Farm Stays
Have a toddler who has never seen a live chicken? Make your next vacation a trip to a working farm. While enjoying the tranquillity of country life, you’ll help feed calves, pigs and sheep, collect chicken eggs and learn to make jam using berries you picked fresh that day. The quiet rural location and homey B&B-style digs should ensure a restful night—but it’s not compulsory to get up at the crack of dawn with your hosts.
Franklin, NY (607) 829-2587 handsomebrookfarm.com. Nestled between the Catskill and the Adirondack Mountains, Handsome Brook Farm offers a unique blend of town and country living. Imagine yourself feeding the calf, sheep and pigs in the morning, followed by tending or picking berries in the afternoon. Take a hike in the Catskills or sit by a campfire at night. Built in 1836, the farm is close to the Baseball Hall of Fame and Cooperstown Dreams Park.
HULL-O FARMS FAMILY FARM VACATIONS
Durham, NY (518) 239-6950; www.hull-o.com; Breakfast and dinner; private baths. A Catskill Mountains dairy farm open to overnight visitors. With a crowd-pleasing maze through their cornfield every fall, a 3,000-pheasant preserve, the 350-acre property has a main farmhouse with one guest room, as well as three other houses that guests can take over. Before long your kids are hanging out with the cows, sheep, ducks, goats, and geese and getting ready for a hayride.
Walton, NY (607) 865-7965 www.featherdown.com. Private guest tents are tucked into a hillside facing the creek and there are centuries-old barns. You will have your own wood cookstove, bathroom, and kitchen sink. You are free to walk the 85+ acres of pastures and woods, wade into the creek, and cut herbs for your evening meal among other simple pleasures. Your children will never want to leave once they experience the freedom of the farm and the open countryside. You are welcomed to be actively involved in daily farm chores or to be just a casual observer of everything that goes on at the farm.
Troy, NH (603) 242-6495 www.east-hill-farm.com. Hosting family farm vacations, senior programs, bus groups, square dance weekends and lots more. A full working farm where kids are kings. The full barnyard—plus a heated swimming pool, located in a county with 23 covered bridges.
MAPLE HILL FARM BED & BREAKFAST INN
Hallowell, ME (800) 622-2708; www.maplebb.com; breakfast; private baths. An eight-guest-room Victorian farmhouse just outside town, with goats, sheep, llamas, a pony, and a dwarf cow named Lumpy. Restaurants, antiques shops, and a 1,755-acre wildlife preserve nearby.
Rochester, VT (802) 767-3926; www.libertyhillfarm.com. Breakfast and dinner; shared baths. There’s a big white farmhouse, an old red barn with a hayloft all in the Green Mountains of Vermont. A 200-acre dairy operation, guests sleep in seven sunny bedrooms right in the farmhouse and can participate in any of the farm jobs. You can help milk the cows twice a day, collect eggs, and pick sweet corn and wild blackberries in season. Fill up more baskets at the local apple orchard. Then again, you could skip work altogether and tube down the White River—or, in winter, ski at Killington or Sugarbush, or cross-country in the Green Mountain National Forest next door. There’s a nearby farm museum that offers hands-on butter churning. Just make it back in time for the big, farm-style suppers.
