The Walker home — where Santa goes for milk and cookies

Santa’s busy elves have nothing on Charles and Margaret Walker during the Christmas season. Margaret Walker, 80, and her husband Charles, 87, of Gallatin will bake and give away exactly 3,564 cookies this year.

They started the project about 15 years ago. The first Christmas they baked and distributed nearly 600 cookies.

"It’s a way to be nice and it gives us something to do," Margaret said. "The ones that get them want them again next Christmas or would take them all year round. I just can’t do it. I think every year might be my last year."

Charles and Margaret have a system and they churn out cookies as efficiently as an assembly line. Margaret measures the ingredients and puts them in the order they are to go in the mixing bowl. Charles stirs them up. Margaret presses them down and puts them on the tray 15 at a time and then sticks the tray in the oven. They take no longer than 10 minutes to bake.

"One batch of dough makes close to 100 cookies," Margaret said. "It depends on if I get tired and make them a little bigger than they should be, then there might be 95 or so. We never make more than two batches a day."

She uses up to 40 pounds of flour making all the cookies. But it only takes one cup of sugar to make 95 to 100 cookies. All together there are 19 ingredients.

"It takes time to do them," Margaret said. "And the longer they sit the better they are."

Like Santa, they have a list. They keep track of who will receive the cookies. The amount of cookies has increased through the years as more and more cookies are given away to family and friends and neighbors and just about everybody — the mail carrier, the substitute mail carrier, the people at the post office, the trash collector, the people at the bank, their veterinarian, the people at the county health department, etc., etc.

"The man that reads the meter is always tickled to get some," Margaret said. "Though I don’t even know his name."

Margaret chose this particular cookie recipe because she liked the taste. The recipe is an old recipe and it is a secret.

"When I’m gone, if my children want to give it away, that’s their affair," Margaret said. "As of now, I don’t want to."

The cookies come delivered in colorful Christmas tins and Santa Claus buckets with bails and pretty holiday canisters. The dining room table of their home is covered with boxed and canned cookies, the spare bedroom is chock-full of "popcorn" tins. They do ask people to save the containers and give them back so they don’t have to buy new ones every year.

Her biggest fan may be her great-grandson.

"He holds up the cookie and says, ‘This is the best cookie in the world!’" Margaret said. "He loves them. He has his own cookie can. He can have all of them he wants."

Margaret and Charles plan to keep making the cookies as long as they are able.

"We just enjoy doing it and we like giving them away," Margaret said. "There’s not enough for everybody in Gallatin, but we do the best we can."