PETERBOROUGH — It was just like any other Monday morning at the Kernel Bakery.
Baker and owner Robert Koerber knows his customers, their families, their lives and their favorites, whether it is a cherry Danish or a loaf of sesame seed bread.

But this Monday, however, was the Kernel Bakery’s last. Friday afternoon Koerber plans to close the bakery doors, his business and his life for the past 31 years, for good.

Koerber, 63, only started telling his customers last week he is closing the bakery and retiring. The local businesses that buy Koerber’s bread — such as Roy’s Market and Harlow’s’ Pub — were given several months notice, Koerber said.

Koerber said there are three reasons behind the bakery closure: mental health, retirement and sailing, he said.

“I have a sailboat and I want to spend a lot more time on my boat and sort of loaf,” Koerber said.

Koerber also plans to start painting again and get some reading in.

Like many customers on Monday morning, Susan Mansfield of Peterborough said she doesn’t know where she will get her bread when he closes his doors. She promises to be back Wednesday morning and then again on Friday.

She and her husband were regular summer customers until they moved to Peterborough full-time. She told her husband at the time they would continue to buy Koerber’s sesame seed bread until they got sick of it. That was 21 years ago, she said.

“Our taste for it has outlasted him,” she said laughing.

Koerber said he is too old to run the bakery anymore. Working primarily from 1 a.m. to 1 p.m. is just too hard at his age. Over the past decade, though, he has been trying to lessen his load. In 2001, Koerber cut back to Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays. Before that he was baking five days a week. Then two years ago Koerber’s middle son, Christopher Koerber, 30, started working fulltime at the bakery. Koerber said he tried to sell the business a few years ago, but he couldn’t find a potential owner who was up for the early morning hours.

“It’s been a lot of hours,” Koerber said. “I’m too old and Christopher has his own dreams and everybody should live their dream.”

Christopher plans to go camping a lot, work part time and finish school. He is majoring in political science and environmental science.

“He wants to go camping and live a normal life,” Koerber said.

Koerber has two other sons — Jason, a musician in Keene, and Jonathan, a chef in Portland, Maine.

Koerber said he sort of fell into baking when he graduated from high school at the age of 17 in Western Pennsylvania. Out of high school everyone went to work for the steel mills, he said. But you had to be 18.

So he began working for an old German baker who had apprenticed in Germany after World War I. Later he worked at a German bakery in Virginia. The bakers there had apprenticed in Germany after World War II, he said. “Most of my training was in fancy pastries.”

Then Koerber moved to England to attended Emerson College, a teacher training college for Waldorf schools.

The school officials asked him to start a bakery in the local village, which he did. After living in England for seven years, he sold that bakery to move back to the States. The bakery, the Cyrnel Bakery which is the Welsh spelling of Kernel Bakery, is still open today, he said.

He moved to Peterborough so that his sons could attend Pine Hill Waldorf School in Wilton, he said.

Koerber admitted he is a little afraid of how retirement will treat him. “When you actually reach retirement it’s very weird. ... Suddenly when you’re not working. What are you going to do all day?”

Koerber said he will not miss the early mornings, however, he will miss his customers and the conversations.

When Koerber opened his bakery, he also intended to open a café as well to create a place where people could come and talk and have conversations. While his dream of opening a café never came to fruition, he did start a 31-year-long conversation with his regulars.

“Most of my customers have grown old together,” Koerber said. “I’ve seen little kids grow up into adults and bring their kids in here.”

Koerber hopes to keep that conversation going.