worked out an arrangement with Canaan’s Jen Tetreault, a banker-turned-baker, who initially helped out alongside Kondi and then started her own baking business, Knot Just Pretzels, and makes about a third of Red Wagon’s baked goods, including bagels and biscuits.

Nellie Smith Kondi and, at right, her sister-in-law, Georgia Kondi

Those biscuits feature in one of the breakfasts Kondi likes best at Red Wagon: the biscuit sandwich. “Jen’s biscuits, they just melt in your mouth,” she says. “They’re just divine, especially if you butter them and throw them on the grill. So we make a biscuit sandwich with cheddar cheese, bacon, an egg, and then we happened to have Stonewall Kitchen garlic and onion jam, which we put on it. It’s a sweet but savory, oniony jam, and it just—with a jammy egg, it melts in your mouth. I lament when people order it without the jam. You’ve got to order the jam!”

Of course, Red Wagon’s a bakery, so Kondi’s also got a favorite out of the display case: the cinnamon buns. “I only make them, usually, on Sundays. It’s one of the only recipes I use that has a yeasted dough, which takes time, and I’m not a patient baker. But cinnamon buns are something where you don’t have a choice: They have to take time, you have to wait, and that shows. Warm with cream cheese frosting? There’s nothing better if I’m going to indulge in something.” Of course, there are always critics. Not too long ago, she gave one to a young boy who took a bite and said, “It’s too cinnamon-ey!” So she cut back on the cinnamon… until a couple of weeks back she overheard someone say, “I love the cinnamon buns, but they need more cinnamon.”

One final word: Change is coming to the bakery. For one thing, Kondi is pregnant with her first child; she hopes to keep going until the first week of December, but then plans to shut down until February, though she’s been talking to a few people who might want to use the space for pop-ups: “Just so it wouldn’t be closed for two months without anyone here,” she says.

And then, after much effort, she’s awaiting final approval from the town selectboard on her bid to buy the building next door, a former garage owned by the town that everyone refers to as the Cozy Corner. It’s mostly been used for storage and an occasional town camp, and Kondi hopes to raze it and build a new kitchen with a small general store attached. “I plan to keep the restaurant here, but all our baking operations will be in a state-of-the-art kitchen with real ovens and bread proofers. We need a walk-in fridge and freezer. We’ve outgrown our space here,” she says.

“We’ve outgrown our space here,” says Nellie Kondi. At the cooktop, Gage Perry and Carmen Zani prep an order.