Country Girl at Heart
I gotta tell you, I do love staying at bed and breakfast inns.
I know they’re not for everybody, but they fit me to a T. Quaint surroundings filled with antiques and lots of friendly people to talk to, hospitable innkeepers cooking my food for me, not to mention sample sizes of bath products– what’s not to love? The girls are right there with me, but Russ… not so much.
If you’re a regular reader, you’ve probably figured out by now that our Russ is an introvert trapped in an extrovert’s career. After years of practice he’s become very good at pushing through his discomfort and making the effort to talk and connect with people he doesn’t know, but trust me, it does not come naturally to him. We are such a pair– when we leave a gathering of any kind I am all hyped up and happy from interacting with everyone, and even though Russ enjoyed himself, he’s exhausted and basically ready to fall asleep in the car! So the fact that Russ was not only willing to go to a B & B with the girls and I last week, but actually instigated the whole trip himself is kind of a miracle. (Cue angels singing.) Needless to say, the pressure was on me to come up with something that wouldn’t make him regret his momentary lack of judgement. Luckily, I have mad ninja Googling skills, so I was up for it.
Now even though I’m definitely a B & B fan, I don’t enjoy just any ol’ kind, and I can be a wee bit picky. I’m basically a pretty low-maintenance, flexible kind of traveller (hey, I spent 15 years on a bus with a band, remember?) but I figure if I’m going to be paying for the pleasure of staying at an inn, it doesn’t make sense to go somewhere that’s not at least as nice as the house I’m leaving. I usually lean towards the historical inns– you know those wonderful huge old mansions that you always drive by and wonder what they look like on the inside but unless you happen to know the owners you never get to see them? Yeah, I love those.
Here are some of the things on my checklist: I prefer that the guest rooms are well separated from the public rooms and have an element of privacy so that it doesn’t feel like I’m crammed into my Auntie’s spare bedroom with a bunch of noisy cousins next door. ‘Shared baths’ are a big ‘no thanks,’ unless I’m sharing them with family members or people that have already seen me naked. Breakfast should not be served at the butt-crack of dawn– if you have to set an alarm to get up and get ready, it starts feeling like work instead of play. Animals of any kind are always a plus, especially those you can pet. Bonus points for big ol’ porches with swings and lovely grounds for wandering around in. Having some kind of interesting, regional restaurant not too far away is pretty important, though it doesn’t have to be fancy– in fact everybody (but me) emphatically prefers that it is not AT ALL fancy! Also, driving distance has to be factored in because if you blow most of the first day getting there AND you know you face a long drive when you leave, it has a tendency to make you spend the in-between time napping instead of exploring.
Actually this is starting to make me sound kind of high-maintenance after all, isn’t it?!
I prefer the term “discriminating.”
Anyway, bearing all of those elements in mind, I hit the computer and came up with… *trumpet fanfare* …The Country Girl at Heart Bed and Breakfast Inn! It’s in Munfordville, Kentucky, a straight shot up I-65, barely two hours away with the added bonus (to the girls and I at least) of having all kinds of (previously visited) charming little Southern towns (like Franklin, Smith’s Grove and Glendale) right off the interstate so we could basically antique-mall our way to the inn. Their website will give you the basic info about the inn, but what it leaves out is that the owner, Darlene, is truly an amazing, fascinating force of nature-type woman– my favorite kind! She and her daughters (who happen to be INCREDIBLE singers and musicians known collectively as “Warrior Poetes”– check them out here) moved to Kentucky from Connecticut after an exhaustive, multi-state search to find the perfect property to turn into an inn. A local business magazine called ‘The Lane Report’ describes their journey this way:
“You’d have to think that a woman who kept two pygmy goats and a full chicken coop in a New England suburb might have a farm in her future. All Darlene Rose knew was that for years she knew she wasn’t where she was meant to be. Whenever she, her husband and children went on vacation, she’d look at houses and property, dreaming of running a bed and breakfast on a working farm and cooking in great big pots.
When the mother of four began searching online four years ago, nothing panned out. Then in 2007, her brother found an Amish farm for sale in Hart County.
Darlene fell in love with its house, barns, rolling pastures and woods, and purchased the lot. Upon returning to Connecticut, she announced to her family, “I’m moving to Kentucky. Anyone who wants to can come with me.”
Thus began the adventure.
Last October, Darlene and her girls opened Country Girl at Heart Farm Bed and Breakfast. On this 140-acre working sustainable farm, visitors can sip lemonade on a wraparound porch and watch Amish buggies clip-clop by, or roll up their sleeves and pitch in to help with the animals or burgeoning vegetable, perennial and herb gardens.
“So many people say they’ll come for the b’n’b, but probably won’t get involved with the farm work,” Darlene laughs. “But they all do.”
In addition to horses, goats, ducks and a grass-fed beef operation, 100 hens lay orange-yoked brown eggs the women sell in Elizabethtown and Louisville, where Avalon Restaurant now features “Country Girl at Heart Deviled Eggs.”
Remarkably, none of the women knew anything about renovation or farming at first. Though Darlene had tended an organic garden in their suburban backyard, they had never canned green beans, mowed pastureland or cared for livestock. So, upon buying the farm, they moved in across the road and spent the first six months mapping out the makeover (**featuring a 5000 sq. ft. incredibly well-thought-out addition**) Darlene’s husband Brian, who retains a business and residence in Connecticut, helped with the planning; Darlene was the designer and builder.
These days, the former Amish farmhouse now sports five additional beamed bedrooms. Each has a private bath, a king or queen bed with 100 percent organic cotton or bamboo sheets, and a unique theme – farmer, pioneer, patriot, artisan and gentry. The Pioneer Room, for example, (**where we stayed**) sports country French décor to honor a French woman instrumental in local history. All common areas in the farmhouse have wireless high-speed Internet access.” (**And yes, this was a definite selling point for the Taff family.**)
Now, my personal taste in interior design for my own home runs more towards the art deco/folk art/early bordello/eclectic/bordering-on-looking-like-circus-folk-live-here kind of look, so I don’t necessarily want to live full-time surrounded by country-themed decorations. But Darlene has the perfect touch for a country inn, and she also shares my love of vintage dishes, teapots and mixed fabrics so I fell in love with the decor on the spot. In this blog post I really wanted to show you guys some of her more creative touches, so if you’ll bear with me…. here’s a few (million) photos:
**Website pictures of our room, the Pioneer Suite– it has an adjoining room with two twin beds, perfect for the girls.
**It had a couple of great decorating ideas in it– our bedroom featured ‘aged’ pages from a book that told the true story of the French pioneer woman that the room was named after, hung as art on the wall.
**The girl’s room featured one of my favorite things in the world, vintage nightgowns, again hung as art on the wall. How great is this? I have collected these for years, never once though of displaying them this way!
**Frankly, Charlotte was much more impressed with this particular artistic expression:
**We were able to peek into an unoccupied guestroom down the hall, the colorful Artisan Room which had another great wall display idea– a clothesline strung with antique linens and lace.
**Darlene has such a flair for mixing patterns and textures. Here are some website photos of Artisan Room–
**A couple more interesting answers to the eternal “What can I do to perk up this blank wall? question– and again, this might not be your decorating style, but you gotta admire her creativity:
**Walking into the dining room for breakfast we were greeted by this lovely sight:
**Close-up view (and yes, I was lusting mightily over those Homer Laughlin berry bowls, but my mother raised me right so I didn’t even THINK of stealing them. Also, a complete set of 6 wouldn’t fit into my purse.):
**Darlene’s magical Oatmeal For People Who Don’t Like Oatmeal:
**A delectable popover/pancake fusion known as a ‘dutch baby':
**By the way, this is what I was gazing lovingly at while I was eating all of these wondrous things… See why I felt an instant bond with Darlene?
**And look what she did with these cute vintage aprons– chair skirts!
**The dining room opens into a sunny common room that has all kinds of cozy nooks factored into it so you can sit around and talk in a group, or settle into a quiet reading corner. Great use of space, and WONDERFUL choice of mixed fabric upholstery!
**That’s a puzzle table behind the sofa.
**You can get a glimpse of the sunporch through these french doors:
**Lots of fun things are thoughtfully placed at kid-level, like this dollhouse:
**OK, if you’re still hanging with me, in the next few days I’ll do one more little post that shows some of the actual farm outdoors, and maybe a couple more Shaker Village shots– are you guys up for it?
I’ll leave you with this shot of our fabulous innkeeper, who is bright, funny, full of energy and interesting stories. She also happens to be a deeply spiritual woman, which is probably one of the reasons Mr. Not-A-Big-Fan-Of-B&Bs ironically ended up being the LAST one of us to leave the dining room after we had spent at least two hours having a unexpectedly soulful conversation with Darlene and her equally fascinating daughter Marissa!
He’s already asking when we’re going to plan another trip.
