How Baking a Pie Every Day for a Year Transformed a Retiree's Life
Vickie Hardin Woods faced a common fear as she approached retirement: the potential loss of her professional identity. After decades as a city planner in Salem, Oregon, she worried about what would come next. Instead of succumbing to uncertainty, she devised a unique plan that would not only fill her days but profoundly reshape her life.
A Creative Solution to Retirement Anxiety
At 61 years old, Hardin Woods decided to bake a pie every single day for an entire year. Each creation would be made with fresh local ingredients and given away to someone in her community. "I was worried about losing my carefully crafted identity as a professional," she explains. "I was looking for something to carry me through that time... What else can I be?"
The project served multiple purposes. It provided structure to her newly open schedule, forced her to connect with others daily to prevent isolation, and offered creative expression at a time when she had recently been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment. "I was trying to show myself that I could still think and be creative," she says.
The Journey of 365 Pies
Hardin Woods began her pie odyssey on the first day of her retirement by flying to California to visit her brother. In his kitchen, she baked her inaugural pie - a lemon meringue - which she presented to her 88-year-old aunt Carolyn. This recipient held special significance, as Hardin Woods had lived with her aunt and uncle during her teenage years when her mother became ill. "They gave me stability," she recalls. "I really learned what a family was there... It was the perfect first pie."
The following days saw a peach pie for a high school friend, a chocolate cream pie for her niece who had just given birth to twins, and eventually pies for former colleagues, local baristas, grocery clerks, and even strangers. One particularly memorable day, she gave a pie to a homeless man sitting outside a mall, who shared it with his friends.
As the project progressed, Hardin Woods became known throughout Salem as "the pie lady." Recipients often expressed profound gratitude, sometimes saying, "How did you know I needed this today?" or "Nobody's ever given me anything before!" These moments proved particularly heartwarming and reinforced the project's value.
From City Planning to Pie Planning
Hardin Woods brought her professional skills to this personal project. With over 30 years as a city planner, culminating in a department head position, she approached pie-making with the same systematic thinking that characterized her career. "I'm a planner by nature, training and profession," she notes. "So it's part of who I am."
She discovered her passion for planning during college, immediately drawn to land-use planning because "planning takes time, chaos, many different components, puts them all together and makes them into something manageable." This same attraction to creating order from chaos eventually translated to her baking endeavors. "You take a bunch of ingredients and you create something out of them," she observes.
A Life Marked by Resilience
Hardin Woods' path to retirement wasn't straightforward. At 18 in 1970, she became a mother after falling in love with a man who deserted the military during the Vietnam War. He was later arrested and imprisoned when their baby was born. "It was a very traumatic year," she acknowledges, but adds, "I put myself in that position. It was me making those choices. So I knew I had to follow through on them."
Now 74, Hardin Woods has been married to her third husband Bob for approximately 30 years - what she describes as a period of stability after earlier chaos. She has taught her three grandchildren to bake pies and continues to find joy in creative projects.
Lasting Impact Beyond the Oven
Twelve years after completing her year of daily pie baking, Hardin Woods continues to invent new projects, including writing a letter each day and painting pictures of her local sky. She won a Best of Show prize at the state fair for a brown butter hazelnut pie and is writing a book about her pie experience.
More importantly, she gained profound personal insights. "What really came out of it was the understanding that I was someone who could do new things," she reflects. "And my professional identity wasn't critical to who I am."
The project's spirit continues to influence her daily interactions. "After I have an encounter with somebody," she says, "I think: 'There's a person I wish I could give a pie to.'" Her story serves as an inspiring example of how creativity, generosity, and daily commitment can transform retirement into a period of growth and connection rather than loss.
