A Day at Shelburne Farms

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When we stayed in Burlington Vermont for several weeks back in 2018, we had done a few day trips into the town of Shelburne to check out the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory as well as a wine tasting at Shelburne Vineyard. But there is more to see in this town and we head there one day to visit Shelburne Farms. We didn’t know a great deal about the place before we arrived but we knew there were some trails and an old barn and fancy inn. It sounded like an interesting place to explore. Below is a distant picture of the old barn - from the looks of things even the old barn is fancy!

The Main Barn at Shelburne Farms

We show up to the main parking lot and it was quite busy. We hadn’t considered that being Fathers Day, there might be more than the normal number of visitors. Between the large map and the volunteers to answer questions at the visitors center, we came up with our strategy. Our first stop was to have a picnic lunch behind the visitor center before we start wandering around. There were several scheduled talks throughout the afternoon so we needed to make sure we could get to the various locations at the proper times.

It’s a very big property - about 1400 acres and there are miles of trails and roads. One option is to hop on the tractor drawn shuttle that runs between the visitors center and the main barn. We decide that it is a very nice day so we set off on the trail to the barn. It’s about 2/3 mile along the walking path. There are numerous cars that are driving the road here but it seems like they must be guests staying at the inn.

Visitor Center at Shelburne Farms

The Farm's Shuttle

Our Path to the Barn

Along the way as we got closer to the barn, there was an unusual display. Mounted on wooden posts were various hollowed out logs a few inches in diameter. They all had some sort of carved head of various animals and people. There were notches cut along the sides. Our determination was they were some sort of musical instruments. A stick rubbed up and down the notches produced “music” and the tone varied based on the size of the opening in the log. Even though we tried to make music, we were unable to produce anything pleasant sounding.

Unusual Musical Instruments

Somewhat Scary Carvings

Our path leads us to the barn. And what a barn! We’ve seen some fancy barns in our travels but this is on a completely different level. The barn isn’t just singular building but more like a full complex of buildings all built around a 2 acre courtyard. The main barn is about 50 by 200 feet and 5 stories high. The adjoining buildings wrap around from either end of the barn to surround the courtyard. The architectural details are rather incredible.

One of the Side Buildings at Main Barn

Weathervane Atop Barn

View Over the Courtyard

Outside Corner of Main Barn

We know that Shelburne Farms is currently run by a nonprofit to teach about sustainable agriculture and forestry but the buildings and property don’t really fit with that mission. A little research explains the history of the place. In the late 19th century, William Seward and Lila Webb bought 33 farms in the area amounting to nearly 4000 acres. Where did they get the money? Lila was the youngest daughter of William H. Vanderbilt - one of the richest in the world at the time. When Vanderbilt died in 1885, Lila came into a great deal of money. Shelburne Farms was her project. The barn was constructed in the late 1880’s and had some major renovations in the early 1990’s. We probably should have known a bit of this backstory before our visit so we wouldn’t be walking around the grounds confused why some nonprofit had such a fancy facility.

There are several business operations that are run out of the barn. We first stop at the bakery and find a large assortment of breads, pastries and cookies. We succumb and get a some cookies to be our desert as we explore the grounds more. There is a woodworking shop that was not open on a Sunday. When I looked through the windows of the shop, I was expecting to see lots of old time woodworking tools like a treadle lathe, but from the looks of things, this shop is equipped with modern day woodworking tools.

Goodies For Sale at the Bakery

One of the larger businesses is the cheese making shop. This shop is actually run by Shelburne Farms using milk from the cows living here on the farm. They make cheese every day since the cows don’t stop producing milk. A chalkboard explains the timing from the milk arriving at 8 AM to cutting curds at 10 AM until it is complete by 2:30 PM. It also has the stats from today’s production run. They started with 637 gallons of milk (5477 pounds) and expect to produce 575 pounds of cheddar cheese. The process can be watched through some large windows. At the time we stopped by they were working on the cheese curds. Since these are my favorite, I really wanted to get a tub full of them to go, but they don’t sell their cheese at the curd stage. Bummer!

Stirring the Cheese Curds

More Than a Pinch of Salt!

One of the talks we wanted to see was regarding the goats and other animals kept on the farm. They do have many of your “standard” barnyard animals.

Number 419

Lambs

Inquisitive Goat

Miniature Donkey

Another talk we were looking forward to was a local resident talking about raptors. He apparently works for a nearby bird shelter (Outreach for Earth Stewardship) that takes in birds of prey that have suffered some sort of injury and can no longer live in the wild. He doesn’t always bring the same bird so we didn’t know for sure what to expect until we see him walking up the hill with a great horned owl. It was a beautiful bird that had gotten snagged in some sort of fence and had to have some of its toes and talons removed. With that disability, he would be a rather useless hunter, so now he lives in captivity. The man was a wealth of information about this particular bird and other birds of prey. Since it was a hot day, a small spray bottle of water helps to keep the owl cool and hydrated.

Hoot Hoot

Squirt Me

By mid afternoon, we had gotten in our talks and visited everything around the barn so we headed out to explore some more of the property. We hike up the trail in the woods to Lone Tree Hill where we get an excellent view of Lake Champlain and what we assume to be the Inn in the distance. A bench on the hill provides a nice stopping point.

View from Lone Tree Hill

The Inn with Lake Champlain

The trail to get down to the in leads us past a memorial to one of the prior owners of the property and came to the backside of the barn. It’s from here that you can see beauty of the place and its view of the Green Mountains in the distance to the east.

Memorial

Main Barn from Behind

As we work our way through the woods, we come upon an elaborate array of tubing that connect to the large number of sugar maples and leading to the sugar shack. As we continue down the hill we even have a geocache hidden in the woods and to get to it I need to limbo under the tubing. Next along the trail was the Market Garden. There are numerous greenhouses and large planting beds. A beautiful house sits nearby and there looks to be an area where classes are held.

Sugar House

Home by Greenhouses is Pretty Nice Too

There is a very large “Solar Orchard” in the field below the greenhouses. It consists of 530 panels and averages 187 MWH each year - enough for ~17 homes. One of the nearby fields had been cut recently and a large John Deere tractor was out turning the rows of hay to dry before baling. As we get closer to the edge of the property along the lake, we find yet another huge barn. This is the Coach Barn completed in 1902 and previously  housed all the carriages and sleighs used on the property as well as the horses and tack used for pulling them. This building is in the process of renovation and not open to the public but is sure is big and beautiful.

Making Hay

The Coach Barn from Behind

Front of Coach Barn

It was about a 1.5 mile walk from Lone Tree Hill before we reach the lake. From here we can see the inn about a quarter mile away.

Shore of Lake Champlain with Inn on Hill

The inn itself sits atop a hill with great views of the lake. There are lots of guests enjoying the grounds. Most of them are sitting on Adirondack chairs with a drink or bottle of wine enjoying the day. We seem a little out of place since we aren’t wearing our Polo shirts but we don’t seem to draw too much attention to ourselves by walking around the grounds and the gardens.

The Inn at Shelburne Farms

View from Gardens

Lake Champlain and Adirondacks

The gardens are very well maintained and contain lots of statues. We wander thru a side trail in the woods to find more statues but also appear to have come upon some private residences back here so we turn back.

Formal Gardens by Inn

Giant Allium

Pond and Fountain in Gardens

We continue our loop around the property by following the trail next to the road to the inn. It passes along a seawall and beach of sorts. Just a little bit further is the large dairy barn. It didn’t look like this area was setup with the intention of having visitors wandering around so we only got close enough to check out some of the cows eating in the barn.

Seawall and Beach

Moo!

A quarter mile from the dairy barn, we have the choice to follow trails back towards the main barn which would have us repeat some trails or walk the trails that parallel the road back to the visitor center. We weren’t sure we could make it back to the main barn to catch the last shuttle ride of the day, so we just follow the road and enjoy the views and come across another herd of cows grazing in the fields.

More of the Cows at Shelburne

At a fork in the road near the barn, we had the option of about half a mile walk to the visitor center or a quarter mile to the main barn. We checked our watches and realized if we hustled, we should be able to catch the last shuttle. So back to the main barn we went. Our timing was perfect. The tractor was just pulling the wagon cars into the loading area as we walked up.

The Easy Way to the Visitor Center

This turned into a wonderful stop. We had originally figured we would spend an hour or two here and then check out other places in the Shelburne area. We ended up spending nearly 6 hours exploring Shelburne Farms and likely walked around 6 miles. And while we believe we saw the bulk of the place, there were likely other things we missed completely.

The next couple of days were some more very hot ones and we were really wishing the campground pool was open. The water was looking much better than it had looked when we first arrived but apparently it wasn’t quite ready for use yet.

Not Quite Ready Pool at Campground