While taxes and the cost of feed, services, fuel, and just about everything else rise, the price of milk stays the same. As the Kennetts saw the farms going out, they realized that they had to do something different if they wanted to keep their farm in the family.
That something different seemed to happen purely by chance. In 1984, a local bed-and-breakfast overbooked for the weekend, but its owners knew that there was plenty of room at Liberty Hill Farm. They asked the Kennetts if they wanted to take some guests in. The answer was yes, and it may have saved the farm.
So if Bob has to work around some flatlanders in his barn, that’s fine with him: “Our guests understand that we have to keep working, that we can take some time to explain things but then we have to get back to business.” And that’s why they come. From the minute they arrive, it’s perfectly clear that this is no faux-farm theme park.
At a theme park, they don’t work from six in the morning until ten at night milking the cows twice a day, feeding them as many as seven times a day, haying, chopping corn. “I let Beth take care of the inn,” Bob says. “I just try to keep the farm going.”
Beth (picture Joanne Woodward playing a farmwife) has graciously slipped into the roles of innkeeper, cook, host, and raconteur. She will tell you the story of how hostages from the Revolutionary-period Royalton Raid were held captive for a night on this very property. She’ll explain why Liberty Hill Farm milk is free of bovine growth hormone. And, if you’re a repeat guest, she’ll make sure you get your regular room when you check in.
The house itself didn’t require any additions to become an inn. With 18 rooms, there was plenty of space the family wasn’t using. And once the attached woodshed and bunkhouse were modernized, the house contained seven guest bedrooms. Now it can hold a dozen extra people without seeming crowded.
The farmhouse is, well, homey. It’s a big, old place with butternut woodwork, old-fashioned wallpaper, mismatched furniture, and lots of corners, cubbyholes, and sitting rooms to explore and escape to. In the parlor, the upright piano gets more use than the television. You won’t be afraid to put your cup of coffee down on the table without a coaster. It’s a weathered oak table that’s been in the family for years. But people aren’t drawn here for deluxe accommodations. They come for the hospitality, the companionship, and the food.
From midafternoon on, the kitchen is filled with the aroma of fruit pies and homemade bread baking, and maybe a pot roast. “I always serve a roast or turkey, and several vegetable dishes,” Beth says. That turkey might be fresh from son Tom’s farm, the vegetables from his huge garden. Or there might be corn on the cob from a neighbor’s fields.
Beth learned to cook not from her mother but from her grandmother and from a neighbor, Lena Quillia. “Lena wanted to see to my education as a farmwife,” Beth says. “She really encouraged me to feed people going-home-to-visit-grandma kinds of meals. I try really hard to serve old-fashioned New England meals, but I also know that people’s tastes have changed. So I always make sure that there’s some kind of protein dish for those who don’t want meat. Saturday is often baked ham, but I always do macaroni and cheese, baked beans, and sticky buns. Whenever I do leg of lamb, I have pasta or some other kind of dish to go with it.”
No one is shy about digging in or asking for seconds. There is plenty to do to work off the calories. You can pitch in with the chores—feeding the cows and the calves, gathering eggs from the handful of chickens that roam around the farmyard, or even trying your hand at milking. If Tom is heading off to his place to pick tomatoes or squash or peppers, he may let you tag along.
There’s also the possibility of making yourself scarce during the day. There are plenty of trails to be hiked in the nearby national forest or apples to be picked at another local farm. In the winter, it’s an easy drive to the ski slopes. And in the summer, you can grab an inner tube from the barn, walk down to the bridge, launch yourself onto the White River, and have a leisurely float to the Kennetts’ private beach.
But there is something else that brings people here and makes them want to return. It’s something subtle but ever present, like the faint scent of the animals in the air. It’s the sense of fellowship. It’s a sense of experiencing—even belonging to, if only for a weekend—a disappearing way of life, where sons work shoulder to shoulder with fathers; where husbands and wives fret over an ailing animal or celebrate a sunny fall day.
Just a few hours at Liberty Hill brought back that feeling for me. I grew up on a farm, and I remember the satisfaction of pushing away from a good meal to head back out to work in the evening. I remember the pride that comes from working long hours in a family business. It’s a heroic feeling that most of us never get to experience, even vicariously, these days. But at Liberty Hill you are quickly drawn into the drama of a family trying to maintain a farm under difficult conditions.
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