EAST BREMERTON – Ann Lillian Helm, who farmed lands just north of bustling Highway 303 and sold produce and savory treats along it, died April 13. She was 80.
Helm lived a simple, pious life on acreage her parents purchased in 1942, not far from the highway’s intersection with McWilliams Road. She continued to till the soil and lived in a woodstove-heated farmhouse until her death, her friends say.
In some ways, visiting her home was like taking a trip back through time, said Valerie Gile, a customer and friend for more than a decade.
“You’d have to open the cow gate, and then you’d step back four decades,” Gile said. “She was very, very old school.”
“Annie,” as friends and family called her, graduated from Central Kitsap High School in 1956 and worked for a time at Naval Undersea Warfare Center-Keyport before focusing on the farm and home life, according to her obituary.
A devout Christian, she kept her hair in a bun, always wore a dress and would often have her AM tuned to religious stations as she farmed. Her father, Theodore, a retired Puget Sound Naval Shipyard electrician, preached in the family home until his death in 1979, according to Kitsap Sun archives. Helm took care of her parents and never married, friends said.
For years, Helm sold luscious pies made of the fruits she grew and fresh breads she baked at a stand on Highway 303, until, apparently, she was asked to stop due to food handling regulations. But despite her failing vision in later years, she still grew livestock and produce, and pickled and canned vegetables.
Within a family of 14 siblings, Helm taught herself to play an accordion, piano and the family organ. She told the Sun in 1991 that her faith, combined with work on the farm, provided a clarity others away from it don’t experience.
"It's harder to live like the world lives," she said. "Because for us, the way is clear."
She’d formed a bond with dozens of people, like Gile, who would buy eggs and produce, sometimes trading for an item she might need at the grocery store. Some called her “Egg Annie” or “The Bread Lady.”
Helm died April 13 at the family’s homestead off Highway 303 of natural causes, friends said.
Services will be held at noon Thursday at Miller-Woodlawn Funeral Home, 5505 Kitsap Way, following visitation. She will be buried at Ivy Green Cemetery.
