Our Front Yard

Up until last weekend this was the view from our front door:

This is a picture of the house taken from the road:

And here are a few more pictures of the front yard taken from Suydam Road:

It's a bit overgrown, obviously. So we decided to do something about it.

Tomorrow I'll post some pictures of how it looks now that it is all cleaned up.

Recent Things

Gregg, Mike and Murdoch cleaning up some trees we cut down last fall:

The cistern, corn crib, and 3Bay:

The corn crib, 3Bay, and Banked Barn seen from other side of the park:

This is Tommy, also known as Trunk. He is the father of Dean, Tigre, and Bakshi. He has been coming up to the house recently for snacks and company:

Here is Will ready for school on a rainy morning:

Ryno says, "This is good."

We got some new tools - a drill press and a band saw:

We have been using the new tools to build benches:

Here is the camp store from one side:

And the other:
And last but not least, our beloved Stonehouse:

The Most Beautiful Day Ever

The last two weeks or so we have been feeling spring rising up beneath us - the ground got soft and muddy under the snow and the trees started to swell up with buds - but yesterday it got warm from the top down. The snow melted. I saw a robin. The sun was shining. It felt like the Most Beautiful Day Ever.

There is one small green growing thing already, struggling along in a small lake made by snow melt and the sump pump. It looks as if Noah's dove might snatch it up as a sign that the water will recede.





Happy Spring

Bed & Breakfast

A question has been asked about our plans to turn the Stonehouse into a Bed and Breakfast and how the B&B will function.

The Stonehouse has been a private residence up to this point. We have plans to turn it into a place that people can rent; either the whole house rented by one group or individual suites rented by individual guests. The house can function as a meeting place, an inn where food is served, or as a traditional B&B.

We intend to remodel the interior of the house in order to create 4 bedroom suites, each with a full bath, while restoring some of the original features of the house and correcting the structural and aesthetic issues that the house has developed over the last 147 years. The house will have a kitchen, a dining room, a parlour, and a sitting room with a fireplace.

The exterior of the house will get some new clapboard and paint. The area around the house will be regraded and landscaped. We plan to put in some nice sitting areas for drinking coffee and reading the paper as well as pathways and roads connecting the house with other areas of the park.

How the house functions as a rentable space will depend on what sort of guests we have staying here. To be honest, we aren't quite sure what that will look like yet. We assume that many of the people who will be interested in staying in the house will be here with a larger group; for example, if a military re-recreation group rents the entire park for a weekend, perhaps certain members or units of the group will rent the house for use as both a base of operations and sleeping accomodations. A living history group might rent the house as part of their efforts to bring a lost time period back to life. A wedding party renting the park for their ceremony or reception might choose to stay in the house instead of traveling to a hotel...and so on and so forth. On the other hand, we may get many guests who stay here independently of a large group. These guests may be looking for a more traditional B & B experience, or just hoping for a relaxing stay in farm country, and we intend to cater to their interests.

Hope that helps. We will try to keep you updated on our progress in the house and will be certain to let you know when the house is available for rent.

Website

We worked on our website over the weekend. We added links to our blog and photos on the front page of the website. We added a "Coming Events" section to the front page also, which lets you know what groups we will be hosting soon. Click on their names to be directed to each group's website for more information about them.

We added a lot of photos to our Photos page, reorganized the albums, and are in the process of adding captions. We hope you find it easier to navigate and that you enjoy the photos.

The website can be found at www.stonehousepark.net.

Northwest Territory Alliance

Yesterday Gregg gave a presentation to the Northwest Territory Alliance at their annual meeting in Highland, Indiana. The NWTA is a Revolutionary War re-enactment organization. You can learn more about them at http://www.nwta.com/.

Gregg and the rest of the Stonehouse Park staff would like to thank the NWTA for having us at their annual meeting. Hope to see you at the park soon!

Questions From the Floor

Lest I bore you all with my rambling, I would like to open the floor for questions. Is anyone curious about anything we do or have done here at the park? Got any questions about what's coming up next? Something specific you would like to know about?

Leave a comment here or shoot one of us an email and we'll create a blog post that will hopefully address your questions.

Thanks for reading,
Ellie