By Melanie Petrucci, Senior Community Reporter
Photo/Melanie Petrucci
Shrewsbury – “I think Rachel is special, just in her love of animals and in her interest in taking good care of them and also her willingness to put all of this time in to this project,” noted Amy Coskie of her daughter Rachel’s summer project.
Rachel baked and sold homemade dog treats at the Shrewsbury Farmers Market to raise funds to help animals at the Baypath Humane Society in Hopkinton. Rachel will be donating half her proceeds at the end of the season which closes Sept. 26.
Rachel isn’t your average 12-year-old. The Shrewsbury seventh-grader, who is a student at Oak Middle School, originally wanted to hold a traditional bake sale, so she researched how to go about doing this.
“You have to have a license and all sorts of things to do that here,” explained Rachel.
Farmers Market organizer Melissa Hollenbeck said that she received an email from Rachel with her inquiry. She told Rachel that if she wanted to do anything with human food that it would be very difficult because of regulations and licensing. However, a few hours later an opportunity presented itself.
“It was purely serendipitous…We got an email from our normal dog treat vendor, The Salty Barkery, saying her husband was retiring so they were going to travel the world,” Hollenback said.
She emailed Rachel back explaining that they just had an opening and that they needed dog treats. Hollenback asked if Rachel would consider making those instead. Dog treats are easy to bake and there would be no licensing or regulatory obstacles.
After researching recipes online, she baked three varieties, cheesy biscuits, cheesy bacon biscuits and peanut butter pumpkin biscuits. She enlisted her 6-year-old miniature dachshund “Coffee” as a taste tester. The peanut butter pumpkin variety is her biggest seller.
“She has lots of repeat customers each week, including Shrewsbury’s K9 police officer and his German shepherd,” Amy Coskie said.
She added Rachel was the only kid vendor at the market, noting that not many kids her age would want to spend their whole working. Rachel tried to enlist one of her friends to help her but to no avail.
The project has become a family project of sorts with Rachel’s mother providing transportation and assistance in the kitchen and at the farmers market. Her father helps with the shopping and her 17-year-old sister manned her booth while Rachel attended summer camp.
Rachel is looking forward to presenting her donation to the Baypath Humane Society when the Farmers Market season ends.
