THE FARMSTAY

We are thrilled to now be offering two “Farm Stay” getaways for folks to experience life alongside the animals out in the pastures of Medicine Creek Farm.

We have both a two-bedroom, full-amenities, extra-comfortable offering in our Timber Frame Barn as well as a Vintage Remodeled Camper Trailer for those looking for more of an adventurous camping experience.

Summer and fall are the best time to visit to see regenerative grazing in all its glory, help move the sheep or cows to fresh grass, collect the eggs, feed the pigs, have a bonfire, grill some burgers, listen to crickets, find a wild strawberry or raspberry, and maybe even catch a lightning bug.

In winter we close down the camper trailer, but the Timber Frame Barn with its in-floor heat is a wonderful winter getaway for cross country skiing, snowshoeing, sledding or simply enjoying a book next to the fireplace. We also have a wood-fired sauna adjacent to the barn for your use.

You can check our availability and easily make a booking for either option through a company with a mission to get more people outside called Hipcamp.

If you’re interested in a week-long vacation rate, please inquire with us directly.

FARM TOURS

When you book a Farmstay through Hipcamp, you’ll have the option of adding on a Farm Tour to your stay! But even if you’re not able to spend a night with us, most Saturdays in the summer I host a 1.5 hour guided tour that can be scheduled on Airbnb Experiences.

Feed a pig, take your photo with a lamb, hug a livestock guardian dog, and collect eggs from the hens. Learn about regenerative agriculture and the importance of soil health to animal welfare, human health, and healthy ecosystem function. Then learn how rotationally-grazed cows fight climate change!

Wear your walking shoes, bring some water, and watch where you step as we traverse the pastures to see the farm in action.

FARMSTAY HISTORY

Many of you know that Jason has an intense work ethic and a gift for making seemingly insane projects happen in record time. While my focus has always been on caring for the animals and building our farm business, he has been at work literally building the infrastructure of the farm from our house to our garden beds, pole shed to livestock chute, and water lines to the pastures, while also maintaining and fixing machinery.

As if he wasn’t busy enough, in 2018 Jason found a beautiful old barn on Craigslist four hours away from our farm, outside the little town of Amboy not far from Trimont where I grew up. It seemed like a crazy idea but it was in amazing condition, and all the stars aligned for it to be ours... as long as he pitched all the hay out and took it down piece by piece and figured out how to move it to our farm. When he stepped inside he said it felt like church and he knew he couldn’t say no, despite not being sure how he’d do it.

The barn is a mortice and tenon timber frame held together with wooden pegs. Barns like these are being bulldozed at record pace these days as fewer and fewer small farms keep livestock and can justify the cost of maintaining them. The wood alone was worth preserving, but to pull off keeping this barn in its original state felt like an honoring of the many hands that made it and the mouths it fed.

DECONSTRUCTION

Friends and family offered places for Jason to stay while he worked on it, and he spent three weeks the summer of 2018 taking it apart. Many amazing experiences throughout the deconstruction left him feeling sure he’d made the right decision.

A friend offered to help and after four days they succeeded in getting all the siding off and hay pitched out. When that work was done, his friend hopped in his car, and as Jason took out his wallet to pay him, he shouted “it takes a community to build a barn!” and sped away.

One day a car of strangers pulled up out of the blue. A granddaughter of the original owner of the farm happened to be visiting from California and shared that the barn was built in the 1880s and moved to the current site from a farm down the road where it was set on a new brick foundation in 1945. She was touched that Jason was going to such lengths to keep it and said she was excited to let her extended family know about its preservation.

He also met an 83-year-old neighbor who has taken down and reassembled over 40 barns, grainaries, sheds, and chicken coops. After sizing Jason up, he mentioned he had the heavy equipment for the bigger tasks of taking down the roof and framing, and offered for him and his 77-year-old best friend to help. Jason said he’d never met harder workers and had to tell them to slow down because he couldn’t keep up!

When Jason’s truck broke down in Amboy and needed repairs, he ended up stopping into the Amboy Cottage Cafe to kill time. Even though they were about to close, owner Lisa Lindberg brought him out coffee and a sandwich on the house and let him stay. Turns out she’s no stranger to historic preservation, having moved the gas station that became the cafe as well as leading the campaign to save a 118-year-old truss bridge set to be destroyed, and the two bonded over crazy projects. She also raises sheep with her mother and owns a yarn store in town so how could we not love her!

Jason had to leave the 1940s foundation behind, but hauled all the lumber, meticulously labeled, over several trips all the way up to Finlayson. For several years it lived disassembled in our pole shed, awaiting an uncertain future while we explained to people how we were keeping a barn inside a barn.

THE VISION FOR RECONSTRUCTION

Enter a pandemic and Jason sitting home without a job or a project. He renovated our 1965 camper trailer he got on Craigslist five years ago in record time, and it got him thinking. The more we talked about the barn, the more it seemed like these strange times may actually be the perfect time to rebuild a barn, while he and so many friends were out of work.

Initially, reconstructing the barn seemed like a place to store hay and create a workshop for Jason’s future projects, but over the past two years, we allowed ourselves to dream bigger and see an expanded vision for such a beautiful space. The gravity of the pandemic when so many of us have been longing for physical togetherness, followed by the outbreak of protests against racial injustice in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, had us feeling the need to do more and give more and make more real efforts toward community.

We have always considered it our mission to educate about the benefits of regenerative agriculture and continue growing the farm as a place of community and connection—to the land, the animals, and each other. Our passions and interests also cross music and art, social justice and advocacy, food and health, and spiritual connection and rest. So for some time we have been envisioning the barn as a center for regenerative agriculture education—for school groups and tours—as well as a community space for farm-to-table dinners, barn dances and concerts, non-profit fundraisers, wellness workshops, classes, retreats, and public art events.

We have also always wanted to build a farm-stay: a getaway retreat for visitors to come experience the farm in action, meet the animals they watch on Instagram or Facebook, and remember what it’s like to catch a firefly or eat a carrot from the garden.

What would this all take?

Most of the materials made it intact to our farm in Finlayson, but a few beams were no longer structurally sound, and the barn needed a graded pad and new foundation. It also involved permitting, insulation, electricity, windows, septic and plumbing for a bathroom, and a heat source. This is the minimal amount of work that needed to be done, in addition to the cost of hardware supplies and labor for friends we insisted on paying this time.

We began researching grants and received family loans to get started. Our friend James abandoned his NYC apartment after getting laid off from his fancy furniture making job in Brooklyn, and while quarantining in his dad’s basement, reached out about coming to the farm for the summer. He and Jason successfully reconstructed the timber frame structure in the summer and fall of 2020, with various friends and experts showing up at just the right times to help with design and engineering.

THE BARN’S NEW LIFE

Over the winter and spring of 2021, Jason finished the interior of the Farm Stay living space on the first floor. Complete with posts, beams, and woodwork from a second barn torn down in Wisconsin, it’s a beautiful, lofty space with views of the pastures and pond. After a year of sharing the space with family and friends, in June of 2022 we officially began offering the Farm Stay as a rental to the public on Hipcamp!

There is still an unfinished space on the first floor where we are planning to build out a farm store for on-farm sales of meat and other local products from farmer friends and neighbors in our region. We are currently researching licensing and grants for the farm store and hope to have a finished space in 2023.

And while we are clearly facing the reality of our financial limits, we planned ahead with in-floor heat in the upstairs “hay loft” with the dream of some day insulating it for year-round use. For now, we christened it with our first barn dance in August of 2021 and hope to continue the tradition annually in early fall.

We have been so grateful for the donations of time and money many of you have shared with us thus far. If you would like to be notified of our next farm party or when the store officially opens, please sign up for our newsletter!

In the meanwhile, we welcome you to join us at the farm for rest, relaxation, and farm life explorations through one of our farm stays in the Timber Frame Barn Stay or Vintage Remodeled Camper Trailer.

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for participating in the history and culture of agriculture, and investing in a future where this land can belong to a community of caretakers.