Blue Vista Farm

I

The farmhouse

For more than a hundred years the farmhouse has stood at the center of this land, and it carries its age with the ease of a house that has been lived in and cared for through every season. Wide-plank floors run through rooms warmed by a wood stove, the dining room opens to the yard through a wall of windows, and upstairs, two rooms tucked beneath the roofline make the kind of quiet corners newer houses rarely have. With three bedrooms and roughly 2,785 square feet, there is room for family, for guests who stay the week, and for long winters spent comfortably indoors. Gigabit internet is available at the house, so working from here is as easy as living here.

II

The land

The farm's thirty-eight acres are protected by a conservation easement, with a future building site set aside for anyone who wants to build, so the open fields, the orchard rows, and the ponds will stay just as they are. The easement carries no obligation to farm, which leaves a new owner free to walk the mown lanes in the evening, let the meadows grow long, or tend the plantings as closely as they wish.

III

The barn and outbuildings

The barn is the landmark of the property, a red gambrel on a fieldstone foundation crowned with a cupola, with whitewashed beams and heavy timber posts on the lower level. Around it stand a pole barn, a shop, and a garage, along with a yurt on the lawn and a gravel terrace set with posts for string lights on summer evenings. The old fieldstone milkhouse has been converted into a cedar-lined sauna, and the walk-in coolers and freezers remain with the buildings, ready for a workshop, a studio, a collection, or gatherings of any size.

IV

The plantings

Some fourteen and a half acres are planted to fruit, with nearly ten thousand blueberry bushes now in their prime, rows of raspberries, and an apple orchard that includes a block of Cortlands planted in 1961, the year before Bayfield held its first Apple Festival. In spring the rows and the crabapples come into bloom across the property, and by late summer the blueberries hang heavy on the bushes. The plantings can be enjoyed for what they bring to the table, entrusted to a local grower, or allowed to return in part to meadow, and none of it is required.

V

The setting

Bayfield lies a few minutes down the hill, a harbor town of shops, galleries, and restaurants, and the ferry to Madeline Island and the Apostle Islands departs from the edge of town. Summer here means sailing and long evenings, autumn brings the color and the Apple Festival, and winter settles in with quiet roads and ski trails close at hand. Once the leaves have fallen, small glimpses of Lake Superior sneak through the trees from the upstairs of the house and from the barn.

VI

The location

VII

Gallery