ABOUT WENDY JO

I was raised on a dairy farm in a tight Mennonite community south of Lancaster City, in a town called New Danville. My sister Christine and I grew up in the same brick farmhouse my father and his siblings were born and reared in. Besides the usual farm chores like feeding the calves an bailing hay, I was able to find time to spend in my mother's kitchen, baking cookies from old family recipes and occasionally trying new ones. It was my Grandma Mabel Hess who taught me to make a pie crust and other family favorites. All of her recipes were in her head. When we made chicken pot pie it would be "a handful of this and two pinches of that!"

After finishing college, I eventually moved home with little idea of what career I wanted to pursue. Pieces didn't take long to fit together when I found a bakery to rent and decided to bid on a stand at Lancaster Central Market. I love the idea that I sell my goods where both my grandmothers and my mother worked years ago.

At Wendy Jo's we use local, quality ingredients including Wilbur chocolate from Lititz, whole milk without added BST hormones from Pine View Acres Dairy and apples from Kauffman's Fruit Farm in Bird-in-Hand.