KINGFIELD – Lisa Standish has a vision for the historic farm she purchased in the spring. Some of it is already a reality.
The 1850s farm on the corner of Route 27 and School Street was refurbished in about a month to serve as an inn. With seven rooms, all with private baths, the Mountain Village Inn has seen a trickle of business since it opened in July, according to Standish. But she has only just begun her marketing scheme and is confident that the winter months will bring more business. After all, a snowmobile trail travels directly across her property.
Standish bought the property in May and finished renovations on it in a month, adding five bathrooms and a new heating system.
Furnished with an elegance intended to evoke the simplicity of rural farm life, it has many furnishings from Maine WoodWorks, a Biddeford company with a small work force of mostly disabled woodworkers who manufacture furniture in Shaker and other simple styles. With views of Mount Abraham and Sugarloaf from its many windows, the farmhouse is a maze of bedrooms, bathrooms and sitting rooms. The open, quaintly rustic kitchen and dining area boasts a floor-to-ceiling window with views of fields and mountains.
How much has this endeavor cost?
“More than I can afford,” Standish said, grinning slightly.
Known variously as the Brackley Farm, the Wing Farm or the Robinson Farm, depending on a local resident’s age, says Standish, the inn has a history of family dairy and beef farming that dates back more than 150 years.
“If you heard people speak about this place, you’d know it is a community place,” she said Wednesday.
And community is part of the point.
Kingfield residents are free to use the grounds at will. Others will need to pay to have a wedding ceremony or other such event there, she said.
The inn will also be the site for a meeting of the Department of Economic and Community Development, which plans to host consultants from Fermata Representatives, a national firm hoping to help residents identify key nature-based tourism development opportunities. The gathering is scheduled for 4 p.m. Sept. 23 and is open to the public.
Standish wants to provide jobs to her neighbors. She already has two employees – an assistant innkeeper, Shelly Poulin, and a local high school student who helps with the grounds. She said she wants to create jobs “so other people will be really busy,” a reference to her abundantly full life.
And the inn is only the beginning of her mission for the historic property. There are sheep in its future.
Standish was very interested in people coming to her inn and working farm “to contribute to their understanding of how difficult farming is and what determined commitment it takes.”
“The average person has no idea where their food comes from,” she said.
If business supports it and she can raise funding, Icelandic and Fresian milking sheep may be grazing on the 12 acres surrounding the inn by next spring. She hopes to be able to recruit other local farmers to raise milking sheep and create a sheep cheese-making cooperative.
The inn will host a harvest festival in October. Craft booths will be arranged in the 24,000-square-foot post-and-beam barn, and farm animals will be roaming the barnyard.
More information may be obtained by calling, toll free, 866-577-0741 or on the Internet at www.mountainvillageinn.com.
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