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Ariel Yotive portions out dough for baked goods to be sold at Vitsky Bakery in Wassaic. Yotive has been baking since she was a child helping in her father’s Illinois-based Quality Bakery.
Langdon Speers
WASSAIC — Ariel Yotive has a motto, “Work with what you’ve got.” Her unique Vitsky Bakery in Wassaic has the fruits of that motivation flying off the shelves.
Literally, during apricot season, one of her neighboring farm orchards may be harvesting fresh-off-the-tree fruit that is transformed into danishes. Local hives supply honey for Cream Buns with White Chocolate or a Ricotta Custard with a chunk of honeycomb floating in the middle. “I use what is around,” said the baker.
At Vitsky Bakery, Yotive’s approach has become a defining philosophy. Working closely with nearby farms, beekeepers and gardeners, she creates a constantly shifting menu shaped by the season, surplus and chance, turning overlooked or fleeting ingredients into inventive pastries that have made her Wassaic bakery a destination for locals and weekend visitors alike.
Yotive wanted to be a baker since she was five and has a video of her vowing to do it way back when. Working beside her grandfather in Illinois at his Quality Bakery, she learned to make bread — and still has his recipes and notes — but got started out in the food trade roasting whole animals and cooking everything in a resort camp in Patagonia.
After a stint at Bard College from 2006 to 2010, she worked at Troutbeck in Amenia and fell in love with the Oblong Valley, where today she has created a warm, sun-splashed mecca for baked goods of all sorts.
Vitsky Bakery is located at the south end of Wassaic’s Main Street, nestled in front of the Metro-North railroad, which flies by behind the counter, and an atmospheric creek that burbles along with its otters and snapping turtles.
There are chairs outside and picnic tables to sip coffee and tea, and even on a brisk, snowy day, a family munched pretzel scones and traditional hot cross buns. Yotive is still working on getting a café inside.
Yotive’s workday starts at 1:30 a.m., baking bread and proofing yeast. Dozens of muffins take three to four hours, and some mornings in the winter she has to shovel snow. She opens at 8:30 a.m. every Friday, which includes a challah bread special, and on Saturday and Sunday, which feature the big hits: cardamom buns and bialys.
The baker describes her style as French/Jewish with viennoiserie and “Frankenstein” touches — meaning she puts together unlikely components. One morning she made croissants that didn’t work out. Rather than trash them, she repurposed them as her famous and madly popular Walnut Croissants, cut in half and rebaked after being filled with walnut frangipan. “I bake what I want and what is local,” she said, avoiding ingredients like lemons which don’t grow in these parts. “I’ve learned to let go of expectations.”
If a local grower’s garlic bulbs are too small for market, they become sandos, Yotive’s name for sandwiches, with zucchini from an overflowing nearby garden combined into Goat Cheese Danish/Beet Lettuce with HBE’s (Hard-Boiled Eggs), a sandwich that Yotive said started as a joke and later became a regular offering.
A bumper crop of rhubarb became Sugar Twists and Raspberry Rhubarb Cobbler. Any flowers of the week adorn Elderberry Custard Buns, Apple Rose Scones, Winterberry Pastries, and Wildflower Honey Twists. Local syrup becomes Maple Custard Pie.
Yotive’s partnership with local organic farms and neighbor-sourced ingredients has created a network of local businesses that help support one another. Part of her philosophy is to be part of the community and bring people together. Yet long hours and driving from farm to farm to collect ingredients takes its toll. “It’s hard to have a social life and a family when you work from the middle of the night to late afternoon, instead of 9 to 5.”
Using fresh also requires long hours preserving and freezing the fruit or vegetables of the moment. Tomatoes later become fabulous Focaccia Slices, bottled jams, or herbs turned into Cheddar Dill Biscuits. She also has “regular” bakery items like chocolate croissants, cookie boxes, sunflower bread, babka, honeyoat rye and even gluten-free options.
Yotive said she tries to allow her brain to combine what is immediately available with a standard item. This produces her Brown Butter Apple Custard, which goes beyond the bakery status quo. “I like to punch it up, try the exotic, and go beyond food culture,” she said, mentioning her Earl Gray Buns.“I try to utilize what I have.”
Walk-ins account for 90% of her sales, with a steady stream of customers through the day, but she also sells online. Yotive doesn’t make cakes to order but she said customers are glad to accept whatever she has available.
And as for the name? Ariel Yotive’s grandfather dropped the “Vitsky” from the family name “Yotvitsky” so his Quality Bakery didn’t sound too exotic, Yotive said. Ariel has picked it up and run with it. Her outpost of inventive and enticing baked goods must be visited to be appreciated, an experience best summed up by one customer who bought for his family one of everything that was left. He absentmindedly bit into something he just purchased without knowing the clever name, or the unexpected ingredients, only the flavor that turned his face to joyous wonderment.
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Ed Sheehy and Tom Taylor of Copake, New York, and Karen and Wendy Erickson of Sheffield, Massachusetts, traveled to Salisbury on Saturday to voice their anger with the Trump administration.
Photo by Alec Linden
SALISBURY — Impassioned residents of the Northwest Corner and adjacent regions in Massachusetts and New York took to the Memorial Green Saturday morning, Jan. 10, to protest the recent killing of Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good at the hands of a federal immigration agent.
Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was shot at close range by an officerwith Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE, on Wednesday, Jan. 7. She and her wife were participating in a protest opposing the agency’s presence in a Minneapolis neighborhood at the time of the shooting.
The incident sparked protests and vigils nationwide, both in remembrance of Good and in opposition to what demonstrators described as a broader pattern of government overreach.
In Hartford on Thursday evening, Jan. 8, two vehicles that authorities believe were operated by ICE officers drove through a crowd that had gathered in memory of Good. Connecticut Public Radio reported that at least one person had been struck by the vehicles and that police are investigating potential charges.
In Salisbury, the protest unfolded calmly but with a palpable sense of urgency. Just before noon, roughly 160 demonstrators lined Route 44, holding signs and cheering as passing motorists honked their horns.
Organizer Sophia deBoer stood alongside her husband, Lee deBoer, and fellow activists Kathy Voldstad and Amy Lake to greet demonstrators as they arrived. Along with Al Ginouves, the group has organized weekly protests against the Trump administration since April 2025’s nationwide “Hands Off” movement.
“It’s time that people stood up to this lawless administration,” Sophia deBoer said as the crowd waved their signs.
Local immigrants’ rights advocate John Carter echoed that sentiment. “I need to put my body where my soul is,” he said.
Attendees cited a range of emotions for turning out, from anger and fear to cautious optimism
Joan Gardiner said it was “outrage and fear” that brought her to the protest, while Christine Clare said, “Being out here today, this makes me hopeful.”
Calls for justice dominated many of the messages displayed on protesters’ signs. Asked what motivated him to attend, Salisbury resident Louis Tomaino pointed to the words on his sign: “We all saw Renee Good murdered. And we all saw murder excused.”
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Area ambulance squad members, along with several first selectmen, attend a Jan. 5 meeting on emergency service providers hosted by Nuvance/Northwell.
Photo by Ruth Epstein
FALLS VILLAGE, Conn. — Paramedic coverage in the Northwest Corner is continuing despite concerns raised last month after Sharon Hospital announced it would not renew its long-standing sponsorship agreement with Northern Dutchess Paramedics.
Northern Dutchess Paramedics (NDP), which has provided advanced life support services in the region for decades, is still responding to calls and will now operate alongside a hospital-based paramedic service being developed by Sharon Hospital, officials said at a public meeting Monday, Jan. 5, at the Falls Village Emergency Services Center.
“We haven’t missed a beat; we’re still taking calls,” said Andrea Downs, president of the Falls Village Volunteer Fire Department and an employee of NDP, speaking at the meeting, which was attended by ambulance squad members, first selectmen and representatives of Sharon Hospital.
Sharon Hospital announced Dec. 11 that it would not renew its annual agreement with NDP, ending a 28-year relationship and initially stating that service would cease Jan. 1. Hospital President and CEO Christina McCulloch said the decision was based on compliance concerns tied to the hospital’s role as sponsor.
“Being a sponsor is a big deal,” McCulloch said. “Our concerns were big enough that we couldn’t sign. It was a difficult decision.”
She said the hospital had discussed the issues with NDP representatives and cited unmet state requirements.
Without a sponsoring hospital, NDP could not operate in Connecticut. That issue was resolved when NDP finalized an agreement with Stamford Hospital, allowing it to continue providing services in the Northwest Corner.
At the same time, Sharon Hospital is establishing a hospital-based paramedic service through Nuvance/Northwell, owner of the hospital. Under the current model, the service consists of a single paramedic, who begins the day at New Milford Hospital before traveling to Sharon, prompting concerns from some volunteer ambulance crews about response times while that paramedic is in transit.
Addressing those concerns, hospital officials said while the new paramedic service covers a wide area, so too does NDP, which is based out of Rhinebeck. Some volunteer ambulance crews also said their concerns relate to the transition to two providers, with Sharon Hospital’s service still being built out and not yet fully stationed in Sharon.
Falls Village First Selectman David Barger asked whether more than one paramedic service could operate in the region.
“There could be more than one,” McCulloch said.
Matt Cassavechia, director of emergency services for Sharon Hospital, said Litchfield County Dispatch, which handles all ambulance and fire dispatching for the region, will call whichever paramedic service is available at the time of an emergency.
He acknowledged that the current arrangement could be improved and said the hospital hopes to expand on-site paramedic coverage in Sharon. Doing so would require state approval through a need-for-service application, which Cassavechia said would benefit from letters of support from the community and area first selectmen.
Several volunteer ambulance representatives expressed concern about how changes could affect basic life support services and volunteer operations. Cassavechia said the hospital does not intend to replace volunteer squads.
“We’re not snapping up patients,” he said. “That’s not what we do. We are deliberate and purposeful. We have zero intent of putting volunteers out of business.”
Questions were also raised about possible delays in transferring patients from Sharon Hospital to other facilities.
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Richard Charles Paddock
Jan 14, 2026
TACONIC — Richard Charles Paddock, 78, passed away Friday, Jan. 2, 2026, at Charlotte Hungerford Hospital.
He was born in Hartford on April 12, 1947 to the late Elizabeth M. Paddock (Trust) and the late Charles D. Paddock. He grew up in East Hartford but maintained a strong connection to the Taconic part of Salisbury where his paternal grandfather, Charlie Paddock, worked for Herbert and Orleana Scoville. The whole family enjoyed summers and weekends on a plot of land in Taconic gifted to Charlie by the Scovilles for his many years of service as a chauffeur.
Dick graduated from East Hartford High School in June of 1965 and went on to join the Class of 1969 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He graduated from MIT with a degree in Electrical Engineering and followed in his father’s footsteps by accepting a job with IBM in 1969. His career at IBM spanned 31 years and involved everything from supercomputers to single chip microcomputers.
He formally retired from IBM in 2000 but stayed on at IBM as a contract employee for the IBM Executive Briefing Center in Poughkeepsie, New York. His work at the briefing center ended in July 2002 and he finally had time to pursue other interests. Those interests included the iron industry of the Northwest Corner and the Central New England Railroad which passed through Taconic from 1871 until 1965.
Dick joined the Friends of Beckley Furnace in 2003 where he helped develop educational programs with the late Ed Kirby and designed and produced interpretive signs to explain the site to visitors, spending most summer Saturdays as a docent at the site. He also joined the Historical Society branch of the Salisbury Association where he assisted in the preparation of numerous books, the oral history and interpretive signs for the Salisbury area. He also served several terms as a Trustee for the Association. Other activities included teaching courses for the Taconic Learning Center and The Bard Lifetime Learning Center and being a frequent speaker in the area on various topics such as the railroads, the iron industry and the industrial heritage of the area.
He leaves behind his wife and best friend, Frances Paddock of Taconic, two stepchildren; David Rosell of Greenville, New York, his son, Sterling of Tivoli, New York; Alicia Rosell of Dalton, Georgia, her daughters, Mary Rosell and Paula Gordon, also of Dalton, and his very large family of in-laws and many friends.
There will be no funeral services at this time. Ryan Funeral Home, 255 Main St., Lakeville, is in care of arrangements.
If you would like to remember Dick, please contribute to Friends of Beckley Furnace, P.O. Box 383, East Canaan, CT 06024, or the Salisbury Association (https://salisburyassociation.org/ways-to-support/donate/)
To offer an online condolence, please visit ryanfhct.com
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