WEST PARIS — The Hungry Hollow Country Store on Route 26 closed on Sept. 30 and is seeking someone to buy the business and carry on its legacy of providing wholesome home cooking and local artisan goods.

Many admirers of the store took to Facebook to lament 91-year-old owner Shirley Damm’s retirement, expressing how much they loved the store.

In Hungry Hollow’s guest book, frequent visitor Cheryl Foster wrote, “Thank you for making my family so happy with all your delicious pies, cakes, breads, cookies, scones, muffins, chicken and beef pies, and more! You are so special and make so many people happy! Your food is love!”

Damm uses fresh local ingredients as much as possible in her cooking and everything has no trans fats, and is cooked with sea salt and unbleached organic flours.

“As you step in the door of the old farm house it will remind you of “Grandma’s Kitchen. Fresh homemade ‘from scratch’ food awaits you,” a pamphlet for the store reads.

The 91-year-old baker and owner of Hungry Hollow Country Store in West Paris, Shirley Damm, stands behind the counter on Monday. The store closed on Sept. 30 but Damm is seeking a buyer who will carry on the legacy of the 40-year-old business. Evan W. Houk/Advertiser Democrat

“This is what people should eat,” Damm said. “That’s why I want this to go on. We are what we eat.”

Originally, Damm owned the orchard behind the store with her husband, Robert Damm. 

“He always had it in his mind that he wanted an orchard,” she said.

Since they didn’t have enough apple trees to make a go of it, the couple decided to try their luck selling their fresh fruit at retail prices from the building on the side of Route 26/Bethel Road.

Hungry Hollow also started with 19 arts, crafts, and antiques vendors to sell their wares on consignment. The store also sold books, homeopathic remedies, and local honey and maple syrup.

Since opening in 1984, the cozy country store hasn’t change it’s business model much, except by expanding with new foods and gifts.

Damm said she would take recommendations from customers on what types of foods she should make  and the store’s following grew organically from there.

“When I got into making chicken pies, it really escalated,” she said. “Then I got into mac and cheese, chicken divan, and beef pies. It’s a long list now.”

The name “Hungry Hollow” derives from the name of the area where the store is located, which had been dubbed with that moniker because of a legend concerning the Native American Princess Molly Ockett. According to legend, Ockett walked along the road in the area where Hungry Hollow currently sits during bad weather in the winter of 1809-10, looking for shelter from the white residents near Snow Falls.

“According to oral tradition, she was turned away, whereupon she uttered a curse on the place, said to be responsible for the lack of success of subsequent business enterprises in that neighborhood,” the Bethel Historical Society writes on its website.

After struggling to Paris Hill, Ockett was welcomed in by the Hamlin family, where she found a sick infant Hannibal Hamlin, later to become Abraham Lincoln’s first vice president, who she helped nurse back to health.

“She put a curse on the valley that nothing would grow here, therefore the Hungry Hollow,” Damm said. “It’s really Pleasant Valley, but it changed.”

Damm said her favorite part of running Hungry Hollow over the past 40 years has been the “good rapport with the people.” She said she has had customers from across the world stop into her little unassuming shop.

“They came in with their kids, and now their kids are coming in with their kids,” Damm said of her regular customers.

She said that recently a young child of about four years old came into the place, looked around, and exclaimed “I love this place!”

“It’s so different from all the commercial buildings and stores, it’s homey I guess,” Damm said.

Damm said that business hummed right along until the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, which was hard on the business.

“It kind of destroyed us,” she said.

Inflation has also been a challenge and Damm is finally ready to hang up her apron.

The exterior of the Hungry Hollow Country Store in West Paris. Evan W. Houk/Advertiser Democrat

When asked what is next for her, Damm said, “I guess see what it feels like to retire.”

She posted a poem to Facebook, memorializing her time at the store:

“Man does not live by bread alone.

The Lord gave us this place.

Best years – most fulfilling of my life.

Support through cancer

Many wonderful acquaintances and new friends

I love them all.

Thank you for your loyalty, encouragement, hugs, 

conversation, your laughter and your tears

And sharing with me a gift that God has given me.”