Lew-Ellyn Hughes is an award-winning newspaper columnist and author who spent her childhood summers on Moosehead Lake. In 2001, Lew-Ellyn left her job as a nurse in Bangor and bought a 1890s farmhouse in Stratton, where she opened the five-room Diamond Corner Bed & Breakfast. There, she chronicled her experiences as she learned how to run an inn, open a bakery, and fall in love with the small town and its people. “Away with Words”, Lew-Ellyn’s newspaper column, is an eight-time winner of the Maine Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest. She currently lives in Greenville.
We asked Lew-Ellyn some questions about writing her short essay collection Farmhouse on the Edge of Town, her key moments from opening a small bakery along her B&B duties, and her advice for those who may want to open a B&B themselves.
What was the most challenging part of owning the bed-and-breakfast? What was the easiest?
The things I loved the most about the B&B were also the most challenging—the five gardens were a lot of work, (I remember one August night around 10pm, I was in the garden pulling all the tomato plants because of an early frost warning). But the reward of feeding myself and my guests from the fruits [literally] of my labor satisfied my soul like answered prayer. There is a lot of praying in the garden.
We have all heard the saying, “Firewood warms you twice—first, during the cutting, splitting and stacking, then again in the woodstove." There is a peace on a pre-dawn morning, sitting in a rocking chair, hot coffee in hand, in front of a woodstove with a winter wonderland out the windows. That was part of my life—a farmhouse life and worth every single piece of wood work.
The cleaning! Yuk. I have written that the best part of living in a bed and breakfast is that it always looks like a bed and breakfast. The worst part is: my home always HAD to look like a bed and breakfast. During the busiest time of year, winter—I hired help with that.
It was challenging for me, a woman alone, to do the upkeep on an old home and to deal with things like pipes freezing and water backing up under the eaves if I didn’t keep the snow on the roof shoveled off. But out of those challenges (and lessons) I saw the kindness of humanity when someone would help. For example, I came home one day and found a roof ladder propped up against the house—a ladder that would make that job so much easier! When I found out who lent me his ladder, he only asked for a pie as recompense. Another time, I looked out my window to see a local man shoveling the walkway. Again, baked goods was his requested payment. You know, a hungry man is a powerful thing. I would find a stack of firewood dumped in front of the barn doors, with the explanation, “Ahhh, I had too much wood, not enough room.”—things like that happened a lot. I routinely used the snowblower I wrote about and cleared my driveway and parking lot of snow myself, but on a couple of occasions I would find it plowed and would never learn who had done that.
I traded Holland’s old Chevy Blazer (it no longer ran, but a local carpenter wanted it for parts). In exchange, he built a new (beautiful) sliding door on the barn. Bartering made those difficult parts of that life so much easier. Stubbornness helped.
One of the key moments of Farmhouse on the Edge of Town is when you open a small bakery. What was your favorite thing to make? Can you share the recipe?
I was asked this question quite often and my answer was, “My favorite baked good is the one that sells.” I did not have a favorite recipe. I actually don’t like cooking—I am terrible at it! Although I didn’t abhor baking as much as I did cooking, it is not my favorite thing to do. I don’t like the mess, the prep, the mess, the work, and especially the mess. But I LOVED feeding people. I enjoyed the satisfaction that came with providing a small pleasure of yumminess to folks at both my breakfast table and bakery.
Plus, at $20.00 per pie, the bakery was quite fruitful (sorry, not sorry).
If you could go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice before opening the bed-and-breakfast, what would it be?
Once the foundation is secure, go to the roof.
Your love of Maine is a major theme in your book. What makes Maine such a unique place to live?
I owe it to my ancestors to be a true proud Mainer. They came to Maine (Aroostook County) around the Revolutionary War and the things they survived are amazing. My maternal great grandmother Delia was “put out” on her own when she was nine years old, to find work because her mother had died of TB, her father was away in a lumber camp and her grandparents couldn’t take care of both her and her five-year-old brother. I have Delia’s memoir so I know what her life was like—often, very often, abusive. But she survived—thank God because that’s why I’m sitting here writing these answers.
My paternal great-grandparents lost their business twice to fire—they didn’t give up, opened new markets, kept going, but when the town of Wytopitlock burned to the ground, they moved to Greenville and opened another one that finally lasted generations. All because they didn’t give up.
My father always brought us back to Maine, to Moosehead Lake every summer, no matter where he was stationed in the Air Force. The fact that he did that is reason enough for me to honor this state.
My great-great- great- grandfather was, as he signed his letters, “a preacher of the gospel” in Aroostook County. I have some of those letters. Imagine how I felt when I read that he prayed for me. Me—who had yet to exist, me—someone he would never meet. I cannot explain that, I can only honor it.
Because of them, I am who I am.
What do you hope readers take away from your book?
I want the reader to enjoy the stories. I want them to smile. That will be enough for me.
Lew-Ellyn Hughes dreams of leaving city life and finding a place where she can see her beloved Maine wilderness from her window each morning. Her dreams finally come true when she finds a nineteenth-century farmhouse for sale in Stratton, an idyllic town nestled in between lakes and mountains. She decides to turn it into Diamond Corner, a cozy, five-room bed-and-breakfast, sharing her love of Maine with visitors from all over the world. Farmhouse on the Edge of Town is a collection of heartwarming and humorous stories from fifteen years of owning the bed-and-breakfast that features a cast of hardy Mainers, colorful guests, and lovable family, as Lew-Ellyn juggles their wants and needs with her trademark humor and insight. From opening up a bakery in her kitchen to painting her house to shoveling snow, her stories will delight anyone who’s ever spent time in a small town.
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