Today we learned that our long time bread baker, Gerard Rubaud, died after a recent illness.

We had all hoped he might recover from a recent heart condition and get back to working in his cozy bakery, crafting his beloved, wood-fired loaves of delicious bread, but it was not to be.

Gerard has been providing ICF families with his naturally-leavened country French loaf since 1995. Children have become adults while eating this bread. Sometimes the bread would arrive still warm and it was always a pleasure (and a giggle) to see members tuck their loaf under an arm, start gathering vegetables, and sneak a chunk of bread between selecting roots and hearty greens. We know that the loaves were on the dinner table on Mondays or Thursdays…or there was French toast for a weekend breakfast, or homemade croutons if any loaf lasted that long.

Gerard loved baking and loved his loaves. I learned just how much when I made several trips to the bakery to get the boxes of warm bread for our pick-ups. I treated the excursions as part of my personal physical therapy after some major surgeries. Gerard only cared that I was handling the loaves properly, stacking them just so, placing the boxes in a certain position. He could be quite gruff, but he was the bread master and we learned to roll with his moods.

While I take a lot of pictures of the farm behind the scenes (tractors, harvests, etc.), I don’t have any pictures of Gerard. I have pictures of bread (I call them my “art shots” sometimes) but not of the baker. Oh, pictures of him at work exist and I’m including several links to wonderful profiles and pictures carried in Seven Days, on a blog called Farine, and on the City Market web site.

Services or memorials are unscheduled at this time. We’ll let you know when we have details.